I cannot think the method here suggested would be so costly as the present. It seems to me that institutions of this character might be made not only to support themselves, but be so managed as to leave a balance of income considerably beyond the expense. This might be made use of for the advantage of the criminal when he returned to society; or with it he might help make restitution of what he had once stolen. Besides being less costly, it would cure the offender and send back valuable men into society.
It seems to me that our whole criminal legislation is based on a false principle--force and not love; that it is eminently well adapted to revenge, not at all to correct, to teach, to cure. The whole apparatus for the punishment of offenders, from the gallows down to the House of Correction, seems to me wrong; wholly wrong, unchristian, and even inhuman. We teach crime while we punish it. Is it consistent for the State to take vengeance when I may not? Is it better for the State to kill a man in cold blood, than for me to kill my brother when in a rage? I cannot help thinking that the gallows and even the jail, as now administered, are practical teachers of violence and wrong! I cannot think it will always be so. Hitherto we have looked on criminals as voluntary enemies of mankind. We have treated them as wild beasts, not as dull or loitering boys. We have sought to destroy by death, to disable by mutilation or imprisonment, to terrify and subdue, not to convince, to reform, encourage, and bless.
The history of the past is full of prophecy for the future. Not many years ago we shut up our lunatics in jails, in dungeons, in cages; we chained the maniac with iron; we gave him a bottle of water and a sack of straw; we left him in filth, in cold and nakedness. We set strong and brutal men to watch him. When he cried, when he gnashed his teeth and tore his hair, we beat him all the more! They do so yet in some places, for they think a madman is not a brother but a devil. What was the result? Madness was found incurable. Now lunacy is a disease, to be prescribed for as fever or rheumatism; when we find an incurable case we do not kill the man, nor chain him, nor count him a devil. Yet lunacy is not curable by force, by jails, dungeons, and cages; only by the medicine of wise men and good men. What if Christ had met one demoniac with a whip and another with chains!