Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 1 (of 3)Parker, Theodore
Religion
Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 1 (of 3)
Parker, Theodore
Sermons, American; Unitarianism
The evil does not stop with the infamy. A guilty man has served out his
time. He is thoroughly resolved on industry and a moral life. Perhaps he
has not learned that crime is wrong, but found it unprofitable. He will
live away from the circumstances which before led him to crime. He comes
out of prison, and the jail-mark is on him. He now suffers the severest
part of his punishment. Friends and relations shun him. He is doomed and
solitary in the midst of the crowd. Honest men will seldom employ him.
The thriving class look on him with shuddering pity; the abounding
loathe the convict's touch. He is driven among the dangerous and the
perishing; they open their arms and offer him their destructive
sympathy. They minister to his wants; they exaggerate his wrongs; they
nourish his indignation. His direction is no longer in his own hands.
His good resolutions--he knows they were good, but only impossible. He
looks back, and sees nothing but crime and the vengeance society takes
for the crime. He looks around, and the world seems thrusting at him
from all quarters. He looks forward, and what prospect is there? "Hope
never comes that comes to all." He must plunge afresh into that miry
pit, which at last is sure to swallow him up. He plunges anew, and the
jail awaits him; again; deeper yet; the gallows alone can swing him
clear from that pestilent ditch. But he is a man and a brother, our
companion in weakness. With his education, exposure, temptation, outward
and from within, how much better would the best of you become?
No better result is to be looked for from such a course. Of the one
thousand five hundred and ninety-two persons in the State's prison of
New York, four hundred have been there more than once. In five years,
from 1841 to 1847, there were punished in the House of Correction in
this city, five thousand seven hundred and forty-eight persons; of these
three thousand one hundred and forty-six received such a sentence
oftener than once. Yes, in five years, three hundred and thirteen were
sent thither, each ten times or more! How many found a place in other
jails I know not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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