been, upon the whole, satisfactory. This is the concurrent testimony of
officers and others whose opinions are entitled to weight. Permit the
statement of a single case, to which many similar ones might be added.
In a remote state of the West there is a respectable and successful
farmer, who was once sentenced to the penitentiary for life. His crime
was committed in a moment of desperation, produced by the contrast
between a state of abject poverty in a strange land, at the age of
twenty-three, and the recollection of childhood and youth passed beneath
the parental roof, surrounded by the comforts and conveniences of the
well-educated and well-conditioned classes of English society. This, it
is true, was a peculiar case. It was marked in the circumstances and
enormity of the crime, and marked in the subsequent good conduct of the
prisoner. But can any one object, that, after ten years' imprisonment,
this man was allowed to try his fortunes once more among his fellow-men?
Are there those who would have had no faith in his uninterrupted good
conduct; in the abundant evidence of complete reformation; in the fact
that, in prison and poverty and disgrace, he had allied to him friends
of name and fortune and Christian virtues, who were ready to aid him in
his good resolutions? If any such there be, let them visit the solitary
cell of the despairing convict, whose crime is so great that executive
clemency fears to approach it. Crime and despair have made the features
appalling; all the worst passions of our nature riot together in the
temple made for the living God; and the death of the body is almost
certainly to be preceded by madness, insanity, and idiocy of the mind.
Or, if any think that this person escaped with too light an expiation
for so great a crime, let them recall the incident of the youth who was
questioned because he looked with fond affection into the babbling face
of the running brook, and, apologizing, as it were, in reply said, "O,
yes, it is very beautiful, and especially to me, who have seen no water
for four years, beside what I have had to drink!"
Nor is it assumed, in all that is said upon this subject, that the laws
are severe, or that the judicial administration of them is not
characterized by justice and mercy. In the ordinary course of affairs,
the pardoning power is not resorted to for the correction of any error
or injustice of the courts; but it is the means by which the state
tempers its justice with mercy; and, if the penalties for crime were
less than they are, the necessity for the exercise of this power would
still remain. It assumes that the object of the penal law is
reformation; and if this object, in some cases, can be attained by the
exercise of the pardoning power, while the rigid execution of the
sentence would leave the criminal, as it usually will, still hardened
and unrepenting, is it not wise for the state to benefit itself, and
save the prisoner, by opening the prison-doors, and inviting the convict
to a life of industry and virtue? And let it never be forgotten, though
it is the lowest view which can be taken of crime and prisons, that the
criminal class is the most expensive class of society. In general, it is
a non-producing class, and, whether in prison or out, is a heavy burden
upon the public. The mere interest of the money now expended in prisons
of approved structure is, for each cell, equal annually to the net
income of a laboring man; and professional thieves, when at large, often
gather by their art, and expend in profligacy, many thousand dollars a
year. And here we see how much wiser it is, in an economical point of
view, to save the child, or reform the man, than to allow the adult
criminal to go at large, or provide for his safe-keeping at the expense
of the state.
Under the influence of the pardoning power, wisely executed, the
commonwealth becomes a family, whose law is the law of kindness. It is
the paternal element of government applied to a class of people who, by
every process of reasoning, would be found least susceptible to its
influence. It is the great power of the state, both in the wisdom
required for its judicious exercise, and in the beneficial results to
which it may lead. Men may desire office for its emoluments in money or
fame; they may seek it in a spirit of rivalry, or for personal pride, or
for the opportunity it brings to reward friends and punish enemies; but
all these are poor and paltry compared with the divine privilege,
exercised always in reference to the public welfare, of elevating the
prisoner to the companionship of men, and cheering him with words of
encouragement on his entrance anew to the duties of life.
Yet think not that the prison is a reformatory institution: far from it.
If the prison should be left to the influence of legitimate prison
discipline merely, it is doubtful whether the sum of improvement would
equal the total of degradation. This may be said of the best prisons of
America, of New England. The prison usually contains every class, from
the hardened convict, incarcerated for house-breaking, robbery, or
murder, to the youth who expiates his first offence, committed under the
influence of evil companions, or sudden temptation. The contact of these
two persons must be injurious to one of them, without in any degree
improving the other. Therefore the prison, considered without reference
to the elevating influence of the pardoning power, has but little
ability to reform the bad, and yet possesses a sad tendency to debase
the comparatively good.
