Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/146

142 in four years Massachusetts can invest eight-and-fifty millions of dollars in railroads and manufactures, and cannot prevent intemperance! cannot diminish it in Boston! So there are no able men in this town! I am amazed at such talk, in such a place, full of Rich men, surrounded by such trophies of their work! When tho churches preach and men believe that Mammon is not the only God we are practically to serve; that it is more reputable to keep men sober, temperate, comfortable, intelligent, and thriving, than it is to make money out of other men's misery; more Christian, than to sell and manufacture rum, to rent houses for tho making of drunkards and criminals, then we shall set about this business with the energy that shows we are in earnest, and by a method which will do tho work.

In the matter of crime, something can be done to give efficiency to the laws. No doubt a thorough change must he made in the idea of criminal legislation; vengeance must give way to justice, policemen become moral missionaries, and gaols moral hospitals, that discharge no criminal until he is cured. It will take long to get the idea into men's minds. You must encounter many a doubt, many a sneer, and expect many a failure, too. Men who think they "know the world," because they know that most men are selfish, will not believe you. We must wait for new facts to convince such men. After the idea is established, it will take long to organize it fittingly.

Much can be done for juvenile offenders, much for discharged convicts, even now. We can pull down the gallows, and with it that loathsome theological idea on which it rests—the idea of a vindictive God. A remorseless court, and careful police, can do much to hinder crime; but they cannot remove the causes thereof.

Last year a good man, to whom the State was deeply indebted before, suggested that a moral police should be appointed to look after offenders; to see why they committed their crime; and if only necessity compelled them, to seek out for them some employment, and so remove the causes of crime in detail. The thought was worthy of the