第86章 MORE CRUSADES.(20)

There will remain,after all has been said and done,one problem that has yet to be faced.You may minimise the difficulty every way,and it is your duty to do so,but no amount of hopefulness can make us blink the fact that when all has been done and every chance has been offered,when you have forgiven your brother not only seven times but seventy times seven,when you have fished him up from the mire and put him on firm ground only to see him relapse and again relapse until you have no strength left to pull him out once more,there will still remain a residuum of men and women who have,whether from heredity or custom,or hopeless demoralisation,become reprobates.After a certain time,some men of science hold that persistence in habits tends to convert a man from a being with freedom of action and will into a mere automaton.There are some cases within our knowledge which seem to confirm the somewhat dreadful verdict by which a man appears to be a lost soul on this side of the grave.

There are men so incorrigibly lazy that no inducement that you can offer will tempt them to work;so eaten up by vice that virtue is abhorrent to them,and so inveterately dishonest that theft is to them a master passion.When a human being has reached that stage,there is only one course that can be rationally pursued.Sorrowfully,but remorselessly,it must be recognised that he has become lunatic,morally demented,incapable of self-government,and that upon him,therefore,must be passed the sentence of permanent seclusion from a world in which he is not fit to be at large.The ultimate destiny of these poor wretches should be a penal settlement where they could be confined during Her Majesty's pleasure as are the criminal lunatics at Broadmoor.It is a crime against the race to allow those who are so inveterately depraved the freedom to wander abroad,infect their fellows,prey upon Society,and to multiply their kind.Whatever else Society may do,and suffer to be done,this thing it ought not to allow,any more than it should allow the free perambulation of a mad dog.But before we come to this I would have every possible means tried to effect their reclamation.Let Justice punish them,and Mercy put her arms around them;let them be appealed to by penalty and by reason,and by every influence,human and Divine,that can possibly be brought to bear upon them.Then,if all alike failed,their ability to further curse their fellows and themselves should be stayed.

They will still remain objects worthy of infinite compassion.