The Society looks back with much gratification upon its labors. The
existing active members feel how much they owe to the philanthropic
efforts of the founders of the Association, and to those, who, having
exerted themselves with corresponding zeal in the good cause, have
bequeathed to men of this day the _improved_ work, and the augmented
duties. Every point gained developes the resources of humanity, while it
presents new objects for its exercise. How prisons are conducted, and
how prisoners are treated, where there is no voluntary organization to
alleviate their suffering, history and the report of travelers tell.
Undoubtedly religion meliorates the condition of the incarcerated,
whether his offence be vice or crime; but religion supplies itself with
means and instruments for its holy work, and we look for good results
only where there have been corresponding means. To find the effects of
unalleviated punishment upon tried offenders, is not necessary to look
far back into ages which the world calls “dark,” because light was less
diffused than at present; it is only to seek the nation or community
where arbitrary power not only inflicts the wrong of too severe
punishment, but, by its terrors, prevents the suggestion and adoption of
means by the humane which may lessen the effect of the severity, by
keeping between the sufferer and the world a connection of feeling and
sympathy that will lead him to resolve some good when the punishment for
the bad shall have been all inflicted, which shall make him feel,
indeed, that this will be a use to him of virtue, and that he may
hereafter have a reward in the recognition of its existence in him by
the society to which he may be spared. Seek the government that
understands by criminal law only the punishment of the guilty, and we
shall see that authority seizes the violator of its enactments or
decrees, and treats him as if all of humanity had perished in him with
the conception of his crime, and, dragging him from the decencies, the
enjoyments and the hopes of society, it
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
The difference between that mode of dealing with the convict and the
lesser evil, that of allowing him to perish in inactivity, and acquire
strength in bad resolves, and instruction for future crimes, is what
policy and unaided humanity have wrought out of the condition of the
offender. The difference between the latter condition and that of the
inmates of the Philadelphia County Prison, and especially the Eastern
Penitentiary, is what results from the labor of the Philadelphia Society
for Alleviating the Miseries of Prisons. It is something, in the first
contrast, that the convict has a prison; it is more, in the latter, that
the prison is made a school of physical and moral reform.
To have been instrumental in working out such a difference is an
occasion for felicitation and thankfulness, even though there be felt a
consciousness that with such objects so well defined, and means so
complete, much less has been done to alleviate the miseries of prisons,
and arouse the attention of society to the good work, than might have
been hoped for. But a work of this kind once begun, must, of course, go
on. The hands that are now stretched forth may lose their power, but
others will be employed; and year by year, as we have seen, so shall we
see, volunteers dedicating themselves to a duty which, though painful
and often repulsive, has with it the promise of reward from Him who by
precept and example devolved it upon us.
The important work of convincing society that it has a greater interest
in the reformation of a public offender, than in his punishment, or that
it is its true interest to make his punishment a means of his
reformation, must not be allowed to fail for want of efforts or
advocacy. The great work of demonstrating the truth that crimes are
multiplied by the companionship of the culpable, must be forwarded. The
construction of prisons, and the administration of their affairs, must
still be carefully considered as one of the great objects, a leading
object of this Society, and a means of alleviating existing miseries.
The discipline, the labor, the compensation of prisoners, must have
constant attention; and the results of investigations and experiments be
made public, for the promotion of the great object of this Society.
The great work of establishing auxiliaries to the Society must be
carried forward with prudent zeal, so that, by co-operation, the labors
of all who unite with us in objects and views, may be more effective;
and, indeed, that we may by argument and illustration, increase the
number of those who unite with us in object and views.
We must augment our correspondence also, that we may fully understand
the plans and labours of philanthropists in other States and other
nations, and make them comprehend our own views, and the means by which
we seek to accomplish our object.
All these considerations, and others that seem to regard the physical
condition of prisoners, must continue to occupy the attention of our
members, and chiefly because, through those physical aids, we are to
reach his moral life. But with all these efforts towards the instruments
of good, we must continue, with unwavering, with augmented exertion, our
endeavors to reach _directly_ the hearts and consciences of those whom
we would benefit. To do this effectively, we must have patience, as well
as good will,—we must _endure_, as well as _do_: we must _learn_ the
great lesson of _teachers_, before we undertake the business of
instruction; we must feel it the great duty to ourselves, and our
mission, to “bear and forbear.” We must learn to labor and to wait,—to
bestow our toil this day and every day, but to look at a distance for
the reward of our efforts, in the fixed reformation of its objects, and
to be “instant in season and out of season,” to admonish, advise, induce
and encourage. The experience of those who have spent years at the doors
of the prison cells, is not that of multiplied fruits. The value of a
single soul must be fully appreciated, that the one redeemed from vice
may be regarded as a consolation for the hundreds that make no
improvement from efforts in their behalf. In short, we must find our
pleasure in the discharge of a duty, and leave to Him, whose commands we
obey, to give the increase for which we labor.
