I here saw about two hundred convicts actively employed at various trades, preparing granite for building, doing smiths' work, making shoes, brushes, &c.; all very clean, but certainly not looking very healthy.
A single overseer went the rounds of each building or department, and kept the hive in motion, without a word spoken, unless in reference to the task in hand. Whilst passing through the masons' shed, I noticed two persons make inquiries of the superintendent: their questions were to the point, given in few words, but with an air perfectly free and unrestrained, and were replied to in the like manner.
Upon the value of this system as a preventive of crime, according to my view of human nature, I may be allowed to express a doubt, as well as of its applicability to the condition of Great Britain; but viewing it in the abstract, without such reference, I confess no philanthropic object ever struck me as so completely illustrative of the principles of true benevolence. This was, in fact, returning good for evil, in the most Christian sense of the word; "chastening as a father chasteneth." It would appear that a convict must be unnaturally hardened not to quit this abode a better man. Let him arrive here, however outcast, vile, ignorant, knowing no honest calling, broken in health and savage in spirit, here he will find teachers, masters, physicians, all provided for him by the community whose laws he has violated. His spirit is soothed, his health is recruited, his ignorance enlightened: he is made master of a sufficient calling; and, when restored to society, is able to contrast the value of the meal earned by the honest sweat of his brow with the bitter fruit of idleness and crime.
Such is the result contemplated by the benevolent promoters of the prison system of this country, which everywhere has societies of voluntary philanthropists who watch over and study to improve it. One is ashamed, after this, to avow a doubt of its success in practice, since it almost amounts to an admission that man is indeed the brute our European legislators appear to think him.
The subject is, at least, one that demands from England a rigid inquiry, when we call to mind what a den of debasement, what a sink of soul and body, a prison yet is amongst the most civilized and humane people in the world.
TREMONT HOTEL.
My last, though not least, lion of Boston is the "Tremont House," which being, in my opinion, the very best of the best class of large hotels in the Union, I shall select as a specimen.