of the senate from New Jersey, and, in the following year, was chosen governor. He subsequently was appointed to the bench of the supreme court, and continued to sit upon it until his death, at Albany, on the 9th of September, 1806. He was an able statesman, an upright judge, and a disinterested patriot. PAVOIS. (See Shield.) PEARL SPAR. (See Dolomite.) PENCO. (See Conception, La.)

PENITENTIARY SYSTEM OF PENNSYLVANIA. One of the points which have occasioned the greatest division of opinion among the friends of the penitentiary system, relates to solitary confinement. One party contend that this should be made the very basis of prison discipline, and have carried their principles into effect in the Eastern penitentiary of Pennsylvania: others strenuously oppose it. The opinions expressed in the article Prison Discipline, in this work, are rather unfavorable to the plan adopted in Pennsylvania. As the question is one of great interest, and as many misconceptions on this subject exist among those who are sincerely devoted to the reformation of prisons, we have thought it not improper to give, in this place, a view of some of the arguments which may be urged in support of the principle of uninterrupted solitary confinement. All that will be attempted will be to touch upon the main features of the question, and to offer some suggestions, derived from the writer's own experience, with the view of making it appear that the system of solitary confinement, as now practised in the Eastern penitentiary in Philadelphia, is the only effectual mode of making prisons schools of reformation, instead of schools of corruption. The more light there is thrown upon this subject, the better for the cause. Strong, and, in our opinion, unfounded prejudices against the system of solitary confinement, are entertained even by men justly esteemed for their enlightened views and strenuous labors for the good of mankind. The late William Roscoe, for instance, was extremely hostile to the system, as appears from several pieces which he has written on the subject of prison discipline.* Mr. Roberts

* We learn, from doctor T. S. Traill's memoir on that distinguished scholar, read before the literary and philosophical society of Liverpool, in October, 1832, that he said "that no literary distinction had ever afforded him half the gratification he received from the reflection on the part he had taken on this great question; and he expressed his satisfaction that he now might be permitted to think that he had not lived altogether

Vaux, of Philadelphia, addressed to him a Letter on the Penitentiary System of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1827), from which, and from another production of this gentleman, we shall present to our readers various extracts in the course of this article. We would also refer the reader, for more particular information than our limits will allow, to other publications of Mr. Vaux, who is indefatigable in promoting the education of children and the correction of criminals. The publications to which we allude are Notices of the Original and Successive Efforts to improve the Prison Discipline in Philadelphia, and to reform the Penal Law of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1826); a Discourse delivered before the Historical Society of the State of Pennsylvania on New-Year's Day, 1827 (Philadelphia, 1827); and a Letter to Bishop White, the President, and other Members of the Philadelphia Society for alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, in No. 8, vol. i, of the Journal of Law (Philadelphia, 1830).†

Before going into the subject of this article, we would remark that it is believed by many foreigners, that the Pennsylvania penitentiary system has been abandoned in the very state from which it takes its name. The following passage from the message of the governor of Pennsylvania to the legislature of that state (Dec. 6, 1832), shows that this is a mistake, and throws light upon other points in question:-"Our penitentiary system," says governor Wolf, "as immediately connected with the administration of criminal justice, is to be regarded as being of the first importance, in reference as well to the security of the persons and property, as to the general morals of our citizens; and, so far as regards the Eastern penitentiary, the philanthropic advocates of penitentiary reform may justly congratulate themselves upon the success with which their exertions have been crowned, in bringing so near to perfection a system in vain." And yet to such mistakes are great men liable-we believe that Mr. Roscoe had but a very imperfect knowledge of the effects of solitary confinement, and that his conclusions on the subject were drawn from unfounded suppositions.

