to the poorer classes that they could slip so easily into mendicancy or other useless ways of life, and thus become a nuisance instead of a help to society. This particular evil was now so great and universal, that high government intervention was needed for its thorough cure.
We needed, in fact, quite a new departure, both in this and in criminal jurisdiction. The hardened and hopeless professional criminal, when taken red-handed, should be permanently locked up, as long as he continued such, and for his own good as well as for the due protection of society. Others, of whom there was more or less hope, should be treated with comparative leniency. We should aim, as far as humanity and decency will permit, to prevent the criminal and worthless from leaving families behind, and thus maintaining for society an everlasting battle with professional and hereditary crime.
Yet another subject, and then I have done, for the present, with Yellowly. Discoursing on his great topic, Progress, he would remark that the most necessary and advantageous class of works were those which would surely reimburse all their cost by the lapse of mere value-raising time. This was the now well-known "unearned increment of value" in the country's real estate; and all experience had now proved it so reliable a feature, that he was more than astonished that no one of our successive Governments should as yet have, to any noticeable extent, applied any of its boundless capabilities to the public good.
