Again, it may be objected that, if you banish a man from general society for his immoralities, you will drive him to despair, and so destroy the only remaining hope of his reformation. What! are you going _to keep society corrupt_ in the vain expectation that a corrupt state of society will help to reform its corrupt members? Besides, I grant that we should have compassion on the guilty; but I also hold that we should have compassion on the innocent too. Would you, therefore, allow a bad man to continue in good society, when the chances are a thousand to one that he will make others as bad as himself, and not more than one to a thousand that he himself will be reclaimed? Moreover, this reasoning is fallacious throughout. By expelling a dissipated and profligate man from good society, instead of destroying all hope of his recovery, you do in fact resort to the only remaining means of reforming one over whom a fear of God, and a sense of character, and the upbraidings of conscience have lost their power. What cares he for principle, or God, or an hereafter? Nothing, therefore, is so likely to encourage and embolden him to go on in his guilty course, as the belief that he will be allowed to do so without the forfeiture of the only thing he does care for, his reputable standing in the world. On the other hand, nothing is so likely to arrest him in these courses, and bring him to serious reflection, as the stern and determined threat of absolute exclusion from good society, if he persists.