These writings are known beyond the limits of the U. States. We find them mentioned with respect in the Lectures on Prisons, &c., by Nicholas Henry Julius (Berlin, 1828), and in the Annals of Institutions for Punishment and Correction of Paupers, their Education, &c., published monthly at Berlin, by the same author (both in German)-works little known in this country, on account of the language in which they are written, but which contain a great mass of informa tion on the subjects mentioned in their titles.

surrounded by so many difficulties. The government of this prison has been conducted, in regard as well to its economy as its discipline, in a manner worthy of all commendation; and the experiment of the efficacy of solitary confinement with labor, so far as there has been opportunity to test it, has exceeded the expectations of the most sanguine among its friends. On the 25th October, 1829, the first convict was received into the Eastern penitentiary; and from thence until the 1st November, 1832, the whole number admitted amounted to 132 males, and 4 females, convicted of various offences. On the day last mentioned, there remained in confinement ninety male and four female prisoners. The whole number discharged between the above dates, by reason of the expiration of sentence, was twentyeight: nine died, and five were pardoned. One fact, in reference to this institution, bears strong testimony in favor of its discipline. It appears that not a single convict discharged from this prison has ever been returned to it; which would seem to prove pretty clearly, either that a thorough reformation has been produced, or that a dread of a repetition of the unsocial manner of life which had proved so irksome before, has deterred from the commission of crimes within those limits of the state in which a conviction would insure a sentence to the Eastern penitentiary. The annual accounts of the prison are not closed until the 30th of November. I have not, therefore, been able to ascertain, with accuracy, how far the earnings of the prisoners will be available to defray the expenses of the institution. It is believed that, for the present, they will pay all except the salaries of the officers; and it is not doubted that, as soon as the prison shall have been fully organized, the entire expenses will be defrayed out of the proceeds of the establishment. The experiment made in the Eastern penitentiary has demonstrated the fact, that solitary confinement with labor does not impair the health of those subjected to that species of discipline. The prisoners work to more advantage: having no opportunity for conversation or amusement, they eagerly desire employment; here all communication is cut off; no one knows his fellow prisoner; no acquaintance is formed; no contamination takes place; the convict sees no one, holds communion with no one, except such as will give him good advice; he is placed in a situation where he has every inducement to grow better, but little temptation to grow

worse; here thought and reflection will crowd upon the mind, and prepare it for solemn impressions, and for moral and religious instruction. The discipline established in this prison; the manner of the construction and arrangement of the building itself, and of the cells in which the prisoners are confined and employed, are admitted, by all who have turned their attention to the subject of penitentiary reform, to possess decided advantages over those of any other establishment designed for similar objects, in this or any other country. Foreigners, whose especial business it has been to visit the penitentiaries in this country, generally, for the purpose of acquiring information in reference to the subject of penitentiary punishment, and its efficacy in producing reformation in those subjected to its discipline, have, with one voice, awarded the meed of merit to that established in the Eastern penitentiary of Pennsylvania. I have the satisfaction to inform you that, of the 400 additional cells recently directed by the legislature to be constructed, 100 are finished, and will be ready as soon as the plastering shall have become sufficiently dry to receive prisoners: 118 more are in a state of forwardness, and the whole number will be completed in the course of the ensuing season." The report to be made upon the Eastern prison during the present session of the legislature of Pennsylvania, we understand, will contain satisfactory proofs of the advantages of the system, and an account of essential improvements in the architecture of the prison. In the article on Prison Disci

last report of the inspectors of the Western peni*The governor continues as follows: "From the tentiary, as well as from a partial personal inspection of it, I am satisfied that its condition, and the fruits of the course of discipline there exercised, are directly the reverse of that which I have just attempted to describe. From the imperfect plan of the building itself, and the inconvenient, ingu dicious arrangement of the cells, the discipline of solitary confinement with labor cannot be entere ed; the prisoners cannot be restrained from conversing with each other; every prisoner may aewithin its walls; contamination from conversation quire a knowledge of the individuals confined with his fellow prisoners may take place; the cell of the prisoner cannot, as in the case of the Eastern penitentiary, be used as his workshop, in which he may always be usefully and profitably ed with the several cells, which renders it necesemployed; there are no separate yards connectsary, for the health of the prisoners, to allow them frequently to associate with each other in the common yards. Many other defects exist, and many important alterations will be required to fit this establishment for the same course of salutary discipline so successfully practised in the Eastern penitentiary."

