Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/94

90 that the offender is a man, and so his good also is to be consulted. He may be a bad man, voluntarily bad if you will. Still we are to be economical even of his suffering, for the least possible punishment is the best. Already a good many men think that error is better refuted by truth than by fagots and axes. How long will it be before we apply good sense and Christianity to the prevention of crime? One day we must see that a gaol, as it is now conducted, is no more likely to cure a crime than a lunacy or a fever! Hitherto we have not seen the application of the great doctrines of Christianity; not felt that all men are brothers. So our remedies for social evils have been bad almost as the disease; remedies which remedied nothing, but hid the patient out of sight. All great criminals have been thought incurable, and then killed. What if the doctors found a patient sick of a disease which he had foolishly or wickedly brought upon himself, and then, by the advice of twelve other doctors, professionally killed him for justice or example's sake? They would do what all the States in Christendom have done these thousand years. I cannot see why the Legislature has not as good right to authorize the medical college thus to kill men, as to authorize the present forms of destroying life!

We do not look the facts of crime fairly in the face. We do not see what heathens we are. Why, there is not a Christian nation in the world that has not a secretary of war, armies, soldiers, and the terrible apparatus of destruction. But there is not one that has a secretary of peace, not one that takes half the pains to improve its own criminals which it takes to build forts and fleets! Yet it seems to me that a Christian State should be a great peace society, a society for mutual advancement in the qualities of a man!

Do we not see that by our present course we are teaching men violence, fraud, deceit, and murder? What is the educational effect of our present political conduct, of our invasions, our battles, our victories; of the speeches of "our great men?" You all know that this teaches the poor, the low, and the weak that murder and robbery are good things when done on a large scale; that they give wealth, fame, power, and honours. The ignorant man,