Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/79

Rh ghastly brother cast his shadow in tho sun, or wrapped his cloak about him in tho wintry hour, and still tho world went on though the worst of men remained unhunged. Perhaps you cannot cure those men!—is there not power enough, to keep them from doing harm; to make thorn useful? Shame on us that we know no better than, thus to pour out life upon tho dust, and then with reeking hands turn to the poor and weak, and say, "Ye shall not. kill."

But if tho prevention of crime bo tho design of the punishment, then we must not only seek to hinder the innocent from vice, but we must reform tho criminal. Do our methods of punishment effect that object? During tho past year we have committed to tho various prisons in Massachusetts five thousand six hundred and sixty-nine persons for crime. How many of them will be reformed and cured by this treatment, and so live honest and useful lives hereafter? I think very few. The facts show that a great many criminals are never reformed by their punishment. Thus in France, taking tho average of four years, it seems that twenty-two out of each hundred criminals were punished often er than once ; in Scotland, thirty-six out of the hundred. Of the seventy-eight received at your State's prison tho last year—seventeen have been sent to that very prison before. How many of them have been tenants of other institutions, I know not; but as only twenty-three of the seventy-eight are natives of this State, it is plain that many, under other names, may have been confined in gaol before. Yet of these seventy-eight, ton are less than twenty years old. Of thirty-five men sent from Boston to the State's prison in one year, fourteen had been there before. More than half the inmates of the House of Correction in this city are punished oftener than once! These facts show that if we aim at the reformation of the offender, we fail most signally. Yet every criminal not reformed, lives mainly at the charge of society; and lives, too, in the most costly way, for the articles he steals have seldom the same value to him as to the lawful owner. It seems to me that our whole method of punishing crimes is a false one; that but little good comes of it, or