pline, in the body of this work, it is said that, "unless some decided advantage is to be gained by a more expensive system (the Pennsylvania plan of separate confinement), it (the Auburn system) ought to be preferred." We believe that the Pennsylvania system affords many advantages which can be but partially attained by the Auburn system, or not at all; and that it is the best suited, of all the prison systems yet devised, to the demands of the age. All persons agree that it is of the first importance to prevent prisoners from contaminating each other. It is a melancholy fact that, wherever a number of persons, who have openly transgressed the laws of society, or whose characters are corrupt, are brought together, and allowed to have free intercourse with each other, each individual has a tendency to sink to the level of the worst. The intercourse of the vicious is mutually corrupting, in the same manner as the intercourse of good men is mutually improving. To prevent this contamination, all agree that, during the night, every prisoner should be separately confined; but many have thought that, during the day time, the criminals engaged in common work may be so strictly watched that no communication can take place among them. In order to effect this which is the system followed at Auburn -a very severe discipline has necessarily been resorted to. No criminal is allowed to speak to a fellow prisoner: the meals are taken in the separate cells. Beating by the keepers must be allowed, or the discipline cannot be enforced; and it can easily be imagined how severe a discipline is required to suppress that desire of communication which is so deeply planted in human nature, and to counteract the artifices of a host of adepts in cunning, to suppress looks, signs, &c. Mr. Lynds, who built the prison at Sing-Sing, in the state of New York, and who must be considered as the inventor of the system of discipline pursued in the prisons of Auburn and Sing-Sing, says that his greatest difficulty has been to find keepers who were not too lenient.—We would also refer the reader to a letter written by Mr. Edward Livingston (the present secretary of state, and the framer of the code of Louisiana) to Mr. Roberts Vaux, Oct. 25, 1828 (and which appeared at the time in the public prints), concurring in the opinion that communication can be prevented only to a certain degree, and only by the use of very great severity, if the convicts work together in the day time. See also

the Introductory Report to the Code of Prison Discipline, explanatory of the Principles on which the Code is founded, being Part of the Penal Law prepared for the State of Louisiana, by Edward Livingston; printed separately by Carey, Lea and Carey (Philadelphia, 1827).—But all this severity is avoided in the system of permanent separate confinement. Communication, and consequent contamination, cannot take place; and yet the system requires neither stripes nor any punishment in order to enforce it. It works calmly and steadily, without subjecting the convict, by continually repeated punishment, to a continual recurrence of disgrace for misdemeanors which the common principles of human nature are sufficient to induce him to commit. But even if we could obtain entirely the desired end

interruption of communication-by the Auburn system, would this system be desirable on other accounts? The article on Prison Discipline, speaking of solitary confinement, says, "In the silence and darkness of night the voice of religious instruction is heard; and, if any circumstances can be imagined, calculated to impress the warnings, the encouragements, the threats or the hopes of religion upon the mind, it must surely be those of the convict in his cell, where he is unseen and unheard, and where nothing can reach him but the voice which must come to him, as it were, from another world, telling him of things which, perhaps, never entered into his mind; telling him of God, of eternity, of future reward and future punishment, of suffering far greater than the mere physical endurances of the present life, and of joy infinitely beyond the pleasures he may have experienced." This effect certainly may take place; but it cannot occur often if the convict is in his cell only during the night, when his time will be principally spent in sleep; and, though the nights of winter afford much more time than is required for this purpose, men can accustom themselves to very protracted slumbers, especially if they have never been accustomed to reflection, which must be the case with most convicts. The great object referred to in the above passage can be obtained, in our opinion, only by separate confinement day and night. The greatest step, we believe, which a convict of the common sort can make towards reformation, is from thoughtlessness to thoughtfulness. Few of those committed to prisons are accustomed to think: it is for want of thought that they became guilty. Surrounded as they are, in the

