Agricultural colonies; Poor -- Great Britain; Salvation Army; Unemployed -- Great Britain
There are men so incorrigibly lazy that no inducement that you can
offer will tempt them to work; so eaten up by vice that virtue is
abhorrent to them, and so inveterately dishonest that theft is to them
a master passion. When a human being has reached that stage, there is
only one course that can be rationally pursued. Sorrowfully, but
remorselessly, it must be recognised that he has become lunatic,
morally demented, incapable of self-government, and that upon him,
therefore, must be passed the sentence of permanent seclusion from a
world in which he is not fit to be at large. The ultimate destiny of
these poor wretches should be a penal settlement where they could be
confined during Her Majesty's pleasure as are the criminal lunatics at
Broadmoor. It is a crime against the race to allow those who are so
inveterately depraved the freedom to wander abroad, infect their
fellows, prey upon Society, and to multiply their kind. Whatever else
Society may do, and suffer to be done, this thing it ought not to
allow, any more than it should allow the free perambulation of a mad
dog. But before we come to this I would have every possible means
tried to effect their reclamation. Let Justice punish them, and Mercy
put her arms around them; let them be appealed to by penalty and by
reason, and by every influence, human and Divine, that can possibly be
brought to bear upon them. Then, if all alike failed, their ability to
further curse their fellows and themselves should be stayed.
They will still remain objects worthy of infinite compassion.
They should lead as human a life as is possible to those who have
fallen under so terrible a judgment. They should have their own little
cottages in their own little gardens, under the blue sky, and, if
possible, amid the green fields. I would deny them none of the
advantages, moral, mental, and religious which might minister to their
diseased minds, and tend to restore them to a better state. Not until
the breath leaves their bodies should we cease to labour and wrestle
for their salvation. But when they have reached a certain point access
to their fellow men should be forbidden. Between them and the wide
world there should be reared an impassable barrier, which once passed
should be recrossed no more for ever. Such a course must be wiser than
allowing them to go in and out among their fellows, carrying with them
the contagion of moral leprosy, and multiplying a progeny doomed before
its birth to inherit the vices and diseased cravings of their unhappy
parents. To these proposals three leading objections will probably be
raised
1. It may be said that to shut out men and women from that liberty
which is their universal birthright would be cruel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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