over.

council in the City Hall, and pass regulations' to | afterwards prosecutes and imprisons his debtor for clear the streets they have filled with sin. And do the remaining thousand. Society calls him a shrewd you suppose their poor victims do not feel the injus- business man, and pronounces his dinners excellent; tice of society thus regulated? Think you they the chance is, he will be a magistrate before he dies. respect the laws 2 Vicious they are, and they may The other young man is unsuccessful; his necessibe both ignorant and foolish; but, nevertheless, ties are great; he borrows some money from his they are too wise to respect such laws. Their employer's drawer, perhaps resolving to restore the whole being cries out that it is a mockery; all their same; the loss is discovered before he has a chance experience proves that society is a game of chance, to refund it; and society sends him to Blackwell's where the cunning slip through, and the strong leap island, to hammer stone with highway robbers. The criminal feels this, even when incapa- Society made both these men thieves; but punished `ble of reasoning upon it. The laws do not secure the one, while she rewarded the other. That crimihis reverence, because he sees that their operation is nals so universally feel themselves victims of injusunjust. The secrets of prisons, so far as they are tice, is one strong proof that it is true; for impresrevealed, all tend to show that the prevailing feeling sions entirely without foundation are not apt to beof criminals, of all grades, is that they are wronged. come universal. If society does make its own What we call justice, they regard as an unlucky criminals, how shall she cease to do it? It can be chance; and whosoever looks calmly and wisely done only by a change in the structure of society, into the foundations on which society rolls and tum- that will diminish the temptations to vice, and inbles, (I cannot say on which it rests, for its foun- crease the encouragements to virtue. If we can dations heave like the sea,) will perceive that they abolish poverty, we shall have taken the greatest are victims of chance. step towards the abolition of crime; and this will be the final triumph of the gospel of Christ. Diversities of gifts will doubtless always exist; for the law written on spirit, as well as matter, is infinite variety. But when the kingdom of God comes on earth as it is in heaven,' there will not be found in any corner of it that poverty which hardens the heart under the severe pressure of physical suffering, and stultifies the intellect with toil for mere animal wants. When public opinion regards wealth as a means, and not as an end, men will no longer deem penitentiaries as a necessary evil; for society will then cease to be a great school for crime. In the meantime, do penitentiaries and prisons increase or diminish the evils they are intended to remedy?

For instance, everything in school-books, social remarks, domestic conversation, literature, public festivals, legislative proceedings, and popular honors, all teach the young soul that it is noble to retaliate, mean to forgive an insult, and unmanly not to resent a wrong. Animal instincts, instead of being brought into subjection to the higher powers of the soul, are thus cherished into more than natural activity. Of three men thus educated, one enters the army, kills a hundred Indians, hangs their scalps on a tree, is made major general, and considered a fitting candidate for the presidency. The second goes to the Southwest to reside; some 'roarer' calls him a rascal—a phrase not misapplied, perhaps, but necessary to be resented; he agrees to settle the question of honour at ten paces, shoots his insulter through the heart, and is hailed by society as a brave man. The third lives in New York; a man enters his office, and, true, or untrue, calls him a knave. He fights, kills his adversary, is tried by the laws of the land, and hung. These three men indulged the same passion, acted from the same motives, and illustrated the same education; yet how different

their fate!

With regard to dishonesty, too-the maxims of trade, the customs of society, and the general unreflecting tone of public conversation, all tend to promote it. The man who has made good bargains,' is wealthy and honoured; yet the details of those bargains few would dare to pronounce good. Of two young men nurtured under such influences, one becomes a successful merchant; five thousand dollars are borrowed of him; he takes a mortgage on a house worth twenty thousand dollars; in the absence of the owner, when sales are very dull, he offers the house for sale, to pay his mortgage; he bids it in himself, for four thousand dollars; and

The superintendent at Blackwell told me, unasked, that ten years' experience had convinced him that the whole system tended to increase crime. He said, of the lads who came there, a large proportion had already been in the house of refuge; and a large proportion of those who left, afterward went to Sing Sing. It is as regular a succession as the classes in a college,' said he, from the house of refuge to the penitentiary, and from the penitentiary to the State prison.' I remarked that coercion tended to rouse all the bad passions in man's nature, and if long continued, hardened the whole character. I know that,' said he, from my own experience; all the devil there is in me rises up when a man attempts to compel me. But what can I do? I am obliged to be very strict. When my feelings tempt me to unusual indulgence, a bad use is almost always made of it. I see that the system fails to produce the effect intended; but I cannot change the result.'

