Society in America, Volume 2 (of 2)

by Harriet Martineau

The idea of travelling in America was first suggested to me by a philanthropist's saying to me, "Whatever else may be true about the Americans, it is certain that they have got at principles of justice and mercy in the treatment of the least happy classes of society which we may be glad to learn from them. I wish you would go and see what they are." I did so; and the results of my investigation have not been reserved for this short chapter, but are spread over the whole of my book. The fundamental democratic principles on which American society is organised, are those "principles of justice and mercy" by which the guilty, the ignorant, the needy, and the infirm, are saved and blessed. The charity of a democratic society is heart-reviving to witness; for there is a security that no wholesale oppression is bearing down the million in one direction, while charity is lifting up the hundred in another. Generally speaking, the misery that is seen is all that exists: there is no paralysing sense of the hopelessness of setting up individual benevolence against social injustice. If the community has not yet arrived at the point at which all communities are destined to arrive, of perceiving guilt to be infirmity, of obviating punishment, ignorance, and want, still the Americans are more blessed than others, in the certainty that they have far less superinduced misery than societies abroad, and are using wiser methods than others for its alleviation. In a country where social equality is the great principle in which all acquiesce, and where, consequently, the golden rule is suggested by every collision between man and man, neglect of misery is almost as much out of the question as the oppression from which most misery springs.

In the treatment of the guilty, America is beyond the rest of the world, exactly in proportion to the superiority of her political principles. 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 the charge of him for treating him "with respect." The expression struck me much as being universally used by them. Some explained the contrast between this method of punishment and imprisonment in the old prisons, copied from those of Europe; where criminals are herded together, and treated like anything but men and citizens. Others said that though they had done a wrong thing, and were rightly sequestered on that ground, they ought not to have any farther punishment inflicted upon them; and that it was the worst of punishments not to be treated with the respect due to men. In a community where criminals feel and speak thus, human rights cannot but be, at length, as much regarded in the infliction of punishment as in its other arrangements.

Much yet remains to be done, to this end. An enormous amount of wrong must remain in a society where the elaboration of a vast apparatus for the infliction of human misery, like that required by the system of solitary imprisonment, is yet a work of mercy. Milder and juster methods of treating moral infirmity will succeed when men shall have learned to obviate the largest possible amount of it. In the meantime, I am persuaded that this is the best method of punishment which has yet been tried. Much as the prisoners suffer from the dreary solitude, cheered only by their labour and the occasional visits of official superintendents, they testified, without exception and without concert, to their preference of this over all other methods of punishment. The grounds of preference were, that they could preserve their self-respect, in the first place; and, in the next, their chance in society on their release. They leave the prison with the recompense of their extra labour in their pockets, and without the fear of being waylaid by vicious old companions, or hunted from employment to employment by those whose interest it is to deprive them of a chance of establishing a character. There is no evidence, at present, that solitary imprisonment, with labour, is more injurious to health than any other condition which is attended with anxiety of mind. The Philadelphia prisoners certainly appeared to me to be more healthy-looking than those at Auburn, or at any other prison I visited.

There is at present a deficiency in the religious ministrations of the prison. This is a fact which, I believe, has only to be made known to cease to be true. Among the clergy of all denominations in Philadelphia, there must be many who would contrive to afford their services in turn, if they were fully aware how much they are needed. I know of no direction that can be taken by charity with such certainty of success as visiting the solitary prisoner. I think it far from desirable that prisoners should be visited for the express purpose of giving them religious, and no other, instruction and sympathy. The great object is to occupy the prisoner's mind with things which interest him most; to keep up his sympathies, and nourish his human affections; and especially to promote the activity and cheerfulness of his mind. His situation is such,—he is so driven back upon the realities of life in his own mind, that the danger is of his accepting religion as a temporary solace, of his separating it in idea from active life, and craving for the most exciting kind of it; so as that when he returns to the world, he will discard it as something suiting his prison-life, but no longer needed, no longer appropriate. If, keeping this in view, a very few good men and women of Philadelphia would go sometimes to spend an hour with a prisoner, honourably observing the rules, telling no news, but cheerfully conversing on the prisoner's affairs,—his work, his family, his prospects on coming out, the books he reads, &c.—if they would carry him good and entertaining books, and if religious ones, only those of a moderate and cheerful character, (such being indeed not easy to be found,)—these friendly visitors could scarcely fail of restoring, more or less completely, the moral health of the objects of their benevolence. None who have not tried can imagine the ease with which sufferers so placed are influenced; in the absence of all that is pernicious, and in absolute dependence, as they are, on the sympathy of those who will be kind to them. If watchful observance were united with common prudence and kindness, I believe that a prisoner of five years would rarely re-enter society unqualified for the discharge of his duties there. It must be remembered that the criminals of the United States are rarely the depraved, brutish creatures that fill the prisons of the old world. Even in the old world, I have no doubt that every prison visitor has been conscious, on first conversing privately with a criminal, of a feeling of surprise at finding him so human: but in America, convicts are even more like other men. The reason of my visiting them, as I told them, was to satisfy myself about the causes of crime in a country where there is almost an absence of that want which occasions the greater proportion of social offences in England. Sooner or later, all told me their stories in full: and I found that in every case some domestic misery had been the poison of their lives. A harsh step-mother, an unfaithful wife, a jilting mistress, an intemperate son or father,—these were the miseries at home which sent them out to drink: drinking brought on murder, or caused vicious wants, which must be supplied by theft. The stories, infinitely varied in their circumstances, were all alike in their moral.

