The County Prison presents a vast field for contemplation and labor. It
is the receptacle of the vagrant, the drunkard, the disorderly, the
suspected, and the convicted. All the elements of crime are found in its
cells, and sometimes the unfortunate, the oppressed, and the innocent
are made more miserable by a forced association with the vicious and the
guilty. Sometimes an accidental association with the bad has procured
for the careless, well-meaning innocent, a companion that has
indoctrinated him with vice, and made him a proficient in crime. All
degrees of servitude are experienced in this prison, from that which
terminates with the twenty-four hours for intoxication, to that which is
extended to years for some flagrant violation of the law. Nay, there are
those who, in the midst of years, have no hope of escaping from the
prison cells till they shall “be carried forth of men,” to be buried
under the rules of the prison, or by the charity of those who knew them
in better days. These last are men convicted of willful murder, by a
jury, and sentenced to death, by the Court, but in whose behalf some
circumstance suggests a withholding of the death-warrant, and their
cases remain from one term of gubernatorial office to another,
transmitted by the ruling chief magistrate to his successor, among the
matters unfinished, but which seem not to impose upon the new governor
the necessity of discharging the painful office which was avoided by his
predecessor.