We miss, too, in the prison, another essential element of a reformatory
institution. Reformation in individual cases may take place under the
most adverse circumstances; but an institution cannot be called
reformatory unless its prevailing moral sentiment is actively,
vigorously, and always, on the side of progress and virtue. This moral
influence must proceed from the officers of the institution; but it
should be increased and strengthened by the sympathy and support of the
inmates. This can hardly be expected of the prison. The number of adult
persons experienced in crime and hardened by its penalties is usually so
large, that the moral sentiment of the officers, and the weak
resolutions of the small class of prisoners, who, under favorable
circumstances, might be saved, are insufficient to give a healthy tone
to the whole institution. The prison is a battle-field of vice and
virtue, with the advantage of position and numbers on the side of vice.
Indeed, there can hardly be a worse place for the young or the
inexperienced in crime. This is the testimony of reason and of all
experience; yet the public mind is slow to accept the remedy for the
evil. It is a privilege to believe that the worst scenes of prison life
are not found in the United States. Consider this case, reported in an
English journal, _The Ragged-School Magazine_:
"D. F., aged about fourteen. Mother dead several years; father a
drunkard, and deserted him about three years ago. Has since lived as he
best could,--sometimes going errands, sometimes begging and thieving.
Slept in lodging-houses when he had money; but very often walked the
streets at night, or lay under arches or door-steps. Has only one
brother; he lives by thieving. Does not know where he is; has no other
friend that he knows; never learnt to read; was badly off; picked a
handkerchief out of a gentleman's pocket, and was caught by a policeman;
sent to Giltspur-street Prison; was fed on bread and water; instructed
every day by chaplain and schoolmaster; much impressed with what the
chaplain said; felt anxious to do better; behaved well in prison; _was
well flogged the morning he left; back bruised, but not quite bleeding_;
was then turned into the street, ragged, barefooted, friendless,
homeless, penniless; walked about the streets till afternoon, when he
received a penny from a gentleman to buy a loaf; met, next day, some
expert thieves in the Minories; went along with them, and continues in a
course of vagrancy and crime."
And what else could have been expected? The government, having sown
tares, had no right to gather wheat. Yet, had this boy been provided
with a home, either in a family or a reform school, with sufficient
labor, and proper moral and intellectual culture, he might have been
saved. Of the three thousand persons annually in prison at Newgate,
four hundred are less than sixteen years of age; and twenty thousand
children and youth under seventeen years of age yearly pass through the
prisons of England. "Many of the juvenile prisoners," it is said, "have
been frequently in prison, and are very hardened. Some, from nine to
eleven, have been in prison repeatedly, and have very little fear of
it."
The officers of the Liverpool Borough Jail are united in the opinion
that, when a boy comes once, he is almost certain to come again and
again, until he is transported. And, of every one hundred young persons
discharged from the principal prisons of Paris, seventy-five are in the
custody of the law within the next three months. A professed thief said
to the Rev. Mr. Clay, of England, "I am convinced of this, having too
bitterly experienced it, that communication in a prison has brought
thousands to ruin. I speak not of boys only, but of men and women also."
And Mr. Hill, Recorder of Birmingham, says of the sentences imposed in
his court, "We are compelled to carry into operation an ignorant and
vengeful system, which augments to a fearful extent the very evils it
was framed to correct." A few years ago, there was a lad in a New
England prison whose experience is a pertinent illustration of the evil
we are now considering. His father, a resident of a city, died while
the boy was in infancy. He, however, soon passed beyond the control of
his mother, and at an early age was selected by a brace of thieves, who
petted, caressed, and humored him, until he was completely subject to
their will. He was then made useful to them in their profession; but at
last they were all arrested while engaged in robbing a store,--the boy
being within the building, and the men stationed as sentinels without.
In this case, the discretion of the court, which distinguished in the
sentence between the hardened villains and the youth, was inadequate to
the emergency. The child, unfit for the prison, and sure to be
contaminated by it, ought to have been sent to a house of reformation, a
reform school, or, perhaps better than either, to the custody of a
well-regulated, industrious family. Now, in such cases, the distinction
which the law, judicially administered, does not make, and cannot make,
must be made by the executive in the wise exercise of the pardoning
power. But this power, in the nature of things, has its limits; and on
one side it is limited to those who have been convicted of crime.
At this point, we may see how faulty, and yet how constantly improving,
has been the administration of the criminal law. First, we have the
prison without the pardoning power, except in cases of
mal-administration of the law,--a receptacle of the bad and good, where
the former are not improved, and the latter are hurried rapidly on in
the path of degradation and crime. Then we have the prison under the
influence of the pardoning power, more or less wisely administered, but,
in its best form, able only to arrest and counteract partially the
tendencies to evil. Next, from the imperfections of this system an
advancing civilization has evoked the Reform School, which gathers in
the young criminals and viciously inclined youth, and prepares them, by
labor, and culture of the mind and heart, to resist the temptations of
life. But this institution seems to wait, though it may not always in
reality do so, until the candidate is actually a criminal.
Hence the necessity which calls us to-day to consider the means adopted
elsewhere, and the means now to be employed here, to save the young and
exposed from the dangers which surround them.
Passing, then, in review, ladies and gentlemen, the thoughts which have
been presented, I deduce from them for your assent and support, if so it
please you, the following propositions as the basis of what I have yet
to say:
I. Government, in the prevention and punishment of crime, should be
paternal.
II. The object of punishment should be reformation, and not revenge.
III. The law of reformation in the state, as in the family, is the law
of kindness.
IV. As criminals vary in age and in experience as criminals, so should
their treatment vary.
V. Prisons and jails are not, in their foundation and management,
reformatory institutions, and only become so through influences not
necessarily nor ordinarily acting upon them.
VI. As prisons and jails deter from crime through fear only, exert very
little moral influence upon the youth of either sex, and fail in many
respects and in a majority of cases as reformatory institutions, we
ought to avail ourselves of any new agency which promises success.
Influenced, as we may reasonably suppose, by these or kindred
sentiments, and aided by the noblest exhibitions of private benevolence,
the state has here founded a school for the prevention of crime. As we
have everywhere among us schools whose _leading_ object is the
development of the intellect, so we now dedicate a school whose
_leading_ object is the development of the affections as the basis of
the cardinal virtues of life.
The design of this institution is so well expressed by the trustees,
that it is a favor to us all for me to read the first chapter of the
by-laws, which, by the consent of the Governor and Council, have been
established:
"The intention of the state government, and of the benevolent
individuals who have contributed to the establishment of this
institution, is to secure a _home_ and a _school_ for such girls as may
be presented to the magistrates of the state, appointed for that
purpose, as vagrants, perversely obstinate, deprived of the control and
culture of their natural guardians, or guilty of petty offences, and
exposed to a life of crime and wretchedness.
"For such young persons it is proposed to provide, not a prison for
their restraint and correction, but a family school, where, under the
firm but kind discipline of a judicious home, they shall be carefully
instructed in all the branches of a good education; their moral
affections be developed and cultivated by the example and affectionate
care of one who shall hold the relation of a mother to them; be
instructed in useful and appropriate forms of female industry; and, in
short, be fitted to become virtuous and happy members of society, and to
take respectable positions in such relations in life as Providence shall
hereafter mark out for them.
"It is to be distinctly understood that the institution is not to be
considered a _place of punishment_, or its subjects as criminals. It is
to be an inviting refuge, into which the exposed may be gathered to be
saved from a course which would inevitably end in penal confinement,
irretrievable ruin, or hopeless degradation.
"The inmates are to be considered hopeful and promising subjects of
appropriate culture, and to be instructed and watched over with the care
and kindness which their peculiar exposures demand, and with the
confidence which youth should ever inspire.
"The restraint and the discipline which will be necessary are to be such
as would be appropriate in a Christian family or in a small
boarding-school; and the 'law of kindness' should be written upon the
heart of every officer of the institution. The chief end to be obtained,
in all the culture and discipline, is the proper development of the
faculties and moral affections of the inmates, however they may have
been heretofore neglected or perverted; and to teach them the art, and
aid them in securing the power, of self-government."
Under the influence of these sentiments, we pass, if possible, in the
work of reformation, from the rigor of the prison to the innocent
excitement and rivalry of the school, the comfort, confidence and joys
of home. This institution assumes that crime, to some extent at least,
is social, local, or hereditary, in its origin; that the career of
hardened criminals often takes its rise in poverty, idleness, ignorance,
orphanage, desertion, or intemperance of parents, evil example, or the
indifference, scorn and neglect of society. It assumes, also, that there
is a period of life--childhood and youth--when these, the first
indications of moral death, may be eradicated, or their influence for
evil controlled. In this land of education, of liberty, of law, of labor
and religion, we may not easily imagine how universal the enumerated
evils are in many portions of Europe. The existence of these evils is in
some degree owing to institutions which favor a few, and oppress the
masses; but it is also in a measure due to the fact that Europe is both
old and multitudinous. America, though still young, is even now
multitudinous. Hence, both here and there, crime is social and local.
