world, and it is by other nations that the question between us must be decided. The question is then, "Is the credit of America better than that of England, in the intercourse of the two countries with each other, and with foreign nations?" Let the commercial world decide.

PENITENTIARIES, &c.

ALTHOUGH, during my residence in the cities of the United States, I visited most of the public institutions, I have not referred to them at the time in my Diary, as they have been so often described by preceding travellers. I shall now, however, make a few remarks upon the pe

nitentiary system.

I think it was Wilkes who said, that the very worst use to which you could put a man was to hang him; and such appears to be the opinion in America. That hanging does not prevent crime, where people are driven into it by misery and want, I believe; but it does prevent crime where people commit it merely from an unrestrained indulgence of their passions. This has been satisfactorily proved in the United States. At one time the murders in the city of New Orleans were just as frequent as in all the States contiguous to the Mississippi; but the population of the city determined to put an end to such scenes of outrage. The population of New Orleans is very different from that of the Southern States in general, being composed of Americans from the Eastern States, English merchants, and French creoles. Vigorous laws and an efficient police was established; and one of the southern planters, of good family and connexions, having committed a murder, was tried and condemned. To avoid the gallows, he committed suicide in prison. This system having been rigorously followed up, New Orleans has become perhaps the safest city in the Union; and now not even a brawl is heard in those streets where, a few years back, murders occurred every hour of the day.

In another chapter I shall enter more fully into this question; at present I shall only say that there is a great

unwillingness to take away life in America, and it is this aversion to capital punishment which has directed the attention of the American community to the penitentiary system. Several varieties of this species of punishment have been resorted to, more or less severe. The most rigid that of solitary confinement in dark cells, and without labour-was found too great an infliction, as, in many cases, it unsettled the reason, and ended in confirmed lunacy. Confinement, with the boon of light, but without employment, was productive of no good effect; the culprit sank into a state of apathy and indifference. After a certain time, day and night passed away unheeded, from the want of a healthy tone to the mind. The prisoners were no longer lunatics, but they were little better than brute animals.

Neither do I consider the present system, as practised at the Sing Sing, the state prison of New York, as tending to reform the offenders: it punishes them severely, but that is all. Where corporal punishment is resorted to, there always will be feelings of vindictiveness; and all the bad passions must be allowed to repose before the better can gain the ascendant.

The best system is that acted upon in the Penitentiary at Philadelphia, where there is solitary confinement, but with labour and exercise. Mr. Samuel Wood, who superintends this establishment, is a person admirably calculated for his task, and I do not think that any arrangements could be better, or the establishment in more excellent hands. But my object was, not so much to view the prison and witness the economy of it, as to examine the prisoners themselves, and hear what their opinions were. The surgeon may explain the operation, but the patient who has undergone it is the proper person to apply to, if you wish to know the degree and nature of the pain inflicted. I requested, therefore, and obtained permission, to visit a portion of the prisoners without a third party being present to prevent their being communicative; selecting some who had been in but a short time, others who had been there for years, and referring also to the books, as to the nature and degree of their offence. I ought to

state that I re-examined almost the whole of the parties about six months afterwards, and the results of the two examinations are now given. I did not take their names, but registered them in my notes as No. 1, 2, 3, &c.

No. 1-a man who had been sentenced to twelve years imprisonment for the murder of his wife. He had been bred up as a butcher. (I have observed that when the use of the knife is habitual, the flinching which men naturally feel at the idea of driving it into a fellow-creature, is overcome; and a man who is accustomed to dissect the still palpitating carcasses of animals, has very little compunction in resorting to the knife in the event of collision with his own race.) This fellow looked a butcher; his face and head were all animal; he was by no means intelligent. He was working at a loom, and had already been confined for seven years and a half. He said that, after the first six months of his confinement, he had lost all reckoning of time, and had not cared to think about it until lately, when he enquired, and was told how long he had been locked up. Now that he had discovered that more than half his time had passed away, it occupied his whole thoughts, and sometimes he felt very impatient.

Mr. Wood told me afterwards that this feeling, when the expiration of the sentence was very near at hand, sometimes amounted to agony.

This man had denied the murder of his wife, and still persisted in the denial, although there was no doubt of his having committed the crime. Of course, in this instance there was no repentance; and the Penitentiary was thrown away upon him, further than that, for twelve years, he could not contaminate society.

No. 2.-sentenced to four years' imprisonment for forgery; his time was nearly expired. This was a very intelligent man; by profession he had been a schoolmaster. He had been in prison before for the same offence.

His opinion as to the Penitentiary was, that it could do no harm, and might do much good. The fault of the system was one which could not well be remedied, which was, that there was degradation attached to it. Could

punishment undergone for crime be viewed in the same way as repentance was by the Almighty, and a man, after suffering for his fault, re-appear in the world with clean hands, and be admitted into society as before, it would be attended with the very best effects; but there was no working out the degradation. When he was released from his former imprisonment, he had been obliged to fly from the place where he was known. He was pursued by the harshness of the world, not only in himself, but in his children. No one would allow that his punishment had wiped away his crime, and this was the reason why people, inclined to be honest, were driven again into guilt. Not only would the world not encourage them, but it would not permit them to become honest; the finger of scorn was pointed wherever they were known, or found out, and the punishment after release was infinitely greater than that of the prison itself.

Miss Martineau observes, "I was favoured with the confidence of a great number of the prisoners in the Philadelphia Penitentiary, where absolute seclusion is the principle of punishment. Every one of these prisoners (none of them being aware of the existence of any other) told me that he was under obligations to those who had charge of him for treating him with respect.""

No. 3-a very intelligent, but not educated man: imprisoned three years for stealing. He had only been a few months in the Penitentiary, but had been confined for ten years in Sing Sing prison for picking pockets. I asked him his opinion as to the difference of treatment in the two establishments. He replied, "In Sing Sing the punishment is corporal-here it is more mental. In Sing Sing there was little chance of a person's reformation, as the treatment was harsh and brutal, and the feelings of the prisoners were those of indignation and resentment. Their whole time was occupied in trying how they could deceive their keepers, and communicate with each other by every variety of stratagem. Here a man was left to his own reflections, and at the same time he was treated like a man. Here he was his own tormentor;