SPEAKING FOR THE DEFENSE--

In spite of all the reforms which have been brought to pass by an enlightened society, descendants of Fagin and Bill Sykes still roam the wilds of Whitechapel. If anything, their numbers have greatly increased since the days when the Artful Dodger and his merry associates removed pocket bandkerchiefs from the coat-talls of respectable old gentlemen, and disturbed the waking hours of Bow Street Magistrates. Human nature is still a checkered pattern of blacks and whitos.

So at least thinks Sir Honry Dickens, a son of the famous Charles, who is a dispenser of the King's justice in London. A short time ago an incident occurred which irromediably shattered. Sir Henry's inherlted confidence in the fundamental goodness of his follow men, and seriously distifibed his belief in the applicability of his father's theories. A criminal was brought up for sentence, and instead of committing him forthwith to prison, the son of Charles Dickens found him a job and placed him on parole. Three months later the man was again in the dock. Sir Henry was disconsolate.

"It is one of the greatest disappointments I have ever experienced," he mourned, "I will never try such a thing again."

A certain feeling of discouragement in such circumstances is not unnatural; it is most embittering to have a benevolent idea fail, and fail solely because the object of one's benevolence is too unworthy to appreciate what is being done for him. But at the same time, life would be tiresome without its setbacks. Instead of submitting to the fell clutch of circumstance, Sir Henry should call up his fighting spirit and try again. Generalities cannot be drawn from single cases.

Besides, in the present instance, the experiment was obviously not conducted with the proper attention to detail. The prisoner was a man of mature years, and was doubtless confirmed in crime; a long record of misdeeds should have suggested to the meanest intelligence that he was not the ideal type for a test case. Also, being familiar with police methods, he may have surmised that he was being invited into a trap; and acting on the theory that he was being given rope with which to hang himself, he determined no doubt that his moral demise should at least be accomplished with eclat.

Sir Henry is much more of a magistrate than a sociologist, or he would know that for one instantaneous success in an experiment such as his there are a hundred failures, and that the reform of an habitual criminal, in cases where reform is possible, is rarely accomplished in three months, or with no backslidings. An eminent criminologist has said that to change the outlook of one disposed to crime is many times more difficult after the first conviction than before. If Sir Henry could be moved to continue his interesting work, remembering to temper his mercy with common sense, and experimenting with less hardened offenders, he might eventually come to accept his father's opinions with only one or two grains of salt, instead of an entire sellerful.