I felt that his words were true. He could not change the influence of the system while he discharged the duties of his office; for the same reason

of things as they are. Violations of right, continued generation after generation, and interwoven into the whole structure of action and opinion, will continue troublesome and injurious, even for a long time after they are outwardly removed. Legislators and phi

do with those who have become hardened in crime; meanwhile, the highest wisdom should busy itself with the more important questions. How did these men become criminals? Are not social influences largely at fault? If society is the criminal, were it not well to reform society?

t is common to treat the inmates of penitentiaries and prisons as if they were altogether unlike ourselves-as if they belonged to another race; but this indicates superficial thought and feeling. The passions which carried those men to prison, exist in your own bosom, and have been gratified, only in a less degree: perchance, if you look inward, with enlightened self-knowledge, you will perceive that there have been periods in your own life when a hair'sbreadth further in the wrong would have rendered you amenable to human laws; and that you were prevented from moving over that hair's-breadth boundary by outward circumstances, for which you deserve no credit.

that a man cannot be at once slave-driver and missionary on a plantation. I allude to the necessities of the office, and do not mean to imply that the character of the individual was severe. On the contrary, the prisoners seemed to be made as comfortable as was compatible with their situation. There lanthropists may well be puzzled to know what to were watch-towers, with loaded guns, to prevent escape from the island; but they conversed freely with each other as they worked in the sunshine, and very few of them looked wretched. Among those who were sent under guard to row us back to the city, was one who jested on his own situation, in a manner which showed plainly enough that he looked on the whole thing as a game of chance, in which he happened to be the loser. Indulgence cannot benefit such characters. What is wanted is, that no human being should grow up without deep and friendly interest from the society round him; and that none should feel himself the victim of injustice, because society punishes the very sins which it teaches, nay drives men to commit. This world would be in a happier condition if legislators spent half as much time and labour to prevent crime, as they do to punish it. The poor need houses of encouragement; and society gives them houses of correction. Benevolent institutions and reformatory societies perform but a limited and temporary use. They do not reach the ground-work of evil; and it is reproduced too rapidly for them to keep even the surface healed. The natural spontaneous influences of society should be such as to supply men with healthy motives, and give full, free play to the affec. tions, and the faculties. It is horrible to see our young men goaded on by the fierce, speculating spirit of the age, from the contagion of which it is almost impossible to escape, and then see them tortured into madness, or driven to crime, by fluctuating changes of the money-market. The young soul is, as it were, entangled in the great merciless machine of a falsely-constructed society; the steam he had no hand in raising, whirls him hither and thither, and it is altogether a lottery-chance whether it crushes or propels him.

Many, who are mourning over the too obvious diseases of the world, will smile contemptuously at the idea of reconstruction. But let them reflect a moment upon the immense changes that have already come over society. In the middle ages, both noble and peasant would have laughed loud and long at the prophecy of such a state of society as now exists in the free States of America; yet here we are!

I by no means underrate modern improvements in the discipline of prisons, or progressive meliorations in the criminal code. I rejoice in these things as facts, and still more as prophecy. Strong as my faith is that the time will come when war and prisons will both cease from the face of the earth, I am by no means blind to the great difficulties in the way of those who are honestly striving to make the best

If reflections like these make you think lightly of sin, you pervert them to a very bad use. They should teach you that every criminal has a human heart, which can be reached and softened by the same means that will reach and soften your own. In all, even the most hardened, love lies folded up, perchance buried; and the voice of love calls it forth, and makes it gleam like living coals through ashes. This influence, if applied in season, would assuredly prevent the hardness, which it has so much power to soften.

เ

That most tender-spirited and beautiful book, entitled My Prisons, by Sylvio Pellico,' abounds with incidents to prove the omnipotence of kindness. He was a gentle and noble soul, imprisoned merely for reasons of state, being suspected of republican notions. Robbers and banditti, confined in the same building, saluted him with respect as they passed him in the court; and he always returned their salutations with brotherly cordiality. He says, One of them once said to me, Your greeting, signore, does me good. Perhaps you see something in my face that is not very bad? An unhappy passion led me to commit a crime; but oh, signore, I am not, indeed I am not a villain.' And he burst into tears. I held out my hand to him, but he could not take it. My guards, not from bad feelings, but in obedience to orders, repulsed him.'

In the sight of God, perchance their repulse was a heavier crime than that for which the poor fellow was imprisoned; perhaps it made him a ‹villain,' when the genial influence of Sylvio Pellico might have restored him a blessing to the human family.

