times jumps to conclusions which
are not verified. Common Sense uttered predictions concerning gas and
steam, which have not come to pass. And the views of Common Sense
concerning discipline for youthful offenders are perhaps rather too
summary. "Give the young thief a whipping"--very good. The thing is done
with small expenditure of time and material. It does not take many
minutes: it is attended only with a slight wear of whipcord: cost you a
farthing, as MR. PEPYS would have said: and a certain laceration of
human integument, cost you absolutely nothing. You lose nothing whatever
in raw material. Therefore inflict the whipping on the young thief. And
have done with him? Ah! "If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere
well it were done quickly." But it appears that you won't have done with
him. On the contrary, after that beginning, the child constantly comes
back to this court, as ASSISTANT-JUDGE ADAMS says. After all, is it not
manifest even to Common Sense--if Common Sense will exert itself--that
to attempt the reformation of a child--and for what else would you
punish a child?--by whipping him, is really beginning at the wrong end?
The application of the scourge belongs to the operative part--the
surgery--of the treatment of criminals; and operations should be
resorted to only when all other remedies have failed. Primarily, the
whip lacerates the skin; but the laceration is succeeded by hardening of
the part that was lacerated; but not only by that: by the induration,
also, of any amount of heart that the patient may previously have been
endowed with. After such a beginning, no wonder that he comes back to
this court or that. No: the lash is a valuable application, so is lunar
caustic, so is lapis infernalis, or the actual cautery itself. But
reserve it for desperate cases. Resort to it only in those of subjects
that have lost all sensibility to every other appeal. Keep stripes for
the ruffian who savagely maltreats his wife; for the hopeless brute, for
the irreclaimable blackguard. And administer them to him in such a dose
that he will not readily come back to any court to have it repeated. But
a little whipping is a dangerous thing. It degrades and brutalises
without subduing. You must lash a human being like a hound if you want
to conquer him as you would conquer a hound--and it surely would be
rather too severe to carry flagellation to that extent with juvenile
offenders. It is not fair, moreover, to use the r