Herald and news. [volume] (West Randolph, Vt.) 1878-1943, 1891-04-16

SoCietitS Oh new i OK says lAu ultttu
years Of age Lad spent three years of his
life in prison, aud he said to the lad.
what have they done for you to make
sou letteri" "Well" replied the lad, 1.-THE
first time was brought up before the
judge he said. You ought to be ashamed
Of Yourself And then committed a
crime again, and | was brought up before
the same judge, and he said, You rascalp
And after a while | committed some other
crime, and was brought before the same
judge, and he said, You ought to be
E..ngod.'' That was all they had done
for him IN the way Of reformation and sal
walton. oh, you say. these people are
incorrigible." suppose there are hun
dreils of persons this day lying in the
prison hunks who would leap up at the
prospect of reformation if society would
only allow them way into decency and
responsibility.
TIE UHcHARITABLE JUDGES.
"Oh, you say, II have no patience with
these rogues" | ask you in reply, how
much better would you have been under
the s1me circumstances Suppose your
mother had been blasphemer and your
father sot, and you had started life with
body stuffed with evil proclivities, and
you had spent much of your time III cellar
amid obscenities and cursng, and If at ten
years OF age you had been compelled TO go out
and steal, battered and banged at night II
you came in without any spoils, and suppose
your early manhood and womanhooa had
been covered with rags and filth, and de-
cent society had turned its back upon you,
and left you TO consort with vagabonds and
wharf ruts-how much better would you
have beeny | have no sympathy with that
executive clemency which would let crime
run loose, or which would sit in the gallery
of court room weeping because some
hard hearted wretch is brought 10 justice;
but do say that the safety and life of the
community demand more potential influ-
ences in behalf Of public offenders.
In some Of the city prisons the air Is like
that of the Black Hole of Calcutta. ! have
visited prisons where. as the air swept
through the wicket, it almost Knocked me
down No sunlight. Young men who had
committed their first crime crowded in
among old offenders. | saw in one prison
a woman, with child almost blind, who
had been arrested for the crime OF poverty,
who was waiting until the slow law could
take her 10 the almshouse, where she
rightfully belonged; but she was thrust in
there with her child amid the most aban-
doned wretches OF the town. Many OF the
offenders in that prison slept on the
floor, with nothing but vermin covered
blanket over them. Those people crowded
and wan and wasted and half suifocated
and Infatuated. | said TO the men, How
do you stand it herep God knows, said
one man. "we have 20 stand it, Oh, they
will pay you when they get out. Where
they burned down one house they will
burn three They will strike deeper the
assassin's knife. They are this minute
plotting worse burglaries
Some of the city jails are the best places
know Of to manufacture footpads, vaga-
bonds and cutthroats. Yale college Is not
so we'll calculated TO make scholars, nor
Harvard 50 well calculated to make scien-
lists, nor Princeton so well calculated TO
make theologians, as many of our 1ails are
calculated to make criminals. All that those
men do not know Of crime after they have
been in that dungeon for some time. Sa-
tanic machination cannot teach them. In
the insulferable stencil and sickening sur
roundings of such places there is nothing
but disease for the body, idiocy for the
mind, aud death for the soul. Stitied air
and darkness and vermin never turned
thief into an honest man.
We want men like John Howard and Sir
William Blackstone and women like Eliz-
abeth Fry to do for the prisons of the
United States what those people did in
other days for the prisons Of England.
thank God for what Isaac I. Hopper and
DR.. Wines and Mr.. Harris and scores of
others have done in the way Of prison re-
form, but we want something more radical
before will come the blessing Of him who
said, II was in prison, and We came unto
me-"
THE CRIME OF MIsGOvERNMENT.
Again, in your effort to arrest this plague
of crime you need to consider untrust-
worthy officials "Woe unto thee, land,
when thy king is child, and thy princes
drink in the morning." 1t is great
calamity to city when bad men get into
public authority. Why was it that in New
York there was such unparalleled crime be-
tween 1866 and 1877 1t was because the
Judges Of police in that city at that time
for the most part were as corrupt as the
yagabonds that came before them for trial
Those were the days of high carnival for
election frauds, assassination and forgery
We had all kinds of rings. There was one
man during those years that got one hun
dred and twenty eight thousand dollars in
one year for serving the public.
La few years it was estimated that
there were fifty millions of public treasure
souandered. In those times the criminal
had only to wink to the judge, or his law
yer would wink for him, and the question
was decided for the defendant OF the eight
thousand people arrested in that city in
one year only three thousand were punish
ed. These little matters were fixed up"
while the interests Of society were fixed
down" You know as well as lido thatone
villain who escapes only opens the door for
other criminalities. When the two pick
pockets snatched the diamond pin from the
brooklyn gentleman in a Broadway stage
ard the villains were arrested and the trial
WAS set down for the general sessions, and
then the trial never came, and never any
thing more was heard Of the case, the pub
lie officials were only bidding higher for
more crime.
1t is no compliment to public authority
when we have in all the cities of the coun-
try, walking abroad, men and women no
torious for criminality unwhipped of JUS
- Us,,as- a "a nnfnfqd ouf tn Won in the