But if the prevention of crime be the design of the punishment, then we must not only seek to hinder the innocent from vice, but we must reform the criminal. Do our methods of punishment effect that object? During the past year we have committed to the various prisons in Massachusetts five thousand six hundred sixty-nine persons for crime. How many of them will be reformed and cured by this treatment, and so live honest and useful lives hereafter? I think very few. The facts show that a great many criminals are never reformed by their punishment. Thus in France, taking the average of four years, it seems that twenty-two out of each hundred criminals were punished oftener than once; in Scotland thirty-six out of the hundred. Of the seventy-eight received at your State's prison the last year--seventeen have been sent to that very prison before. How many of them have been tenants of other institutions I know not, but as only twenty-three of the seventy-eight are natives of this State, it is plain that many, under other names, may have been confined in jail before. Yet of these seventy-eight, ten are less than twenty years old.[32] Of thirty-five men sent from Boston to the State's prison in one year, fourteen had been there before. More than half the inmates of the House of Correction in this city are punished oftener than once! These facts show that if we aim at the reformation of the offender we fail most signally. Yet every criminal not reformed lives mainly at the charge of society; and lives too in the most costly way, for the articles he steals have seldom the same value to him as to the lawful owner. It seems to me that our whole method of punishing crimes is a false one; that but little good comes of it, or can come. We beat the stool which we have stumbled over. We punish a man in proportion to the loss or the fear of society; not in proportion to the offender's state of mind; not with a careful desire to improve that state of mind. This is wise if vengeance be the aim; if reformation, it seems sheer folly. I know our present method is the result of six thousand years' experience of mankind; I know how easy it is to find fault--how difficult to devise a better mode. Still the facts are so plain that one with half an eye cannot fail to see the falseness of the present methods. To remove the evil, we must remove its cause,--so let us look a little into this matter, and see from what quarter our criminals proceed. Here are two classes. I. There are the foes of society; men that are criminals in soul, born criminals, who have a bad nature. The cause of their crime therefore is to be found in their nature itself, in their organization if you will. All experience shows that some men are born with a depraved organization, an excess of animal passions, or a deficiency of other powers to balance them.