B. F. H. was a victim of drunkenness. Few men ever received from the hand of their Creator a richer store of intellectual capacity than this man, and on none were such gems more wastefully lavished. He abandoned a most amiable wife; and after spending many years in different prisons, the last I heard of him he was fitting for another. Over this victim, intemperance might boast, for he was like a star of superior brightness; he was learned, ingenious, and eloquent, qualified for a high station, but self-damned to the lowest.
P. D. illustrated very affectingly the legitimate consequences of intemperance. After he became its victim, it made him the author of a crime for which he was sent to prison for eighteen months. When this term had expired, he enjoyed liberty about three months, during which time he added another crime to the effects of rum, for which he was sent back to prison for three years. When these had expired, he was let out into the fields of liberty again; but in less than seven hours he was in gaol for a crime which he had had but just time enough to get drunk and commit, and in less than seven days he was back again in prison for six years.
This was entirely the effect of rum. He was not a criminal of choice, but when filled with rum, he would always steal. I never knew a man of better or purer moral feelings, when he was sober; and what is by no means common, he had such a sense of the crimes he committed, that he justified his punishment, and always considered it merciful. What a pity that such a man should have been ruined by intemperance.
I need not dwell on particular cases.—How great a proportion of the crimes which sent so many prisoners to Windsor, were directly or indirectly caused by the sin of intemperate drinking, I have not sufficient data to ascertain; but I have no hesitation in saying, that one half of the entire number would never have been in that gloomy mansion, if there never had been any intoxicating liquors. The victims of this prevailing sin, which I saw in that dreary house, are passing through the field of memory, and they appear like the armies of Gog and Magog. It would be well for the dealers in this ruinous article to dwell a few minutes every night on the moral character of their employment. They are earning their daily bread, and growing rich, on the profits of a poison which sends the body of the purchaser through flames of torment to an untimely grave, and prepares his soul for the miseries of the second death.—Let rum, and all the family of intoxicating drinks, be banished from the land, and half the rooms in our prisons will be soon found without an inhabitant.
I have known many prisoners who had gone to such excess in drinking, that for a year after they came into prison they endured a trembling of their hands, and a burning thirst for rum, which rendered their existence a real curse. Very many have I heard lamenting their crimes as having been occasioned by rum. Their language was—"If it had not been for liquor, I should not have done so;" and this was no doubt the fact. But though the prisoners so deeply lament their past folly and sin in drinking, it is not easy to cure them of it. After spending years in prison, and after many a "dolorous lament" over the effects of intoxication—after writing and publishing against intemperance, it is no strange thing to hear that they are drunk the day they are released. With one instance of this kind I will close this article. B. F. H. while in prison, wrote several essays on the sin of intemperance, to which he had been given, and delivered an oration on the subject in the prison chapel; and he professed to have been thoroughly reformed. Through the influence of his friends he was pardoned, and the journal of the prison contains the following entry in respect to him;—"Benj. F. Harwood pardoned—returned at night—DRUNK."
INFLUENCE OF "FREE MASONRY" ON THE REGULATIONS OF PRISONS, AND THE DECISION OF COURTS.
On this contested point, I am, from occular demonstration, a perfect sceptic. I have known many Freemasons in prison, and I have known masonic keepers treat them with a severity for which there can be no excuse. I have known many instances of this kind. And so thoroughly is it understood that Masonry is of no use to a man in that prison, that when a masonic prisoner is in punishment, the common remark is,—"This is rather hard treatment to receive from a brother."
I am not a mason, and should there be any real necessity for me to take sides in the contest on this subject, I should be an Anti. I am not then under the influence of any prejudice in favor of the order, and I wish to record it here as a historic fact, that masonry was not of any obvious advantage to a single prisoner in Windsor, during my whole acquaintance with it. I never heard it mentioned as a matter of complaint by the prisoners, that any one had been favored in the least because he was a mason, which was not the case in respect to other things. It was often said of the Master Weaver, that he was partial to the Irish, and to Roman Catholics. The Superintendent was often accused of shewing favor to the Baptists. One of the Visiters was often cursed because he was thought to be a particular friend to professors. But it was never said of Judge Cotton, or Captain Hunter, that they were partial to the masons. Indeed I always thought that they retained a little wrath against such prisoners as had belonged to lodges, on account of their having disgraced the order. As an instance of the treatment which masons have to endure in Windsor, I will relate the case of H. M.
He was sent to the prison for ten years. He was a man of good habits, was industrious and orderly, and I know not that he did any thing that should make him an object for particular wrath; and yet he was made to stay nine years out of ten, and was, moreover, treated rather unmercifully all the time. It is said by some that the rule of the masons is to hide a brother's faults, while they can be hidden, and to withdraw their protection from those whose faults are known.
If this is true, it accounts for the treatment which I have mentioned. But however this may be, I have two facts in relation to masonry which I learned in Windsor, and I shall make this the place to record them. The first relates to a stranger who was apprehended in Burlington and committed to gaol for passing counterfeit money. He was a man of gentlemanly appearance, and there was no doubt of his being guilty of the crime alleged against him. Soon after his commitment a letter from him to some of the principal men of the place, drew a number of them to his room. He was taken out on bail, and permitted to go on his way. He was a mason, and those who visited him were masons; and from a full conversation with him, which was overheard, it is certain that his masonry was the sole cause of his release. There was, however, no bribery of officers, no polluting of the streams of Justice, in this case, as the men who befriended him, did it legally, and they were private individuals.