However, to act intelligently as well as conscientiously in matters of such gravity, the study of the origin of the evils which afflict and disgrace our country, and the sources from whence they generally spring, requires more attention than has usually been given, even by those who most deplore their existence. It will not do to throw down your newspaper after perusing accounts of three or four cases of murder, and ask to what is the world coming? It is almost equally useless to occasionally hang a criminal, or to send another to prison for life. For the one so punished, a score at least escape, and the demands neither of retributive nor distributive justice are satisfied. The evil-disposed gratify their revenge by the commission of these crimes, while their chances of punishment are no more than one in twenty. Thus the plague that infests society daily becomes more noxious and, as it were, epidemic.
Crime has its latitude and longitude, its nationality, classes, and castes, its peculiar inciting causes, as well as the great vital cause--the absence of true religious faith and practice. For instance, it might be easily demonstrated that the many-nationed people of the United States are addicted to special classes of crime, as distinct and almost as obvious as their language, habits, and intellectual idiosyncrasies. We speak now of the more flagrant violations of the social compact, not with the intention of discriminating against any class or race in the community, nor with the object of holding the mass of any people, no matter what their origin or country, responsible for the acts of a few among them--for after all the criminals are in a small minority, fortunately, among all nations--but to point out the nature and peculiar motives for the commission of offences against the law as they exist among different classes of our population, so that suitable remedies may be applied to the respective cases.
Outrages against law and justice depend to a certain extent on locality for their distinctive character. The desperate hand-to-hand encounters which have so long characterized a certain class of society in the border states, are as different in motive from that of the cool Connecticut poisoner, as the assassin of our aristocratic circles is dissimilar to the ruffian of the slums.