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
thrift, of good morals and sound religion! I would set such a man, if I
could find such another, to look after the dangerous classes of society.
I would pay him for it; honor him for it. I would have a Board of Public
Morals to look after this matter of crime, a Secretary of Public Morals,
a Christian Censor, whose business it should be to attend to this class,
to look after the jails and make them houses of refuge, of instruction,
which should do for the perishing class what the school-house and the
church do for others. I would send missionaries amongst the most exposed
portions of mankind as well as amongst the savages of New Holland. I
would send wise men, good men. There are already some such engaged in
this work. I would strengthen their hands. I would make crime infamous.
If there are men whose crime is to be traced not to a defective
organization of body, not to the influence of circumstances, but only to
voluntary and self-conscious wickedness,--I would make these men
infamous. It should be impossible for such a man, a voluntary foe of
mankind, to live in society. I would have the jail such a place that the
friends of a criminal of either class should take him as now they take a
lunatic or a sick man, and bring him to the Court that he might be
healed if curable, or if not might be kept from harm and hid away out of
sight. Crime and sin should be infamous; not its correction, least of
all its cure. I would not loathe and abhor a man who had been corrected
and reformed by the jail more than a boy who had been reformed by his
teacher, or a man cured of lunacy. I would have society a father who
goes out to meet the prodigal while yet a great way off; yes, goes and
brings him away from his riotous living, washes him, clothes him, and
restores him to a right mind. There is a prosecuting attorney for the
State; I would have also a defending attorney for the accused, that
justice might be done all round. Is the State only a step-mother? Then
is she not a Christian Commonwealth but a barbarous despotism, fitly
represented by that uplifted sword on her public seal, and that motto of
barbarous and bloody Latin. I would have the State aid men and direct
them after they have been discharged from the jail, not leave them to
perish; not force them to perish. Society is the natural guardian of the
weak.
I cannot think the method here suggested would be so costly as the
present. It seems to me that institutions of this character might be
made not only to support themselves, but be so managed as to leave a
balance of income considerably beyond the expense. This might be made
use of for the advantage of the criminal when he returned to society; or
with it he might help make restitution of what he had once stolen.
Besides being less costly, it would cure the offender and send back
valuable men into society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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