an's abuse of power!

The records of its abuse in the savage who loads women's slender
shoulders with his burdens, leaves his sick to the wayside jackal, and
knocks his aged father on the head when he is past work; the brutality
of slave-drivers, the iniquities of vice-maddened Eastern
despots;--such things those who never have to deal with them may afford
to forget.

But men who act for those who have no natural protectors, or have lost
the power of protecting themselves, who legislate for those who have no
voice in the making of laws, and for the brute creation, which we win to
our love and domesticate for our convenience; who apprentice pauper boys
and girls, who meddle with the matters of weak women, sick persons, and
young children, are bound to face a far sadder issue. That even in these
days, when human love again and again proves itself not only stronger
than death, but stronger than all the selfish hopes of life; when the
everyday manners of everyday men are concessions of courtesy to those
who have not the strength to claim it; when children and pet animals are
spoiled to grotesqueness; when the good deeds of priest and physician,
nurse and teacher, surpass all earthly record of them--man, as man, is
no more to be trusted with unchecked power than hitherto.

The secret histories of households, where power should be safest in the
hands of love; of hospitals, of schools, of orphanages, of poorhouses,
of lunatic-asylums, of religious communities founded for GOD'S worship
and man's pity, of institutions which assume the sacred title as well as
the responsibilities of Home--from the single guardian of some rural
idiot to the great society which bears the blessed Name of Jesus--have
not each and all their dark stories, their hushed-up scandals, to prove
how dire is the need of public opinion without, and of righteous care
within, that what is well begun should be well continued?

If any one doubts this, let him pause on each instance, one by one, and
think of what he has seen, and heard, and read, and known of; and he
will surely come to the conviction that human nature cannot, even in the
very service of charity, be safely trusted with the secret exercise of
irresponsible power, and that no light can be too fierce to beat upon
and purify every spot where the weak are committed to the tender mercies
of the consciences of the strong.

Mr. Crayshaw's conscience was not a tender one, and very little light
came int