I do not like the principle of the Auburn prison: and I am confident that very little effectual reformation can take place under it. The disadvantages of the prisoners being waylaid and dogged on their discharge are very great; but there are some within the prison quite as serious. The spy system is abominable, in whatever light it is viewed. It is the deepest of insults; and if there be a case rather than another in which insult is to be avoided, it is where a reformation is desired. The great point to be gained with the criminal is to regenerate self-respect. A virtuous man may preserve his self-respect under the eyes of a spy; (though even he is in some danger); but a morally infirm man can never thus acquire it. Arrangements should be made for his secure custody and harmless outward conduct, and then he should be left to himself. And what is the purpose of the spying,—of the loop-holes to peep through, and the moccasins which are to make the tread of the spies as stealthy as that of a cat? To detect talking; talking subjecting a man to the lash. Talking is an innocent act; and, in the case of men secluded from the world and their families, and all that has hitherto interested them, an unavoidable act. They ought to talk; and they do, in spite of spies, governor, and the whip. They learn to murmur intelligibly behind their teeth, without moving the lips, and to take advantage of the briefest instants when the superintendent turns his back. It is surprising to me that any effectual reformation can be looked for from men who, convicted of grave crimes, have the prohibition to speak set up before their minds as the chief circumstance and interest of their lives for five, seven, or ten years. Their interest in it makes it the chief circumstance. How the disordered being is to be rectified, how the prostrated conscience is to be reinstated, while an innocent and necessary act is thus erected into an offence, I leave those who are most versed in moral proportions to decide. I do not believe in the possibility of effectual reformation in any but a few cases, under such a discipline.

The will of the majority has not yet wrought out the right practice from good principles, in two cases which regard the treatment of the guilty: and great evil arises in the interval. It is extremely difficult, in some parts of the States, and with regard to some particular offences, to get the laws enforced against offenders. In those parts of the States where personal conflicts are countenanced by opinion, offences against the person go too often unpunished; elsewhere, riot is passed over without notice; and in some few places, the most heinous crimes of all are nearly certain to be got over without the conviction of the offender. The impunity of riot arises from the reliance society has on the moral sense of the whole: a reliance very honourable in itself, but found of late to be inadequate under the pressure of such a crisis as that of the anti-slavery question. Nothing can be more honourable to the people, than the fact that they have been safe and virtuous under the superintendence of principle, while the laws have slept so long, that it is now found difficult to put them in force: but now that the time has come for a conflict of classes and opinions, the time has also come for the law to be vigilant and inexorable. The frequent impunity of the most serious crimes arises from the growing enmity of opinion to the punishment of death. There can be little doubt that in a short time capital punishments will be abolished throughout the northern States: and if this is to be done, the sooner it is done the better: for the present impunity is a tremendous evil.

In passing the City Hall of one of the northern cities with a friend, I asked what was the meaning of a great crowd that was about the doors, and even clustered on the windows of the building. My friend told me, that a young man was being examined on the charge of being the murderer in a most aggravated case, which had been related to me the day before. I observed, that no one seemed to have any doubt of his guilt. She replied, that there never was a clearer case; but that he would be acquitted: the examination and trial were a mere form, of which every one knew the conclusion beforehand. The people did not choose to see any more hanging; and till the law was so altered as to allow an alternative of punishment, no conviction for a capital offence would be obtainable. I asked, on what pretence the young man would be got off, if the evidence against him was as clear as was represented. She said, some one would be found to swear an alibi: the young man would be wholly disgraced, and would probably set out westwards the morning after his acquittal. I watched the progress of the case. The trial was a long one. There was no doubt of the suppression of large portions of the evidence against him. A tradesman swore an alibi: the young man was thereupon acquitted; and next morning he was on his way to the west.

On the principle that punishment should be reformatory, the practice of pardoning criminals has gone to far too great an extent, from the belief of reformation in each particular case. The consequence is very injurious. A sentence of life-imprisonment is generally understood to mean imprisonment for a shorter term than if ten or seven years had been named. Every one of the prisoners I conversed with was in anxious expectation of a pardon. In the cases of those who were in for five years, and who I knew would not be pardoned, I reasoned the matter; and found that the fact of all their fellow-prisoners having the same expectation with themselves, made a strong impression. They were, amidst their dreadful disappointment, easily convinced: but I could not but mourn that they did not learn the philosophy of the case in society, rather than in prison.

Whenever the abolition of the punishment of death takes place, it will be essential to the safety of virtue and society, that it should be understood that the practice of pardoning is, except on rare and specified occasions, to cease; and that punishment is to be certain in proportion to its justice.