SOLON ROBINSON, 1842 315 



depend upon it villains would then be punished, and dread 

 your State prisons, which as now conducted should be 

 rather called State asylums. Then tax the honest, labor- 

 ing part of the community to pay for punishing crimi- 

 nals, and my word for it they will pay the tax more 

 cheerfully than they now look upon this system of 

 abominable State monopoly, and convict competition with 

 all the mechanical trades. 



Depraved indeed must be that mind, and anti-Ameri- 

 can that heart, that could wish to see the present system 

 entailed upon us, merely because a few dollars were 

 brought directly into the State treasury, by the labor of 

 convicts, when if the whole field was thrown open to the 

 competition of unpunished labor, the great body politic 

 would be made ten times richer, and the guilty would be 

 really punished. 



Gentlemen of the Nashville Mechanic's Association, 

 friends and brothers ! You have opened a battery upon 

 this worst of all monopolies that afflicts and disgraces 

 our common country, and degrades the honest artizan 

 below the level of "a penitentiary gentleman boarder;" 

 and I beseech you never to spike your guns or pull down 

 your flag of justice, till you have driven every felon to 

 his solitary cell, and cast out the "legion of devils," in 

 the shape of mechanical implements, in the great State 

 manufactory, where criminals are punished with labor, 

 and you are disgraced by being placed in competition 

 with "villains, thieves and murderers." x 



Let your watchword be, "We can, we must, we WILL, 

 elevate our character and standing in society," and you 

 shall not lack, at least one volunteer, while the ability to 

 wield a pen remains with your humble servant and 

 friend, 



Solon Robinson. 



Lake Court House, Ind., March 1842. 



1 For comment on this article see the Agriculturist, 3:136-37, 

 157-58 (June, July, 1842). 



