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months feel not the least desire for ardent spirits, who are yet periodically drunkards. Some, likewise, are entirely deranged by a single glass of spirits. And there are those, who are recognised as drunkards, but who are never known to be intemperate, except under the pressure of some calamity, or trouble. Is it just, then, or is it wise, to imprison the intemperate with the lascivious, and with thieves? I cannot here allow myself the space which is required, for a full expression of my views upon this subject. But I could not pass the subject, without calling attention to it. Am I, however, asked, what then shall we do with the common drunkard? I would reply, that I feel, as strongly as any one can, the difficulties of the question. I would however say, that if a law should be passed, authorising his committal to the House of Industry, and for a term long enough to produce important changes both in his body and his mind, a considerable number at least might thus be saved from the influences of the House of Correction. But send an intemperate man, or woman,—I mean one whose only legal offence is intemperance, as often as you will, to this prison, and you will recover neither of them to sobriety; though, perchance, you may cause them both to be initiated into the arts of dishonesty, or perhaps cause a still deeper pollution to be extended to the soul. But my object is, to exhibit facts; and here, therefore, I must leave this topie.

With the additional knowledge which is furnished by the tabular views I have given, let us again enter the women's apartments in the House of Correction. We pass by the lower story of this building, pausing only for a moment to remember the fact stated in the second Table,

that fiftyeight lunatics have been sentenced to this prison!!! We ascend to the stories above, and there we find from sixty to ninety females, from the ages of 16 or 17, to 50 years, confined as 'common drunkards,'' wanton and lascivious,' 'pilferers,' 'keepers of disorderly houses,' &c. There are from two or three, to five and six in a room; and the same room contains, or often may contain, one of each of these offenders. In the same room may be, and sometimes must be, one who has just fallen into sin,—and this may be the sin of pilfering, the habitual drunkard, perhaps the practised thief, and the old 'keeper,' who has pandered to the lusts of others, till she has extinguished, as far as may be, every spark of moral feeling in her soul. Here are wives and mothers,-I have seen four mothers in one room, each with an infant in her arms,-with, perhaps, an equal number who are unmarried. During the day, these females are in the charge of two very respectable and worthy matrons, who do what they can to exert a useful influence on the minds of the prisoners. But even these matrons acknowledge, that the whole of this influence is, a mere general restraint of the prisoners from gross improprieties. From five o'clock in the afternoon, at this season, till eight in the morning, these females are locked in their rooms; and here they are at liberty to say, and to do, what they will. Nor is it alone with the inmates of their rooms, that they can hold - free conversation. From the apertures in the doors, which are opposite to each other, they can communicate with those in other rooms that are near to them, almost as easily as with those enclosed within the same walls. I do not indeed believe half of what these females have

told me. But if far less than half of it be true, this prison is a school of sin, in which the dullest in the work of iniquity may soon acquire a marvellous skill; and in which even those, if such at any time are sent to it, who had begun to feel a hearty sorrow for their sin, and who might, by judicious treatment, have been recovered to virtue, will be made for life the willing slaves of evil. Girls of sixteen years old have been sent to this prison for pilfering, who, within the month or two for which they were committed, have obtained the most accurate knowledge of the various haunts of lewdness in the city; have become the intimates of those, who were utterly abandoned; have learned the names of those on whom they might depend for the wages of guilt; have acquired the whole vocabulary of profligacy; and in mind, in purpose, in will, even before the expiration of the time of their confinement, have become as guilty as their associates. This is a sufficiently revolting view of the institution; and, had we nothing more to say of it, this view of it alone should awaken our whole community to the inquiry, is there no possible remedy for all this evil?

But the question, of the moral influence of this prison, is not to be decided alone by this reference to its obvious, and apparently necessary tendencies. I have been accustomed to visit it for the last three years, and I have not known one instance of the permanent reformation of one of its inmates. I have inquired, also, of the overseers, and of the matrons, whether they have known one to be reclaimed, of all who have been sent here; and their answer is, not one. There is, to be sure, a religious service here on Sunday; and two or three pious ladies pass an hour or

two, twice in a week, in religious conversation with the female prisoners. To these ladies, I doubt not, many confessions are made; and I, too, have heard not a few professions of penitence, and promises of amendment. But how can it be, that any corrective influence should be exerted here? I have again and again been told, and I believe it is true, that there is far more mockery of all that concerns duty and religion, in the hours which these females pass in their rooms at night, than there is of acknowledgment of wrong, or of the expression of purposes of a better life. We are not indeed to conceive, that all these female convicts are equally lost to all sense of duty and virtue. Wives and mothers are here for intemperance, or perhaps for theft, who are not otherwise comparatively corrupt; and whose greatest injury received from their associates is, an increased insensibility of the guilt of the conduct, for which they have been imprisoned. But this is an evil, with this class, which is almost, if not wholly, without an exception. The entrance of a new convict awakens the curiosity of all, to know who she is, and why she has been brought there; and, as each one is anxious to give as favorable an impression as she can of herself, the first work of every convict, on entering this prison, is, self-justification. And each one believes, or seems to believe, the story of the other, as the readiest means of securing a belief of her own. Each gives to the rest a history of her life, in her own way; and with unsparing comments on all, whom she is disposed to call her enemies, and persecu. tors. With whatever convictions of guilt, therefore, they may enter the prison, each seems, in a few days, to be convinced of her innocence. Or, if some are brought,

by kind and gentle appeals to conscience, to a confession of some fault in the case for which they have been punished, and a few may even be free and full in confession, in a single evening more may be done, and more is done, in their private intercourse, to exasperate their minds towards those who are without, and to deaden their sen sibility to their own guilt, than can be done in a week for their moral restoration. I believe, therefore, that the instance is not to be adduced, in which even a female drunkard, after returning from this prison to her friends, has not been found to be more obdurately given up to her sin, than before she went there. And of those more profligate, sunk deeper in iniquity than the drunkard,that not one of any age, except the very small number who have been persuaded to be transferred from the prison to the Refuge,' has failed to proceed immediately or within a very short time, to the resorts of profligacy, crime and misery.

From the women's prison in the House of Correction, we return to that which is appropriated for the men. This, it will be remembered, is the middle story of the building, the upper story of which contains the apartments for the debtors in the Common Jail; and the lower, the apartments for criminals, and for those committed for trial. In this middle story, I have said, are nine rooms. In each of these rooms are lodged, from five or six, to eight or nine convicts. At eight o'clock in the morning, at this season of the year, they are turned out into the yard for labour; and with the exception of an hour at noon, they are employed, till sunset, in breaking stones, for Macadamizing our streets. This is well. In the yard is a very commodious building, which was erect

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