I now pass to the question. The Report and the accompanying Resolutions present three principal points: first, the duty and pledge on our part of candor and impartiality between the different systems of Prison Discipline; secondly, the duty of offering some expression of regret to our brethren in Philadelphia on account of the past; thirdly, the duty of our officers to make increased exertions, particularly by enlisting the coöperation of individual members.
To these several propositions we have had various replies, occupying no inconsiderable time. We have listened to the humane sentiments of my friend on the left [Dr. Walter Channing], to the inappropriate twice-told statistics of my other friend [Mr. F.C. Gray], to the labored argument of my professional brother [Mr. Bradford Sumner], to the two addresses of the reverend gentleman from Worcester [Rev. George Allen]. Let me say, that I have many sympathies with this gentleman. With admiration and delight I have recently read a production of his, entitled "Resistance to Slavery Every Man's Duty." Here his own powers answered to the grandeur of his cause. If he has failed in the present debate, it cannot be from lack of ability or from shortness of time. Lastly, we have been made partakers of that singular utterance from our Treasurer, which abounded so largely in the excellence that Byron found in Mitford, the historian of Greece, and which he said should characterize all good historians,—"wrath and partiality."
It is my purpose to consider and sustain the positions of the Report and Resolutions, and, in the course of my remarks, to repel the objections raised against them. In doing this, I shall confine myself to the topics which occupied the attention of the Committee. This will lead me to put aside one suggestion, of an irrelevant character, introduced into this debate by a friend not of the Committee: I refer to the charge of Sectarianism. This did not enter into the deliberations of the Committee, and formed no part of the Report. If there be in the past course of the Society any ground for this charge,—and on this I express no opinion,—it will doubtless find a corrective in what has been said here. As I do not ask your acceptance of the Report and Resolutions on this ground, so I appeal to your candor in their behalf irrespectively of any considerations arising from the introduction of this topic.
I.
The first point for consideration is the duty and pledge on our part of candor and impartiality between the different systems of Prison Discipline. Here I might, perhaps, content myself with a bare enumeration of these systems, and ask the Society if they are so fully convinced with regard to the comparative merits of each as to embrace one, and to reject, absolutely, all the others. For instance, I mention four different systems. First, that of Pennsylvania, so much discussed, the principal feature of which is separation of prisoners from each other both by day and night, with labor in cells. Secondly, that of Auburn, where the prisoners are in separate cells by night, but labor in common workshops, in enforced silence, by day. Thirdly, a system compounded of these two, according to which certain prisoners are treated as at Auburn, and certain others as in Pennsylvania,—sometimes called the Mixed System, and sometimes that of Lausanne, from the circumstance that here, in Switzerland,—interesting to us as the place where Gibbon wrote his great history,—there is a prison of this character. Fourthly, there is still another system,—or, perhaps, absence of system,—which is followed at Munich, and is called after Obermaier, the benevolent head of the prison in that place, who has rejected the separate cell of Pennsylvania by day, and also the corporal punishment and enforced silence of Auburn. Our own prison at Charlestown, also marked by absence of system, seems to me not unlike that of Obermaier. A similar benevolence emanates from the head of each of these institutions.
In each and all of these systems there is, doubtless, much that we should hesitate to condemn, and which it becomes us, as honest inquirers, to examine carefully and seek to comprehend. Calling upon our Society for a pledge of candor and impartiality, it will not be disguised that there are special reasons from its past course. Properly to appreciate this course, and to understand the unfortunate position of ungenerous antagonism to the Pennsylvania System which we now occupy, it will be necessary to consider the origin and true character of that system. This will lead to some minuteness of historical detail.
Turning our eyes to the condition of prisons during the last century, we perceive that scarcely a single ray of humanity had then penetrated their dreary confines. Idleness, debauchery, blasphemy, brutality, squalor, disease, wretchedness, mingled in them as in a hateful sty. All the unfortunate children of crime, the hardened felon, whose soul was blotted by continual guilt, and the youthful victim, who had just yielded to temptation, but whose countenance still mantled with the blush of virtue, and whose soul had not lost all its original brightness, were crowded together, without separation or classification, in one promiscuous, fermenting mass of wickedness, with scanty food and raiment, with few or no means of cleanliness, a miserable prey to the contagion of disease, and the worse contagion of vice and sin. The abject social degradation of the ancient Britons, in the picture drawn by Julius Cæsar, excites our wonder to a less degree than the well-authenticated condition of the poor prisoners in the polished annals of George the Third.
Of all the circumstances which conspired to produce this wretchedness, it cannot be doubted that the promiscuous commingling of the prisoners in one animal herd was the most to be deplored. This evil arrested general attention. In France it enkindled the burning eloquence of Mirabeau, as in England it inspired the heavenly charity of Howard. It was felt not only in Europe, but here in our own country. Nay, it still continues, the scandal of this age and place, in the present jail of Boston!
In the effort to escape from this evil, persons with best intentions, but by a not unnatural error, rushed to the opposite extreme. It was proposed to separate prisoners from each other by a system of absolute solitude, without labor, books, or solace of any kind. This was actually done in Maine, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Without referring particularly to other States, I ask you to follow the course of things in Pennsylvania. In 1818 a law was passed authorizing the building of a penitentiary at Pittsburg "on the principle of solitary confinement of the convicts," and "provided always that the principle of the solitary confinement of the prisoners be preserved and maintained." In 1821 another law was passed authorizing the same at Philadelphia. Both of these prisons were conceived in a system of solitude without labor.