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some Norfolk Island, into some special Convict Colony or remote domestic Moorland, into some stone-walled Silentsystem, under hard drill-sergeants, just as Rhadamanthus, and inflexible as he, and there leave you to reap what you have sown; he meanwhile turning his endeavours to the thousandfold immeasurable interests of men and gods,—dismissing the one extremely contemptible interest of scoundrels; sweeping that into the cesspool, tumbling that over London Bridge, in a very brief manner, if needful! Who are you, ye thriftless sweepings of Creation, that we should for ever be pestered with you? Have we no work to do but drilling Devil's regiments of the line?

If I had schoolmasters, my benevolent friend, do you imagine I would set them on teaching a set of unteachables, who, as you perceive, have already made up their mind that black is white, that the Devil namely is the advantageous Master to serve in this world? My esteemed Benefactor of Humanity, it shall be far from me. Minds open to that particular conviction are not the materials I like to work upon. When once my schoolmasters have gone over all the other classes of society, from top to bottom; and have no other soul to try with teaching, all being thoroughly taught,—I will then send them to operate on these regiments of the line: then, and, assure yourself, never till then. The truth is, I am sick of scoundreldom, my esteemed Benefactor; it always was detestable to me; and here where I find it lodged in palaces and waited upon by the benevolent of the world, it is more detestable, not to say insufferable to me than ever.

Latter Day Pamphlets. Model Prisons, p. 13.

NO BROTHERHOOD WITH SCOUNDRELS.

Most sick am I, O friends, of this sugary disastrous jargon of philanthropy, the reign of love, new era of universal brotherhood, and not Paradise to the Well-deserving, but Paradise to All-and-sundry, which possesses the benighted minds of men

THE ONLY TRUE AIM OF PUNISHMENT.

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and women in our day. My friends, I think you are much mistaken about Paradise! No Paradise for anybody; he that cannot do without Paradise, go his ways:' suppose you tried that for a while! I reckon that the safer version.-Unhappy sugary brethren, this is all untrue, this other; contrary to the fact; not a tatter of it will hang together in the wind and weather of fact. In brotherhood with the base and foolish I, for one, do not mean to live. Not in brotherhood with them was life hitherto worth much to me; in pity, in hope not yet quite swallowed of disgust,-otherwise in enmity that must last through eternity, in unappeasable aversion, shall I have to live with these! Brotherhood? No, be the thought far from me. They are Adam's children,-alas yes, I well remember that, and never shall forget it; hence this rage and sorrow. they have gone over to the dragons; they have quitted the Father's house, and set up with the Old Serpent: till they return, how can they be brothers? They are enemies, deadly to themselves and to me and to you, till then; till then, while hope yet lasts, I will treat them as brothers fallen insane;— when hope has ended, with tears grown sacred and wrath grown sacred, I will cut them off in the name of God! It is at my peril, if I do not. With the servant of Satan I dare not continue in partnership. Him I must put away, resolutely and forever; 'lest,' as it is written, 'I become partaker of his plagues.'

But

Latter Day Pamphlets. Model Prisons, p. 22.

THE ONLY TRUE AIM OF PUNISHMENT.

I take the liberty of asserting that there is one valid reason and only one, for either punishing a man or rewarding him in this world; one reason, which ancient piety could well define: That you may do the will and commandment of God with regard to him; that you may do justice to him. This is your one true aim in respect of him; aim thitherward with all your heart and all your strength and all your soul; thitherward, and not

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elsewhither at all! This aim is true, and will carry you to all earthly heights and benefits, and beyond the stars and Heavens. All other aims are purblind, illegitimate, untrue; and will never carry you beyond the shop-counter, nay very soon will prove themselves incapable of maintaining you even there. Find out what the Law of God is with regard to a man; make that your human law, or I say it will be ill with you, and not well! If you love your thief or murderer, if Nature and eternal Fact love him, then do as you are now doing. But if Nature and Fact do not love him? If they have set inexorable penalties upon him, and planted natural wrath against him in every god-created human heart, then I advise you, cease, and change your hand.

Latter Day Pamphlets. Model Prisons, p. 33.

"WHAT TO DO WITH OUR CRIMINALS?"

Really, one of the most difficult questions this we have in these times. "What to do with our criminals ?" blandly observed a certain Law-dignitary, in my hearing once, taking the cigar from his mouth, and pensively smiling over a group of us under the summer beech-tree, as Favonius carried off the tobacco-smoke; and the group said nothing, only smiled and nodded, answering by new tobacco-clouds. "What to do with our criminals?" asked the official Law-dignitary again, as if entirely at a loss." I suppose," said one ancient figure not engaged in smoking, "the plan would be to treat them according to the real law of the case: to make the Law of England, in respect of them, correspond to the Law of the Universe. Criminals, I suppose, would prove manageable in that way: If we could do approximately as God Almighty does towards them; in a word, if we could try to do Justice towards them." "I'll thank you, for a definition of Justice ?" sneered the official person in a cheerily scornful and triumphant manner, backed by a slight laugh from the honourable company; which irritated the other speaker. "Well, I have no

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pocket-definition of Justice," said he, "to give your Lordship. It has not quite been my trade to look for such a definition; I could rather fancy it had been your Lordship's trade, sitting on your high place this long while. But one thing I can tell you: Justice always is, whether we define it or not. Everything done, suffered, or proposed, in Parliament or out of it, is either just or else unjust; either is accepted by the gods and eternal facts, or is rejected by them. Your Lordship and I, with or without definition, do a little know Justice, I will hope; if we don't both know it and do it, we are hourly travelling down towards-Heavens, must I name such a place! That is the place we are bound to with all our trading-pack, and the small or extensive budgets of human business laid on us; and there if we don't know Justice, we, and all our budgets and Acts of Parliament, shall find lodging when the day is done!"-The official person, a polite man otherwise, grinned as he best could some semblance of a laugh, mirthful as that of the ass eating thistles, and ended in "Hah, oh, ah!"

Latter Day Pamphlets. Model Prisons, p. 30.

BENEVOLENCE V. JUSTICE.

On the whole, what a reflection is it that we cannot bestow on an unworthy man any particle of our benevolence, our patronage, or whatever resource is ours,-without withdrawing it, it and all that will grow of it, from one worthy, to whom it of right belongs! We cannot, I say; impossible; it is the eternal law of things. Incompetent Duncan M'Pastehorn, the hapless incompetent mortal to whom I gave the cobbling of my boots, and cannot find in my heart to refuse it, the poor drunken wretch having a wife and ten children; he withdraws the job from sober, plainly competent and meritorious Mr. Sparrowbill, generally short of work too; discourages Sparrowbill; teaches him that he too, may as well drink and loiter and bungle; that this is not a scene for merit and demerit at all, but for dupery, and whining flattery, and incompetent cobbling

of every description; clearly tending to the ruin of poor Sparrowbill! What harm had Sparrowbill done me that I should so help to ruin him? And I couldn't save the insalvable M'Pastehorn: I merely yielded him, for insufficient work, here and there a half-crown,-which he oftenest drank. And now Sparrowbill also is drinking!

Latter Day Pamphlets. Model Prisons, p. 24.

JUST LEGISLATION.

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The aim of all reformers, parliamentary and other, is still defined by them as 'just legislation,' just laws; with which definition who can quarrel? They will not have 'class legislation,' which is a dreadfully bad thing; but all classes legislation,' I suppose, which is the right thing. Sure enough, just laws are an excellent attainment, the first condition of all prosperity for human creatures; but few reflect how extremely difficult such attainment is! Alas, could we once get laws which were just, that is to say, which were the clear transcript of the Divine Laws of the Universe itself; so that each man were incessantly admonished, under strict penalties, by all men, to walk as the Eternal Maker had prescribed; and he alone received honour whom the Maker had made honourable, and whom the Maker had made disgraceful, disgrace: alas, were not here the very 'Aristocracy' we seek? A new veritable Hierarchy of Heaven,-approximately such in very truth, bringing Earth nearer and nearer to the blessed Law of Heaven. Heroic men, the Sent of Heaven, once more bore rule and on the throne of kings there sat splendent, not King Hudson, or King Popinjay, but the Bravest of existing Men; and on the gibbet there swung as a tragic pendulum, admonitory to Earth in the name of Heaven,-not some insignificant, abject, necessitous outcast, who had violently, in his extreme misery and darkness, stolen a leg of mutton, but veritably the Supreme Scoundrel of the Commonwealth, who in his insatiable greed and bottomless atrocity had long, hoodwinking the poor

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