Part 5

That the evil is a very great one no one can doubt. It amounts to a positive insecurity of life and property which is disgraceful in the richest, most civilized, most complicated society on earth. At this moment, the number living by depredation and outrage, and known to belong to the criminal class, is estimated to reach in the United Kingdom to 130,000. In this year, 1863, a considerable portion of the respectable inhabitants of London are reduced to carry concealed weapons for their own defence; and this from no groundless apprehensions, but because they _may_ any day be called upon to use them, and often _are_. We annually commit to, and liberate from, our county jails in England and Wales, at least 130,000 offenders, a very large proportion, if not the majority, of whom are habitual pilferers, burglars, or in other ways violators of the law, and recognized preyers upon the industrious and peaceful part of the community. Besides these, we turn loose every year, at the expiration of their sentence of penal servitude, or shortly before its expiration, 3000 convicts, nearly all of whom are professional, finished, hardened offenders, and all of whom, with scarcely any exceptions worth naming, have been confined for crimes in which ruffianism and dishonesty were combined. Of these 3000, at least 2500 on an average are liberated in this country, and almost invariably go back to their evil courses, more vicious, more skillful, more irreclaimable than ever. Many of them have been convicted several times, never dream of adopting an honest mode of life, and could not do so if they wished. In a word, we have among us an army--very active, very well trained, tolerably organized, very resolute, and in part very desperate--of internecine enemies and spoliators, as numerous as the troops of most European kingdoms, and more numerous than the military and police forces in our own country combined. This is the evil we have to deal with. It is an evil, in some degree and in some form, incidental to every large and populous community; but the form and degree depend entirely on our own management. We may reduce it to the minimum which human temptation to wrong and the imperfection of human powers of repression must always leave, a minimum which would be seldom heard of and little felt, and which should be always tending to decrease. Or we may suffer it, as we are in a fair way to do now, to augment and intensify year by year till it reaches the maximum compatible with a comfortable existence and a secure civilization. Now what we affirm is, that, for the height to which it has reached at the present moment, we have only ourselves to thank. For a long time back, in spite of ceaseless warning, and ignoring all the lessons of experience, physiology, and common sense, we have done little to repress crime and much to encourage it. Our plans of dealing with it have been based upon no clear understanding and no settled principle; the changes we have introduced from time to time, have been either inconsistent _nibblings_ or mutually destructive fluctuations; we have neither aimed at felling the tree, nor at cutting off the nourishment from its roots; we have simply pruned the branches, and contented ourselves with wondering that it should flourish still. We believe that all this is remediable still, though the mischief has assumed such vast dimensions; but that which is imperatively needed before we can hope to remedy it is, that we should boldly face all patent facts; that we should courageously accept all undeniable conclusions from those facts; that we should at once and for ever place sentiment under the control and supremacy of sense; that no inconvenience should drive us to do injustice to others; and that no expense should make us shrink from doing justice to ourselves.

Criminals, the moment we look at them closely and analytically, divide themselves into two distinct categories--the casual and the habitual. Many of the more trifling, and some of the most heinous offenders, belong to the former class. Temptation there will always be; and this will be liable to increase with the progress and complexity of civilization, as long as some are poor and some are rich, and as long as the appliances of wealth are spread out in the sight of the struggling and needy. Defective moral natures there will always be--natures weak to resist and prone to fall; but these, it is to be hoped, will diminish as comfort and instruction penetrate among the masses. Passions will always exist among all ranks, and passions will occasionally burst through the restraints of morality and law. Boys will thieve who are no worse than idle, neglected, and ill-trained. Poor men, who are habitually respectable, will steal under circumstances of sudden and desperate necessity. Clerks will occasionally forge or rob to avert exposure, to meet debt, or to purchase vicious pleasures. Any man, in any rank, of violent or malignant temper and ill-disciplined mind, may, in a moment of provocation or of fury, be guilty of manslaughter; or, if he be thoroughly bad and licentious, may outrage a defenceless woman, or murder one whom he hates, or whose possession he desires. Crimes and criminals of this sort, however, are not those that embarrass our police, and perplex our rulers and philosophers; they do not constitute the social problem we have to solve. They are the casual outbreaks of human vice and passion, incidental to all stages and forms of civilization, and incurable by any. But besides and independent of these cases, we have among us a large population, numbered by thousands and tens of thousands, who _live by_ outrage and depredation; to whom crime is an employment and _profession_; who are brought up to it; who have no other teaching, no other vocation, no other resource; to whom the respectable and industrious portion of society is the oyster they have to open; who prey upon the community, and sometimes hate it also. They are simply the enemies of society; and the protection of society against them constitutes precisely the difficulty which at this moment our thinkers have to master, and the duty which our rulers have to discharge.

