SERMON 
 
 OF 
 
 THE DANGEROUS CLASSES IN SOCIETY, 
 
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 PARKER, 
 
 MIXISIEP. OF THE XXY1II. CONQREOAXIONAL CHtJRCn IX B03I0X, 
 
 AND NOW PUBLISHED BT BEQUEST. 
 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY C. & J. M. SPEAR, 40 CORNHILL, 
 
 AND B. H. GREENE, 124 WASHINGTON STREET. 
 
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 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, by 
 THEODORE PARKER, 
 
 In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 FRESS OF COOLIDGE AND WILEY, 
 WATER STREET. 
 
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 SERMON. 
 
 
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 IF A MAN HAVE AN HUNDRED SHEEP, AND ONE OF THEM BE GONE ASTRAY, 
 DOTH HE NOT LEAVE THE NINETY AND NINE, AND GOETH INTO THE MOUN¬ 
 TAINS, AND SEEKETH THAT WHICH IS GONE ASTRAY ? — Matt, xviii : 12. 
 
 We are first Babies, then Children, then Youths, 
 then Men. It is so with the Nation; so with Man¬ 
 kind. The Human Race started with no culture, 
 no religion, no morals, even no manners, — having 
 only desires and faculties within, and the world 
 without. Now we have attained much more. But 
 it has taken many centuries for Mankind to pass 
 from primeval barbarism to the present stage of 
 comfort, Science, civilization, and refinement. It 
 has been the work of two hundred generations; 
 perhaps of more. But each new child is born at 
 the foot of the ladder, as much as the first child; 
 with only desires and faculties. He may have a 
 better physical organization than the first child; 
 he certainly has better teachers, — but he, in like 
 manner, is born with no culture, no religion, no 
 morals, even with no manners; born into them, 
 not with them; born bare of these things and 
 naked as the first child. He must himself toil up 
 the ladder which Mankind have been so long in 
 constructing and climbing up. To attain the pres¬ 
 ent civilization he must pass over every point 
 
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 which the Race passed through. The child of the 
 civilized man, born with a good organization and 
 under favorable circumstances, can do this rapidly, 
 and in thirty or forty years attains the height of 
 development which it took the whole Human 
 Race sixty centuries or more to arrive at. He has 
 the aid of past experience and the examples of 
 noble men; he travels a road already smooth and 
 beaten. The world’s cultivation, so slowly and 
 painfully achieved, helps civilize him. He may 
 then go further on, and cultivate himself; may 
 transcend the development of Mankind, adding 
 new rounds to the ladder. So doing he aids future 
 children who will one day climb above his head, 
 he possibly crying against them, — that they climb 
 only to fall and thereby sweep off him and all be¬ 
 low ; that no new rounds can be added to the old 
 ladder. 
 
 Still, after all the helps which our fathers have 
 provided, every future child must go through the 
 same points which we and our predecessors passed 
 through, only more swiftly. Every Boy has his 
 Animal period, when he can only eat and sleep, 
 intelligence slowly dawning on his heart. Then 
 comes his Savage period, when he knows nothing 
 of Rights, when all thine is mine to him if he can 
 get it. Then comes his Barbarous period, he is 
 ignorant and dislikes to learn, study and restraint 
 are irksome. He hates the School, disobeys his 
 mother; has reverence for nobody. Nothing is 
 sacred to him — no time, nor place, nor person. 
 He would grow up wild. The greater part of chil¬ 
 dren travel beyond this stage. The unbearable 
 Boy becomes a tolerable Youth; then a powerful 
 
5 
 
 Man. He loves his duty; outstrips the men that 
 once led him so unwilling and reluctant, and will 
 set hard lessons for his grandsire which that grand- 
 sire, perhaps, will not learn. The young learns 
 of the old, mounts the ladder they mounted and 
 the ladder they made. The reverse is seldom true, 
 that the old climbs the ladder which the young 
 have made and over that storms new heights. Now 
 and then you see it, but such are extraordinary and 
 marvellous men. In the old story Saturn did not 
 take pains to understand his children, nor learn 
 thereof; he only devoured them up, till they out¬ 
 grew and overmastered him. Did the generation 
 that is passing from the stage ever comprehend 
 and fairly judge the new generation coming on ? 
 In the world the Barbarian passes on and becomes 
 the Civilized, then the Enlightened. 
 
 Now in the physical process of growth from the 
 Baby to the Man there is no direct intervention of 
 the Will. Therefore the process goes on regularly, 
 and we do not see abortive men who have ad¬ 
 vanced in years but stopped growth in their baby¬ 
 hood, or boyhood. But as the Will is the Soul of 
 Personality, so to say, the Heart of Intellect, Morals 
 and Religion, so the force thereof may promote, re¬ 
 tard, disturb and perhaps for a time completely ar¬ 
 rest the progress of intellectual, moral and religious 
 growth. Still more, this spiritual development of 
 men is hindered or promoted by subtle causes 
 hitherto little appreciated. Hence by reason of 
 these outward or internal hindrances you find 
 persons and classes of men who do not attain the 
 average culture of Mankind, but stop at some 
 lower stage of this spiritual development, or else 
 
6 
 
 loiter behind the rest You even find whole na¬ 
 tions whose progress is so slow that they need the 
 continual aid of the more civilized to quicken their 
 growth. Outward circumstances have a powerful 
 influence on this development. If a single class 
 in a nation lingers behind the rest, the cause there¬ 
 of will commonly be found in some outward hin¬ 
 drance. They move in a resisting medium and 
 therefore with abated speed. No one expects the 
 same progress from a Russian serf and a free man 
 of New England. I do not deny that in the case 
 of some men personal will is doubtless the disturb¬ 
 ing force. I am not now to go beyond that fact, 
 and inquire how the will became as it is. Here is 
 a man who, from whatever cause, is bodily ill-born, 
 with defective organs. He stops in the Animal 
 period; is incapable of any considerable degree 
 of development, intellectual, moral, or religious. 
 The defect is in his body. Others disturbed by more 
 occult causes do not attain their proper growth. 
 This man wishes to stop in his Savage period, he 
 would be a Freebooter, a Privateer against society, 
 having universal letters of Marque and Reprisal — 
 a perpetual Arab, his rule is to get what he can, as 
 he will and where he pleases; to keep what he 
 gets. Another stops at the Barbarous age. He is 
 lazy and will not work, others must bear his share 
 of the general burthen of Mankind. He claims 
 letters patent to make all men serve him. He is 
 not only indolent, constitutionally lazy, but lazy 
 consciously and wilfully idle. He will not work, 
 but in one form or another will beg or steal. Yet a 
 fourth stops in the Half-civilized period. He will 
 work with his hands but no more. He cannot dis- 
 
7 
 
 cover; he will not study to learn; he will not even 
 be taught what has been invented and taught be¬ 
 fore. None can teach him. The horse is led to 
 the water, or the water brought to the horse, but 
 the beast will not drink. “ The idle Fool is whipt 
 at school,” but to no purpose. He is always an 
 oaf. No college or tutor mends him. The wild 
 ass will go out free; wild and an ass. 
 
 These four, the Idiot, the Pirate, the Thief, and 
 the Clown — are exceptional men. They remain 
 stationary. Meanwhile, Mankind advances, con¬ 
 tinually, but not with an even front. The Human 
 Race moves not by column or line, but by tchelon 
 as it were. We go up by stairs, not by slopes. 
 Now comes a great man, of far-reaching and pro¬ 
 spective sight, a Moses, and he tells men that there 
 is a Land of Promise, which they have a right to 
 who have skill to win it. Then lesser men, the 
 Calebs and Joshuas, go and search it out, bringing 
 back therefrom new wine in the cluster and allur¬ 
 ing tales. Then troops of Pioneers advance — yet 
 lesser men; then a few bold men who love ad¬ 
 venture. Then comes the Army, the People with 
 their flocks and herds, the Priesthood with their Ark 
 of the Covenant and the Tabernacle, the title-deeds 
 of the new lands which they have heard of but not 
 seen. At last there comes the Mixed Multitude, 
 following in no order, but not without shouting 
 and tumult, men treading one another under foot, 
 cowards looking back and refusing to march, old 
 men dying without seeing their consolation. If 
 you will he down on the ground and take the pro¬ 
 file of a great city r and see how Hill, Steeple, 
 Dome, Tower, the Roof of the tall house gain on 
 
8 
 
 the sky, and then come whole streets of ware¬ 
 houses and shops, then common dwellings, then 
 cheap, low, tenements — you will have a good 
 profile of Man’s march to gain new conquests in 
 Science, Art, Morals, Religion, and general devel¬ 
 opment. It is so in the Family, —- a bright boy 
 shooting before all the rest, and taking the thunder 
 out of the adverse cloud for his brothers and sis¬ 
 ters, who follow and grow rich with unscathed 
 forehead. It is so in the Nation, — a few great 
 men bearing the brunt of the storm, and wading 
 through the surges to set their weaker brothers, 
 screaming and struggling, with dry feet, in safety, 
 on the firm land of Science or Religion. It is so 
 in the World, — a tall nation achieving Art, Sci¬ 
 ence, Law, Morals, Religion, and by the fact re¬ 
 vealing their beauty to the barbarian race. 
 
