nt were sought and fostered, there would be no reformation in
your chastisement. Between society and the adult culprit, this is
exactly the case. Here the hostile parent strikes, but makes no after
overture of kindness. The blow, and the bitterness of the blow, are left
unhealed. Nothing is done to take away the sting of anger, to keep the
heart tender to reproof, to prevent the growing callousness to shame,
and the rising rebellion of the spirit. And here reveals itself, in all
its force, another notorious difficulty with which the reformer of penal
codes has to contend.

In drawing the picture of the helpless condition of the convicted and
punished criminal, how often and how justly does he allude to the
circumstance, that the reputation of the man is so damaged that honest
people are loath to employ him--that his return to an untainted life is
almost impossible--and that out of self-defence he is compelled to
resort again to the same criminal enterprises for which he has already
suffered. Struck with this view, the reformer would institute a
penitentiary of so effective a description, that the having passed
through it would be even a testimonial of good character. But who sees
not that the infamy is of the very essence of the punishment? A good
character is the appropriate reward of the good citizen; if the criminal
does not pay the forfeit of his character--if only a certain amount of
temporary inconvenience is to be sustained, the terror of punishment is
at an end. Here, on the arena of public life, between society and the
culprit, are they not manifestly incompatible--the tenderness that would
reclaim, and the vigour that must chastise?

There is no question here, we must observe, of that delicate sense of
shame which is the best preservative against every departure from
rectitude. This has been worn out, and almost ceased to operate on the
majority of persons who expose themselves to the penal laws of their
country. It is the value of character as a commercial commodity, as a
requisite for well-being, that alone has weight with them. Benevolent
projectors of reform, more benevolent than logical, are fond of
comparing a prison to an hospital; they contend that the inmates of
either place are sent there to be cured, and that they should not be
restored to society until they are restored, the one to health of body,
the other to health of mind. Would they carry out the analogy to its
fair completeness, and maintain