Now we do not say that the obstacles and embarrassments with which the solution of the problem is surrounded are not actually great, because they are. But the problem itself is neither difficult nor obscure, as soon as we take pains to place before ourselves distinctly its precise nature and conditions. The thing to be done is simple enough; the impediments in the way of doing it are nearly all of our own creation, arising partly out of ignorance or thoughtlessness, and partly out of willfulness; partly because we have not fully understood what we had to do, and partly because we have been unwilling to accept the consequences and incur the annoyance and expense of doing it. Divested of all complications, our task is to _defend ourselves_ against the criminal population,--the professional criminals; to guard society against their outrages and depredations in the most prompt, effectual, and enduring fashion we can devise. That is all: we have NOT to _punish_ them; and we shall only confuse our minds and perplex our action if we try to do so. It is the almost universal neglect of this vital distinction, more than any other error, which has led us into such grotesque and inconceivable blunders. _Individuals_ may regard these offenders in any light which harmonizes with their several idiosyncracies. Some may look at them as objects of vengeance; some as objects of compassion; some as subjects of conversion; some as patients to be cured; some as unfortunate lunatics to be carefully and comfortably confined; and there may be much truth in all these different views, and they may be allowed to influence some of the _details_ of the practical treatment of criminals in prison and on their discharge from prison. But _the State_, as we said, has only got to protect the community against them--to regard them as domestic foes, against whom self-defence is legitimate and necessary. The reason why it should not seek to _punish_ them, in the strict and proper meaning of that word, is, that it has not the knowledge requisite for the just discharge of that function. It cannot possibly apportion the penalty it inflicts to the _guilt_ of the offender, which apportionment constitutes the very essence of _punishment_. Neither the wisest judge, nor the most patient and enlightened jury, nor the most omniscient police officer, can do more than form a plausible conjecture as to the _moral criminality_ of any convict; since this, it is obvious, must depend on the organization which he inherited, on the antecedents which have surrounded him from the cradle, on the degree of instruction he has received, on the special nature and _adaptation_ of the temptation, on a multitude of circumstances which we neither can know, nor could estimate if we did. The State, too, is just as incompetent to estimate the severity of the infliction as the guilt of the offence. How is the legislator who awards, or the judge who pronounces, to ascertain the weight and bearing of any given sentence upon any individual culprit? The same penalty which to one man would be almost too lenient for a theft, may, to a differently organized and differently trained offender, be too severe almost for a murder. The educated convict, whose ungoverned passion led him to a heinous but a single crime, would be driven mad by the association and the _entourage_ which the habitual and hardened ruffian would find congenial and even pleasant. Punishment which _retributes_, like vengeance which _repays_, can, by its very term, belong only to that higher intelligence which can estimate aright both the debt to be repaid, and the intrinsic value of the coin in which repayment is awarded.

The thing to be done, then, being ascertained, the next point for consideration is how to do it. Now, society may protect itself against habitual criminals in three ways, separately or in combination. It may deal with him so as to _deter_ him, to _reform_ him, or to _get rid_ of him. It may so arrange and contrive its penalties as to frighten him from bad courses, or to incapacitate him from recurring to them, or to persuade him to amend them. And, putting out of view the very few whom it will or can hang, it has to effect these objects by such secondary punishments as lie within its reach, as the public purse will pay for, and public conscience and feeling will allow the State to inflict.

