NOTE ON PENITENTIARIES. 183 



solitary confinement, on the ground floor. Criminals sentenced to imprisonment had hereto- 

 fore been simply confined in the jails of the counties in which they were convicted. The 

 law of 1796 effected at the same time an important amelioration in our criminal code. Pre- 

 viously to that period there were no less than sixteen species of crime punishable with death. 

 Corporeal punishment was used, and in many cases felonies which were not capital on their 

 first, became so on tlicir second commission. In fourteen of these offences, imprisonment for 

 life, or for shorter periods, was substituted for the capital penalty, which was only retained 

 for treason and murder. The model afforded by the Philadelphia and New-York prisons was 

 soon successively imitated by other states. The state prison at Richmond, Virginia, was 

 erected in 1800 ; that at Windsor, Vermont, in 1808 ; at Baltimore, Maryland, in 1811 ; at 

 Concord, New-Hampshire, in 1812; and at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1816. 



But this system, the object of so much sanguine hope to its philanthropic projectors, was 

 no where crowned with success. It is in the state of New-York in particular, tliat we are 

 here to regard its operation. The great body of the convicts were thrown together in the 

 prison, in numbers which soon became improperly crowded, and were kept at work through 

 the day. The only punishment which their keepers had a right to inflict for violations of the 

 discipline, was solitary confinement with bread and water. A small proportion of them, who 

 before the reform of the penal laws would have been sentenced to death, were confined in 

 perpetual solitude, unrelieved by the solace of labor. The system was found not only totally 

 ineffective to reform, but on the contrary most perniciously active to corrupt and to harden. It 

 was an enormous drain on the public treasury. It soon ceased to have any terrors for the 

 depraved ; while to young offenders thrown for the first time into the midst of the polluted 

 atmosphere and the fatal society assembled in the rooms of the prison, it was certain and irre- 

 coverable ruin. And partly from the increase of population, but in probably a still greater 

 degree from the tendency of the system itself to manufacture new rogues and to continue old 

 ones, it became so overstocked, as soon to make it necessary annually to pardon out large 

 numbers of offenders for no other reason than to accommodate the reception of the fresh in- 

 flux. Though adapted to the suitable accommodation of not more than between three and four 

 hundred, it was at times occupied by upward of seven hundred — crowded and herded to- 

 gether beyond any possibility of proper classification. A report made to the legislature in 

 1817, by commissioners appointed to examine into the subject, stated that, within a period of five 

 years, 740 had been pardoned, while only 77 had been discharged by the expiration of their 

 sentences. In the Uvo years, 1816 and 1817, the number of pardons was 573. A report 

 made to the senate in 1822, by the Hon. Samuel Miles Hopkins, states the whole number of 

 convicts committed since 1796 to have been .5,069, of which number tlicre had been pardoned 

 not less than 2,819. The necessary effect of such a system to promote the multiplication of 

 crime, need scarcely be adverted to. It will be sufEcicnt to state, that of twenty-tlu-ee convicted 

 of second and third offences in the year 1815, twenty had been previously pardoned, and only 

 three discharged by the ordinary course of law. The average number of deaths was about 

 seven per cent. Fires and insurrections were of not unfrequent occurrence. 



