No: the Laodicean spirit will not serve! I do not ridicule or belittle
the efforts of generous and genial men and women who give their spare
time, or their whole time, to bettering the plight of convicts. But the
diabolical spirit of the prisons sneers at them, and sits undisturbed.
Let air and sunshine come to outer courts and clean-swept cells; the
star-chambers and the secret dungeons remain. Let the outraged creatures
out, to stray to the extent of their honor-tether; they are slaves and
prisoners still. There were compassionate reformers in Ancient Egypt,
who tried to make the lot of the captive Israelites easier; but the
heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and God Himself must intervene before he
would let the people go. Nor does it help that the slaves themselves are
grateful for hard-won privileges, and that we read urbane descriptions
of smiling and rosy felons working on state roads in "Don't Worry"
camps. Is it ground for congratulation that the very victims of the
specious pretense of the eternal right and necessity of prisons should
have succumbed to that delusion? Does it not prove a need yet more
urgent to be up and at them? Is it not humiliating to know that men, our
brothers, partakers of our common nature, can be so abased as to kiss
the rod, and joke about their fetters, and accept as favor what none is
entitled to deny them?
Prisons are hell--we come back to that; and they are not and cannot be
made purgatories.
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