; and it is the inevitable, by no means
inartistic or unhealthy discursiveness of the treatment which makes it
difficult to do justice to it. But we will venture upon a point or two
nearly at random.

In discussing "Model Prisons," or rather the assumptions of that
Latter-day Pamphlet, Mr. Bayne takes a view of our duty to criminals
with which we agree, and he quotes the fact that the majority of those
who belong to the criminal class are found to have abnormal brains and
often diseased bodies. He also treats just in the way we might expect
the _dictum_ that stupidity means badness. The last meaning of that, we
almost fear, Mr. Bayne has not quite caught; as John Bunyan meant it,
and as Carlyle means it, it is surely true. Again, it seems doubtful if
Mr. Bayne, in taking up Kant's complaint that, while there is so much
kindness in the world, there is so little justice, has put the complaint
in the right place. It is awfull true, and not to be hidden from any
honest and acute observer, that the love of justice and truth is very
weak in most human beings; while the instinct of kindness is
comparatively strong. Again, Dr. Bayne nearly surprises us by adopting
the commonplace that great talents bring with them an increase of moral
responsibility. Well, we all know the insuperable difficulties of the
subject, how they all run up at last into one final problem of which the
most plausible-looking solutions turn out to be only paradoxes. But,
after all, can it be maintained that there is really any final
difference in the degree of moral responsibility to be assigned to a man
with a constitution like Byron's or Edgar Poe's, and that which is to be
assigned to one of those criminals with abnormal brains? Shelley's
grandfather was crazed; the father, Sir Timothy, was _half_-crazed; what
Shelley was we know. And can we consistently say that his faults (we do
not speak of any particular act) were one shade less the natural result
of the constitution of his brain than are those of any of Mr. Carlyle's
"dog-faced" criminals? Is there any sense in suggesting that the
splendid powers of such a man ought to be expected to act as breakwaters
against the force of his special temptations? Of course we know how the
enlightened British juryman would answer such a question, and equally of
course there are rocks ahead answer it as you may; but we must pause a
little longer on it than Dr. Bayne does (page 89) over the question
"What is justice?