MEMBERS.

Ashhurst, Lewis R. Kintzing, William F. Armstrong, William Kitchen, James, M. D. Anderson, V. William Kneedler, J. S. Atmore, Frederick B. Knight, Edward C. Knorr, G. Frederick Brown, John A. Klapp, Joseph, M. D. Brown, Frederick Brown, Moses Laing, Henry M. Brown, Thomas Wistar Lambert, John Brown, Abraham C. Landell, Washington J. Brown, N. B. Lathrop, Charles C. Brown, David S. Latimer, Thomas Brown, Joseph D. Leeds, Josiah W. Brown, Benneville D. Lewis, Henry, Jr. Brown, Mary D. Lewis, Edward Bell, John M. D. Lippincott, John Biddle, William Lippincott, Joshua Biddle, John Longstreth, J. Cooke Barton, Isaac Lovering, Joseph S. Burgin, George H., M. D. Lovering, Joseph S., Jr. Bohlen, John Ludwig, William C. Binney, Horace, Jr. Lynch, William Bayard, James Lytle, John J. Beesley, T. E., M. D. Beesley, B. Wistar McCall, Peter Bowen, William E. Meredith, William M. Bettle, Samuel Milliken, George Bettle, William Myers, John B. Baldwin, Matthias W. Morris, Isaac P. Barcroft, Stacy B. Massey, Robert V. Bailey, Joshua L. Maris, John M. Baily, Joel J. Morris, Charles M. Burr, William H. Morris, Wistar Boardman, H. A. Morris, Caspar, M. D. Bunting, Jacob T. Morris, Anthony P. Bacon, Richard W. Morris, Elliston P. Bacon, Josiah Montgomery, Richard R. Brock, Jonathan Mercer, Singleton A. Barclay, Andrew C. Mullen, William J. Brooke, Stephen H. Megarge, Charles Baines, Edward Martin, William Budd, Thomas A. Martin, Abraham Bispham, Samuel McAllister, John, Jr. Broadbent, S. McAllister, John A. Brant, Josiah McAllister, William Y. Beaux, John Adolph Macadam, William R. McAllister, F. H. Corse, J. M., M. D. Marsh, Benjamin V. Cope, Alfred Morton, Samuel C. Cope, M. C. Merrill, William O. B. Cope, Henry Morrell, R. B. Cope, Francis R. Mellor, Thomas Cope, Thomas P. Mitcheson, M. J. Colwell, Stephen Caldwell, James E. Norris, Samuel Caldwell, William Warner Neall, Daniel Cresson, John C. Needles, William N. Claghorn, John W. Nesmith, Alfred Chandler, Joseph R. Nicholson, William Carter, John Neuman, L. C. Carter, John E. Campbell, James R. Ormsby, Henry Comegys, B. B. Orne, Benjamin Childs, George W. Child, H. T., M. D. Purves, William Chance, Jeremiah C. Parrish, William D. Coates, Benjamin Parrish, Joseph, M. D. Chamberlain, Lloyd Poulson, Charles A. Conrad, James M. Perot, William S. Cooke, Jay Perot, Francis Collier, Daniel L. Perot, Charles P. Comly, Franklin A. Perot, T. Morris Patterson, Joseph Demmé, Charles R. Patterson, Morris Ducachet, Henry W. Patterson, William C. Dawson, Mordecai L. Potter, Alonzo, D.D. Dorsey, William Price, Eli K. Dutilh, E. G. Price, Richard Ditzler, William U. Pearsall, Robert Dreer, Ferdinand J. Pitfield, Benjamin H. Dickinson, Mahlon H. Peters, James Davis, R. C. Peterson, Lawrence Derbyshire, Alexander J. Potts, Joseph Derbyshire, John Parry, Samuel Dennis, William H. Palmer, Charles Duane, William Perkins, Henry

