Art. VII.—AN EXTRAORDINARY DOCUMENT.
We have before us a stitched pamphlet, entitled “Report on the Subject of Prisons, by Rev. Alexander L. Hamilton, State Commissioner, to Hon. Austin King, Governor of Missouri—Referred to the Committee on the Penitentiary, and three thousand copies ordered to be printed, January 5, 1853,” pp. 24.
The author of this report is, we doubt not, a very worthy and intelligent gentleman, or he would not have been appointed by the Executive of Missouri on so important an agency. That he has fulfilled his mission to the best of his ability, we may also admit; but that his report contains “such information as is necessary to present the subject of Prison Discipline fully to the consideration of the next general assembly of Missouri,” we cannot believe. Indeed we do not hesitate to say that it is entirely deficient in every point that a report on such a subject, for such a purpose, should embrace.
Statements are made, which have been disproved over and over again, until the repetition of them is loathsome to those who have been familiar with the subject. Principles are set forth as of present validity, which have been long ago abandoned even by those who once advocated them. The most ultra partisan opinions and doctrines are revived, with such an air of sincerity and confidence, as leads us to believe that the Rev. Commissioner never saw or heard of the oft-repeated refutation of them. He refers to those whose minds are steeped in prejudice, as the most reliable and responsible sources of information; and perhaps we cannot better describe the document, as a whole, than by saying that it is a synopsis of the reports of the Boston Prison Discipline Society and Mr. Gray’s book, prepared and printed at the expense of the State of Missouri.
We owe it to ourselves to cite a passage or two from the report, to serve as an indication of the qualities we have mentioned.
As to its rhetoric and logic let the following suffice:
The conviction forces itself upon my mind, that, if the numerous weighty objections already given be correct—this (the separate) system is not only wrong per se, but will soon be deserted by its remaining followers. For if it be true, when alluding to it in the least objectionable manner, that this system is only suited to short sentences, as many of its friends and advocates aver, then, “to all intents and purposes,” it must soon be subject to one of two consequences; either the penal code of the laws of the land must be so altered as to suit the demand of the system, or the system must be so altered as to fully come within the demands of the law.
As to its facts let the following suffice:
Upon the separate and solitary principle, the prisoner—good, bad, or indifferent as he may be, surrounded by his Bible, and such other good books as are given him from time to time, remains all alone in his cell, from the first of January to the last of December, until his term of imprisonment expires; and is thus left to his own reflections by day, and by night—unless paid an occasional visit by some kind officer of the prison, or by the chaplain. And hence it is, that in too many instances to justify the means employed, insanity precedes the work of reformation.
Were we to cite but a single passage from the report to include the logic, the rhetoric, the philosophy, the facts, and the reliability of the statements in a single view, it would be the following: