degree, proportionate to
the extent of the means em-
ployed, much misery must be prevented,
and many
evils be exterminated. Your efforts in establishing a
preventive system, and in diffusing a knowledge of
the means of
self-correction to the lower classes of
society, are the wisest that
can be imagined; you
strike at once at the root of the tree of evil,
instead
of lopping a branch here and there, which, sooner
or
later, shoots out again in new vigour.
The United States, particularly those states in
which slavery is
unknown, or almost eradicated,
possess signal advantages for
securing themselves
from the dreadful evils which oppress society in
Eu-
rope
wisdom enough rightly to estimate, and use, the
means that Providence has been pleased thus to put
into their hands.
A law passed our state legislature, authorizing the
corporation of
this city to erect a prison for solitary
confinement, to be solely for the punishment of
petty
offenders, to be kept on low diet, and in solitary
apartments, for a term not exceeding ninety days;
some accounts of
this plan may be seen in the
account of the State Prison, page 62.
From observing
the effects of this mode of punishment, in the
State
Prison, where it is used to correct those who violate
the
rules of the prison, by profane swearing, quar-
relling, want of
cleanliness, or neglect of their alloted
task of labour, &c., I
have been led to believe it is
the most efficacious that can
possibly be adopted.
The average number of convicts is nearly 400,
most
of whom observe a uniform, regular, and peaceable
course of
conduct; the hardened and refractory are
kept in good order, by
occasional punishment in the
cells, which strikes such a terror on
their minds, that
it often happens, that not a single person has
been
punished for eight or ten days. Certain I am, that
a
punishment of this kind will be far more beneficial
than that
of the Bridewell, or even the State Prison,