ormation, a
reform school, or, perhaps better than either, to the custody of a
well-regulated, industrious family. Now, in such cases, the distinction
which the law, judicially administered, does not make, and cannot make,
must be made by the executive in the wise exercise of the pardoning
power. But this power, in the nature of things, has its limits; and on
one side it is limited to those who have been convicted of crime.

At this point, we may see how faulty, and yet how constantly improving,
has been the administration of the criminal law. First, we have the
prison without the pardoning power, except in cases of
mal-administration of the law,--a receptacle of the bad and good, where
the former are not improved, and the latter are hurried rapidly on in
the path of degradation and crime. Then we have the prison under the
influence of the pardoning power, more or less wisely administered, but,
in its best form, able only to arrest and counteract partially the
tendencies to evil. Next, from the imperfections of this system an
advancing civilization has evoked the Reform School, which gathers in
the young criminals and viciously inclined youth, and prepares them, by
labor, and culture of the mind and heart, to resist the temptations of
life. But this institution seems to wait, though it may not always in
reality do so, until the candidate is actually a criminal.

Hence the necessity which calls us to-day to consider the means adopted
elsewhere, and the means now to be employed here, to save the young and
exposed from the dangers which surround them.

Passing, then, in review, ladies and gentlemen, the thoughts which have
been presented, I deduce from them for your assent and support, if so it
please you, the following propositions as the basis of what I have yet
to say:

I. Government, in the prevention and punishment of crime, should be
paternal.

II. The object of punishment should be reformation, and not revenge.

III. The law of reformation in the state, as in the family, is the law
of kindness.

IV. As criminals vary in age and in experience as criminals, so should
their treatment vary.

V. Prisons and jails are not, in their foundation and management,
reformatory institutions, and only become so through influences not
necessarily nor ordinarily acting upon them.

VI. As prisons and jails deter from crime through fear only, exert very
little moral influence upon the youth of either sex, and fail in many