Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/89

Rh of instruction. But to teach man what is conformable to his nature, something more is required.

To return to the other class, who are born criminals. Bare confinement in the prison alters no man's constitutional tendencies; it can no more correct moral or mental weakness or obliquity, than it can correct a deficiency of the organs of sensation. You all know the former treatment of men born with defective or deranged intellectual faculties—of madmen and fools. We still pursue the same course towards men born with defective or deranged, moral faculties, idiots and madmen of a more melancholy class, and with a like result.

I know how easy it is to find fault, and how difficult to propose a better way ; how easy to misunderstand all that I have said, how easy to misrepresent it all. But it seems to me that hitherto we have set out wrong in this undertaking; have gone on wrong, and, by the present means, can never remove the causes of crime, nor much improve the criminals as a class. Let me modestly set down my thoughts on this subject, in hopes that other men, wiser and more practical, will find out a way yet better still. A gaol, as a mere house of punishment for offenders, ought to have no place in an enlightened people. It ought to be a moral hospital where the offender is kept till he is cured. That his crime is great or little, is comparatively of but small concern. It is wrong to detain a man against his will after he is cured ; wrong to send him out before he is cured, for he will rob and corrupt society, and at last miserably perish. We shall find curable cases and incurable.

I would treat the small class of born criminals, the foes of society, as maniacs. I would not kill them, more than madmen; I would not inflict needless pain on them. I would not try to shame, to whip, or to starve into virtue men morally insane. I would not torture a man because born with a defective organization. Since he could not live amongst men, I would shut him out from society; would make him work for his own good and the good of society. The thought of punishment for its own sake, or as a compensation for the evil which a man has done, I would not harbour for a moment. If a man has done me a wrong, calumniated, insulted, abused me with all his power,