the best of them were pardoned every month to make way for new convicts. This defect has since been remedied by the erection of a large bridewell in the city of New York, and a state prison at Auburn. These are said, by the governor, in his last speech to the Legislature, to be in an excellent condition. Another state prison is now erecting at Sing-sing, in Westchester county. Pennsylvania, also, as we have already observed, is supplying the want of suitable buildings, by the penitentiaries now erecting at Pittsburg and near Philadelphia. These two states have set a noble example to the rest of the Union. In both of them, the system was once fairly tried, with the best results; and their late efforts to restore its purity, and afford means for its operation, prove their conviction of its usefulness. Their example is most encouraging. It shows that the system is most valued where it is best known. We hope that the other states, and our own among the rest, will be roused to corresponding exertions. Wherever the system is pursued steadily, according to the principles which experience has shown to be correct, there can be little doubt of its success. By success, we do not mean that all crimes will be prevented, nor all prisoners reformed; but that enough will be effected to justify the labour expended. The indulgence of extravagant expectations on this point, has been productive of much disappointment; and, what is worse, has rendered men sceptical as to the real advantages of the plan, and relaxed their efforts for its regulation and improvement. It is not contended that it is perfect, but only that it is much superior to the old mode of punishment, and affords the best means at present in our power for the prevention of crime. To effect this object, the old system relied simply on the principle of terror, the modern adds that of the criminal's reformation. And the same means which are used to restore him to virtue, are made instrumental in deterring others from offending. Confinement and hard labour are substituted in the room of death, scourging, branding, and mutilation. And it can hardly be doubted, that the change is for the better, even though we look no farther than to the relative influence of the two modes of punishment, in deterring from crime. As to the punishment of death, it is so abhorrent to the feelings of our community, and consequently the chance of escape, from the scrupulosity of courts, juries, and witnesses is so great, that we cannot believe the fear of it would operate so powerfully, as the certainty of a tedious confinement on reasonable proof of guilt. And as to the other painful and ignominious punishments which we have mentioned, we would

remark, that a criminal is generally a man of unbridled passions, and little sense of character. Pain and shame are less dreadful to him than restraint. His reckless habits generate a brutal hardihood, which bids defiance to corporal punishment, and depriving him of character render him insensible to shame. But restraint he most cordially hates and dreads. The want of selfcontrol impels him to the commission of crime. And this impulse will be most effectually checked by the prospect of confinement and strict discipline.

But greater efficacy in the prevention of crime is by no means the only advantage attending the penitentiary system. It prevents the growth of that savage callousness among the lower classes, which springs from the frequent sight of public executions and corporal punishments. By confining the offender, it relieves society from the fear of his depredations and the pollution of his example; while the old system would have turned him loose, rendered doubly ferocious by the smart of bodily pain. It compels him to labour for his own support, instead of preying upon the spoils of his fellow men, and offers him the means of reformation, which, if properly applied, can hardly fail, in a majority of cases, of dismissing him a better man, than when he entered the prison. It may easily be shown, too, that this system produces a great saving of expense to the public. Our state prison, this last year, has supported itself, and left a balance of more than ten thousand dollars in favour of the commonwealth. And the state prison in the city of New York, Governor Clinton observes, in his last speech to the Legislature, would, probably, under judicious management, pay all its own expenses.

But, perhaps, it may be said, that this great amount of productive labour can be attained only by a departure from the strict discipline of a penitentiary. Be it so. The illustration is not

essential to our argument. We maintain, that if the public were to pay the whole expense of the prisoners' support, still they would be great gainers in a pecuniary view. It has been truly said, that one thief out of prison costs the community more than ten within it. It is stated in the North American Review for April, 1820, that "in the town of Boston, which is as well governed, and as sharply watched as any city in the Union, it is supposed there are two thousand men and women, who live by profligacy, fraud, and felony; and that they obtain, in one way or another, at least one dollar per day each, making, in the whole, the enormous sum of seven hundred and thirty thousand dollars per annum, the twentieth part of which could be made to support the whole of them in the state prison at Charlestown."

It can hardly be denied then, that the advantages attending the penitentiary system are great. But it is vain to think of securing them without a steady adherence to its principles. Prisons must be erected of sufficient size and proper construction, to allow of the necessary separation of the convicts, during the hours of labour and repose. They must be properly prisons, places of punishment and not manufactories. The main object should not be to make the criminals pay the expense of their support, but the penalty of their crimes. The name of penitentiaries should be indicative of their character. The discipline should be such, as to make the prisoner heartily repent, that he ever committed the offence which subjected him to its rigours. But its strictness will necessarily be relaxed, and a proper separation of the convicts prevented, if the first object attended to, is to induce and enable them to make the most profitable use of their mechanical skill. Another requisite is, that the amount of punishment should be certain. The power of pardoning should be very sparingly exercised. Men should not enter prison, with the hope, that a short period of pretended reformation will strike off years from the term of their confinement.

