The New York herald., 1870-07-31


that great body of our fellow beings whom we call
"criminals," and find it needful and right to shut
up in prisons. 1t is impossible to exaggerate the
possible fully to realize it. Only divine
Comprehension and divine love and divine
patience can know and devise and bear all
that is involved in the true idea OF reformatory
punishment; bat only in so far as we approach
the divine comprehension love and patience are
we fit to punish. The oft quoted maxim that
punishment is to be inflicted for the protecuon OF
society is shallow and selfish by the size OF the
higher motive which proposes first the reform ana
salvation of the offender tor his souls sake, and
second, the saving of the world from the posi-
BILE Inconvenience of his continued crime. 49,,
The committee of arrangements OF this natlonai
congress have prepared paper caued "A riuE
form Of Prison Discipline"
It is most remark BILE paper, containing for
ty-one propositions, beginning with THIS state-
ment:-"Crime Is an Intentional violation OF duties
imposed by law. Criminals are persons conVicteu
OF crime bv competent courts. Punishment is
suffering inflicted on the criminal with special
view to prevent his relapse, by reformation;" and
all, and is essential to ALL it is our conviction that
no prison system can be perfect, or even success
full TO the most desirable degree, without
some central authority to sit at the helm,
guiding, controlling, unifying and vitalizing the
whole. We arden.Iy hope yet to see all the de-
partments OF our preventive, reformatory and
penal institutions in each State moulded into one
harmonious and effective system; its parts mutu-
the whole animated by the same spirit, aiming at
the same objects and subject to the same control,
yet without loss of the advantages OF voluntary
aid and effort wherever they are attainable."
As we read over one after another of those pro-
positions we are greatly impressed with their ex-
cellence and wisdom; but we are more and more
impressed with their applicability to children as
we'll as to criminals, to families as well as to
prisons
If children were governed from their first days
on the principles laid down in these forty lone pro-
positions should have no criminals. If families
were ordered as this platform" proposes to order
prisons prisons would be done away with in a
| generation. How much better to begin
earlier TO prevent than to cure? Why
ascume of Children whos snail pubsh
"Platform of Family Discipline" embodying the
| best thoughts and suggestions OF the wisest and
most earnest fathers and mothers and teachers IN
| the land? We believe that such movement as
this rightly aud effectively carried out, would be
| greater blessing than words can state or fancy
conceive. There is concerted action, common in
| terchange of knowledge and experience, on al
most every other subject under the sun, from
agricultural societies and cattle shows, with their
prize cabbages and cattle. up to scientific acade-
mics, with their honors for formulas and eclipse
reckonings. But children are reared on as many
different plans as there are fathers and mothers.
| Not only is there no acknowledged authority;
there is not the slightest reverence in anybody's
mind for any authority in the matter. Nothing is
| commoner than to hear shallow minded girls of
|
care than few months before they
handled their dolls, say, ooh! / don't be-
lieve in any of those notions. At any rate
everybody must bring up their own children on
| their own plan" Seeing the results in the NOR
tality tables of Cities and in the lists Of insane
| asylums and state prisons, OF everybody.s bring
ing uptheir children on their own plau," one is
often tempted to wish for trial OF Plato's plan
of having children brought up i'm public nurseries,
officered and supported by the State. OF course
reckless and unthnking mothers. and fathers
would not be reached nor bettered by the results
of any such congress as we propose-not even if
its platform Of discipline were printed and circu-
lated in every county and village. Nothing can
reacn the reckless and unthinking. God forgive
them, and help the poor children who are born to
them. But there are thousands and tens of thou
sands of parents who make shpwreck of their
children's souls or bodies, or both, simply from
ignorance-simply because they are welded to
tions of routine which their parents and their
grandparents held before them, and from which
no new gospel of light has set them free.
Who does not believe, for instance, that if such
Congress as we speak of were to give emphatic
and detailed reiteraton OF the opinions of the
best medical authorities as to the Injurious effect
of even little blows-"lignt whippings' as they
are caled--on the nervous system of children
and still more the belief of many of the wlsest
and most earnest men and women Of the day that
the possible injury to the body is of small account
by side of the certain Injury to the character
who does not believe that such published state
ments as these might Danish the cruel and debas-
ing rod from many households where it is now
used by weeping and distressed mothers, who
honestly believe it is the only way, if into every
house in the land could go this sentence, which
was the close OF an eloquent article by NJ. D. Con-
way:-"Oh how melancholy that the age which
has learned that even its horse Is better trained
without blow should still whip its children!''
Would not the satire and the pathos and the truth
of it rouse in parental hearts sudden echoes, which
would never cease until the law had been written
in their lives?
mr.
Prison Discipline" we read Hope being a
more potent agent than fear should be made an
everpresent force in the minds of prisoners" In
the fourteenth system can hope to succeed
which does not secure such harmony of wills
that the prisoner shall choose for himself what his
officer chooses for him. But to this end the officer
must really choose the good of the prisoner"
And in the sixteenth:-"The prisoners selfre-
spect should be cultivated to the utmost and
every effort made to give him back his manhood
There is no greater mistake in The whole compass
Of prison discipline than its studied imposition of
degradation as part OF punishment. Such de-
gradaton destroys every better impulse and as
piration. 1t is trampling where we ought to raise
and is, therefore, as unchristan in principle as it
is unwise in policy"
Who that has observed and suffered with little
children under the hap-hazard penalties and proh-
billions and humiliations of average family gov
ernment can read these paragraphs without
intense realization of the greater need of incu-
eating such principles in homes than in prisons?
The tweDty-fifth proposition is as follows:-
Preventive institutions, such as public nurseries,
truant homes, industrial schools, &c., for the re-
ception of children not yet criminal, but in dan
ger Of becoming So cons ttute the true field of
promise in which to labor for the repression Of
crime" Children not yet criminal, but in dan
ger of becoming so,' stand round the knee of
every mother to-day; and homes, if they are
what they should be, will be all the preventive
institutions " that we need.
Religious Notes and Observations.
Brigham Young has one wife less.
'Gusebius" has returned. Prime.