RETROSPECT AND FORECAST 217 



good Spirit which has achieved for us as a nation 

 that higher moral sentiment from which we look 

 down with shuddering and disgust upon the judicial 

 massacres of the legal code, the shocking inhumanities 

 of the prison system, and the brutal sports of this 

 country as they existed one brief century ago. If 

 the public sentiment of the English people has become 

 so changed for the better and elevated in one century 

 of progress, as has undoubtedly been the case, what 

 may not be reasonably hoped for from the refining 

 and educative influences of the coming centuries ? 



We cannot anticipate a time when human nature, 

 however refined, however held in restraint by con- 

 ventional sentiment, and however modified in its 

 activities by happier social arrangements, will be 

 wholly divorced from the primitive passions that 

 have up to the present day so largely moulded the 

 history of nations and wrecked individual lives. 

 I do not forecast a society so admirably organised 

 or so interpenetrated with the principles of morality 

 that it will contain no vicious elements, no evil 

 natures, a society in which the policeman will be 

 unnecessary, and in which courts of justice, criminal 

 trials, and legal punishments will have ceased to be 

 indispensable to the maintenance of the social order. 

 But I do forecast a society ,that will have left 

 behind it for ever the possible existence of such 

 vice-fostering slums and dens of misery, debauchery, 

 and crime as exist to-day in all our great towns. 

 I do forecast a time when the refining influences 



