Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/75

Rh What shall be done for criminals, the backward children of society, who refuse to keep up with the moral or legal advance of mankind? They are a dangerous class. There are three things which are sometimes confounded: there is error, an unintentional violation of a natural law. Sometimes this comes from abundance of life and energy; sometimes from ignorance, general or special; sometimes from heedlessness, which is ignorance for the time. Next there is crime, the violation of a human statute. Suppose the statute also represents a law of God; the violation thereof may be the result of ignorance, or of design, it may come from a bad heart. Then it becomes sin—the wilful violation of a known law of God. There are many errors which are not crimes; and the best men often commit them innocently, but not without harm, violating laws of the body or tho soul, which they have not grown up to understand. There have been many crimes: yes, conscious violations of man's law which were not sins, but rather a keeping of God's law. There are still a great many sins not forbidden by any human statute, not considered as crimes. It is no crime to go and fight in a wicked war; nay, it is thought a virtue. It was a crime in the heroes o± the American Revolution to demand the unalienable rights of man—they were "traitors" who did it; a crime in Jesus to sum up the "Law and the Prophets" in one word, love; He was reckoned an "infidel," guilty of blasphemy against Moses! Now, to punish an error as a crime, a crime as a sin, leads to confusion at the first, and to much worse than confusion in the end.

But there are crimes which are a violation of the eternal principles of justice. It is of such, and the men who commit them, that I am now to speak. What shall be done for the dangerous classes, the criminals? The first question is, "What end shall we aim at in dealing with them? The means must be suited to accomplish that end. We may desire vengeance; then the hurt inflicted on the criminal will be proportioned to the loss or hurt sustained by society. A man has stolen my goods, injured my person, traduced my good name, sought to take my life. I will not ask for the motive of his deeds, or the cause of that motive. I will only consider my own damage, and will make him smart for that. I will use