Auburn system, by a variety of objects during the day, they cannot feel the same inducement to reflection as under the pressure of constant solitude. It is difficult, even for a man accustomed from his youth to reflection, and to a mode of life which offers a great variety of objects and subjects, to entertain himself in long-continued solitude. He must occupy his mind with himself. The writer may be permitted to refer to his own experience, having been imprisoned for a considerable period during a time of political persecution; and, though he was not haunted with remorse, and had more resources, from the habits of his past life, than can fall to the lot of most of the inmates of prisons, he can testify to the power with which solitude forces a man to make himself the subject of his contemplation-a power which can hardly be realized by one who has not felt it. How strongly must it operate on the common convict! Deprived of most of the resources of educated men; constantly reminded of the cause which brought him into this situation; undisturbed by any distracting objects; enveloped in silence—he needs must think. This power of solitude was acknowledged by the wisest and best of antiquity, who retired from the walks of men to prepare themselves for great tasks by undisturbed contemplation. The labor which the convict performs in his cell, and which is indispensably necessary, does not disturb him, because it soon loses the distracting power of novelty; and, though it will engage him sufficiently to prevent him from sinking into torpid sullenness (as experience shows), it does not interrupt his contemplations. When he has once begun to reflect, he must come to the conclusion that virtue is preferable to vice, and can tranquillize his troubled mind only by resolving on reformation: he must at last seek comfort in the mercy of that Being who created him in his goodness, and who will receive him, notwithstanding his guilt, if he is sincere in his repentance. This will be the natural course of most prisoners in uninterrupted solitary confinement, judging from the observation which we have made on convicts thus confined. All agree that prison discipline ought to be such as to afford a possibility for the reformation of the prisoner; and this seems to us possible only in the Pennsylvania penitentiary system. The cases must be very rare in which a person, in the moment of his conviction, feels the entire justice of it, and resolves to become better: it requires a moral en

ergy of which very few are capable. The feeling usually produced in any man, by any punishment, is that of offended price, of irritated self-love. The prisoner, at the moment of conviction, does not reflect on the justice of his punishment, but places himself in opposition to the rest of mankind, as an injured man, or, if he be of a better nature, with the embittered feeling of an outcast. In this state of mind he enters the prison. If uninterrupted solitude awaits him, he will, if be is capable of reformation by any means but the devoted labors of personal friends (in which character, of course, the government cannot address him), become thoughtful. When he has reached this state, no new punishment awaits him: no new shame; no corrupting and degrading company; no new cause for considering himself an outcast, and fit associate for the worst. His solitary confinement hangs over him, indeed, as a severe dispensation, but does not daily renew the irritation of his pride. However much he may have been offended by his sentence, the prison in itself inflicts no further degradation. The keeper appears as a friend rather than a severe overseer. If he is disposed to reform, his weakness is not constantly put to the trial by offended shame, by the consideration that he is an outcast and associate of outcasts. We have asked many prisoners, in permanent solitary confinement, whether they would prefer to be placed together with others; and they have almost invarably answered that they considered it as the greatest privilege to be left alone. It ought not to be supposed that solitude bears so hard upon the mind of the pris oner, that he would exchange it for any other situation which would bring him into contact with other human beings When the writer, after an imprisonme DE of eight months, was offered the comp ny of another prisoner in his cell, copfined also on political grounds, he refused the offer, though it was repeated at seperal different times. If the prisoner bas made any step towards reformation, he always will wish to remain alone. How different from this is the operation of the Auburn system! As soon as the convict leaves his cell, he sees and feels anew that he is degraded: he knows and w known by his fellow convicts; the keeper is (and necessarily must be) a severe, inexorable overseer. He is treated every day anew as an outcast from society; his pride is constantly offended; or, if be bas no pride, no opportunity is afforded for the feeling of self-respect to spring up.

