Page:SermonsFromTheLatins.djvu/415

 tion to  the  crime  must  be  clearly  evident. Excess and defect  are  equally  fatal  to  its  efficacy. But experience proves  that  of  a  certain  class  of  malefactors, the only  good  prisoner  is  a  dead  prisoner. You may punish them  ever  so  severely  in  the  hope  that  they will obey  "  not  only  for  wrath's  but  for  conscience' sake,"  but  eventually  you  will  find  the  basic  motive of their  abhorrence  of  crime  and  respect  for  law  is the  active  lictor  by  the  side  of  the  ruler. To merely kill a  wayward  limb  that  threatens  the  symmetry  of some  splendid  tree,  or  to  apply  soothing  lotions  to  a cancerous  growth,  would  be  little  creditable  to  gardener or  physician,  and  vastly  more  reprehensible and disastrous  would  it  be  for  the  government  to  visit capital crimes  with  merely  civil  death,  or  withhold the knife  from  a  dangerous  ulcer  on  the  body  politic. Nor must  we  lose  sight  here  of  the  law  of  imitation, and the  necessity  the  State  is  under  of  dealing  at times  with  epidemics  of  crime. That a  little  leaven corrupteth the  whole  mass,  is  especially  true  of  the leaven of  iniquity. Avarice, lust,  desire  of  revenge, etc., are  as  so  many  ever-ready  and  deadly  mines  beneath the  surface  of  society,  and  a  single  explosion usually precipitates  a  general  upheaval. To an  individual highly  charged  with  such  passions,  the  satisfying of  them  is  of  all  good  things  the  best. Not even penal servitude  for  life  can  altogether  embitter  the sweetness of  revenge,  for  the  youthful  desperado  receives his  sentence  with  a  scornful  smile,  and  coolly marches off  to  prison  with  a  laugh  and  a  swagger. But even  in  his  most  desperate  calculations  the