In cases where fines are meted out those who can afford to pay escape with comparative ease; others are forced to shift a burden of debt upon father, mother, wife, children, or friends, who are thus punished for years, not for crime, but for their loyalty and love. If, perchance, through any effort the money for a fine can be obtained, the state cruelly and brutally takes the unholy, ill-gotten cash, although it may mean that a home is scant of food and shivering in cold or darkness; or a little child is forced from school to a factory or store. It may mean a plundered girlhood and abandoned womanhood, that the vengeance of the state may be appeased. The taking of money by the state in payment of crime is infinitely more damnable than private theft. The evils of force and violence are unending—bold and ignorant, indeed, is he, whether ruler, official, or private citizen, who sets in motion bitterness and hate. It is an evil force set loose upon the earth to wander up and down, cankering, polluting and despoiling all it meets, augmented by every other force, to be conquered and subdued, if ever conquered and subdued, only by infinite mercy and charity and love. Every man, whether ruler, juror, judge or whosoever that is called upon or volunteers to pass judgment on the conduct of others, must do it according to his own flickering, feeble light, according to the experiences that have made up his life. It is for this reason that good men are so bad, and bad men so good. Life ordinarily means breadth. Some, of course, are born deaf and blind, and the longer they travel the road the more contracted, cold and uncharitable they become; but to the ordinary person life means suffering and, above all other lessons, it teaches charity. As the real man grows older, less and less does he believe in or administer punishment, and more and more does he see the extenuating circumstances that explain and excuse every act. The stern and upright judge is an impossibility. No one can be stern and upright. In proportion as he becomes truly upright, really just, the more nearly he approaches the character of the ideal judge, the more nearly does he understand the injustice of violence and cruelty, and the eternal unfailing righteousness of charity and love. Where is the man so wise or the judge so great and just that he could take any two human beings with their different ancestry, environment, opportunities, passions and temptations, and pronounce a judgment that would equalize the two? Lawmakers, since the world began, have been busy undoing each other’s wrongs. Courts have been established whose sole duty it is to correct other courts. Unjust judgments are necessarily incident to the infirmities of man. The wise judge who looks back over a long career, the judge who knows human life and has a human heart, the judge who seeks to be ruled by his conscience, will find much in his past career he would wish undone.