"It may be,' said the man. mother!!"" My poor, poor That fearful imprisonment could not touch him-but when the thought came rushing into his mind, that his mother witnessed his situation, his degradation, imprisonment; and sufferings, his heart felt its power, and he bowed before the shrine of that mother's memory, who had watched over him in infancy, and with maternal fondness sought many methods to sectire his happiness and welfare. But, though fact might be piled upon fact, yet it could not be rendered more demonstrably true, that the law "overcome evil with good," is the only correct principle upon which to found all prison discipline intended to cure offenders, and to render them useful members of society. Still, notwithstanding Christianity, notwithstanding experience and humanity, very many of even American prisons carry out their internal regulations solely through fear of the whip. And if a prisoner infringes a law governing his actions while in confinement, his person is seared with the bloody marks of the lash, every stroke of which, not only inflicts pain upon his body, but strikes degradation and infamy deeper into the soul, until the last hope of reformation is extinguished. Oh, with all our boasted light and civilization, in many things we grope in darkness which belongs to the thirteenth, rather than to the nineteenth century. For we give up the holy, governing power which Christianity puts into our hands, and consent to use a barbarism which is characteristic of an age of ignorance and cruelty. There is an important reason why criminals should be treated with kindness while suffering the penalty of our offended laws, which is not often considered. The great majority of criminals are very ignorant, and consequently have comparatively feeble moral conceptions. There are multitudes of persons who are placed, from infancy, in circumstances beyond their control, and are in continual contact with crime, who commit sin under the influence of an infatuated ignorance, and are degraded because they never had the means of emerging from the moral darkness into which fate had thrown them. As evidence of this position, let it be remembered, that though 1512 prisoners were confined in the New York State Prisons, at Auburn and SingSing, in the year 1834, yet of that number only nineteen had received a superior education. And among the 20,984 committed or held to bail in England and Wales for the year 1836, only 192 had received a superior education. A large majority could neither read nor write, and nearly all the rest were very imperfectly edu cated. In the Report of the British and Foreign School Society, for 1831, we are informed that out of nearly 700 prisoners put on trial in four counties, upwards of two hundred and sixty were as ignorant as the savages of the desertthey could not read a single letter. Of the entire 700, only 150 could write, or even read with ease; and nearly the whole number were totally ignorant with regard to the nature and obligations of true religion. In the reports of the society for 1832-3, it is affirmed, that "in September, 1831, out of fifty prisoners put on trial at Bedford, only four could read. In January, 1833, there were in the same prison between fifty and sixty awaiting their trials, of whom not more than ten could read, and even some of these could not make out the sense of a sentence, though they knew their letters. At Wisbeach, in the Isle of Ely, out of nineteen prisoners put on trial, only six were able to read and write, and the capital offences were committed by persons in a state of the most debasing ignorance."* When a jailer was describing his prisoners to Leigh Hunt, he termed them "poor, ignorant creatures." This phrase will describe almost every person convicted of crime-for it is undoubtedly true, that the vast majority of * Dick's Mental Illumination, p. 338. those who fall into crime, are chained by the most hopeless ignorance to their degraded lot in life. Now, if these persons had been kindly cherished in infancy, and had received a good education, perchance among their number might have been found the statesman, the philosopher, the patriot, the philanthropist, and the Christian, while all might have been useful members of community. But, by neglect in youth, by ignorance, by constant companionship with all the vices of low life, and oftentimes by the pressure of circumstances, multitudes become criminals. Such men are truly unfortunate, and they should be governed by kindness, and an exertion made to exalt their minds, until they can rise above sin, and disdain its chains. And it is my thorough conviction, sustained negatively by every instance of cruelty, and affirmatively by every instance of kindness, that the inmates of all prisons should be fully and constantly ruled in the most enlarged and pure spirit of the divine "OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD." law, CHAPTER VII. KINDNESS AND IGNORANCE. "God loves from whole to parts; but human soul Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest, POPE'S ESSAY ON MAN. WE may take a step still lower in life, and with safety affirm that the law of kindness will produce the most powerful and enduring obedience from the enslaved son of Africa, towards the master who governs him. Though the Africans have been degraded for ages, and bound down in ignorance—so much so, that many persons have imbibed the erroneous notion that they are incapable of attaining much advance in knowledge, even after a constant training of |