Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/91

Rh of temperance, industry, thrift, of good morals and sound religion! I would Get such a man, if I could find such another, to look after the dangerous clashes of society. I would pay him for it; honour him for it. I would have a board of public morals to look after this matter of crime, a secretary of public morals, a Christian censor, whose business it should be to attend to this class, to look after the gaols, and make them houses of refuge, of instruction, which should do for the perishing class what the school-house and the church do for others. I. would send missionaries amongst tho most exposed portions of mankind as well as amongst the savages of New Holland, I would send wise men, good men. There are already some such engaged in this work. I would strengthen their hands. I would make crime infamous. If there are men whose Crime is to be traced not to a defective organization of body, not to the influence of circumstances, but only to voluntary and self-conscious wickedness, I would make these men infamous. It should be impossible for such a man, a voluntary foe of mankind, to live in society. I would have the gaol such a place that the friends of a criminal of either class should take him as now they take a lunatic or a sick man, and bring him to tho Court that he might be healed if curable, or if not, might be kept from harm and hid away out of sight. Crime and sin should be infamous; not its correction, least of all its cure. I would not loathe and abhor a man who had been corrected and reformed by the gaol, more than a boy who had been reformed by his teacher, or a man cured of lunacy. I would have society a father who goes out to meet the prodigal while yet a great way off; yes, goes and brings him away from his riotous living, washes him, clothes him, and restores him to a right mind. There is a prosecuting attorney for the State; I would have also a defending attorney for the accused, that justice might be done all round. Is the State only a step-mother? Then is she not e Christian Commonwealth, but a barbarous despotism, fitly represented by that uplifted, sword on her public seal, and that motto of barbarous and bloody Latin. I would have the State aid men and direct them after they have boon discharged from the gaol; not leave them to perish, not force them to perish. Society is the natural guardian of the weak.