 In all departments of human concern there are 
 such Pioneers for the Family, the Nation, or Man¬ 
 kind. It is instructive to study this law of human 
 progress — to see the De Gamas and Columbuses, 
 aspiring men who dream of worlds to come, and 
 lead the perilous van; to see the Vespuccis, the 
 Cortes, the Pizarros who get rank and fame by 
 following in their track; to see next the merchant 
 adventurers, soldiers, suttlers and the like who 
 make money out of the new conquest, while the 
 great Discoverers had for meet reward the joy of 
 their genius, the nobleness of their work, a sight 
 of the world’s future welfare from the Prophet’s 
 mountain — a hard life, a bad name, and a grave 
 unknown. 
 
 Now while there are those- men in the van of 
 society, who aspire at more, chiding and taxing 
 
9 
 
 Mankind with idleness, cowardice, and even sin, 
 
 — there are yet those others who loiter on the way, 
 from weakness or wilfulness, refusing to advance 
 
 — idlers, cowards, sinners. If born in the rear 
 afar from civilization they are left to die — the 
 Savages, the Inferior Races, the Perishing Class¬ 
 es of the world. If born in the centre of civiliza¬ 
 tion, for a while they impede the march by actively 
 hindering others, by standing in their way, or by 
 plundering the rest — the Dangerous Classes of 
 society. They too are slain and trodden under foot 
 of men and likewise perish. 
 
 In most large Families there is a Bad Boy, a black 
 sheep in the flock, an Ishmael whom Abraham 
 will drive out into the wilderness, to meet an angel 
 if he can find one. That story of Hagar and her 
 son is very old, but verified anew each year in 
 families and nations. So in Society there are 
 Criminals who do not keep up with the moral 
 advance of the mass, stragglers from the march, 
 whom Society treats as Abraham his base-born 
 boy — but sending them off with no loaf nor skin 
 of water, not even a blessing but a curse; sending 
 them off as Cain went — with a bad name and a 
 mark on their foreheads ! So in the World there 
 are Inferior Nations, savage, barbarous, lialf-civiliz- 
 ed; some are inferior in nature, some perhaps only 
 behind us in development; on a lower form in the 
 great school of Providence — Negroes, Indians, 
 Mexicans, Irish, and the like, whom the world treats 
 as Ishmael and the Gibeonites got treated: now 
 their land is stolen from them in war; their chil¬ 
 dren, or their persons, are annexed to the Strong 
 as Slaves. The Civilized continually preys on the 
 
10 
 
 Savage, re-annexing their territory and stealing 
 their persons — owning them or claiming their 
 work. Esau is rough and hungry, Jacob smooth 
 and well fed. The smooth man overreaches the 
 rough; buys his birthright for a mess of pottage ; 
 takes the ground from underneath his feet, thereby 
 supplanting his brother. So the elder serves the 
 younger, and the fresh civilization, strong and 
 sometimes it may be wicked also, overmasters the 
 ruder age that is contented to stop. The young 
 man now a Barbarian will come up one day and 
 take all our places, making us seem ridiculous, 
 nothing but timid conservatives! 
 
 Now all these three, the reputed Pests of the 
 Family, Society, and the World are but loiterers 
 from the march, bad boys, or dull ones. Criminals 
 are a class of such; savages are nations thereof—- 
 classes or nations that for some cause do not keep 
 up with the movement of Mankind. The same 
 human nature is in us all, only there it is not so 
 highly developed. Yet the bad boy, who to-day is 
 a curse to the mother that bore him, would perhaps 
 have been accounted brave and good in the days 
 of the Conqueror; the dangerous class might have 
 fought in the Crusades and been reckoned soldiers 
 of the Lord whose chance for Heaven was most 
 auspicious. The savage nations would have been 
 thought civilized in the days when “there was 
 no smith in Israel.” David would make a sorry 
 figure among the present kings of Europe, and 
 Abraham would be judged of by a standard not 
 known in his time. There have been many centu¬ 
 ries in which the Pirate, the Land-Robber and the 
 Murderer were thought the greatest of men. 
 
11 
 
 Now it becomes a serious question what shall be 
 done for these Stragglers, or even with them. It is 
 sometimes a terrible question to the Father and 
 Mother what they shall do for their reprobate Son 
 who is an offence to the neighborhood, a shame, a 
 reproach and a heart-burning to them. It is a sad 
 question to Society, What shall be done with the 
 criminals — Thieves, Housebreakers, Pirates, Mur¬ 
 derers. It is a serious question to the World, What 
 is to become of the humbler nations — Irish, Mex¬ 
 icans, Malays, Indians, Negroes. 
 
 In the World and in Society the question is 
 answered in about the same way. In a low civi¬ 
 lization, the instinct of self-preservation is the 
 strongest of all. They are done with, not for ; are 
 done away with. It is the Old Testament an¬ 
 swer : — the Inferior Nation is hewn to pieces, the 
 Strong possess their lands, their cities, their cattle, 
 their persons, also, if they will; the class of Crimi¬ 
 nals gets the Prophet’s curse — the two Bears, the 
 Jail and the Gallows, eat them up. In the Fami¬ 
 ly alone is the Christian answer given; the good 
 shepherd goes forth to seek the one sheep that has 
 strayed and gone lost upon the mountains; the 
 Father goes out after the poor prodigal, whom the 
 swine’s meat could not feed nor fill.* The World, 
 which is the Society of Nations, and Society, 
 which is the Family of Classes, still belong mainly 
 to the “ old dispensation,” Heathen or Hebrew, 
 the Period of Force. In the Family there is a 
 certain instinctive love binding the Parent to the 
 
 * The allusion is to the following passages of Scripture, which 
 were read as the lesson for the day: —Numb., xiv.; II. Kings, ii: 
 23 — 25 5 and Luke, xv. 
 
12 
 
 Child, and therefore a certain Unity of Action- 
 growing out of that love. So the Father feels his 
 kinship to his boy, though a reprobate, looks for 
 the causes of his son’s folly or sin, and strives to 
 cure him; at least to do something for him, not 
 merely with him. The spirit of Christianity comes 
 into the Family, but the recognition of Human 
 Brotherhood stops mainly there. It does not reach 
 throughout Society; it has little influence on na¬ 
 tional Politics or international Law — on the affairs 
 of the World taken as a whole. I know the Idea 
 of Human Brotherhood has more influence now 
 than hitherto; I think in New England it has a 
 wider scope, a higher range, and works with far 
 more power than elsewhere. Our hearts bleed for 
 the starving thousands of Ireland, whom we only 
 read of; for the down-trodden Slave, though of 
 another race and dyed by Heaven with another 
 hue; yes, for the Savage and the Suffering every¬ 
 where. The hand of our charity goes through 
 every land. If there is one quality for which the 
 men of New England may be proud it is this —- 
 their sympathy with suffering Man. Still we are 
 far from the Christian ideal. We still drive out of 
 Society the Ishmaels and Esaus. This we do not 
 so much from ill-will as want of thought, but there¬ 
 by we lose the strength of these outcasts. So much 
 water runs over the dam — wasted and wasting ! 
 
 In all these melancholy cases what is it best to' 
 do ? what shall the Parents do to mend their dull 
 Boy, or their wicked one ? There are two methods 
 which may be tried. One is the Method of Force, 
 sometimes referred to Solomon and recommended 
 
by the maxim “ Spare not the rod and spoil the 
 child.” That is the Old Testament way, “ Stripes 
 are prepared for the Fool’s back.” The mischief is 
 — they leave it no wiser than they found it. By 
 the law of the Hebrews, a man brought his stub¬ 
 born and rebellious son before the magistrates and 
 deposed: “ This our son is stubborn and rebellious: 
 he will not obey our voice. He is a glutton and a 
 drunkard.” Thereupon, the men of the city stoned 
 him with stones and so “ put away the evil from 
 amongst them ! ” That was the Method of Force. 
 It may bruise the body; it may fill men with fear; 
 it may kill. I think it never did any other good. 
 It belonged to a rude and bloody age. I may ask 
 intelligent men who have tried it and I think they 
 will confess it was a mistake. I think I may ask 
 intelligent men on whom it has been tried and they 
 will say, “ It was a mistake on my father’s part, but 
 a curse to me ! ” I know there are exceptions to 
 that reply; still I think it will be general. A man 
 is seldom elevated by an appeal to low motives; 
 always by addressing what is high and manly 
 within him. Is fear of physical pain the highest 
 element you can appeal to in a child; the most 
 effectual ? I do not see how Satan can be cast out 
 by Satan. I think a Saviour never tries it. Yet 
 this Method of Force is brief and compact. It 
 requires no patience, no thought, no wisdom for its 
 application, and but a moment’s time. For this 
 reason, I think, it is still retained in some families 
 and many schools, to the injury alike of all con¬ 
 cerned. Blows and violent words are not correction 
 *—often but an adjournment of correction: some¬ 
 times only an actual confession of inability to 
 correct. 
 
14 
 
 
 The other is the Method of Love, and of Wis¬ 
 dom not the less. Force may hide, and even si¬ 
 lence effects for a time; it removes not the real 
 causes of evil. By the Method of Love and Wis¬ 
 dom the Parents remove the causes; they do not 
 tie the Demoniac, they cast out the Demon, not by 
 letting in Beelzebub, the Chief Devil — but by the 
 finger of God. They redress the child’s folly and 
 evil birth by their own wisdom and good breeding. 
 The Day drives out and off the Night. 
 
