Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/189

 who were to succeed them. These persons were everywhere, and in almost every individual case, perfectly well known to the respective local police, which police, ever watching these wary and adroit subjects, would make occasional arrests of the more maladroit, who, after, in most cases, some brief interval of seclusion, would be freely restored to prey, as before, upon society.

Now the new idea as to all this professional and hopeless criminal element, was that on every reasonably possible occasion it should, even for its own good, as well as for that of society at large, be placed permanently under lock and key. If, for instance, there was solid ground for believing that any criminal, if set at large, would only forthwith resume his criminality, why do him the injustice to set him at large? No doubt criminals had their rights; but it now began to be seriously thought that the rights of the non-criminal part of society ought to have an equal consideration.

This new and extirpatory method with crime took its initiatory movement as far back as the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the casual or non-professional lawbreaker, and especially the juvenile first offender, began to be strictly distinguished, and kept carefully separate from the hardened and hopeless professional. The new policy aimed to deal tenderly with all the former, as persons who might yet be even good citizens; but to permanently lock up the latter, as persons of whom there could be reasonably no such hope. From this correct beginning we graduated onwards, giving, as required, exceptional powers to our courts, to meet all excep-