CONSTITUTION OF THE PENNSYLVANIA PRISON SOCIETY.
When we consider that the obligations of benevolence, which are founded on the precept and examples of the Author of Christianity, are not cancelled by the follies or crimes of our fellow-creatures, and when we reflect upon the miseries, which penury, hunger, cold, unnecessary severity, unwholesome apartments, and guilt (the usual attendants of prisons) involve with them, it becomes us to extend our compassion to that part of mankind who are the subjects of those miseries. By the aid of humanity their undue and illegal sufferings may be prevented; the link which should bind the whole family of mankind together, under all circumstances, be preserved unbroken; and such degree and modes of punishment may be discovered and suggested as may, instead of continuing habits of vice, become the means of restoring our fellow-creatures to virtue and happiness. From a conviction of the truth and obligations of these principles, the subscribers have associated themselves under the title of “The Pennsylvania Prison Society.”
For effecting these purposes they have adopted the following Constitution: