A Plea for the Criminal

given greater opportunities for the enjoyment of their riches and an enlarged sphere of usefulness opened to them. The poor have had their lot so greatly ameliorated, that given health, very few me

in the land. The private has become the general; the office boy the judge; the peasant boy the President; the full-blooded aboriginal has graduated through our universities and been called t

to the world; whether it will continue will entirely dep

ave overtaken every disease that the flesh is heir to, or better still, that some new discovery will have made it possible to heal all sicknesses without the tedious work of surgeons and nurses. Healing will become a pastime like table-turning. Neither will there be any criminals because the whole social state will be so happy, contented, and knit together that inducement to crime will cease. Others will treat the criminal "scientifically," ensuring reforms at the rate of 100 per cent. with lightning-like rapidity. Which all practically amounts to this, that the problem concerning the future of the weak is shelved. To study it deeply would spoil our best theories and therefore it must be got rid of. Dr Chapple has done nothing more than shelve it, for as we have seen his remedy is both practically and morally impossible. Like all others it betrays the selfish spirit. Like them it regards the weak as if they were nothing less than an intolerable incubus on society, a grit in its bearings. It may be that our social advancement will account for this. In old time when communities were small and fixed, the burden of nursing the helpless necessar

ur effort. Still it would be better to say that we do not rescue them, than that we cannot, for what was incurable yesterday is curable to-day, and the most deadly diseases are giving clear evidence that their powers to baffle science are fast giving out. That they will give out, scientific men confidently hope. Neither is this hope groundless for past success warrant it and there again point to another assurance, almost a guarantee. The miracles of healing which Our Lord wrought were not o

latter also demand our consideration if for no other reason than that they menace society. To exterminate them is impossible.

hey have fallen and been trampled on. Their right to fall may be denied, but whose right was it to trample on them? To declare it to have been

r force is very great. But when we speak to them of peace do they not make them ready to battle? No, their case is not so hopeless as that. David lived under the Mosaic Dispensation, and Moses could give but the law whereas Christ has given His Life. Our method will determine everything. Good advice, good books, good laws wil

one of the first convictions that comes home to us is that we must allow no waste, neither in the lives of others nor in the energies of ourselves. With this conviction soon comes the startling fact that the energies we are allowing to waste are identically those which were given to us to save the lives of others which are wasting. A wonderful independence exists among us. The social system is bound together by ties of nature, and not merely by those of commerce or benefit. Man is social, not merely gregarious. He enters into the life of his fellow-man and establishes relations which we are bound to c

work with that of his fellow-man in a grand co-operative undertaking for the advancement and betterment of society regarded as a whole and with regard for its units. We cannot realise self if engaged in competition man

is obligation which sent the Christian-Maidens into the suburbs of Rome seeking the exposed offspring of unnatural parents. To

s of society. He says, of these weaklings, that Nature has decreed that they should die. A most unscientific statement. Are these charitable efforts to be regarded as profane interference with the sacred decrees of Nature? Nature's decrees are inviolate and none can disturb them. Because thes

ature say o

do no

annot

ust no

that in the past

xist under the laws of Nature. So far as this enquiry has advanced it has been made quite clear that the charitable eff

has decreed that they should not. This must be a secret communication, for it is not universal knowledge, and the operation of Nat

e a misery t

y are to

der the progr

eaten to over

ight they not be left to decide that matter for themselves? They, knowing best, cry to us for help. If we were merely gregarious creatures like wolves or sharks we would tear or destroy them in their misery; but

re that the one aim of both society and individual is to ama

n for the suffering creates a tie between them and us. The intention to help requires our co-operation with others, and so the bond extends uniting first individuals then groups and then the whole of society. Nor must we forget the immense advance in surgery and medicine

gent research by revealing the cure of all the ills our flesh inherits. Thus assured, scientific men are most zealously studying the most deadly and most obstinate diseases. Against plague, smallpox, and consumption they can at least give us an effective protection, and almost hourly we expect to hear the shout of triumph accompanying the announcement that the victory over can

sed is being lessened. By being cured, instead of dying, these increase the proportion of the strong to the weak.

ore the proportion which they, the strong, have thus by their selfishness disturbed. Nature gives adequate protection so far as num

ful as to wrest the supremacy from the European. Charity, however, demands that these measures shall be taken, and the terrors of the future are at best hypothetical. This is but another case in which consideration for the unknown future is apt to hinder us in the

, and in the bearing of it is brought into view th

these powers he has, through supplication the means of engaging the Divine Influence

ding institutions is sometimes due to a craze and not charity. Thus evils are sometimes accentuated