 Sometimes you see that worthy parents have a 
 weak and sickly child, feeble in body. No pains 
 are too great for them to take in behalf of the faint 
 and feeble one. What self-denial of the father; 
 what sacrifice on the mother’s part! The best of 
 medical skill is procured; the tenderest watching 
 is not spared. No outlay of money, time, or sacri¬ 
 fice is thought too much to save the child’s life; 
 to insure a firm constitution and make that life a 
 blessing. The able-bodied children can take care 
 of themselves, but not the weak. So the affection 
 of father and mother centres on this sickly child. 
 By extraordinary attention the feeble becomes 
 strong; the deformed is transformed, and the 
 grown man, strong and active, blesses his mother 
 for health not less than life. 
 
 Did you never see a Robin attend to her imma¬ 
 ture and callow child which some heedless or 
 wicked boy had stolen from the nest, wounded and 
 left on the ground, half-living; left to perish ? Pa¬ 
 tiently she brings food and water, gives it kind 
 nursing. Tenderly she broods over it all night 
 upon the ground, sheltering its tortured body from 
 the cold air of night and morning’s penetrating 
 
15 
 
 dew. She perils herself; never leaves it — not till 
 life is gone. That is Nature; the Strong protecting 
 the Feeble. Human nature may pause and con¬ 
 sider the fowls of the air, whence the Greatest 
 once drew his lessons. Human history, spite of 
 all its tears and blood, is full of beauty and majes¬ 
 tic worth. But it shows few things so fair as the 
 Mother watching thus over her sickly and deformed 
 child, feeding him with her own life. What if she 
 forewent her native instinct and the mother said, 
 “ My Boy is deformed, a cripple — let him die”? 
 Where would be the more hideous deformity ? 
 
 If his child be dull, slow-witted, what pains will 
 a good father take to instruct him; still more if he 
 is vicious, born with a low organization, with bad 
 propensities — what admonitions will he adminis¬ 
 ter ; what teachers will he consult; what expedi¬ 
 ents will he try; what prayers will he not pray for 
 his stubborn and rebellious son! Though one ex¬ 
 periment fail, he tries another, and then again, re¬ 
 luctant to give over! Did it never happen to one 
 of you to be such a Child, to have outgrown that 
 rebellion and wickedness! Remember the pains 
 taken with you; remember the agony your mother 
 felt; the shame that bowed your father’s head so 
 oft and brought such bitter tears adown those ven¬ 
 erable cheeks. You cannot pay for that agony, that 
 shame, not pay the hearts that burst with both — 
 yet uttering only a prayer for you. Pay it back 
 then, if you can, to others like yourself, stubborn 
 and rebellious sons. 
 
 Has none of you ever been such a Father or 
 Mother? You know then the sad yearnings of 
 heart which tried you. The World condemned 
 
16 
 
 you and your wicked child, and said, “ Let the Eld¬ 
 ers stone him with stones. The Gallows waiteth 
 for its own! ” Not so you! You said: “ Nay, now, 
 wait a little. Perchance the boy will mend. Come, 
 I will try again. Crush him not utterly and a Fa¬ 
 ther’s heart beside! ” The more he was wicked, 
 the more assiduous were you for his recovery, for 
 his elevation. You saw that he would not keep 
 up with the moral march of men; that he was a 
 Barbarian, a Savage, yes almost a Beast amongst 
 men. You saw this; yes felt it too as none others 
 felt. Yet you could not condemn him wholly and 
 without hope. You saw some good mixed with 
 his evil; some causes for the evil and excuses for 
 it which others were blind to. Because you 
 mourned most you pitied most — all from the 
 abundance of your love. Though even in your 
 highest hour of prayer, the sad conviction came 
 that work or prayer was all in vain — you never 
 gave him over to the world’s reproach, but inter¬ 
 posed your fortune, character; yes, your own person 
 to take the blows which the severe and tyrannous 
 world kept laying on. At last if he would not 
 repent, you hid him away, the best you could, from 
 the mocking sight of other men, but never shut 
 him from your heart; never from remembrance in 
 your deepest prayers. How the whole family suf¬ 
 fers for the Prodigal till he returns. When he 
 comes back, why you rejoice over one recovered 
 Olive-Plant more than over all the trees of your 
 field which no storm has ever broke or bowed. 
 How you went forth to meet him ; with what joy 
 rejoiced! “For this my son was lost and is found,” 
 says the old man; “He was dead and is alive once 
 
17 
 
 more. Let us pray and be glad! ” With what a se¬ 
 rene and hallowed countenance you met your 
 friends and neighbors, as their glad heart smiled up 
 in their faces when the Prodigal came home from 
 riot and swine’s-bread, a new man safe and sound ! 
 Many such things have I seen and hearts long cold 
 grew bright and warm again. Towards evening 
 the clouds broke asunder — Simeon saw his conso¬ 
 lation and went home in sunlight and in peace. 
 
 The general result of this treatment in the Fam¬ 
 ily is that the Dull Boy learns by degrees, learns 
 what he is fit for: the Straggler joins the troop, 
 and keeps step with the rest, nay sometimes be¬ 
 comes the leader of the march : the Vicious Boy 
 is corrected; even the faults of his organization get 
 overcome, not suddenly but at length. The re¬ 
 jected stone finds its place on the wall, and its use. 
 Such is not always the result. Some will not be 
 mended. I stop not now to ask the cause ; some 
 will not return though you go out to meet them a 
 great way off. What then ? will you refuse to go ? 
 can you wholly abandon a friend or a child who 
 thus deserts himself? Is he so bad that he cannot 
 be made better? Perhaps’t is so. Can you not 
 hinder him from being worse ? Are you so good 
 that you must forsake him ? Did not God send his 
 greatest, noblest, purest son to seek and save the 
 lost; send him to call sinners to repent ? When 
 sinners slew him — did God forsake Mankind ? 
 Not one of those sinners did his love forget. 
 
 Does the good physician spend the night in feast¬ 
 ing with the sound or in watching with the sick ? 
 Nay though the sick man be past all hope, he will 
 look in to soothe affliction which he cannot cure; 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 at least to speak a word of friendly cheer. The 
 wise teacher spends most pains with backward 
 boys, and is most bountiful himself where Nature 
 seems most niggard in her gifts. What would you 
 say if a teacher refused to help a boy because the 
 boy was slow to learn; because he now and then 
 broke through the rules? What if the mother 
 said: “My boy is a sickly dunce, not worth the 
 pains of rearing. Let him die! ” What if the 
 father said: “ He is a born villain, to be bred 
 only for the gallows — what use to toil or pray for 
 him! Let the Hangman take my son! ” 
 
 What shall be done for Criminals, the backward 
 children of Society, who refuse to keep up with 
 the moral or legal advance of Mankind? They 
 are a Dangerous Class. There are three things 
 which are sometimes confounded; there is Error, 
 an unintentional violation of a Law. Sometimes 
 this comes from abundance of life and energy; 
 sometimes from ignorance, general or special; 
 sometimes from heedlessness, which is ignorance 
 for the time. Next there is Crime, the violation of a 
 human Statute. Suppose the Statute also repre¬ 
 sents a Law of God — the violation thereof may be 
 the result of ignorance, or of design, it may come 
 from a bad heart. Then it becomes a Sin — the 
 wilful violation of a known Law of God. There 
 
 i 
 
 are many Errors which are not Crimes; and the 
 best men often commit them innocently, but not 
 without harm, violating laws of the body or the 
 soul which they have not grown up to understand. 
 There have been many Crimes — yes, conscious 
 violations of man’s law which were not Sins, but 
 
19 
 
 rather a keeping of God’s Law. There are still a 
 great many Sins not forbidden by any human stat¬ 
 ute — not considered as Crimes. It is no Crime to 
 go and fight in a wicked war; nay it is thought a 
 virtue. It was a Crime in the Heroes of the Ameri¬ 
 can Revolution to demand the unalienable Rights 
 of man — they were “ Traitors ” who did it; a Crime 
 in Jesus to sum up the “ Law and the Prophets ” 
 in one word, Love — he was reckoned an “ Infi¬ 
 del,” guilty of blasphemy against Moses! Now to 
 punish an Error as a Crime, a Crime as a Sin, leads 
 to confusion at the first, and to much worse than 
 confusion in the end. 
 
 But there are Crimes which are a violation of the 
 eternal principles of Justice. It is of such and the 
 men who commit them that I am now to speak. 
 What shall be done for the Dangerous Classes — 
 the Criminals? 
 
