The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1875-03-29
Sympathy with Crime.

"Prison reform is phrase which runs
glibly from the lips of certain kind of phi
lanthropy. Heaven knows it is needed, even
more in this country than in Europe, but it
should not be of that sentimental character
which forgets the crime III pity foc the
criminal. 1t Is not necessary to make man
hero because he happens to be a murderer,
nor to weep the salt water of sorrow over a
pickpocket, who was simply an object of dis
gust until his treacherous fingers were found
in the wrong place. It is q tendency of the
times to overlook the criminality of crime, to
offer ready excuses for it and to be affected by
very weak feeling in the region Of the
heart when villain kills some one ese's rela-
tons rather than ours. We moralize in the
most poetic fashion over the temptations Of
the dangerous classes and set our occasional
sympathy to the music of a passing sigh.
This is not the product of a true philanthropy,
as we 1ondly dream it to be, but rather of ab-
solute Indifference to the public welfare.
When we are so becomingly stirred with pity,
it is that peculiar kind of pity which lights
another cigar, murmurs 'SSad, very sad, in
deed" and then lets all rascality drift out of
its thoughts. To be soft-hearted AMI SORROW
ful is not the fulness of a genuine phil
anthropy. There is pity which has organ
lied its missionaries, gathered its libraries,
established its Sunday schools and night
schools and spent its best energies to make
the dangerous classes less dangerous and to
lift the sub-cellar population of New York to
the level Of the sidewalk.
The various charities of tho city, ill-sup-
ported as they are, are doing lusty service Tor
the prevention of crime. Every dollar spent
bv them tells in Il twofold direction; it saves
the man who is ready for misdeeds, ard it
saves society the tax and the generalization
of q bad life. Il has always been our policy
TO urge the most generous contributions to-
ward this general work of tanning the embers
Of self-respect in those who have only TOO
much reason to feel that every mans hand is
against them. One mission school is better
than n two-volume treatise on theology, and
discussion of the best methods Of making a
paradise out of the Five Points is more profit
able than any tournament of the knights of
dogma that vas ever held.
Still, 4 prison should be prison and not q
hotel The actual and rigid punishment of
crime should be sufficiently emphasized to in
timidate the burglar and the felon The
strictest discipline should be enforced and the
hard labor should be fact and not fancy
For ourselves, we are apt to think that all
sorts Of sympathy should be offered a man so
long as that sympathy is Gn incentive to an
honest life; but when he voluntarily leads such
a course that society confines him in q dun
geon it should be understood all around that
the italicized experience of tho next few years
is TO be punishment. II is not necessary for
the warden to be brutal. nor to forget that
even a murderer is humaa being; but it is
necessary to the general welfare that rogues
should understand that the way OF the trans
| gressor is not macadamized, but an old
fashioned corduroy road.
Fifty years ego very large proportion Of