We may err in our ideas of the true relations of the prison to the prisoner. We call a prison good or bad when we see its walls, cells, workshops, its means of security, and points of observation. These are very well. They are something; but they are not all. We might so judge a hospital for the sick; and we did once so judge an asylum for the insane.
But what to the sick man are walls of wood, brick, granite, or marble? What are towers and turrets, what are wards, halls, and verandas, if withal he is not cheered and sustained by the sympathizing heart and helping hand? And similar preparations furnish for the insane personal security and physical comfort; but can they
"Minister to a mind diseased;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain?"
And it may be that the old almshouse at Philadelphia, which was nearly destitute of material aids, and had only superintendent, matrons, and assistants, was, all in all, the best insane asylum in America.
We cannot neglect the claims of security, discipline, and labor, in the erection of jails and prisons; but to acknowledge these merely will never produce the proper fruit of punishment—reformation. Indeed, walls of stone, gates of iron, bolts, locks, and armed sentinels, though essential to security, without which there could be neither punishment nor reformation, are in themselves barriers rather than helps to moral progress. Standing outside, we cannot say what should be done either in the insane hospital or the prison; but we can deduce from the experience of modern times a safe rule for general conduct. In the insane hospital the patient is to be treated as though he were sane; and in the jail the prisoner is to be treated, nearly as may be, as though he were virtuous. This rule, especially as much of it as applies to the prisoner, may be recklessness to some, to others folly, to others sin.
"The court awards it, and the law doth give it," is no doubt the essence and strength of governmental justice in the sentence decreed; but it would be a sad calamity if there were no escape from its literal fulfilment. And let no one borrow the words of Portia to the Jew, and say to the state,
"Nor cut thou less nor more,
But just a pound of flesh."