The truth of this statement is proportionate to the force of the causes
in the respective countries.
We are assembled upon a sloping hillside, over-looking a quiet country
village. Happy homes are embowered in living groves, whose summer
foliage is emblematical of innocence, progress, and peace. We have here
a social life, with natural impulses, cultivated worldly interests,
moral and religious sentiments, all on the side of virtue. Crime here
is not social. If it appear at all, it is segregated; and, as the
burning taper expires when placed at the centre of the spirit lamp's
coiling sheet of flame, so vice and crime cannot thrive in the genial
embrace of virtue.
Circumstances are here unfavorable to crime; it is never social; but
sometimes, though not often, it is hereditary. A family for many
generations seems to have a criminal tendency. Perhaps the members are
not in any generation guilty of great crimes, but often of lesser ones;
and are, moreover, in the daily practice of vices that give rise to
suspicion, neglect, and reproach. Here together are associated, and made
hereditary, poverty, ignorance, idleness, beggary, and vagrancy. Surely
these instances are not common, probably not so common as they were in
the last generation. But how is the boy or girl of such a family to rise
above these circumstances, and throw off these weights? Occasionally one
of great energy of character may do so; but, if the children of more
fortunate classes can scarcely escape the influence of temporary evil
example, how shall they who are born to a heritage of poverty,
ignorance, and ever-present evil counsel and conduct under the guise of
parental authority, pass to the position of intelligent, industrious,
respectable members of society? Some external influence must be
applied; by some means from without, the spell must be broken; the
fatal succession of vicious homes must be interrupted. The family has
here failed to discharge its duty to itself and to the state; and shall
not the state do its duty to itself, by assuming the paternal relation
under the guidance of that law of kindness, which we have seen effectual
to control the insane, and melt the hardened criminal? But in cities we
find vice, not only hereditary in families, but local and social; so
that streets and squares are given up, as it were, to the idle and
vicious, whose numbers and influence produce and perpetuate a public
sentiment in support of their daily practices. This phase of life is not
due to the fact that cities are wealthy, or that they are engaged in
manufactures or commerce; but to the single fact that they are
multitudinous, and their inhabitants are, therefore, in daily contact
with each other, while, in the country, individuals and families are
comparatively isolated. Yet some may very well doubt whether such an
institution as this, with all the benign influences of home which we
hope to see centred and diffusive here, will save a child of either sex,
whose first years shall have been so unfavorable to a life of virtue.
The answer is plain: as in other reformatory institutions, there will be
some successes and some failures. The failures will be reckoned as they
were; the successes will be a clear gain.
But investigation and trial will show a natural aptitude or instinct in
children that will aid in their improvement and reformation. There has
been in one of our public schools a lad, who, at the age of fourteen
years, could not recall distinctly the circumstances of his life
previous to the time when he was a newsboy in the city of New York. He
was ignorant of father, mother, kindred, family name, and nation. At an
early age, he travelled through the middle, southern and south-western
states, engaged in selling papers and trash literature; and, for a time,
he was employed by a showman to stand outside the tent and describe and
exaggerate the attractions within. When he was in his fourteenth year,
he accepted the offer of a permanent home; his chief object being, as he
said, to obtain an education. "I have found," said he, "that a man
cannot do much in this country unless he has some learning." This truth,
simple, and resting upon a low view of education, may yet be of infinite
value if accepted by those who, even among us, are advancing to adult
life without the preparation which our common schools are well fitted to
furnish. And the case of this lad may be yet further useful by showing
how compensation is provided for evils and neglects in mental and moral
relations, as well as in the physical and natural world. Though ignorant
of books, he was thoroughly and extensively acquainted with things, and
consequently made rapid progress in the knowledge of signs; for they
were immediately applied, and of course remembered. In a few months, he
took a respectable position among lads of his age. The world had done
for this boy what good schools do not always accomplish,--made him
familiar with things before he was troubled with the signs which stand
for them. There is an ignorance in manhood; an ignorance under the show
of profound learning; an ignorance for which schools, academies and
colleges, are often responsible; an ignorance that neither schools,
academies nor colleges, can conceal from the humblest intellects; an
ignorance of life and things as they are within the sphere of our own
observation. From this most deplorable ignorance this boy had escaped;
and the light of learning illumined his mind, as the sun in his daily
return reveals anew those forms of life, which, even in an ungenial
spring and early summer, his rays had warmed into existence, and
nourished and cherished in their progress towards perfection.