Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/27

Rh It is a special mark of a Christian as distinguished from a heathen community, to care for all its members, not only for those who can maintain themselves and contribute to the general welfare, but for the sick, the infirm, and even for the criminal. America is the land of benevolent institutions, to which not only much money but a more precious tribute of voluntary labour is paid. It is the land too of mild criminal legislation and of prison reform. In its charities and in its model prisons, as well as in the opulence and comfort of its prim Quaker streets, Philadelphia stands a noble monument of the Society of Friends. Whether the system employed for the regeneration of the criminal has been in all things wise is a different question. There is no doubt such a thing as pseudo-philanthropy; though it would be well if those who have denunciations of pseudo-philanthropists always in their mouths, would tell us, and show us by their own example, what genuine philanthropy is, that we may not be in danger of relapsing altogether into savagery and barbarism. But at all events, the system is an attempt to redeem the most abject, and at the same time often the most sorely tempted and the most unfortunate portion of humanity; it is a genuine victory of the Christian spirit over those cruel fears which lead society to be lavish of punishment. Democratic justice, as well as philanthropy, contributed to the change. Our criminal law, in the last century, was the law of a privileged class, which hanged the rabble wholesale for petty larceny, while it indulged itself freely in duelling and all the vices of a gentleman. It is true that the benevolence and humanity, unquestionably characteristic of American nature, are partly virtues of prosperity—qualities not of character but of circumstance. The same people who are