[1]. It may be proper to state that Townsend Sharpless, one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society, was appointed on this Board, but was prevented by sickness from taking part in its labors, and he died before the Report was made to the Acting Committee.
At the Annual Meeting of the Society, held First Month, (January) 28, 1864, the Report of the “Acting Committee.” was presented, and after consideration, was referred back to the Acting Committee, with instructions to cause the whole (or such parts thereof as might be deemed best) to be printed in the usual form, with any other matter that should be thought advisable.
At a meeting of the Acting Committee, Second Month (February) 11, 1864, it was ordered that the Annual Report, signed by the President and Secretary, be referred to the members by whom it was proposed, with instructions to them to cause a suitable number of copies thereof to be printed.
JOHN J. LYTLE, Secretary.
REPORT.
In presenting the Report of the Seventy-Eighth Year of the labors of “The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons,” we are struck with what in this country may be regarded as a remarkable instance of longevity. Few benevolent societies in the United States survive their founders. Some effect a certain object and are allowed to fall into uselessness and disorganization. Others arise, with kindred purposes and similar means, and produce other good with an advantage of new zeal and fresh machinery. In Europe numerous philanthropic associations have outlived their usefulness, not so much from a diminution of the numbers that need aid, as from changes in their circumstances. The funds do not fail, but the right to apply them, in the changed condition of society, has ceased. The continued existence of the association is secured by the capital upon which it was founded, and the lumbering machinery is annually reviewed by those charged with its custody, and it is then consigned to another year’s seclusion and repose. The dust of antiquity settles upon it, to give it an interest with some, but the idea of usefulness is no longer entertained.
In many of the cases of defunct associations in this country, the wrongs or sufferings that suggested their organization were only temporary, and with the accomplishment of their objects they ceased to exist, or they have given place to others better adapted to the good ends proposed. Most of the still remaining inoperative associations of the old world were called into existence by permanent evils, but their usefulness was made temporary by certain fixed requirements that were soon to render them inapplicable to the changes in the political, religious and social condition of the people. But “The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons,” has before it a work, which though it may vary with time, is not likely to lessen. While society exists we shall have vice and crime; while vice and crime abound we must have prisons to restrain the violators of the laws; and while prisons have inmates, the duty of reforming their morals and ameliorating their condition, will devolve upon some of those who seek the good of society by the improvement of individuals. That duty in its broadest sense has been assumed by this Association. Not merely to lessen the sufferings of the condemned, not alone to assist the innocent, not merely to teach sound morals to those who are suffering from a violation of the laws of God and man, not merely to prevent a too rigid enforcement of special enactments, not alone to prescribe and ensure a separate confinement to the condemned, but so to use that confinement that vice or crime, so communicable in its character, shall not propagate itself through the cells of the prison, and thus make a penitentiary a nursery for misconduct rather than a school for mental and moral discipline; not alone to deal justly and faithfully with a convict while he occupies his cell, but to secure to him, when he shall have completed his penal term, some position in which he may carry into effect his good resolves, without incurring risk from those associates that led him into crime, and especially to secure him from recognition in the world by those who have passed months or years of separate confinement in the same prison with him. We repeat it, it is no one of these measures that is the single or even the great object of the Society. It is every one of them, separate, or all of them combined, with whatever else may present itself for alleviation or correction in the affairs of prisons or the condition of prisoners. Nor is this all; while this Society has in view the whole of these and other benefits, it is no less its intention to continue its labor of benevolence as much upon the fruit of its own existence as upon the evils which it was organized to ameliorate. The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, will accommodate its labors to the new state which its exertions may have produced, and, thus, what has been improved to-day may be perfected to-morrow. Nor does it escape the notice of the Society that new work is presented or new forms of labor are suggested as the system which it produces becomes more and more operative. The vicious are to be reclaimed by gentle exhortations and encouraging sympathy. The young criminal is, by kind monitions and encouraging confidence, to be lured from the path into which he has been seduced, and the felon is to be made to understand that there is a hope of regaining the respect of society by that repentance which consists as much in reparation for the wrong and resolves for the future, as in regret for the past; or, failing to acquire for himself the forfeited regard of his fellow men, he may secure a hope of a better rest. True philanthropy seems but the embodiment of religion, and never do the consolations of the Divine promises operate with greater efficacy than when they are poured upon the heart of the convict in the solitude of his cell.
In claiming for the Association such an extensive field and such a variety of labors, we do not overrate its plans nor over-estimate its means and devotion. It may safely be said that as no circumstances of the prisoner are beyond the aim of the Society, so no class of prisoners are excluded from its benevolent intentions. The visitor of the Society when he presents himself at the cell of the prisoner, is not to be deterred by the rank, grade, condition or color of the prisoner. Nor are his efforts to be lessened by any circumstances of his case. We must say with the Roman,
“Homo sum; et humani a me nil alienum puto.”