The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1872-09-26
An TmDOrtant Confession,


An honest physician, who was lately called
to testify as an expert touching the insanity
of another person, frankly confessed that he
was unable, after thirty years experience, to
tell where insanity begins or where it ends.
This striking testimony of a man of great
ability and much experience, tends to confirm
the growing opinion that it is an extremely
difficult matter to define the limits of human
responsibility. The lines that divide the sane
from the insane are so faint and undistin-
guishable, that only Omniscience can see
them. Practically human society does come
to a decision in every case that is presented,
and when any OF its members commit wrong
they are either sent to Jail for correction or to
an asylum for cure. But of the thousands
who are annually sent to penitentiaries, a large
per cent, unquestionably ought, in justice, to
be held no more responsible for their acts
than those who are sent to hospitals and asy-
lums. Inherited tendencies of overpowering
strength, dense ignorance, vicious associates
and bad training in youth, result in minds as
thoroughly diseased or as little under the con-
troll of reason as those which are afflicted with
what is commonly called insanity, and in very
many instances the former class of
cases are undistinguishable from the
latter. Indeed the theory held by those
who have given the most attention to the
subject of crime and criminals-those who
have brought to the examination of the sub
ject the most enlightened conscience and the
most humane spirits that Grim inals are
all sick men whom it is the duty of society to
cure. Vengeance ought to be eliminated
from the human economy as it has been from
theology. Practically wrong-doerS must be
restrained, and it must be made impossible
for them to infiict injuries on their neighbors,
but after the law has succeeded in its primary
purpose of insuring society against fnrther in
jury, its chief aim should be to reform or cure
and not to punish. We admit with pleasure that
there is found in our prisons much which is
reformatory and remedial instead of punitory.
Thorne, who at the time ofhis Incarceration af
forded so striking an example of the brutal
izing effects of ignorance and bad surround
ings on mind not naturally vicious, seems
to have found il our State Prison human
iZing influences and means of education that
made him reformed man when through the
wise clemency of the Executive he was re-
leased. But the reformatory appliances are
now only incidental matters in prison disci-
pline. To punish and to make Jelf-sup-
porting are the grand aims in our best pen
itentiaries. In the most of them.
in nearly all our jails, and we greatly fear in
some of our reform schools, the tendency of
the way of life is to make the vicious more
vicious, the reckless more reckless, the cruel
more cruel, the selfish more selfish, while ig-
norance retains its undisputed sway over the
minds of its victims. If supreme intelli-
gence could draw up a statement showing the |
exact state of the account between society
and its criminals we have no doubt that the
world would be greatly surprised at the strik-
ing of the balance. This conclusion is irresis-
tible in view of the statistics showing the |
large per cent of persons unable to read and |
write among those who are confined in our
jails and prisons, that fact implying in almost |
every case degraded parentage, neglect and
temptation in the plastic age of youth. There
are several prominent reformers who are now
actively engaged in attempting to secure JUS
tlce for class too long made subject to the
irrational and inhuman theories of other DAYS.
The influence of the late Prison Reform Con-
gress held in England, in which the right |
view of the nature of criminal:ty was more |
fully recognized than ever before, will, we |
trust, be idely felt and result in right action.
THE accounts of Greeleys escape from his
managers who foresaw the disastrous conse-
quences of this new Pilgrims Progress, ac-
companied as it necessarily is by limitless
flow OF speech are very amusing. 1t is said
that Mr.. Greeley's torrent of profanity against
the DIRECTORS was something marvellous in
the way OF objurgatory expression. The dis
cussion was long and warm, those of the
"LiberaP' committee who are suspected of |
desiring the Sage's defeat advocating the
tour, while those whose fortunes are ire.
trlevably dependent upon the Philosophers
success urgently opposed. The matter was
finally settled by the farmer himself who de-
clared, with many Strengthening intersections,
that he knew as much about running the
as any other-man and that
these-Grant papers had said many things
about him which he could and would fix in
his speeches as he would have the use of the
associated press and could thus talk to the
"hoie people. SO he went and is very busy
extending himself over the spacious west ut
tering extreme statements at one place and
taking them back at the next and yentilatinp
all sorts of eccentric theories to the intense de-
light of the "-Grantites'.. as he calls them.