We hardly see how the slow process of reformation can go on under these circumstances. Yet the most humane of all systems of prison disciplines-that of Pennsylvania has been called, and by an excellent man too (Mr. Roscoe), "the most inhuman and unnatural that the eruelty of a tyrant ever invented, no less derogatory to the character of human nature than it is in direct violation of the leading principles of Christianity." We have already shown why we believe that it is not only not " unnatural," but founded on the deepest principles of human nature; that, so far from being " inhuman," it is founded on the very principle of mercy, because it affords the fullest opportunity for reformation, and prevents all exposure to shame and contamination. And is it cruel? All agree, that contamination must be prevented at any price, or reformation entirely given up. The question, then, can only be a comparative one What is the cruelty of this compared with the Auburn system? Perfect solitude, alleviated only by the permission to work, and to read the Bible, may be a hard situation; but is it more so than being placed in the company of many fellow-prisoners, with whom all intercourse is prevented by the threat of whipping? This must be torture indeed, like that of Tantalus, with the tempting viands constantly before him, and constantly receding from the approach of his famished lips. Solitary confinement, as practised in the Eastern prison of Pennsylvania, is rather a deprivation of most of the comforts of life, than the infliction of positive punishment. It is severe; it ought to be so; it ought to be feared. Is it cruel in a physical respect? Let us answer this question in the words of Mr. Vaux, page 7 of his Letter to Mr. Roscoe, who represents the cells to be "destined to contain an epitome and concentration of all human misery, of which the Bastile of France, and the Inquisition of Spain, were only prototypes and humble models." To which Mr. Vaux replies "The rooms of the new penitentiary at Philadelphia are fireproof, of comfortable dimensions, with convenient courts to each, built on the surface of the ground, judiciously lighted from the roof, well ventilated and warmed, and ingeniously provided with means for affording a continual supply of excellent water, to insure the most perfect cleanliness of every prisoner and his The exact size of the chambers is 8 feet by 12 feet, the highest point of the ceiling 16 feet. The yards are 8 feet by 20 feet.

apartment. They are, moreover, so arranged as to be inspected, and protected, without a military guard, usually, though unnecessarily, employed in establishments of this kind in most other states. In these chambers no individual, however humble or elevated, can be confined, so long as the public liberty shall endure, but upon conviction of a known and welldefined offence, by the verdict of a jury of the country, and under the sentence of a court, for a specified time. The terms of imprisonment, it is believed, can be apportioned to the nature of every crime with considerable accuracy, and will, no doubt, be measured in that merciful degree which has uniformly characterized the modern penal legislation of Pennsylvania. Where, then,-allow me to inquire,is there, in this system, the least resemblance to that dreadful receptacle constructed in Paris during the reign of Charles V, and which, at different periods, through four centuries and a half, was an engine of oppression and torture to thousands of innocent persons? Or by what detortion can it be compared to the inquisitorial courts and prisons that were instituted in Italy, Portugal and Spain, between the years 1251 and 1537 ?" Or is it believed that the influence of solitary confinement on the mind is cruel? that the human mind cannot bear it, and must be driven to madness? We believe this by no means to be the case. Mr. Vaux's testimony on this point is important. Cases of insanity, he says, in the pamphlet just quoted, seem not to be more frequent in jails than among the same number of persons in the ordinary condition of life. The cells of the old penitentiary are small and badly contrived, and yet many individuals have, for acts of violence committed in the prison, been confined in them for six, nine, and twelve months in succession, generally in irons, and always on a low diet; but no case of mental alienation has ever occurred there. When the mind becomes hardened by a career of vice, ultimately reaching a point of degradation which fits it for the perpetration of those crimes that are punishable under the penal statutes, no fear of exciting its tender sensibilities need be entertained, by its mere abstraction from equally guilty minds, so as to induce either melancholy or madness. All experience proves how difficult it is to make any impression whatever upon the feelings of the benighted and unhappy subjects of criminal punishment. As to the influ