 The first question is, What end shall we aim at 
 in dealing with them ? The means must be suited 
 to accomplish that end. We may desire Ven¬ 
 geance ; then the hurt inflicted on the criminal will 
 be proportioned to the loss or hurt sustained by So¬ 
 ciety. A man has stolen my goods, injured my per¬ 
 son, traduced my good name, sought to take my life. 
 I will not ask for the Motive of his deeds, or the 
 Cause of that motive. I will only consider my 
 own damage and will make him smart for that. 
 I will use violence — having an eye for an eye 
 and a tooth for a tooth. I will deliver him over to 
 the tormentors till my vengeance is satisfied. If 
 he slew my friend, or sought to slay but lacked 
 the power, as I have the ability I will kill him! 
 This desire of vengeance, of paying a hurt with a 
 
20 
 
 hurt, has still very much influence on our treat¬ 
 ment of Criminals. I fear it is still the chief aim of 
 our penal Jurisprudence. When vengeance is the 
 aim, violence is the most suitable method; Jails 
 and the Gallows most appropriate instruments! 
 But is it right to take vengeance; for me to hurt a 
 man to-day solely because he hurt me yesterday? 
 If so, the proof of that Right must be found in my 
 nature, or in the Law of God; a man can make a 
 Statute, God only a Right. As I study my nature 
 I find no such Right; Reason gives me none; 
 Conscience none; Religion quite as little. Doubt¬ 
 less I have a Right to defend myself by all manly 
 means; to protect myself for the future no less 
 than for the present. In doing that it may be 
 needful that I should restrain and in restraining 
 seize and hold, and in holding incidentally hurt my 
 opponent. But I cannot see what Right I have in 
 cold blood wilfully to hurt a man because he once 
 hurt me, and does not intend to repeat the wrong. 
 Do I look to the authority of the greatest Son of 
 man ? I find no allusion to such a Right. I find 
 no Law of God which allows vengeance. In his 
 Providence I find Justice everywhere as beautiful 
 as certain; but vengeance nowhere. I know this 
 is not the common notion entertained of God and 
 his Providence. I shudder to think at the Barbarism 
 which yet prevails under the guise of Christianity; 
 the vengeance which is sought for in the name of 
 God! 
 
 The aim may be not to revenge a crime but to 
 prevent it; to deter the offender from repeating the 
 deed, and others from the beginning thereof In 
 all modern legislation the vindictive spirit is slowly 
 
21 
 
 r 
 
 yielding to the design of preventing crime. The 
 method is to inflict certain uniform and specific 
 penalties for each offence proportionate to the dam¬ 
 age which the criminal has done; to make the 
 punishment so certain, so severe, or so infamous 
 that the offender shall forbear for the future, and 
 innocent men be deterred from crime. But have 
 we a right to punish a man for the example’s sake ? 
 I may give up my life to save a thousand lives, or 
 one, if I will. But Society has no right to take it, 
 without my consent, to save the whole Human 
 Race! I admit that Society has the right of Emi¬ 
 nent Domain over my property, and may take my 
 land for a street; may destroy my house to save 
 the town; perhaps seize on my store of provisions 
 in time of famine. It can render me an equiva¬ 
 lent for those things. I have not the same lien on 
 any portion of the universe as on my Life, my Per¬ 
 son. To these I have an unalienable Right which 
 no man has given, which all men can never justly 
 take away. For any injustice, wilfully done to me, 
 the Human Race can render me no equivalent. 
 
 I know society claims the right of Eminent Do¬ 
 main over Person and Life not less than over 
 House and Land — to take both for the common¬ 
 wealth. I deny the Right — certainly it has never 
 been shown. Hence to me — resting on the broad 
 ground of natural justice — the Law of God — 
 capital punishment seems wholly inadmissible — 
 Homicide with the pomp and formality of Law. 
 It is a relic of the old barbarism — paying hurt for 
 hurt. No one will contend that it is inflicted for 
 the offender’s good. For the good of others I con¬ 
 tend we have no right to inflict it without the suf- 
 
22 
 
 ferer’s consent. To put a criminal to death seems 
 to me as foolish as for the child to beat the stool it 
 has stumbled over, and as useless too. I am aston¬ 
 ished that nations with the name of Christian ever 
 on their lips, continue to disgrace themselves by 
 killing men, formally and in cold blood; to do this 
 with prayers — “ Forgive us as we forgive ; ” doing 
 it in the name of God ! I do not wonder that in the 
 codes of nations, Hebrew or Heathen, far lower 
 than ourselves in civilization, we should find laws 
 enforcing this punishment; laws too enacted in the 
 name of God. But it fills me with amazement that 
 worthy men in these days should go hack to such 
 sources for their wisdom; should walk dry-shod 
 through the Gospels and seek in records of a bar¬ 
 barous people to justify this atrocious act! Famine, 
 Pestilence, War are terrible evils, but no one is so 
 dreadful in its effects as the general prevalence of 
 a great theological idea that is false. 
 
 It makes me shudder to recollect that out of the 
 twenty-eight states of this Union twenty-seven 
 should still continue the Gallows as a part of the 
 furniture of a Christian government. I hope our 
 own State — dignified already by so many noble 
 acts — will soon rid herself of the stain. Let us 
 try the experiment of abolishing this penalty, if we 
 will for twenty years, or but ten — and I am confi¬ 
 dent we shall never return to that punishment. If 
 a man be incapable of living in Society, so ill-born 
 or ill-bred that you cannot cure or mend him — 
 why, hide him away out of Society. Let him do 
 no harm, but treat him kindly, not like a wolf but 
 a man. Make him work, to be useful to himself 
 to society, but do not kill him. Or if you do, never 
 
23 
 
 say again, “ Forgive us our trespasses as we for¬ 
 give those that trespass against us.” What if He 
 should take you at your word ! What would you 
 think of a father who to-morrow should take the 
 Old Testament for his legal warrant and bring his 
 son before your Mayor and Aldermen because he 
 was “stubborn and rebellious, a drunkard and a 
 glutton,” and they should stone him to death in 
 front of the City Hall! But there is quite as good 
 a warrant in the Old Testament for that as for 
 hanging a man. The law is referred to Jehovah as 
 its author. Is not Society the Father of us all — 
 our Protector and Defender ? How much better is 
 it to choke the life out of a man behind the prison 
 wall ? Hanging is vengeance ; nothing but ven¬ 
 geance. I can readily conceive of that great Son 
 of Man, whom the loyal world so readily adores, 
 performing all needful human works with manly 
 dignity. Artists once loved to paint the Saviour in 
 the lowly toil of lowly men, his garments covered 
 with the dust of common life ; his soul sullied by 
 no pollution. But paint him to your fancy as an 
 executioner; legally killing a man; the halter in 
 his hands, hanging Judas for high treason ! You 
 see the relation which that punishment bears to 
 Christianity. Yet what was unchristian in Jesus 
 does not become Christian in the Sheriff We call 
 ourselves Christians; we often repeat the name, 
 the words of Christ,—but his Prayer? oh no — 
 not that. 
 
 There are now in this land I think sixteen men 
 under sentence of death; sixteen men to be hanged 
 till they are dead ! Is there not in the nation skill 
 to heal these men? Perhaps ? tis so. I have 
 
24 
 
 known hearts which seemed to me cold stones, so 
 hard, so dry. No kindly steel had alchemy to win 
 a spark from them. Yet their owners went about 
 the streets; and smiled their hollow smiles; the 
 ghastly brother cast his shadow in the sun, or 
 wrapped his cloak about him in the wintry hour, 
 and yet the world went on though the worst of 
 men remained unhanged. Perhaps you cannot 
 cure these men! — is there not power enough to 
 keep them from doing harm; to make them useful ? 
 Shame on us that we know no better than thus to 
 pour out life upon the dust, and then with reeking 
 hands turn to the poor and weak and say, “Ye shall 
 not kill.” 
 
 But if the Prevention of crime be the design of 
 the punishment, then we must not only seek to hin¬ 
 der the Innocent from vice, but we must reform the 
 Criminal. Do our methods of punishment effect 
 that object ? During the past year we have com¬ 
 mitted to the various prisons in Massachusetts 5,669 
 persons for crime. How many of them will be 
 reformed and cured by this treatment, and so live 
 honest and useful lives hereafter ? I think very 
 few. The facts show that a great many criminals 
 are never reformed by their punishment. Thus in 
 France, taking the average of four years, it seems 
 that twenty-two out of each hundred criminals 
 were banished oftener than once; in Scotland 
 thirty-six out of the hundred. Of the 78 received 
 at your State’s Prison the last year—17 have 
 been sent to that very Prison before. How many 
 of them have been tenants of other Institutions I 
 know not, but as only 23 of the 78 are natives of 
 this State it is plain that many, under other names, 
 
25 
 
 may have been confined in jail before. Yet of 
 these 78, ten are less than 20 years old.^ Of 35 
 men sent from Boston to the State’s Prison in one 
 year, 14 had been there before. More than half the 
 inmates of the House of Correction in this city are 
 punished oftener than once! These facts show 
 that if we aim at the Reformation of the offender 
 we fail most signally. Yet every criminal not re¬ 
 formed lives mainly at the charge of society; and 
 lives too in the most costly way, for the articles 
 he steals have seldom the same value to him as to 
 the lawful owner. 
 
 It seems to me that our whole method of pun¬ 
 ishing crimes is a false one; that but little good 
 comes of it, or can come. We beat the stool which 
 we have stumbled over. We punish a man in 
 proportion to the loss or the fear of Society; not in 
 proportion to the offender’s state of mind; — not 
 with a careful desire to improve that state of mind. 
 This is wise if Vengeance be the aim; if Refor¬ 
 mation, it seems sheer folly. I know our present 
 method is the result of six thousand years’ experi¬ 
 ence of Mankind; I know how easy it is to find 
 fault — how difficult to devise a better mode. Still 
 the facts are so plain that one with half an eye 
 cannot fail to see the falseness of the present meth¬ 
 ods. To remove the evil we must remove its 
 Cause, — so let us look a little into this matter and 
 see from what quarter our criminals proceed. 
 
 Here are two classes. I. the Foes of Society; 
 men that are Criminals in Soul, born-criminals, 
 who have a bad nature. The cause of their crime 
 therefore is to be found in their nature itself in 
 
 * See other statistics in u Sermon of the Perishing Classes,” p. 16. 
 
