In presenting the Report of the Seventy-Eighth Year of the labors of
“The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public
Prisons,” we are struck with what in this country may be regarded as a
remarkable instance of longevity. Few benevolent societies in the United
States survive their founders. Some effect a certain object and are
allowed to fall into uselessness and disorganization. Others arise, with
kindred purposes and similar means, and produce other good with an
advantage of new zeal and fresh machinery. In Europe numerous
philanthropic associations have outlived their usefulness, not so much
from a diminution of the numbers that need aid, as from changes in their
circumstances. The funds do not fail, but the right to apply them, in
the changed condition of society, has ceased. The continued existence of
the association is secured by the capital upon which it was founded, and
the lumbering machinery is annually reviewed by those charged with its
custody, and it is then consigned to another year’s seclusion and
repose. The dust of antiquity settles upon it, to give it an interest
with some, but the idea of usefulness is no longer entertained.
In many of the cases of defunct associations in _this_ country, the
wrongs or sufferings that suggested their organization were only
temporary, and with the accomplishment of their objects they ceased to
exist, or they have given place to others better adapted to the good
ends proposed. Most of the still remaining inoperative associations of
the old world were called into existence by permanent evils, but their
usefulness was made temporary by certain fixed requirements that were
soon to render them inapplicable to the changes in the political,
religious and social condition of the people. But “The Philadelphia
Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons,” has before it a
work, which though it may vary with time, is not likely to lessen. While
society exists we shall have vice and crime; while vice and crime abound
we must have prisons to restrain the violators of the laws; and while
prisons have inmates, the duty of reforming their morals and
ameliorating their condition, will devolve upon some of those who seek
the good of society by the improvement of individuals. That duty in its
broadest sense has been assumed by this Association. Not merely to
lessen the sufferings of the condemned, not alone to assist the
innocent, not merely to teach sound morals to those who are suffering
from a violation of the laws of God and man, not merely to prevent a too
rigid enforcement of special enactments, not alone to prescribe and
ensure a separate confinement to the condemned, but so to use that
confinement that vice or crime, so communicable in its character, shall
not propagate itself through the cells of the prison, and thus make a
penitentiary a nursery for misconduct rather than a school for mental
and moral discipline; not alone to deal justly and faithfully with a
convict while he occupies his cell, but to secure to him, when he shall
have completed his penal term, some position in which he may carry into
effect his good resolves, without incurring risk from those associates
that led him into crime, and especially to secure him from recognition
in the world by those who have passed months or years of separate
confinement in the same prison with him. We repeat it, it is no one of
these measures that is the single or even the great object of the
Society. It is every one of them, separate, or all of them combined,
with whatever else may present itself for alleviation or correction in
the affairs of prisons or the condition of prisoners. Nor is this all;
while this Society has in view the whole of these and other benefits, it
is no less its intention to continue its labor of benevolence as much
upon the fruit of its own existence as upon the evils which it was
organized to ameliorate. The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the
Miseries of Public Prisons, will accommodate its labors to the new state
which its exertions may have produced, and, thus, what has been improved
to-day may be perfected to-morrow. Nor does it escape the notice of the
Society that new work is presented or new forms of labor are suggested
as the system which it produces becomes more and more operative. The
vicious are to be reclaimed by gentle exhortations and encouraging
sympathy. The young criminal is, by kind monitions and encouraging
confidence, to be lured from the path into which he has been seduced,
and the felon is to be made to understand that there is a hope of
regaining the respect of society by that repentance which consists as
much in reparation for the wrong and resolves for the future, as in
regret for the past; or, failing to acquire for himself the forfeited
regard of his fellow men, he may secure a hope of a better rest. True
philanthropy seems but the embodiment of religion, and never do the
consolations of the Divine promises operate with greater efficacy than
when they are poured upon the heart of the convict in the solitude of
his cell.
In claiming for the Association such an extensive field and such a
variety of labors, we do not overrate its plans nor over-estimate its
means and devotion. It may safely be said that as no circumstances of
the prisoner are beyond the aim of the Society, so no class of prisoners
are excluded from its benevolent intentions. The visitor of the Society
when he presents himself at the cell of the prisoner, is not to be
deterred by the rank, grade, condition or color of the prisoner. Nor are
his efforts to be lessened by any circumstances of his case. We must say
with the Roman,
“_Homo sum; et humani a me nil alienum puto._”