cemetery was not
the child of pious and intelligent parents; that he was not nurtured by
the best of mothers, and educated by the most judicious teachers;
and that he did not come of a lineage long known and honored for its
intellectual and moral qualities. Suppose that one should go to the
worst quarter of the city and pick out the worst-looking child of the
worst couple he could find, and then train him up successively at the
School for Infant Rogues, the Academy for Young Scamps, and the College
for Complete Criminal Education, would it be reasonable to expect a
Francois Xavier or a Henry Martyn to be the result of such a training?
The traditionists, in whose presumptuous hands the science of
anthropology has been trusted from time immemorial, have insisted on
eliminating cause and effect from the domain of morals. When they
have come across a moral monster they have seemed to think that he put
himself together, having a free choice of all the constituents which
make up manhood, and that consequently no punishment could be too bad
for him.

I say, hang him and welcome, if that is the best thing for society; hate
him, in a certain sense, as you hate a rattlesnake, but, if you pretend
to be a philosopher, recognize the fact that what you hate in him is
chiefly misfortune, and that if you had been born with his villanous low
forehead and poisoned instincts, and bred among creatures of the Races
Maudites whose natural history has to be studied like that of beasts
of prey and vermin, you would not have been sitting there in your
gold-bowed spectacles and passing judgment on the peccadilloes of your
fellow-creatures.

I have seen men and women so disinterested and noble, and devoted to the
best works, that it appeared to me if any good and faithful servant was
entitled to enter into the joys of his Lord, such as these might be.
But I do not know that I ever met with a human being who seemed to me to
have a stronger claim on the pitying consideration and kindness of
his Maker than a wretched, puny, crippled, stunted child that I saw in
Newgate, who was pointed out as one of the most notorious and inveterate
little thieves in London. I have no doubt that some of those who
were looking at this pitiable morbid secretion of the diseased social
organism thought they were very virtuous for hating him so heartily.

It is natural, and in one sense is all right enough. I want to catch a
thief and put the extinguisher on an incen