Earp, Thomas Quinn, John A. Evans, Charles, M. D. Evans, William, Jr. Richardson, Richard Evans, Robert E. Richardson, William H. Evans, J. Wistar Robins, Thomas Erringer, J. L. Robins, John, Jr. Edwards, William L. Ritter, Abraham, Jr. Elkinton, Joseph Rasin, Warner M. Elkinton, George M. Read, W. H. J. Ellison, John B. Robb, Charles Emlen, Samuel Rehn, William L. Eyre, Edward E. Rutter, Clement S. Eyre, William Ruth, John Erety, George Roberts, Algernon S. Ridgway, Thomas Farnum, John Robinson, Thomas A. Fraley, Frederick Randolph, Philip P. Fullerton, Alex. Rowland, A. G. Farr, John C. Richards, George K. Frazier, John F. Ford, William Smedley, Nathan Ford, John M. Shippen, William, M. D. Furness, William H. Scull, David Field, Charles J. Schaffer, William L. Fox, Henry C. Scattergood, Joseph Franciscus, Albert H. Shannon, Ellwood Funk, Charles W. Sharpless, William P. Simons, George W. Garrett, Thomas C. Smith, Nathan Griffin, E., M. D. Stokes, Shmuel E. Greeves, James R. Shoemaker, Benjamin H. Gilpin, John F. Speakman, Thomas H. Grigg, John Starr, F. Ratchford Gummere, Charles J. Saunders, McPherson Gardiner, Richard, M. D. Stokes, Edward D. Sloan, Samuel Hunt, Uriah Smith, Joseph P. Hockley, John Stone, James N. Holloway, John S. Simes, Samuel Husband, Thomas J. Stuart, George H. Hughes, Joseph B. Stewart, William S. Homer, Henry Stevens, Edwin P. Homer, Benjamin Hancock, Samuel P. Townsend, Edward Hand, James C. Taylor, Franklin Hazeltine, John Taylor, John D. Hastings, Matthew Taylor, George W. Huston, Samuel Trewendt, Theodore Hacker, Morris Tredick, B. T. Hacker, William Thomas, John Hunt, William, M. D. Taber, George Hurley, Aaron A. Troutman, George M. Harbert, Charles Thornley, Joseph H. Thissel, H. N. Ingersoll, Joseph R. Ingram, William Van Pelt, Peter Iungerich, Lewis Vaux, George

Jackson, Charles C. Wharton, Thomas F. Janney, Benjamin S., Jr. Wood, Horatio C. Jeanes, Joshua T. Wood, Richard, Jr. Jenks, William P. Welsh, William Jones, Isaac C. Welsh, Samuel Jones, Jacob P. Welsh, John Jones, Isaac T. Wetherill, John M. Jones, William D. Williamson, Passmore Jones, Justus P. White, John J. Jones, William Pennel Wainwright, William Johnson, Israel H. Wright, Samuel Johnson, Ellwood Wright, Isaac Johnston, Robert S. Willets, Jeremiah Justice, Philip S. Wiegand, John Wilstach, William P. Kaighn, James E. Williamson, Peter Kane, Thomas L. Warner, Redwood F. Kelly, William D. Walton, Coates Kelly, Henry H. Williams, Jacob T. Ketcham, John Wilson, Ellwood, M. D. Kiderlen, William L. J. Woodward, Charles W. Kimber, Thomas Whilldin, Alexander Kingsbury, Charles A., M. D. Kinsey, William Zell, T. Ellwood Kirkpatrick, James A.

LIFE MEMBERS.

ON PAYMENT OF TWENTY DOLLARS AND UPWARDS.

Barclay, James J. Ogden, John M. Bache, Franklin, M. D. Bonsall, Edward H. Perot, Joseph Besson, Charles A. Perkins, Samuel H. Parrish, Dillwyn Cope, Caleb Powers, Thomas H. Potter, Thomas Ellis, Charles Sharpless, Townsend Fotteral, Stephen G. Sharpless, Charles L. Foulke, William P. Sharpless, Samuel J. Steedman, Miss Rosa Hacker, Jeremiah Horton, John Turnpenny, Joseph C. Hollingsworth, Thomas G. Townsend, Samuel

Knight, Reeve L. Whelen, E. S. Willits, A. A. Learning, J. Fisher Weightman, William Love, Alfred H. Wilhams, Henry J. Longstreth, William W. Wain, S. Morris

Marshall, Richard M. Yarnall, Charles Yarnall, Benjamin H.

