127.  The wealth of a nation then, first, and its peace and well-being besides, depend on the number of persons it can employ in making good and useful things.  I say its well-being also, for the character of men depends more on their occupations than on any teaching we can give them, or principles with which we can imbue them.  The employment forms the habits of body and mind, and these are the constitution of the man,—­the greater part of his moral or persistent nature, whatever effort, under special excitement, he may make to change or overcome them.  Employment is the half, and the primal half, of education—­it is the warp of it; and the fineness or the endurance of all subsequently woven pattern depends wholly on its straightness and strength.  And, whatever difficulty there may be in tracing through past history the remoter connections of event and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear:  the formation, namely, of the character of nations by their employments, and the determination of their final fate by their character.  The moment, and the first direction of decisive revolutions, often depend on accident; but their persistent course, and their consequences, depend wholly on the nature of the people.  The passing of the Reform Bill by the late English Parliament may have been more or less accidental; the results of the measure now rest on the character of the English people, as it has been developed by their recent interests, occupations, and habits of life.  Whether, as a body, they employ their new powers for good or evil will depend, not on their facilities of knowledge, nor even on the general intelligence they may possess, but on the number of persons among them whom wholesome employments have rendered familiar with the duties, and modest in their estimate of the promises, of life.

128.  But especially in framing laws respecting the treatment or employment of improvident and more or less vicious persons, it is to be remembered that as men are not made heroes by the performance of an act of heroism, but must be brave before they can perform it, so they are not made villains by the commission of a crime, but were villains before they committed it; and the right of public interference with their conduct begins when they begin to corrupt themselves,—­not merely at the moment when they have proved themselves hopelessly corrupt.

All measures of reformation are effective in exact proportion to their timeliness:  partial decay may be cut away and cleansed; incipient error corrected; but there is a point at which corruption can be no more stayed, nor wandering recalled.  It has been the manner of modern philanthropy to remain passive until that precise period, and to leave the sick to perish, and the foolish to stray, while it spends itself in frantic exertions to raise the dead, and reform the dust.

The recent direction of a great weight of public opinion against capital punishment is, I trust, the sign of an awakening perception that punishment is the last and worst instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.  The true instruments of reformation are employment and reward; not punishment.  Aid the willing, honour the virtuous, and compel the idle into occupation, and there will be no deed for the compelling of any into the great and last indolence of death.