26 
 
 their organization if you will. All experience 
 shows that some men are born with a depraved 
 organization, an excess of animal passions, or a 
 deficiency of other powers to balance them. 
 
 II. There are the Victims of Society ; men that 
 become Criminals by Circumstances, made-crimi¬ 
 nals, not born ; men who become criminals not so 
 much from strength of Evil in their Soul, or excess 
 of evil propensities in their organization, as from 
 strength of Evil in their Circumstances. I do not 
 say that a man’s character is wholly determined 
 by the circumstances in which he is placed, but all 
 experience shows that circumstances, such as 
 exposure in youth to good men or bad men, edu¬ 
 cation— intellectual, moral, and religious, or neg¬ 
 lect thereof entire or partial, have a vast influence 
 in forming the character of men, especially of men 
 not well endowed by nature. 
 
 Now the criminals in soul are the most danger¬ 
 ous of men, the born Foes of Society. I will not 
 at this moment undertake to go behind their or¬ 
 ganization and ask, “How comes it that they are 
 so ill-born ? ” I stop now at that fact. The cause 
 of their crime is in their bodily constitution itself. 
 This is always a small class. There are in New 
 England perhaps five hundred men born blind or 
 deaf. Apart from the Idiots I think there are not 
 half so many who by nature and bodily constitu¬ 
 tion are incapable of attaining the average moral¬ 
 ity of the race at this day; not so many born Foes 
 of Society as are born blind or deaf. 
 
 The criminals from circumstances become what 
 they are by the action of causes which may be 
 ascertained, guarded against, mitigated, and at last 
 overcome and removed. These men are born of 
 
27 
 
 poor parents, and find it difficult to satisfy the nat¬ 
 ural wants of food, clothing, and shelter. They get 
 little culture, intellectual or moral. The School- 
 house is open — but the parent does not send the 
 children, he wants their services — to beg for him, 
 perhaps to steal, it may be to do little services 
 which lie within their power. Besides, the child 
 must be ill-clad, and so a mark is set on him. The 
 Boy of the Perishing Classes, with but common 
 endowments, cannot learn at school as one of the 
 Thrifty or Abounding Class. Then he receives no 
 stimulus at home; there every thing discourages 
 his attempts. He cannot share the pleasure and 
 sport of his youthful fellows. His dress, his un¬ 
 cleanly habits, the result of misery, forbid all that. 
 So the children of the Perishing herd together, igno¬ 
 rant, ill-fed, and miserably clad. You do not find 
 the sons of this Class in your Colleges, in your High 
 Schools where all is free for the people ; few even 
 in the Grammar Schools; few in the Churches. 
 Though born into the nineteenth century after 
 Christ, they grow up almost in the barbarism of the 
 nineteenth century before him. Children that are 
 blind and deafj though born with a superior organ¬ 
 ization, if left to themselves become only savages, 
 little more than animals. What are we to expect of 
 children, bom indeed with eyes and ears but yet 
 shut out from the culture of the age they live in ? 
 In the corruption of a city, in the midst of its in¬ 
 tenser life — what wonder that they associate with 
 crime, that the moral instinct baffled and cheated 
 of its due becomes so powerless in the Boy or 
 Girl; what wonder that Reason never gets devel¬ 
 oped there; nor Conscience nor that blessed Relig- 
 
28 
 
 ious Sense learns ever to assert its power ? Think 
 of the temptations that beset the boy; — those yet 
 more revolting which address the other sex. Op- 
 portunities for crime continually offer. Want im¬ 
 pels, Desire leagues with opportunity — and the 
 result we know. Add to all this the curse that 
 creates so much disease, poverty, wretchedness and 
 so perpetually begets crime — I mean Intemper¬ 
 ance ! That is almost the only pleasure of the 
 Perishing Class. What recognized amusement 
 have they but this — of drinking themselves drunk ? 
 Do you wonder at this; with no air, nor light, nor 
 water, with scanty food and a miserable dress, with 
 no culture — living in a cellar or a garret, crowded, 
 stifling, and offensive even to the rudest sense — 
 do you wonder that man or woman seeks a brief 
 vacation of misery in the dram-shop and in its 
 drunkenness? I wonder not. Under such cir- 
 cumstances how many of you would have done 
 better? To suffer continually from lack of what is 
 needful for the natural bodily wants — of food, of 
 shelter, of warmth — that suffering is Misery. It 
 is not too much to say there are always in this 
 city thousands of persons who smart under that 
 misery. They are indeed a Perishing Class. 
 
 Now almost all our criminals — Victims and 
 Foes, come from this portion of Society. Most of 
 those born with an organization that is predisposed 
 to crime are born there. The laws of nature are 
 unavoidably violated from generation to generation. 
 Unnatural results must follow. The misfortunes 
 of the father are visited on his miserable child. 
 Cows and sheep degenerate when the demands 
 of nature are not met — and men degenerate not 
 
29 
 
 
 less. Only the low, animal instincts, those of self- 
 defence and self-perpetuation get developed; these 
 with preternatural force. The animal man wakes, 
 becomes brutish while the spiritual element sleeps 
 within him. Unavoidably then the Perishing is 
 mother of the Dangerous Class. 
 
 I deny not that a portion of Criminals come from 
 other sources—but at least nine tenths thereof pro¬ 
 ceed from this quarter. Of 273,818 criminals pun¬ 
 ished in France from 1825 to 1839 more than half 
 were wholly unable even to read, and had been 
 brought up subject to no family affections. Out 
 of 70 criminals in one prison at Glasgow who were 
 under eighteen, 50 were orphans having lost one or 
 both parents, and nearly all the rest had parents of 
 bad character and reputation. Taking all the crim¬ 
 inals in England and Wales in 1841, there were not 
 eight in a hundred that could read and write well. 
 In our country, where everybody gets a mouthful 
 of education though scarce any one a full meal, the 
 result is a little different. Thus of the 790 prisoners 
 in the Mount Pleasant State’s Prison in New York, 
 100 it is said could read and understand. Yet of 
 all our criminals only a very small proportion 
 have been in a condition to obtain the average 
 intellectual and moral culture of our times. 
 
 Our present mode of treating criminals does no 
 good to this class of men, these Victims of Circum¬ 
 stances. I do not know that their improvement is 
 even contemplated. We do not ask what causes 
 made this man a criminal and then set ourselves to 
 remove those causes. We look only at the crime ; 
 so we punish practically, a man because he had a 
 wicked father; because his education was neglect- 
 
/ 
 
 30 
 
 ed, and he exposed to the baneful influence of 
 unholy men. In the main we treat all criminals 
 alike if guilty of the same offence — though the 
 same act denotes very different degrees of crimi¬ 
 nality in the different men, and the same punish¬ 
 ment is attended with quite opposite results. Two 
 men commit similar crimes, we sentence them 
 both to the State’s Prison for ten years. At the 
 expiration of one year let us suppose one man has 
 thoroughly reformed and has made strict and sol¬ 
 emn resolutions to pursue an honest and useful 
 life. I do not say such a result is to be expected 
 from such treatment; still it is possible, and I think 
 has happened, perhaps many times. We do not 
 discharge the man; we care nothing for his peni¬ 
 tence ; nothing for his improvement; we keep him 
 nine years more. That is an injustice to him; we 
 have robbed him of nine years of time — which he 
 might have converted into life. It is unjust also to 
 Society which needs the presence and the labor of 
 all that can serve. The man has been a burthen 
 to himself and to us. Suppose at the expiration of 
 his ten years the other man is not reformed at all; 
 this result, I fear, happens in the great majority of 
 cases. He is no better for what he has suffered — 
 we know that he will return to his career of crime 
 —-with new energy and with even malice. Still 
 he is discharged. This is unjust to him, for he 
 cannot bear the fresh exposure to circumstances 
 which corrupted him at first, and he will fall lower 
 still. It is unjust to Society, for the property and 
 the persons of all are exposed to his passions just 
 as much as before. He feels indignant as if he 
 had suffered a wrong. He says, “ Society has 
 
31 
 
 taken vengeance on me, when I was to be pitied 
 more than blamed. Now I will have my turn. 
 They will not allow me to live by honest toil. I 
 will learn their lesson. I will plunder their wealth, 
 their roof shall blaze ! ” He will live at the expense 
 of Society, and in the way least profitable and 
 most costly to Mankind. This idle Savage will 
 levy destructive contributions on the rich, the 
 thrifty, and the industrious. Yes, he will help 
 teach others the wickedness which himself once, 
 and perhaps unavoidably learned. So in the very 
 bosom of Society there is a horde of marauders 
 waging perpetual war against Mankind. 
 
 Do not say my sympathies are with the wicked, 
 not the industrious and good. It is not so. My 
 sympathies are not confined to one class, honora¬ 
 ble or despised. But it seems to me this whole 
 method of keeping a criminal a definite time and 
 then discharging him, whether made better or 
 worse, is a mistake. Certainly it is so if we aim 
 at his reformation. What if a shepherd made it a 
 rule to look one hour for each lost sheep, and then 
 return with or without the wanderer ? What if a 
 smith decreed that one hour and no more should 
 be spent in shoeing a horse, and so worked that 
 time on each, though half that time were enough 
 — or sent home the beast with but three shoes, or 
 two, or one, because the hour passed by ? What if 
 the physicians decreed that all men sick of some 
 contagious disease should spend six weeks in the 
 hospital, then if the patient were found well the 
 next day after admission, still kept him the other 
 forty; or if not mended at the last day, sent him 
 out sick to the world? Such a course would be 
 
32 
 
 less unjust, less inhuman, only the wrong is more 
 obvious. 
 
