Under the care of the present judicious and efficient Board of Inspectors, the prison has been satisfactorily conducted; but the population is so unsettled (being largely composed of vagrants, the untried, and those committed for petty offences), that it cannot be considered to fairly illustrate the “Separate System,” and therefore we think it proper to make more especial and extended reference to the Penitentiary than to it.
The Prison “Association of Women Friends” (which is recognized by us as an auxiliary in the good work), have continued to be diligent visitors to the females confined in both prisons, and have entered on the service under a full sense of its serious importance, and with desires that their labors might be promotive of the temporal and eternal good of the visited. In the course of the year they paid 987 visits to the prisoners in the two institutions.
In addition to the moral and religious instruction communicated to those confined in each of the institutions, through the medium of our visitors and those of the association just referred to, the Eastern Penitentiary has, as one of its regular officers, a “Moral Instructor,” whose time is devoted to visiting the prisoners individually in their cells, and there instructing them in those things which most nearly concern their temporal and eternal interests. The present incumbent of the office is John Ruth, a worthy minister of the Methodist persuasion, who appears to be well fitted for the discharge of the duties of his station. Ministers of different denominations also frequently visit the Penitentiary, both for the purpose of having religious opportunities with individual prisoners, and for the more general and public discharge of the duties of their calling. In the County Prison, although there is no regular officer employed for the purpose as in the Penitentiary, yet the institution is pretty well supplied with volunteer religious instructors from different sources, and, on the first day of the week, the prison agent generally procures the attendance there of one or more ministers.
In our Report last year, we informed that the Quarterly Journal, which had been published by the Society for a number of years, was discontinued, and an Annual Report and Journal substituted for it. The principal reason then assigned for the change was, the large absorption of our funds which its publication occasioned, while our means for aiding discharged prisoners and sustaining other objects of practical benevolence in carrying out the original object of our organization, that of “Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons,” were entirely too limited. The result, we think, has already confirmed the propriety of the course then adopted. Our financial condition has considerably improved, and our appropriations in 1862, in aid of discharged prisoners, were upwards of fifty per cent. greater than in 1861.
| Edward H. Bonsall, | Committee on Annual Report, &c. | |
| Joseph R. Chandler, | ||
| Townsend Sharpless, | ||
| Charles C. Lathrop, | ||
| Alfred H. Love. |
Philadelphia, 1st Mo. (Jan.) 15, 1863.
For the Prison Journal.
MAGISTRACY.
The Magistrate must have his reverence, the laws their authority.—Burke.
Moses, in reply to the question of his father-in-law, “Why sittest thou thyself alone and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even?” said, “Because the people, when they have a matter, come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God and his laws.” In him we have a model magistrate. But finding the labor “too heavy” for him, by the advice of Jethro, he confined his duties in this respect to those of an appellant judge, to be for the people “Godward,” to “bring the causes unto God,” and to hear “every great matter,” and he did “provide out of all the people, able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and placed such over them to be rulers,” or minor magistrates, “and made them heads over the people,” “and they judged the people at all seasons; the hard cases they brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves.” In this record of the first institution of the office of the magistrate, and the qualifications considered as requisite in the man to fill the position, we have a lesson that it becomes us diligently to consider at the present day. If there has been degeneracy of the world since the days of Moses, in no respect perhaps has it been more forcibly felt, than in the mode of administering justice, (or as it would be more properly termed injustice,) at the present day, by the police or committing magistrates. The evils resulting to the community, the cruelty done to the unfortunate being who falls into their hands, by the system prevailing and carried out by many of the magistrates, especially of this city, have become so aggravated as to demand a thorough reformation. “Moses chose able men,” whose qualifications were known “out of all Israel.” Men who acted in the “fear of God,” and “who hated covetousness;” or would not take “fees” or levy severe contributions on their victims, or the victims of others’ wrongs, or commit them to prison on false or trivial charges, to exact the payment of “charges and costs.” He did not leave the election of the magistrate to any body of the people whom they were to judge, much less to the worst or dissolute portion of them.
The very word “magistrate,” (from magister, master,) implying control, direction, suggests to the mind the idea of equity, safety, and purity. It excites reverence and a sense of exalted dignity, and imposes such a power and responsibility as never should be exercised by a bad or incompetent man.