Whether, as a body, they employ their new powers for good or evil will
depend, not on their facilities of knowledge, nor even on the general
intelligence they may possess, but on the number of persons among them
whom wholesome employments have rendered familiar with the duties, and
modest in their estimate of the promises, of life.
128. But especially in framing laws respecting the treatment or
employment of improvident and more or less vicious persons, it is to be
remembered that as men are not made heroes by the performance of an act
of heroism, but must be brave before they can perform it, so they are not
made villains by the commission of a crime, but were villains before they
committed it; and the right of public interference with their conduct
begins when they begin to corrupt themselves,--not merely at the moment
when they have proved themselves hopelessly corrupt.
All measures of reformation are effective in exact proportion to their
timeliness: partial decay may be cut away and cleansed; incipient error
corrected; but there is a point at which corruption can be no more
stayed, nor wandering recalled.
Pages:
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171