If, then, there is no reforming power in degradation--no deterrent power--for the reason that the degradation of the criminal degrades the community, and in this way produces more criminals, then the next question is, Whether there is any reforming power in torture? The trouble with this is that it hardens and degrades to the last degree the ministers of the law. Those who are not affected by the agonies of the bad will in a little time care nothing for the sufferings of the good. There seems to be a little of the wild beast in men--a something that is fascinated by suffering, and that delights in inflicting pain. When a government tortures, it is in the same state of mind that the criminal was when he committed his crime. It requires as much malice in those who execute the law, to torture a criminal, as it did in the criminal to torture and kill his victim. The one was a crime by a person, the other by a nation. There is something in injustice, in cruelty, that tends to defeat itself. There were never as many traitors in England as when the traitor was drawn and quartered--when he was tortured in every possible way--when his limbs, torn and bleeding, were given to the fury of mobs or exhibited pierced by pikes or hung in chains. These frightful punishments produced intense hatred of the government, and traitors continued to increase until they became powerful enough to decide what treason was and who the traitors were, and to inflict the same torments on others. Think for a moment of what man has suffered in the cause of crime. Think of the millions that have been imprisoned, impoverished and degraded because they were thieves and forgers, swindlers and cheats. Think for a moment of what they have endured--of the difficulties under which they have pursued their calling, and it will be exceedingly hard to believe that they were sane and natural people possessed of good brains, of minds well-poised, and that they did what they did from a choice unaffected by heredity and the countless circumstances that tend to determine the conduct of human beings. The other day I was asked these questions: "Has there been as much heroism displayed for the right as for the wrong? Has virtue had as many martyrs as vice?" For hundreds of years the world has endeavored to destroy the good by force. The expression of honest thought was regarded as the greatest of crimes. Dungeons were filled by the noblest and the best, and the blood of the bravest was shed by the sword or consumed by flame. It was impossible to destroy the longing in the heart of man for liberty and truth. Is it not possible that brute force and cruelty and revenge, imprisonment, torture and death are as impotent to do away with vice as to destroy virtue?