 To aggravate the matter still more, we have made 
 the punishment more infamous than the crime. A 
 man may commit great crimes which indicate 
 deep depravity; may escape the legal punishment 
 thereof, by gold, by flight, by further crimes, and 
 yet hold up his head unblushing and unrepentant 
 amongst Mankind. Let him commit a small crime r 
 which shall involve no moral guilt and be legally 
 punished — who respects him again ? What years 
 of noble life are deemed enough to wipe the stain 
 out of his reputation ? Nay his children after him 
 to the third generation must bear the curse! 
 
 The evil does not stop with the infamy. A guilty 
 man has served out his time. He is thoroughly 
 resolved on industry and a moral life. Perhaps he 
 has not learned that crime is wrong, but found it 
 unprofitable. He will live away from the circum¬ 
 stances which led him before to crime. He comes 
 out of Prison, and the Jail-Mark is on him. He now 
 suffers the severest part of his punishment. Friends 
 and relations shun him. He is doomed and solitary 
 in the midst of the crowd. Honest men will sel¬ 
 dom employ him. The Abounding Class look on 
 him with shuddering pity; the Thriving loathe the 
 convict’s touch. He is driven among the Dangerous 
 and the Perishing; they open their arms and offer 
 him their destructive sympathy. They minister 
 to his wants; they exaggerate his wrongs ; they 
 nourish his indignation. His direction is no longer 
 in his own hands. His good resolutions — he 
 knows they were good, but only impossible. He 
 looks back, and sees nothing but crime and the 
 
33 
 
 vengeance Society takes for the crime. He looks 
 around — and the world seems thrusting at him 
 from all quarters. He looks forward — and what 
 prospect is there ? “ Hope never comes, that comes 
 to all.” He must plunge afresh into that miry pit 
 which at last is sure to swallow him up He 
 plunges anew and the Jail awaits him; again; 
 deeper yet; the Gallows alone can swing him clear 
 from that pestilent ditch. But he is a man and a 
 brother, our companion in weakness. With his 
 education, exposure, temptation, outward and from 
 within — how much better would the best of you 
 become ? 
 
 No better result is to be looked for from such a 
 course. Of the 1,592 persons in the State’s Prison 
 of New-York 400 have been there more than once. 
 In five years,from 1841 to 1847, there were punished 
 in the House of Correction in this city 5,748 per¬ 
 sons ; of these 3,146 received such a sentence 
 oftener than once. Yes, in five years 313 were sent 
 thither each ten times or more! How many found 
 a place in other Jails I know not. 
 
 What if Fathers treated dull or vicious boys in 
 this manner at home — making them infamous for 
 the first offence, or the first dillness, and then re¬ 
 fusing to receive them back again ? What if the 
 Father sent out his son with bad boys and when 
 he erred and fell said: “ You did mischief with bad 
 boys once. I know they enticed you. I knew you 
 were feeble and could not resist their seductions. 
 But I shall punish you. Do as well as you please 
 I will not forgive you. If you err again I will 
 punish you afresh. If you do never so well you 
 shall be infamous for ever.” What if a Public 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 Teacher never took back to college a boy who once 
 
 had broke the academic law — but made him infa- 
 
 % 
 
 mous for ever ! What if the Physicians had kept 
 a patient the requisite time in the Hospital and dis¬ 
 charged him as wholly cured, but bid men beware 
 of him and shun him for ever ? That is just what 
 we are doing with this class of criminals; not 
 intentionally, not consciously — but doing none 
 the less! 
 
 Let us look more carefully, though I have 
 already touched on this subject, a moment at the 
 proximate causes of crime in this class of men. 
 The first cause is obvious — Poverty. Most of the 
 criminals are from the lowest ranks of society. If 
 you distribute men into three classes—the Abound¬ 
 ing, the Thriving, the Perishing, you will find the 
 inmates of your Prisons come almost wholly from 
 the latter class. The Perishing fill the sink of 
 Society, and the Dangerous the sink of the Per¬ 
 ishing — for in that “ lowest deep there is a lower 
 depth.” Of 3,188 persons confined in the House 
 of Correction in this city 1,657 were foreigners ; of 
 the 550 sent from this city in five years to the 
 State’s Prison 185 were foreigners. Of 547 females 
 in the Prison on Blackwell’s Island at one time — 
 519 were committed for “vagrancy;” women with 
 no capital but their person, with no friend, no shel¬ 
 ter. Examine minutely you shall find that more 
 than nine tenths of all criminals come from the 
 Perishing Class of men. There all cultivation — 
 intellectual, moral, religious — is at the lowest ebb. 
 They are a class of Barbarians — yes, of Savages, 
 living in the midst of civilization but not of it. 
 The fact — that most criminals come from this 
 
35 
 
 class shows that the causes of the crime lie out 
 of them more than in them; that they are Victims 
 of Society, not Foes. The effect of property in 
 elevating and moralizing a class of men is seldom 
 appreciated. Historically the animal man comes 
 before the spiritual. Animal wants are imperious ; 
 they must be supplied. The lower you go in the 
 social scale the more is man subordinated to his 
 animal appetites and demonized by them. Nature 
 aims to preserve the individual and repeat the spe¬ 
 cies— so all passions relative to these two designs 
 are preeminently powerful. If a man is born into 
 the intense life of an American city and grows 
 up having no contact with the loftier culture which 
 naturally belongs to that intense life, why the man 
 becomes mainly an animal, — all the more violent 
 for the atmosphere he breathes in. What shall 
 restrain him? He has not the normal check of 
 Reason, Conscience, Religion, these sleep in the 
 man; — nor the artificial and conventional check 
 of Honor, of Manners. The Public Opinion which 
 he bows to favors obscenity, drunkenness, and vio¬ 
 lence. He is doubly a savage. His wants cannot 
 be legally satisfied. He breaks the law, the lower 
 law which covers property, then goes on to higher 
 crimes. 
 
 The next cause is the result of the first — Edu¬ 
 cation is neglected, intellectual, moral, and relig- 
 ious. Now and then a boy in whom the soul of 
 genius is covered with the beggar’s rags struggles 
 through the terrible environment of modern poverty 
 to die, the' Hero of Misery, in the attempt at 
 education ! His expiring light only makes visible 
 the darkness out of which it shone. Boys born 
 
/ 
 
 36 
 
 into this condition find at home nothing to aid 
 them, nothing to encourage a love of excellence, a 
 taste for even the rudiments of learning — what is 
 unavoidably the lot of such ? The Land has been 
 the Schoolmaster of the Human Race — but the 
 Perishing Class scarce sees its face. Poverty brings 
 privations, misery, and that a deranged state of the 
 system; then unnatural appetites goad and burn 
 the man. The Destruction of the Poor is their Pov¬ 
 erty. They see wealth about them but have none ; 
 so none of what it brings; neither the cleanliness, 
 nor health, nor self-respect, nor cultivation of Mind, 
 and Heart, and Soul. I am told that no Quaker 
 has ever been confined in any Jail in New Eng¬ 
 land for any real crime. Are the Quakers better 
 born than other men? Nay, but they are looked 
 after in childhood. Who ever saw a Quaker in an 
 almshouse? Not a fiftieth part of the people of 
 New York are negroes, yet more than a sixth part 
 of all the criminals in her four State’s Prisons are 
 men of color. These facts show plainly the causes 
 of crime. 
 
 It is almost impossible to exaggerate the tempta¬ 
 tions of the Perishing Class in our great cities. In 
 Boston at this moment there are more than 400 boys 
 employed about the various bowling-alleys of the 
 city, exposed to the intemperance, the coarseness, 
 the general corruption of the men who mainly fre¬ 
 quent those places. What will be their fate? Shall 
 I speak of their sisters; of the education they are 
 receiving; the end that awaits them ? 
 
 Poverty brings misery with its family of vices. 
 A third cause of crime comes with the rest — In¬ 
 temperance, the destroying angel that lays waste 
 
37 
 
 the household of the Poor. In our country, misery 
 in a healthy man is almost proof of vice, but the 
 vice may belong to one alone, and the misery it 
 brings be shared by the whole family. A large 
 proportion of the Perishing Class are intemperate, 
 and a great majority of all our criminals. 
 
 Now our present method is wholly inadequate to 
 reform men exposed to such circumstances. You 
 may punish the man, but it does no good. You 
 can seldom frighten men out of a fever. Can you 
 frighten them from crime when they know little of 
 the internal distinction between Right and Wrong ; 
 when all the circumstances about them impel to 
 crime ? Can you frighten a starving girl into chas¬ 
 tity ? You cannot keep men from lewdness, theft, 
 and violence when they have no self-respect, no 
 culture, no development of Mind, Heart, and Soul. 
 The Jail will not take the place of the Church, of 
 the School-house, of Home. It will not remove 
 the causes which are making new criminals. It 
 does not reform the old ones. Shall we shut men 
 in a Jail — and when there treat them with all 
 manner of violence, crush out the little self-respect 
 yet left, give them a degrading dress, and send them 
 into the world cursed with an infamous name, 
 and all that because they were born in the low 
 places of Society and caught the stain thereof? 
 The Jail does not alter the circumstances which 
 occasioned the crime, and till these causes are re¬ 
 moved a fresh crop will spring out of the festering 
 soil. Some men teach Dogs and Horses things 
 unnatural to these animals; they use violence and 
 blows as their instrument of instruction. But to 
 teach man what is conformable to his nature 
 something more is required. 
 
