The young person is more likely to fall into error than his elders because of his inexperience. Whatever the law may hold, no business man expects the kind of service from a youth that he looks for from a man. The young man may have more knowledge than his senior and more recent information on many things, but only time can enable him to co-relate his knowledge. The question whether a lad knows right from wrong is all that some people will consider; which shows how little they know, if they really believe that the answer will enable anyone to assess a man's responsibility. We are taught "right and wrong" from our earliest years by way of principles to guide us, but they are not always easy of application. The difference between a young and an old man is one of experience. Practice has enabled the one to use his knowledge in a way that the other has yet to learn. Our conceptions of many things on which we have been given information apparently full and accurate have been proved time and again to be quite wrong; experience enables us to discount our anticipations, but it only comes with years. In judging young people it is specially necessary to bear in mind the fact that with all their apparent knowledge they may have totally wrong conceptions of things, and that thus they have been misled. On many occasions I have had to note the fact that a young man had committed an atrocious crime; that he knew perfectly well it was wrong; that it was not due to imperfect powers of control; that he had brooded over and visualised it before the act; and that its accomplishment had left him shocked beyond expression, for it was all so different from his conception of it.
No punishment could intensify the shuddering horror with which these lads regarded their own acts, "so different from what I thought it would be"; and yet in ordinary affairs we are well acquainted with the phenomenon. Why we should lose sight of it when a crime has been committed and we are seeking to unravel the causes is a mystery. Know right from wrong? Yes, and conceive the whole matter wrongly. This state of mind is not peculiar to the criminal, and may sometimes be present in those who take upon themselves to judge and condemn him.