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Vaux.) 652 [June 20, 
estant Episcopal Church, as president of this society, addressed the citizens 
of Philadelphia for aid—aid for a practical benevolence which found the 
evil, and undertook to apply the remedy. It was not humanitarianism— 
that restless agitation of the sympathies of try-to do-something people, 
which usually is converted into mist. 
The criminal laws from 1718 to 1794 were ametiorated. In 1718 ten 
crimes were capital. On the 15th of September, 1786, by the influence of 
an already developed interest, an act of Assembly was passed to markedly 
modify the criminal code of the province. This was the first legislative 
reform. It substituted for robbery, burglary, and the crimes against 
nature, imprisonment at hard labor, for the death penalty. On the 27th 
of March, 1789, this first act was amended. The act of April 5th, 1790, 
repealed both acts, and the act of 1794 made murder only, a capital crime. 
No important legislation, as to the criminal code, occurred from 1821 to 
1860, 
The first Constitution of the State in 1776, chapter 2, section 28, pro- 
vided ‘‘ That punishments be made in some cases less sanguinary ;’’ and 
by section 39, hard labor in prisons be substituted. In 1786 some of these 
provisions were enforced. ‘‘Penn’s Great Law’ of 1682, enacted for his 
province, 10th section, provided that ‘all prisons shall be workshops for 
felons, vagrants, and loose and idle persons.’’ Prior to the Revolution 
these laws were generally disregarded. 
From Mr, Richard Wistar’s first efforts in 1775, till April 5th, 1794, 
slow but effective measures were taken to reform the penal laws and the 
prison system of Pennsylvania. They were the outcome of the earliest 
practical thoughts on this subject in America, 
It is to be noticed that in Italy, 1718, the Hospital of St. Michael was 
founded, and there was first introduced in Europe reforms in prison dis- 
cipline, It was an experiment suggested by philosophy and benevolence, 
and remained for nearly a century the only like instance on that continent, 
It was a successful undertaking. Parenthetically it may be said, with- 
out too broad an assertion that, so far as is known, the present congregate 
prisons of the United States in some features are copies of the St. Michael, 
originated one hundred and sixty-six years ago. 
In 1718, February 22d, a law was passed for erecting houses of correc- 
tion and work-houses in the Province of Pennsylvania, While this law 
of 1718 authorized these establishments, they were intended simply as 
receptacles for vagrants and incapables. 
In 1775 a work appeared on “The State of Prisons in England and 
Wales,’’ which first directed the attention of the English people to the 
subject of the then terrible condition of these institutions. 
During this progress of a thoughtful investigation into the needed reform 
of existing methods of prison management, it became apparent to those in 
Philadelphia engaged in the examination, that a radical change in both the 
crime code, and the punishment of convicts was the only possible relief 
for the abuses and miseries existing in the prisons. ‘The crime code was 