If these things are so, for what a frightful amount of | all dropped on their knees.' Alas, poor childhood, crime are the coercing and repelling influences of thus doth church and state' provide for thee! The society responsible. state arms thee with wooden guns, to play the future murderer, and the church teaches thee to pray in platoons, at the first tip of the whistle.' Luckily they cannot drive the angels from thee, or most as

I have not been happy since that visit to Blackwell's Island. There is something painful, yea, terrific, in feeling myself involved in the great wheel of society, which goes whirling on, crushing thou-suredly they would do it, pro bono publico. sands at every turn. This relation of the individual to the mass is the sternest and most frightful of all the conflicts between necessity and free will. Yet here, too, conflict, should be harmony, and will be So. Put far away from thy soul all desire of retaliation, all angry thoughts, all disposition to overcome or humiliate an adversary, and be assured thou hast done much to abolish gallows, chains, and prisons, though thou hast never written or spoken a word on the criminal code.

God and good angels alone know the vast, the incalculable influence that goes out into the universe of spirit, and thence flows into the universe of matter, from the conquered evil, and the voiceless prayer, of one solitary soul. Wouldst thou bring the world unto God? Then live near to him thyself. If divine life pervade thine own soul, every thing that touches thee will receive the electric spark, though thou mayest be unconscious of being charged therewith. This surely would be the highest, to strive to keep near the holy, not for the sake of our own reward here or hereafter, but that through love to God we might bless our neighbour. The human soul can perceive this, and yet the beauty of the earth is every where defaced with jails and gibbets! Angelic natures can never deride, else were there loud laughter in heaven at the discord between man's perceptions and his practice.

At Long Island Farms I found six hundred children, supported by the public. It gives them wholesome food, comfortable clothing, and the common rudiments of education. For this it deserves praise. But the aliment which the spirit craves, the public has not to give. The young heart asks for love, yearns for love. -but its own echo returns to it through empty halls, instead of answer.

The institution is much lauded by visiters, and not without reason; for every thing looks clean and comfortable, and the children appear happy. The drawbacks are such as inevitably belong to their situation, as children of the public. The oppressive feeling is, that there are no mothers there. Every thing moves by machinery, as it always must with masses of children, never subdivided into families. In one place, I saw a stack of small wooden guns, and was informed that the boys were daily drilled to military exercises, as a useful means of forming habits of order, as well as fitting them for the future service of the state. Their infant school evolutions partook of the same drill character; and as for their religion, I was informed that it was beautiful to see them pray; for at the tip of the whistle, they

The sleeping-rooms were clean as a Shaker's apron. When I saw the long rows of nice little beds, ranged side by side, I inquired whether there was not a merry buzz in the morning. They are not permitted to speak at all in the sleeping apartments,' replied the superintendent. The answer sent a chill through my heart. I acknowledged that in such large establishments the most exact method was necessary, and I knew that the children had abundant opportunity for fun and frolic in the sunshine and the open fields, in the after part of the day; but it is so natural for all young things to crow and sing when they open their eyes to the morning light, that I could not bear to have the cheerful instinct perpetually repressed.

The hospital for these children is on the neighbouring island of Blackwell. This establishment, though clean and well supplied with outward comforts, was the most painful sight I ever witnessed. About one hundred and fifty children were there, mostly orphans, inheriting every variety of disease from vicious and sickly parents. In beds all of a row, or rolling by dozens over clean matting on the floor, the poor little pale, shrivelled, and blinded creatures were waiting for death to come and release them. Here the absence of a mother's love was most agonizing; not even the patience and gentleness of a saint could supply its place; and saints are rarely hired by the public. There was a sort of resignation expressed in the countenances of some of the little ones, which would have been beautiful in maturer years, but in childhood it spoke mournfully of a withered soul. It was pleasant to think that a large proportion of them would soon be received by the angels, who will doubtless let them sing in the morning.

That the law of Love may cheer and bless even public establishments, has been proved by the example of the Society of Friends. They formerly had an establishment for their own poor, in the city of Philadelphia, on a plan so simple and so beautiful, that one cannot but mourn to think it has given place to more common and less brotherly modes of relief. A nest of small households enclosed, on three sides, an open space devoted to gardens, in which each had a share. Here each poor family lived in separate rooms, and were assisted by the Society according to its needs. Sometimes a widow could support herself, with the exception of rent; and in that case, merely rooms were furnished gratis. An aged couple could perhaps subsist very comfortably, if supplied with house and fuel; and the friend

Pain may be heard on a downy bed,
Heaving the groan of despair,

G. WITHER. For Suffering shuns not the diadem's head,