The Criminal: The Crime; The Penalty (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from The Criminal: The Crime; The Penalty

Job iv. 8: "They that plough iniquity and sow wickedness reap the same."

These words were true three thousand years ago, and they are equally true to-day. It has been the concurrent experience of all ages, that wrong prevails but a little while; and, though it succeed in putting on the imperial robes of power, it shortly comes to grief. We see a new and fearful illustration of this law, - an illustration that speaks with warning eloquence to all American citizens, in the short but ignoble career of that man who is at last a captive in the hands of justice. We look back upon the rebellion which he inaugurated, and which in crumbling is likely to bury him beneath its ruins, and we search in vain for a single bright spot in all its black darkness of cruelty and crime. Generally, in a vast movement of this kind, involving the welfare of so many persons, one can find an excuse either in the motive which began it, the heroism which illustrated it, or the sublime courage, overcome but not conquered, which marked its end. But here you read the whole tragedy through with an aching heart, from the first to the last act: in the plot and in the actors, you find no single attribute of pure, high-minded, revolutionary fame.

Here is the nucleus of fact, out of which the terrible drama has been constructed.

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