the work of improvement. But reception, punishment, detention, all are but parts of the work of improvement, and really are of little avail unless they be the means, and successful means, of producing that improvement.

How may the offender be kept from the opportunity of adding to his offences if he desires to increase his guilt?

A very simple and direct answer to that question is presented. He certainly is not likely to add to his offences, though he may desire to increase his guilt, if he be kept safely locked in the cell of a well-constructed prison that is well guarded, and it may be added that people once thought, and even now, in some places, think that such a disposition of the prisoner is the only sure way to prevent his repetition of crime, that is while he is the occupant of the cell.

We may, as a general rule, believe, if the pardoning power is not exercised and escape is prevented, that society will be safe from the depredations of the convicted felon till the term of his sentence shall have expired, and in that regard prisons and penitentiaries are excellent institutions.

We then have an answer to the question how may the prisoner be kept from the opportunity of adding to his offences. Of course the offences include only those against society. Shut up the evil-minded person as closely as possible, and exclude him from all intercourse with his kind, and he may sin more than when he is in the act of crime outside the prison.

The questions as to the safety of society seem to connect themselves with some others. We answer generally that the mere seclusion of the culprit, even if he

have a plenty of work, cannot be regarded as much of a means to insure society against his depredations after the close of his term of imprisonment. Solitude is good for a good man, and sometimes is a means of producing good resolves and devising means for their fulfilment, if there is much moral principle uncontaminated. Men get into prison sometimes and work out long sentences, when apparently their moral powers are uninjured beyond the mere offence for which they are suffering. Such persons are benefited by solitude, and often, too, benefit others with whom they may be associated. But absolute solitude, solitude unbroken by friendly calls and good advice, is not always a means of improving the bad; it hardens dislike into hatred. Solitary prisoners feel shut out from all mankind, and hence they naturally cultivate and fix a hatred for all their kind, a hatred not likely to be diminished, excepting towards those who may, on their release, be associated with them in the work of mischief, for which solitude has sharpened their intellects and matured their plans. And social confinement is even worse; it is likely, as all experience teaches, to weaken the good resolves of the good and to perfect the destruction of the morals of those who have been only partially tainted.

For the bad, the confirmed bad, associate imprisonment enables the utterly depraved to deprave his halfdepraved companion, and more plans of house-breaking, and felonies of like character, have been proposed, considered, debated and perfected in a congregate prison than were ever matured in any club or conclave of free, professed rogues. And what is more, schemes of felonies.

concocted in prisons are much more successful than those planned abroad. In prison there is time to think of the movement, to compare experiences, to weigh well the chances of success, and to consider the best means and instruments, and the mode of securing safety if successful, or of covering the retreat if defeated.

Other people find their way into prisons and penitentiaries for small offences, which seem very small, very inefficient exponents of the utter corruption of their morals. We cannot always judge of the man by the particular crime for which, as a convict, he is suffering.

The question, "How may the felon be improved in his morals and made a better man ?" includes the others, especially if we admit what all who act towards the improvement of prisoners must admit, that if nothing but the vengeance of the law, the punishment of crime, is the end of imprisonment, then the surer and the severer the punishment the better.

How may the convict be improved?

The convict is a human being, and has a claim as such upon humanity. If Terrence was right when he said "I am a man, and nothing that concerns humanity is alien to my breast," then the convict may exclaim, “I also am a man, and as the alleviation of my condition. concerns humanity, it should not be alien to the breast of my fellow-man."

Apothegms sometimes acquire distinctiveness by being viewed in their subjective as well as in their objective bearings. The duty to help seems almost to admit a right to ask. Common sense will admit that where there

is a duty, or even a desire to do good, that duty can be discharged or that desire can be fully gratified only by the selection and use of the best means to effect the proposed good ends.

For a system of prison discipline, we know of none ever practised or proposed that can be favorably compared with what is called "the Pennsylvania system," that of "separate confinement" of the prisoner, his utter exclusion from intercourse with and even the sight of, any other convict in the same prison. This is the system adopted and practised in the Eastern Penitentiary of this State.

We are careful to note here that this Pennsylvania system is that of SEPARATE not SOLITARY confinement. The criminal law of the State has in it the word "solitary" ("separate and solitary") confinement, and such was, perhaps, the intention of those who suggested that law, but the intention of the Court, when it sentences a convict to the Penitentiary, is now not solitary confinement, the exclusion of all persons from intercourse with the sentenced, but separate confinement, that is, the entire, perfect separation, during his whole confinement, of the convict from intercourse with and the sight of his fellow-prisoner, but his frequent intercourse with the proper members of his own family, his conversation with his keepers, his enjoyment of the lessons of the "moral instructor," and the weekly, or, if convenient to them, then the daily ministrations of the benevolent members and representatives of the "Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons."

That kind of imprisonment (the exact kind at the

Eastern Penitentiary) cannot certainly be regarded as "SOLITARY confinement."

That kind of imprisonment is what we wish to be regarded as the system which does more for the improvement of the convict than any or all others ever adopted.

The separate system is greatly dependent for success in its application upon the plans, form, division and construction of the prison, so that there shall be no intercourse among prisoners, no sight of each other obtained, while, at the same time, there shall be no deprivation that shall injure the health or weaken the intellect beyond what exclusion from the world does in most cases produce.

All these requisites are found in the Eastern Penitentiary in this city, "requisites of construction and administration."

The importance of construction to a proper administration of the affairs of a prison, is exhibited in the reports of prison government abroad, where resorts to various expedients show that the system cannot well be carried out, in the existing prisons. A large portion of the prisons abroad are, or were till very recently, dilapidated castles-vacated donjons, convents, and old buildings, never constructed for prison purposes, or if for prison purposes, then only with a view of gratifying a cruel disposition-of revenging real or fancied wrongs

-or disposing of some whose presence abroad hindered the gratification of ambitious wishes. In some of these, solitary confinement was possible-but separate confinement, as practised in the Eastern Penitentiary, could