38 
 
 To return to the other class, who are born crimi¬ 
 nals. Bare confinement in the Prison alters no 
 man’s constitutional tendencies; it can no more 
 correct moral or mental weakness or obliquity than 
 it can correct a deficiency of the organs of sensa¬ 
 tion. You all know the former treatment of men 
 born with defective or deranged intellectual facul¬ 
 ties — of Madmen and Fools. We still pursue the 
 same course towards men born with defective or 
 deranged moral faculties, Idiots and Madmen of a 
 more melancholy class, and with a like result. 
 
 I know how easv it is to find fault and how 
 difficult to propose a better way; how easy to 
 misunderstand all that I have said, how easy to 
 misrepresent it all. But it seems to me that hitherto 
 we have set out wrong in this undertaking; have 
 gone on wrong, and by the present means can 
 never remove the causes of crime nor much im¬ 
 prove the criminals as a class. Let me modestly 
 set down my thoughts on this subject, in hopes 
 that other men, wiser and more practical, will find 
 out a way yet better still. A Jail as a mere house 
 of punishment for offenders ought to have no place 
 in an enlightened people. It ought to be a moral 
 Hospital where the offender is kept till he is cured. 
 That his crime is great or little is comparatively of 
 but small concern. It is wrong to detain a man 
 against his will after he is cured; a wrong to send 
 him out before he is cured, for he will rob and cor¬ 
 rupt Society and at last miserably perish. We 
 shall find curable cases and incurable. 
 
 I would treat the small class of born-criminals, 
 the Foes of Society, as maniacs. I would not 
 kill them more than madmen; I would not inflict 
 
 i 
 
39 
 
 needless pain on them. I would not try to shame, 
 to whip, or to starve into virtue men morally in¬ 
 sane. I would not torture a man because born 
 with a defective organization. Since he could not 
 live amongst men, I would shut him out from 
 Society; would make him work for his own good 
 and the good of Society. The thought of punish¬ 
 ment for its own sake, or as a compensation for the 
 evil which a man has done, I would not harbor for 
 a moment. If a man has done me a wrong, ca¬ 
 lumniated, insulted, abused me with all his power, 
 it renders the matter no better that I turn round 
 and make him smart for it. If he has burned my 
 house over my head and I kill him in return, it 
 does not rebuild my house. I cannot leave him 
 at large to burn other men’s houses. He must be 
 restrained. But if I cure the man perhaps he will 
 rebuild it — at any rate will be of some service to 
 the world, and others gain much while I lose 
 nothing. 
 
 When the Victims of Society violated its laws, 
 I would not torture a man for his misfortune, be¬ 
 cause his father was poor, his mother a brute ; be¬ 
 cause his education was neglected. I would shut 
 him out from Society for a time. I would make 
 him work for his own good and the good of others. 
 The evil he had caught from the world I would 
 overcome by the good that I would present to him. 
 I would not clothe him with an infamous dress, 
 crowd him with other men whom Society had made 
 infamous, leaving them to ferment and rot together. 
 I would not set him up as a show to the public, for 
 his enemy, or his rival, or some miserable fop to 
 come and stare at with merciless and tormenting 
 
40 
 
 eye. I would not load him with chains, nor tear his 
 flesh with a whip. I would not set soldiers with 
 loaded gun to keep watch over him, insulting their 
 brother by mocking and threats. I would treat the 
 man with firmness, but with justice, with pity, 
 with love. I would teach the man; what his fam¬ 
 ily could not do for him — what Society and the 
 Church had failed of, the Jail should do, for the Jail 
 should be a manual labor school, not a dungeon of 
 torture. I would take the most gifted, the most 
 cultivated, the wisest and most benevolent, yes, the 
 most Christian man in the State and set him to 
 train up these poor savages of civilization. The 
 best man is the natural physician of the wicked. A 
 violent man, angry, cruel, remorseless, should never 
 enter the Jail except as a criminal. You have 
 already taken one of the greatest, wisest, and best 
 
 men of this commonwealth and set him to watch 
 
 \ ' 
 
 over the Public Education of the People. True you 
 give him little money, and no honor; he brings the 
 honor to you, not asking but giving that. You 
 begin to see the result of setting such a man to such 
 a work, though unhonored and ill-paid. Soon 
 you will see it more plainly in the increase of tem¬ 
 perance, industry, thrift; of good morals and sound 
 religion! I would set such a man, if I could find 
 such another, to look after the Dangerous Class¬ 
 es of Society. I would pay him for it; honor him 
 for it. I would have a Board of Public Morals 
 to look after this matter of crime, a Secretary of 
 Public Morals, a Christian Censor, whose business 
 it should be to attend to this class, to look after the 
 Jails and make them houses of refuge, of instruc¬ 
 tion, which should do for the Perishing Class what 
 
41 
 
 the School-house and the Church do for others. I 
 would send missionaries amongst the most expos¬ 
 ed portions of Mankind as well as amongst the 
 savages of New Holland. I would send wise men, 
 good men. There are already many such engaged 
 in this work. I would strengthen their hands. I 
 would make crime infamous. If there are men 
 whose crime is to be traced not to a defective or¬ 
 ganization of body, not to the influence of circum¬ 
 stances, but only to voluntary and self-conscious 
 wickedness. — I would make these men infamous. 
 It should be impossible for such a man, a volun¬ 
 tary Foe of Mankind, to live in Society. I would 
 have the Jail such a place that the friends of a 
 criminal of either class should take him as now 
 they take a lunatic or a sick man, and bring him 
 to the Court that he might be healed if curable, or 
 if not might be kept from harm and hid away out 
 of sight. Crime and Sin should be infamous, not 
 its correction, least of all its cure. I would not 
 loathe and abhor a man who had been corrected 
 and reformed by the Jail more than a boy who had 
 been reformed by his teacher, or a man cured of 
 lunacy. I would have Society a Father who goes 
 out to meet the Prodigal while yet a great way off; 
 yes, went and brought him away from his riotous 
 living, washed him, clothed him, and restored him 
 to a right mind. There is a prosecuting attorney 
 for the State; I would have also a defending at¬ 
 torney for the accused, that justice might be done 
 allround. Is the State only a Step-mother? Then 
 is she not a Christian commonwealth but a barba¬ 
 rous despotism, fitly represented by that uplifted 
 sword on her public seal, and that motto of barba- 
 
42 
 
 rous and bloody Latin. I would have the State 
 aid men and direct them after they have been dis¬ 
 charged from the Jail, not leave them to perish; 
 not force them to perish. Society is the natural 
 guardian of the weak. 
 
 I cannot think the method here suggested would 
 be so costly as the present. It seems to me that 
 institutions of this character might be made not 
 only to support themselves, but be so managed as 
 to leave a balance of income considerably beyond 
 the expense. This might be made use of for the 
 advantage of the criminal when he returned to 
 Society; or with it he might help make restitution 
 of what he had once stolen. Besides being less 
 costly, it would cure the offender and send back 
 valuable men into Society. 
 
 It seems to me that our whole criminal legisla¬ 
 tion is based on a false principle — Force and not 
 Love; that it is eminently well adapted to revenge, 
 not at all to correct, to teach, to cure. The whole 
 apparatus for the punishment of offenders, from 
 the Gallows down to the House of Correction, 
 seems to me wrong; wholly wrong, unchristian, 
 and even inhuman. We teach crime while we 
 punish it. Is it consistent for the State to take 
 vengeance when I may not? Is it better for the 
 State to kill a man in cold blood than for me to 
 kill my Brother when in a rage ? I cannot help 
 thinking that the Gallows, and even the Jail as now 
 conducted are practical teachers of violence and 
 wrong! I cannot think it will always be so. Hith¬ 
 erto we have looked on criminals as voluntary ene¬ 
 mies of Mankind. We have treated them as wild 
 beasts, not as dull or loitering boys. We have 
 
43 
 
 sought to destroy by death, to disable by mutila¬ 
 tion or imprisonment, to terrify and subdue — not 
 to convince, to reform, encourage, and bless. 
 
 The history of the past is full of prophecy for the 
 future. Not many years ago we shut up our 
 lunatics in jails, in dungeons, in cages; we chain¬ 
 ed the maniac with iron; we gave him a bottle of 
 water and a sack of straw; we left him in filth, in 
 cold and nakedness. We set strong and brutal 
 men to watch him. When he cried, when he 
 gnashed his teeth and tore his hair we beat him all 
 the more! They do so yet in some places, for they 
 think a madman is not a Brother but a Devil. 
 What was the result ? Madness was found incur¬ 
 able. Now Lunacy is a disease, to be prescribed 
 for as Fever or Rheumatism; when we find an 
 incurable case we do not kill the man, nor chain 
 him, nor count him a Devil. Yet Lunacy is not 
 curable by Force, by Jails, Dungeons, and Cages; 
 only by the medicine of wise men and good men. 
 What if Christ had met one Demoniac with a 
 whip and another with chains! 
 