The state of the county gaols is a most serious obstacle in the way of any system which aims at the diminution of crime. The same indiscriminate mixture prevails in them, which has proved to be so noxious in our state penitentiaries. The convict who is undergoing the sentence of the law, and the accused who are waiting for trial, are allowed to associate with one another, and, in many instances, with the debtors. No employment is furnished, and gambling and drinking are tolerated. So that they prove, as might be expected, schools of vice, and their inmates are soon qualified for admission into the state prisons. When proper measures are taken for their reformation, when the principles of the penitentiary system are strictly pursued in our state prisons, then we may hope to witness a diminution in the number of offences; but till then, they will go on steadily increasing with the increase of our wealth and population.

In the observations which have been made, we have considered confinement, with hard labour and the classification of offenders, according to their different degrees of guilt, as the principles of the penitentiary system. For they have hitherto been its distinguishing characteristics. Lately, however, an opinion has prevailed in Pennsylvania, that solitary confinement without employment has superior advantages. And the experiment is to be tried in the prison now erecting near Philadelphia. We are not

sufficiently acquainted with the details of the plan to form any judgment as to its probable effects. The principal objections seem to be, the danger of producing extreme depression of spirits, and even derangement of mind, by an injudicious excess in the degree of punishment, and the expense of supporting the establishment without any aid from the criminal's labour. If properly managed, it seems likely to become an effectual means of punishment and reformation. It has long been used in prisons, as a means of keeping order and subduing refractory spirits. It appears to us doubtful, however, whether it will prove superior to the former system. That was productive of striking advantages, while the practice accorded with the theory, in the hands of its beneficent founders. It has failed, because it has degenerated, and the reformed system may experience the same fate.

MISCELLANY.

IT

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE.

(Concluded from page 151.)

may not be uninteresting to notice some of the causes which have led to this neglect of the early education of children in the import and use of language.

Among these, the difficulty of descending to the true simplicity of the subject is not the least. How few persons of well cultivated minds know how to talk to children. Progress in knowledge depends very much on the power of generalization, and this power, after having been long in exercise, begets modes of thinking and of expression which are far beyond the reach of the infantile mind, that attends mostly to particulars. "Honesty is the best policy" is a proverb, which we, who have acquired maturity of thought and of language, readily comprehend. But what a number of particulars are involved in this short sentence. Follow out the trains of thought which it will, on a little reflection, produce, and see through what a wide field of action and events and circumstances they lead. The child's mind must pass through all or some of these rains of thought before it can arrive at the meaning of the proverb. To excite them, by a proper induction of particulars, is the difficulty vhich, strange as it may seem, even the philosopher is often at a ss how to overcome. To do this he must for the moment lay ide all the loftiness of thought and splendour of imagination and

scope of language, to which he has long been accustomed, and go back to the dawn of his now mighty intellect, and become again a little child; a task of no easy accomplishment; a talent which comparatively but few of the higher order of minds possess.

To this intrinsic difficulty of the subject may be added its apparent lowliness. To prattle and play with children serves very well to fill up a vacant hour; nay, to the parent it may afford one of the sweetest enjoyments of life. But seriously to exercise all the patience and perseverance which are necessary to carry these plans into effect, this seems too humble an employment for those who have long been engaged in the profound labours of science, the fascinating pleasures of taste, the elaborate performances of art, or the weighty business and projects of human affairs. And yet in truth what occupation can be a nobler one, than to analyze the first principles of the human mind; to divine and prosecute the best modes of planting and nurturing the seeds of thought, of cherishing and unfolding the buds of genius; of expanding and leading to maturity those intellectual fruits which the frost of death withers; but which are to bloom undecaying through the spring-time of eternity.

Another obstacle in the way of promoting any reform in the early education of youth in language, is, the popular objection, that nature herself has pointed out the best mode; that art cannot mend it; that children will take their own way in learning the elements of speech; and that it does no good to attempt to hasten to maturity, what must of necessity be gradual in its growth. But you do not leave nature to do her own work. You do not let your children rise to manhood like the forest-tree. You pursue modes of instruction; you give them example; you lead them by the force of imitation to the use of language as yourself and others around them use it; you even go so far as to send them to school at a very early age, if for no other purpose at least to save yourself some care and trouble. Now the true question is, not whether nothing or something shall be done, but whether what is done is susceptible of no improvement. There is a mode of teaching children language, a very old and almost universal mode; you have carelessly adopted it; are you sure there cannot be devised a better mode? Is human invention, which is now astonishing the world with its discoveries in almost every other field of human effort, to be considered absolutely impotent and useless in that of education? Will fathers take more pains with their grounds than with their children, and devote more time and research to know how to make their orchard-trees yield a few more and fairer apples, than to train up the "olive plants which are around their table" to the production of richer and more abundant fruit! Will philosophers subject matter to all possible varieties of forms and combinations, in order to elicit some new process of its motion or action for the temporal