ARTICLE IV.

The Treasurer shall keep the moneys and securities, and pay all orders of the Society or of the Acting Committee, signed by the presiding officer and Secretary; and shall present a statement of the condition of the finances of the Society at each stated meeting thereof.

All bequests, donations, and life subscriptions, shall be safely invested; only the income thereof to be applied to the current expenses of the Society.

ARTICLE V.

The Acting Committee shall consist of the officers of the Society, ex-officio, and fifty other members. They shall visit the prison at least twice a month, inquire into the circumstances of the prisoners, and report such abuses as they shall discover, to the proper officers appointed to remedy them. They shall examine the influence of confinement on the morals of the prisoners. They shall keep regular minutes of their proceedings, which shall be submitted at every stated meeting of the Society; and shall be authorized to fill vacancies occurring in their own body, whether arising from death, or removal from the city; or from inability or neglect to visit the prisons in accordance with their regulations. They shall also have the sole power of electing new members.

ARTICLE VI.

Candidates for membership may be proposed at any meeting of the Society or of the Acting Committee; but no election shall take place within ten days after such nomination. Each member shall pay an annual contribution of two dollars; but the payment of twenty dollars at any one time shall constitute a life membership.

ARTICLE VII.

Honorary members may be elected at such times as the Society may deem expedient.

ARTICLE VIII.

The Society shall hold stated meetings on the _fourth_ fifth-day (Thursday) in the months called January, April, July, and October, of whom seven shall constitute a quorum.

ARTICLE IX.

No alterations of the Constitution shall be made, unless the same shall have been proposed at a stated meeting of the Society held not less than a month previous to the adoption of such alterations. All questions shall be decided where there is a division, by a majority of votes; in those where the Society is equally divided, the presiding officer shall have the casting vote.

OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY.

PRESIDENT,--JAMES J. BARCLAY.

VICE PRESIDENTS, { TOWNSEND SHARPLESS, { WILLIAM SHIPPEN, M. D.

TREASURER,--EDWARD H. BONSALL.

{ JOHN J. LYTLE, SECRETARIES, { EDWARD TOWNSEND.

{ HENRY J. WILLIAMS, COUNSELLORS, { CHARLES GIBBONS.

_Members of the Acting Committee._

Charles Ellis, Mahlon H. Dickinson, Joseph R. Chandler, William S. Perot, William Ingram, Samuel Townsend, Thomas Latimer, James Peters, Albert G. Roland, John M. Wetherill, Robert E. Evans, Benj. H. Shoemaker, Abram C. Brown, Charles Palmer, Lewis C. Neuman, Benjamin H. Pitfield, Charles P. Perot, Wm. Warner Caldwell, James E. Kaighn, Charles C. Lathrop, Henry Perkins, Alfred H. Love, William Dorsey, George M. Elkinton, Jeremiah Willits, Abram Martin, William R. MacAdam, William H. Burr, John Adolph Beaux, J. M. Corse, M. D., Jacob T. Bunting, Wm. Armstrong, M. D., E. Griffin, M. D., John C. Farr, Wm. Nicholson, William Hacker, George Taber, Charles W. Funk, John E. Carter. William L. J. Kiderlen, Philip P. Randolph,

_Visiting Committee on the Eastern Penitentiary._

Townsend Sharpless, George Taber, William Nicholson, Edward H. Bonsall, William L. J. Kiderlen, Charles W. Funk, John J. Lytle, Mahlon H. Dickinson, Samuel Townsend, Edward Townsend, James Peters, Albert G. Roland, Abram C. Brown, Robert E. Evans, Benj. H. Shoemaker, James E. Kaighn, William R. MacAdam, William Hacker, Alfred H. Love, Charles Palmer, J. M. Corse, M. D., Jeremiah Willits, William Dorsey, E. Griffin, M. D. William H. Burr,

_Visiting Committee on the County Prison._