On another occasion, a company of them bought a lot of tracts for gratuitous distribution in the prison.
As an expression of their sense of the importance of preaching, and of the faithfulness of their Chaplain, they gave him money to purchase him a coat.
At another time, they contributed about twenty dollars to a society which had been formed to send the gospel to prisons.
A cluster of promiscuous incidents which I am now going to group together, will demonstrate the existence of other excellent qualities.
Husbands and children are particularly careful to keep their earnings, and at convenient times, send them to their parents and families. Others are diligent at work, that they may have the means of making a decent appearance when they get their liberty. Some apply themselves to books, and a few have made astonishing progress in the sciences. I knew one who made himself master of Euclid's Elements, Ferguson's Astronomy, Stuart's Intellectual and Paley's Moral Philosophy. Another made himself acquainted with most of the branches in a liberal education. And many others became very good common scholars. Not a few of them are chaste and moral in their conversation, and civil and exemplary in all their conduct. And that they are not so lost to the virtues of our nature, as some who are in different circumstances, is evident from the fact, that they are proverbially, an industrious community.
I dwell with pleasure on these virtues, which still smile and diffuse their fragrance in the midst of surrounding desolation; and some of them are found in every breast of that unhappy multitude. The fact is, there are a great many principles of moral excellence, which go to the formation of a perfect character; and it is never that all of these can be found destroyed, or uprooted, in any one individual. That monster over whose breast has been hung the pall of every virtue, never was and never can be found. Some seed, some root, some germ, remains to repair the desolation, and to smile in perfect growth and endless beauty, where ruin has been the deepest. Hence the hope of reformation. Hence the strongest argument to attempt it, both in ourselves and others. The pulse of spiritual or moral health is still beating in all those guilty souls, and proper attention would soon restore them to its blissful enjoyment.
On the other hand, they exhibit many of the very worst passions and principles of fallen nature, in their worst and most appalling light. Against this charge nothing can be said in their vindication. My only object in introducing this sketch, is, to show, that though many of the virtues of the upright heart have been destroyed from theirs, all of them have not. There are some good and excellent qualities remaining in every one of them; and I wish to turn the thoughts and efforts of our Benevolent Societies to their improvement. This is an inviting field for them to labor in, and they could not labor here in vain. Christ came from heaven to save prisoners, and the servants of Christ ought to be willing to follow his example and visit prisons too. He might have kept better company in heaven, or gone on an embassy to less guilty worlds, but he came to us, to sinners, to prisoners, to save us from sin, and free us from chains.
CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS.
In a state prison, almost every action of the prisoners, not particularly mentioned in the By-Laws, is either a crime or not, according to the whim that happens to be in the breast of the keeper at the time it is done. Hence there are many actions punished, and sometimes very severely, which were not known to have been improper at the time they were committed, but which, by a very common post facto process, became crimes afterwards. Any thing which a prisoner does or neglects to do, is, if the guard or keeper who notices it, has any spite to gratify, dressed up in a criminal suit and made a pretext for punishment. To smile or look sober, to speak or keep silence, to walk or sit still, is alike criminal when convenience requires.
It is, also, a rule of conduct with the keepers, to punish all for the crime of one. Instances of this are very common. I will mention some of them.