SOLON ROBINSON, 1842 313 



The Penitentiary System of the U. States. 



[Nashville Agriculturist, 3:67; Mar., 1842] 



[March ?, 1842] 

 To the Editors of the Tennessee State Agriculturist: 1 



Gentlemen : — Neither you nor your readers should 

 turn away from the caption of this article, under the 

 impression that it is not an Agricultural subject, and 

 therefore inappropriate to your pages, or because it 

 comes from one without the borders of Tennessee, and to 

 you and your readers a stranger. 



My present ideas are awakened by the remarks of Mr. 

 Kezer 2 in your January No., where he calls attention to 

 the fact of the State "collecting all the rascals, thieves, 

 villains and murderers, that come within our borders;" 

 (he should have added, provided they do not escape the 

 penalty of the law, through the influence of money, and 

 subtle technicalities of a Statute that is as a sealed book 

 to the common class of community,) "placing them in a 

 large manufactory, supported in part by the very taxes 

 wrung from honest labor." 



If the latter part of this assertion is true in regard to 

 Tennessee, it is not in many other States, for there, the 

 whole object, end and aim, of the penitentiary system, 



1 The Agriculturist was begun in 1840 and continued until Au- 

 gust 1, 1846. Tolbert Fanning, editor, 1840-1844, was interested 

 in agricultural advancement and imported some of the best breeds 

 of stock. In 1843 he opened an agricultural school on his farm 

 near Nashville which was the forerunner of Franklin College, 

 chartered in 1844. Among contributors to the Agriculturist were 

 Dr. John Shelby, for whom Shelby Medical College was named, 

 and Dr. Gerard Troost, a native of Holland, who spent a year at 

 New Harmony before going to Nashville in 1827. He was pro- 

 fessor of chemistry and geology at the University of Nashville, 

 1828-1850. Dictionary of American Biography, 6:268-69; Clayton, 

 W. W., History of Davidson County, Tennessee . . ., 231, 285 

 (Philadelphia, 1880) ; Tennessee Historical Magazine, 2d series, 

 3:3-19. 



3 T. Kezer, Esq., president of the Nashville, Tennessee, Mechan- 

 ics' Association. A practical mechanic interested in lecturing and 

 raising the standard of regard for mechanics as a profession. 



