" A few years ago, there was a lad in a New
England prison whose experience is a pertinent illustration of the evil
we are now considering. His father, a resident of a city, died while
the boy was in infancy. He, however, soon passed beyond the control of
his mother, and at an early age was selected by a brace of thieves, who
petted, caressed, and humored him, until he was completely subject to
their will. He was then made useful to them in their profession; but at
last they were all arrested while engaged in robbing a store,--the boy
being within the building, and the men stationed as sentinels without.
In this case, the discretion of the court, which distinguished in the
sentence between the hardened villains and the youth, was inadequate to
the emergency. The child, unfit for the prison, and sure to be
contaminated by it, ought to have been sent to a house of reformation, a
reform school, or, perhaps better than either, to the custody of a
well-regulated, industrious family. Now, in such cases, the distinction
which the law, judicially administered, does not make, and cannot make,
must be made by the executive in the wise exercise of the pardoning
power. But this power, in the nature of things, has its limits; and on
one side it is limited to those who have been convicted of crime.
At this point, we may see how faulty, and yet how constantly improving,
has been the administration of the criminal law.
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