PRISONERS, 



303 



keepers. They were stripped of everything,— 

 deprived of all motive to exertion, — occasionally 

 put to the torture, to confess imaginary crimes, — 

 and in all the prisons corporal punishment was al- 

 lowed. Such was the state of the prisons all over 

 South America during the dominion of the Span- 

 iards. A Chilian writer, since the Revolution, 

 describes with great energy the pernicious effects 

 of this system in that country. ' Among us,' he 

 says, ^ a man was imprisoned, not that he might 

 be improved, but that he might be made to suffer, 

 — not that he should work, but that he should 

 learn idleness,— not as a useful warning to others, 

 but to shock their feelings. On visiting a prison, 

 we beheld several hundreds of men in rags, or en- 

 tirely naked, — their countenances withered away, 

 so that they were more like spectres in chains 

 than men : they trembled at the presence of the 

 insolent alguazil, who struck and insulted them. 

 We examined the food of these miserable wretch- 

 es, worn to skeletons, and it proved such as the 

 lowest beggar in the streets would have rejected 

 with disgust.*"' 



In Lima, where the population was upwards of 



