labor which so degrade and famish masses of human beings, that the
divine miracle of the feeding of the five thousand must be multiplied
many times over before the truths of nature or revelation can be
received into teachable minds or susceptible hearts? And who shall
answer for the hereditary poverty, ignorance and crime, which
constitute a marked feature of English life, and are distinctly visible
upon the face of American civilization? These questions may point with
sufficient distinctness to the sources of the evils enumerated; but we
are not to assume that mere human governments can furnish an adequate
and complete remedy
And who shall answer for those distinctions of caste and systems of
labor which so degrade and famish masses of human beings, that the
divine miracle of the feeding of the five thousand must be multiplied
many times over before the truths of nature or revelation can be
received into teachable minds or susceptible hearts? And who shall
answer for the hereditary poverty, ignorance and crime, which
constitute a marked feature of English life, and are distinctly visible
upon the face of American civilization? These questions may point with
sufficient distinctness to the sources of the evils enumerated; but we
are not to assume that mere human governments can furnish an adequate
and complete remedy. Yet this admitted inability to do everything is no
excuse for neglecting those things which are plainly within their power.
Taking upon themselves the parental character, forgetting that they have
wrongs to avenge, and seeking reformation through kindness, criminals
and the causes of crime will diminish, if they do not disappear. This is
the responsibility of the nations, and the claim now made upon them.
Individual civilization and refinement have always been in advance of
national; and national character is the mirrored image of the individual
characters, not excepting the humblest, of which the nation is composed.
Each foot of the ocean"s surface has, in its fluidity or density or
position, something of the quality or power of every drop of water which
rests or moves in the depths of the sea. What is called national
character is the face of the great society beneath; and, as that society
in its elements is elevated or debased, so will the national character
rise or fall in the estimation of all just men, and upon the page of
impartial history. Government, which is the organized expression of the
will of society, should represent the best elements of which society is
composed; and it ought, therefore, to combat error and wrong, and seek
to inaugurate labor, justice, and truth, as the elements of stability,
growth, and power. It must accept as its principles of action the best
rules of conduct in individuals. The man who avenges his personal wrongs
by personal attacks or vindictive retaliation, must sacrifice in some
measure the sympathy of the wise, the humane, and the good. So the
nation which avenges real or fancied wrongs crushes out the elements of
humanity and a higher life, which, properly cultivated, might lead an
erring mortal to virtue and peace. The proper object of punishment is
not vengeance, but the public safety and the reformation of the
criminal. Indeed, we may say that the sole object of punishment is the
reformation of the criminal; for there can be no safety to the public
while the criminal is unreformed. The punishment of the prison must,
from its nature, be temporary; perpetual confinement can be meted out to
a few great crimes only. If, then, the result of punishment be
vengeance, and not reformation, the last state of society is worse than
its first. The prison must stand a sad monument of the want of true
paternal government in the family and the state; but, when it becomes
the receptacle merely of the criminal, and all ideas of reformation are
banished from the hearts of convicts and the minds of keepers, its
influence is evil, and only evil continually.
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