Page:Points of friction.djvu/141

 bold and popular stand that society has created the criminal class, that its members detest the crimes they commit with such apparent zest, and that they should be "tended and cheered" instead of subjected to the "extreme stupidity" of prison life. Indeterminate sentences which carry with them an element of hope, and which should be an incentive to reform because they imply its possibility, he condemned without reserve as putting a premium on hypocrisy. But the point which of all others aroused his just resentment was the demand made by the two jurists for restitution.

This is the crux of a situation which in the moral law is simplicity itself; but which the evasiveness of the civil law has unduly complicated, and which the random humanitarianism of our day has buried out of sight. Every crime is an offence against the State. It is also in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred an 129