Hence, both here and there, crime is social and local.
The truth of this statement is proportionate to the force of the causes
in the respective countries.
We are assembled upon a sloping hillside, over-looking a quiet country
village. Happy homes are embowered in living groves, whose summer
foliage is emblematical of innocence, progress, and peace. We have here
a social life, with natural impulses, cultivated worldly interests,
moral and religious sentiments, all on the side of virtue. Crime here
is not social. If it appear at all, it is segregated; and, as the
burning taper expires when placed at the centre of the spirit lamp's
coiling sheet of flame, so vice and crime cannot thrive in the genial
embrace of virtue.
Circumstances are here unfavorable to crime; it is never social; but
sometimes, though not often, it is hereditary. A family for many
generations seems to have a criminal tendency. Perhaps the members are
not in any generation guilty of great crimes, but often of lesser ones;
and are, moreover, in the daily practice of vices that give rise to
suspicion, neglect, and reproach. Here together are associated, and made
hereditary, poverty, ignorance, idleness, beggary, and vagrancy. Surely
these instances are not common, probably not so common as they were in
the last generation. But how is the boy or girl of such a family to rise
above these circumstances, and throw off these weights? Occasionally one
of great energy of character may do so; but, if the children of more
fortunate classes can scarcely escape the influence of temporary evil
example, how shall they who are born to a heritage of poverty,
ignorance, and ever-present evil counsel and conduct under the guise of
parental authority, pass to the position of intelligent, industrious,
respectable members of society? Some external influence must be
applied; by some means from without, the spell must be broken; the
fatal succession of vicious homes must be interrupted.
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