We may spend days and weeks, as indeed many have spent months, in
seeking to awaken the conscience of the hardened offender to the evils
of his course, and arousing him to the danger of their tendencies; and
when the object of this solicitude shall have passed from our care, and
ceased to hear our lessons, we may hear of him in the midst of
debauchery and villainies, apparently ten-fold more a child of the devil
than when we sought to soften his heart, and succeeded in raising his
tears in the criminal cell. This is the experience of all who undertake
to reclaim those who are hardened in crime or steeped in vice. But are
we, on that account, to relinquish our labors or to forego hope? Are we
to say that this backsliding is the last of the seventy times seven, and
therefore we may stand excused from further effort? That very
backsliding ought to be expected. The return of the offender to his
offence is in the course of the timid, half-repentant wrong-doer, we
know. We see it in regard to amendments of life that have relation to
private interests and individual character. We must look for it in those
who have for a long time cast off respect for social proprieties and
wholesome regard to statute laws. The probability that few to whom we
address ourselves in the cells of the incarcerated will give much heed
to our exhortations, and their liability to return to their ways of sin
and shame, notwithstanding their apparent desire to accept our
ministration and profit by the means of improvement which we present,
are known to us all before we enter upon the service. We accept the
appointment with a knowledge of the difficulties it presents. We receive
the mission to those whom the schoolmaster and the preacher have failed
to influence to good; and we are to thank God for even the small returns
from our laborious gleanings, rather than to arraign his providence or
dishonor our pursuit by complaining of small returns.
Charities have their grades, and they are entitled to commendation not
always for the amount of benefit they have conferred, or the number that
they have assisted, but rather from a consideration of the difficulties
they encounter, and the spirit in which they are conducted.
Colleges and schools have received and instructed the sound minded at
all times, and the asylums for the insane and the orphan have been
working wonderful good among the mentally afflicted and the fatherless
children; but it was left for the present age to see men of character
and science stooping to the wants of the idiot, and by painful,
protracted labor and unheard of patience, irritate into some kind of
life, the low faculties of the mentally infirm, and call into usefulness
and love, those who had been condemned, by universal judgment, to
helpless idiocy. And if this is going on in our midst,—if the wretched,
drivelling child, whose mind and body seems to be given over to utter
helplessness, can be and is called into profitable exercise and lofty
accountability, shall we hesitate to dedicate some portion of our time
to the reformation and right direction of those whose physical powers
are all that vice has left them, or whose sense of responsibility to God
and man is only clouded by the indulgence of vicious appetites, or
deadened by a repetition of those enormities which make a sense of
responsibility a curse? It is most true, as is often asserted by those
who have some experience of the faithlessness of a prisoner’s promises,
that few who seem to listen with respect to moral instruction at the
doors of their cells, ever carry into execution their solemn promises.
The state which made them contemplate and promise reformation is
changed, and they seem to feel released from their pledges. They have
before them a sense of the degradation to which their vices have reduced
them, and they shrink from a contemplation of a perpetuation of that
degradation. They feel that they stand in the presence of those whose
superior moral or social position is only the result of superior virtue,
and they think it easy to check the appetites whose indulgence is vice,
when the reward is near. They promise, and they go forth into a world
that remembers only their follies or their crimes. The means of
gratifying their appetites are available, virtue is difficult, because
the rewards are postponed; and while they are in probation with their
best friends, and under condemnation among the many, they have fewer
present inducements to virtue than they had thought, and so they fall
back into the very faults which had made them prisoners before, and
which send them again to the cells with drunkards and vagrants, who
harden them into shamelessness.
But are we to forbear to seek to reform because they have failed to keep
their promise? Are we to cease to advise kindly, and warn earnestly
because they have again yielded to their degraded and vitiated taste?
Shall we say that this man or that woman has shown himself or herself
irreclaimable, and therefore we will spend no more time, no more
kindness, on such an one? Who shall say that all is lost while life
remains? Who shall say that the seeds of moral truth are dead in his
heart because they have not yet germinated? How long vitality remains in
vegetable seeds we all know. Shall there be less vitality in the seeds
of moral truth? The wild grass grows, the useless weed, or the poisonous
plant springs up into life, and seems to invoke and warrant entire
condemnation of the soil; but let these be cut down, and how often come
forth the sweet herb and the profitable grass, whose seeds have lain
dormant while those profitless or poisonous productions were covering
the surface. At some later day, in some season of great emergency, some
hour of bitter trial, truths that seemed to have fallen profitless on
the heart of the miserable prisoner, may come forth and bless with
usefulness and peace the few closing days of a life that has been
heretofore dedicated to folly and vice. Let us, then, sow the seeds by
all waters; let us not withhold, morning or evening, our hands; and,
when we have reason to believe that these seeds have found a place in
the consenting mind of the listener, let us water them with the
refreshing influences of our experience, and warm them into growth by
that affection which is the basis of true philanthropy. It is thus we
may alleviate the miseries of prisons, and make the criminal’s cell the
vestibule to the temple of virtue and piety.
In conclusion, let it be repeated with emphasis, that we are not to be
driven from our efforts at personal reformation, by any failure of the
prisoner to justify, in liberty, the hopes which he had warranted while
in confinement. As often as he returns to his cell, he should return to
our care,—our instruction. The last resolve may be permanent. The last
“repentance may be unto life, never to be repented of.” And we shall
have occasion, perhaps, in our observations upon life, to conclude that
the best of mankind will find the fruition of their highest hopes less
in the amount of their innocency than in the frequency of their
repentance.