places exist? Unhappily, there is no doubt
about it. When a thief is " wanted," the
policeman, knows in what quarter and among
what companions to look for him. There are
suspicious publics, suspicious lodging-houses,
suspicious landladies, and suspicious landlords.
When, for the twentieth time, a well-known thief
is brought up at Bow-street, the policeman who
appears against him is sure to describe him
as associating with well-known bad characters.
Now, what one feels inclined to ask on reading
for the hundredth time that stereotyped phrase,
is simply this: Why are those same well-known
bad characters allowed to congregate? Why
do we not make a descent upon them and
disperse their colony? Those felon-preserves
which the police know of, ought they to be left
undisturbed? That there should be " well-
known" bad characters at large, and "well-
known" haunts of iniquity flourishing among us,
will seem, years hence when the thing will be
remedied, preposterous.

It is true that justice should be tempered
with mercy, but it is also true that mercy should
be tempered with justice. And we must ask
ourselves, what mercy is? We have got somebody
else, besides the professed thief, towards
whom we ought to exercise some of this heavenly
quality. The industrious and unoffending citizen
has perhaps some little claim on our merciful
feelings, as well as the worst criminal in
Westminster, or St. Giles's. If anything be
neglected that can help to keep this citizen in
security, there is a breach of contract on the
part of those who have undertaken, as far as
they reasonably can, to ensure his safety of life
and property. If a man were residing in some
African settlement and paid annually a certain
sum to be protected against wild beasts, what
would he think if he found out one night by
painful experience that there was a lion's den
left undisturbed in the heart of the town, the
occupants of which were in the habit of turning
out in search of a meal as soon as the sun was
well down behind the Desert Horizon? That a
stray lion should make a descent from some
strange place and should do some considerable
amount of mischief in the little city, would be
deplorable enough; but that ferocious beasts
should be left living within the city walls, with
nothing to live upon but the flesh of the inhabitants,
would be too preposterous. Yet are we not
tolerating much such a state of things as this in
our own town of London? Have we not a den
of wild beasts, nay two or three such dens,
in the very heart of our metropolis? Have
those savage animals any means of living,
except by preying on the inhabitants of the town?
The occasional criminal we cannot guard
against. The habitual bad character we can.
When a man has been two or three times " in
trouble," and when he has no ostensible means
of getting a livelihood, it is morally certain that
he will get a livelihood out of the industrious
portion of the community in some illegitimate
way, and it is exceedingly probable that he even
may manage to squeeze the same out of their
throats, or knock it out of a hole in their skulls.
Now, such a character as this should be kept
out of our way. It is most probable that he will
never come to good. It is quite certain that he
will not come right, without a very long term of
seclusion from such society as he has previously
frequented, and a long period of prison
discipline. To give such a man a short term of
imprisonment as a mere penalty which he has to
pay for the last crime he has committed, and at
the expiration of that term to turn him loose
again with no honest occupation open to him,
even if he wanted to pursue an honest occupation
—which in plain true English he does not—
to act thus is to do what is worse than foolish;
it is indirectly assisting at the next offence the
man is guilty of.

A man's first offence against the laws might
be dealt leniently with. That first fall is bad
enough, and the chances of recovery are not
even then too many. The second offence is a
much more serious affair, and after that he will
require a long and most elaborate treatment
before even the smallest hope of his recovery
can rationally be entertained. The criminal
who has fallen many times can hardly ever be
trusted with entire liberty. Some amount of
surveillance should be exercised over him always:
above all things, it should be a necessary
condition of his liberty that he should have a
certain means of living, and that he should be
able to prove that he is devoting himself
diligently to some recognised employment. Otherwise,
in Heaven's name to prison with him, and
keep him there hard and fast!

A large proportion of criminals still remains
to which not even limited liberty can be safely
accorded. It is sad to think that there are
such cases, but it is of no use denying that
the fact is so. There are many other things
that are sad to think of. It is miserable to
think when you go forth, free, and healthy,
and happy, on a bright day in summer, that at
that moment there are children lying sick in
stifling rooms in Whitechapel, that there are
patients in hospitals waiting till the hour comes
for the operation to be performed, that there
are heads bowed down with sorrow, that other
heads are plotting foul sins which the night
shall see executed. All these things it is sad
to think of, but still they are. And so it is sad
to think that bands of men are to work with
fetters on them, and are to wear a dress which
is disgraceful, and are to be shut out from many
enjoyments and subject to many painful restrictions.
Still the thing must be. Unless we are
to perpetuate most monstrous inconsistencies,
and punish the innocent far more than the
guilty—the robbed much more than the robber—
the thing must be.

Nor must we look at the position of such
felons, quite from our own point of view. They
are men of brutish and unsensitive nature, who
miss, it is true, their liberty and their familiar
vices, but who feel not as we should, the
disgrace as well as the discomfort of their position.
For those who have any spark of goodness latent