 You know how we once treated criminals! with 
 what scourgings and mutilations, what brandings, 
 what tortures with fire and redhot iron! Death 
 was not punishment enough, it must be protract¬ 
 ed amid the most cruel torments that cpiivering 
 flesh could bear. The multitude looked on and 
 learned a lesson of deadly wickedness. A Judicial 
 murder was a Holiday ! It is but little more than 
 two hundred years since a man was put to death 
 in the most enlightened country of Europe for eat¬ 
 ing meat on Friday! not two hundred since men 
 and women were hanged in Massachusetts for a 
 
44 
 
 crime now reckoned impossible ! It is not a hun¬ 
 dred years since two negro slaves were judicially 
 burned alive in this very city ! These facts make 
 us shudder but hope also. In a hundred years 
 from this day will not men look on our Gallows, 
 Jails, and penal law as we look on the Racks, the 
 Torture-chambers of the middle ages — and the 
 bloody code of remorseless Inquisitors ? 
 
 We need only to turn our attention to this sub¬ 
 ject to find a better way. We shall soon see that 
 punishment as such is an evil to the criminal, and 
 so swells the sum of suffering with which Society 
 runs over; that it is an evil also to the community 
 at large by abstracting valuable force from profita¬ 
 ble work, and so a loss. * We shall one day 
 remember that the offender is a man, and so his 
 good also is to be consulted. He may be a bad 
 man, voluntarily bad if you will. Still we are to 
 be economical even of his suffering — for the least 
 possible punishment is the best. Already a good 
 many men think that error is better refuted by 
 
 * The period of confinement in our States’ Prisons differs a good 
 deal in the various States, as will appear from the following Table. 
 
 
 Whole No. in prison. 
 
 
 
 
 Average sentence. 
 
 In Conn. 
 
 189, 
 
 March 31, 
 
 1841, 
 
 7 
 
 yrs. 
 
 3 mos. 
 
 Va. 
 
 181, 
 
 Sept. 
 
 30, 
 
 1839, 
 
 6 
 
 it 
 
 10 
 
 u 
 
 Mass. 
 
 322, 
 
 Sept. 
 
 30, 
 
 1840, 
 
 5 
 
 ll 
 
 9 
 
 ll 
 
 La. 
 
 68, 
 
 Sept. 
 
 30, 
 
 1839, 
 
 5 
 
 Cl 
 
 1 
 
 It 
 
 N. J. 
 
 152, 
 
 Sept. 
 
 30, 
 
 1840, 
 
 4 
 
 Cl 
 
 7 
 
 ll 
 
 Ky. 
 
 162, 
 
 Sept. 
 
 30, 
 
 1839, 
 
 4 
 
 u 
 
 
 
 D. C. 
 
 79, 
 
 Nov. 
 
 30, 
 
 1840, 
 
 3 
 
 ll 
 
 8 
 
 ll 
 
 Md. 
 
 104, 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 Cl 
 
 
 
 Phila. 
 
 129, 
 
 Sept. 
 
 30, 
 
 1840, 
 
 2 
 
 a 
 
 5 
 
 Cl 
 
 The difference between the average term of punishment in Con¬ 
 necticut and Philadelphia is 300 per cent.! If the same result is 
 effected by each, there has then been a great amount of gratuitous 
 suffering in one case ! 
 
45 
 
 Truth than by Faggots and Axes. How long will 
 it be before we apply Good Sense and Christianity 
 to the prevention of crime ? One day we must see 
 that a Jail as it is now conducted is no more likely 
 to cure a crime than a lunacy or a fever! Hitherto 
 we have not seen the application of the great doc¬ 
 trines of Christianity — not felt that all men are 
 brothers. So our remedies for social evils have 
 been bad almost as the disease; remedies which 
 remedied nothing, but hid the patient out of sight. 
 All great criminals have been thought incurable — 
 and then killed. What if the Doctors found a 
 patient sick of a disease which he had foolishly or 
 wickedly brought upon himself—and then, by the 
 advice of twelve other Doctors, professionally killed 
 him for justice or example’s sake ? They would 
 do what all the States in Christendom have done 
 these thousand years. I cannot see why the legis¬ 
 lature has not as good right to authorize the medi¬ 
 cal college thus to kill men, as to authorize the 
 present forms of destroying life! 
 
 We do not look the facts of crime fairly in the 
 face. We do not see what Heathens we are. 
 Why, there is not a Christian nation in the world 
 that has not a Secretary of War, Armies, Soldiers, 
 and the terrible apparatus of destruction. But 
 there is not one that has a Secretary of Peace, not 
 one that takes half the pains to improve its own 
 criminals which it takes to build forts and fleets! 
 Yet it seems* to me that a Christian State itself 
 should be a great Peace Society — a Society for 
 mutual advancement in the qualities of a man! 
 
 Do we not see that by our present course we are 
 teaching men violence, fraud, deceit, and murder ? 
 
46 
 
 What is the educational effect of our present polit¬ 
 ical conduct — of our invasions, our battles, our 
 victories; of the speeches of “our great men 5 '? 
 You all know that this teaches the Poor, the Low, 
 and the Weak that murder and robbery are good 
 things when done on a large scale ; that they give 
 wealth, fame, power, and honors. The ignorant 
 man, ill-born and ill-bred, asks: “ Why not when 
 done on a small scale; why not good for me ? ” If 
 it is right in the President of the United States to 
 rob and murder, why not for the President of the 
 United States Bank ? Do famous men say, “ Our 
 country however bounded”? then why shall not 
 the poor man, hungry and cold, say — “ My purse 
 however bounded,” and seize on all he can get? 
 Give one a seat in Congress if you will and the 
 other a noose of hemp, there is a God before whom 
 seats in Congress and hempen halters are of equal 
 value, but who does justice to great and little ! 
 
 To reform the Dangerous Classes of Society, to 
 advance those who loiter behind our civilization, 
 we need a special work designed directly for the 
 good of the Criminals and such as stand on that 
 perilous ground which slopes towards crime. Some 
 good, men undertook this work long ago. They 
 found much to do ; a good deal to encourage them. 
 Some of them are well known to you—are laboring 
 here in the midst of us. They need counsel, en¬ 
 couragement, and aid. We must not look coldly 
 on their enterprise nor on them. They can tell far 
 better than I what specific plans are best for their 
 specific work. Already have they accomplished 
 much in this noble enterprise. The Society for 
 
47 
 
 Aiding Discharged Convicts is a prophecy of yet 
 better things. Soon I trust it will extend its kind 
 offices to all the Prisons, and its work be made the 
 affair of the State. The plan now before your 
 legislature for a “ State Manual Labor School, r 
 designed to reform vicious children, is also full of 
 promise. The wise and anonymous charity which 
 so beautifully and in silence has dropped its gold 
 into the chest for these poor outcasts, is itself its 
 hundred-fold reward. Institutions like that which 
 we contemplate have been found successful in 
 England, Germany, and France. They actually 
 reform the Juvenile delinquent and bring up 
 useful men, not hardened criminals.^ We are 
 beginning to attend to this special work of re¬ 
 moving the causes of crime and restoring, at least 
 the young offenders. 
 
 However, the greater portion of this work is not 
 special and for the criminal, but general and for 
 Society. To change the treatment of criminals we 
 must change every thing else. The Dangerous 
 Class is the unavoidable result of our present civi¬ 
 lization ; of our present ideas of man and social life. 
 To reform and elevate the class of criminals we 
 must reform and elevate all other classes. To do 
 
 * I refer to the Prisons at Stretton-upon-Dunmore in Warwick¬ 
 shire, that at Horn near Hamburg, and the one at Mettray near Tours 
 in France. The French penal code allows the guardian or relatives 
 of an offender under age to take him from prison on giving bonds for 
 his good behavior.—While these pages are passing through the press 
 I learn the happy effect which follows the vigorous execution of the 
 license laws in this city. In 1846, from the 10th of March to the 24th 
 of April there were sent to the House of Correction for Intemperance 
 189 persons. During the same period of the present year, only 84 
 have been thus punished ! v 
 
48 
 
 » 
 
 that we must educate and refine men. We must 
 learn to treat all men as Brothers. This is a great 
 work and one of slow achievement. It cannot be 
 brought about by legislation, nor any mechanical 
 contrivance and re-organization alone. There is no 
 remedy for this evil and its kindred but a keeping 
 of the Laws of God; in one word none but Chris¬ 
 tianity, Goodness, and Piety felt in the heart, ap¬ 
 plied in all the works of life, individually, socially, 
 and politically. While educated and abounding 
 men acknowledge no rule of conduct but self-inter¬ 
 est, what can you expect of the Ignorant and the 
 Perishing? while great men say without rebuke that 
 we do not look at “ the natural justice of a war ” — 
 do you expect men in the lowest places of Society, 
 ignorant and brutish, pinched by want — to look at 
 the natural justice of theft, of murder? ’T were a 
 vain expectation. We must improve all classes to 
 improve one; perhaps the highest first. Different 
 men acting in the most various directions, without 
 concert, often jealous one of another, and all 
 partial in their aims are helping forward this uni¬ 
 versal result While we are contending against 
 slavery, war, intemperance, or party rage, while we 
 are building up hospitals, colleges, schools, while we 
 are contending for freedom of conscience, or teach¬ 
 ing abstractly the Love of Man and Love of God 
 — we are all working for the welfare of this neg¬ 
 lected class. The Gallows of the Barbarian and 
 the Gospel of Christianity cannot exist together. 
 The times are full of promise. Mankind slowly 
 fulfils what a man of genius prophesies. God 
 grants what a good man asks, and when it comes 
 it is better than what he prayed for. 
 
 (o s y c? ! I 
 

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