ity" is no more than
"justice." It is no more than justice to say--all the conditions being
considered--that as to a vast majority of them, crime is no proof of
_special_ depravity. It is the genuine humanity that is there--not base
metal. It came from the common mint--somewhere you will find upon it a
faint scar of the Divine Image--but the coin was pitched into this
bonfire of appetite and blasphemy, and it has come out a cinder. Thus,
proud and happy Mother, might _your_ boy have been a defaced and
distorted being, kicked, cuffed, knotted with frost, blackened with
bruises; a pick-pocket, a wharf-rat, a panel-thief; with his intellect
sharpened to an intense and impish cunning--only knowing that it is a
hard world, and he must get out of it what he can. Thus, fond Father,
might _your_ daughter, whom the very winds must salute with courtesy,
have gone through the streets at night--a painted desolation, a reeling
shame. Do you think these were made of better texture than those who
blacken and fester yonder? Do you think that when these last came into
the world there was no milk in mothers' breasts for them, no Divine
solicitude about them, no tenderness in the heart of Christ; but that
they were the refuse, whirled into existence as the great wheel of Life
shaped the finer mould of the respectable and the happy? I tell you
that God made them complete souls, and stamped His Image upon them--but
they have fallen into the dark and dreary ways; the fierce flames have
hardened them; the foul air has tainted them; and their special
depravity, over and above the common depravity, is the infection of
circumstances. The young boy, the young girl, driven by necessity and
sharpened with cunning, run into crime. They are all _educated_; for
circumstances--not merely books--are education; but this is their
seminary, and the alphabet is spontaneous, and the science of quick
growth. And with the consequences of all this exposure and temptation we
are all mixed up; and, if the claim of the child in its intrinsic
position does not move us, _prudential_ considerations should--the
consideration of what society does suffer, and must suffer, if these
conditions are not changed.

Such, then, are some of the _principles_ involved with my theme. Let us
in the second place pass to consider, very briefly, a few of the
_facts_. Briefly, because I have no time for details, and because the
general state of the case is but too well known to you.