Volume I Part 8 (1/2)
Few feet have wandered that way, and no hands seem to be busied about those graves; but I was thankful to have been there among the first of many pilgrims who will yet see the spot. For another pupil of the philosopher's, whose homage I carried with my own, I planted a s...o...b..rry on Priestley's grave. When that other and I were infants, caring for nothing but our baby plays, this grave was being dug for one who was to exert a most unusual influence over our minds and hearts, exercising our intellects, and winning our affections like a present master and parent, rather than a thinker who had pa.s.sed away from the earth. Here I now stood by his grave, listening to tales which seemed as fresh as if he were living and walking yesterday, instead of having been wept before I knew any of the meanings of tears.
The inscription on Priestley's tomb is singularly inappropriate: ”Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.
I will lay me down in peace, and sleep until I awake in the morning of the resurrection.” Phrases from the Old Testament and about the soul on the grave of Priestley!
I remained in the neighbourhood several days, and visited as many of the philosopher's haunts as I could get pointed out to me; and when I was at length obliged to resume my journey down the Susquehanna, it was with a strong feeling of satisfaction in the accomplishment of my object. These are the places in which to learn what are the real, in distinction from the comparatively insignificant, objects of regard; of approbation and hatred; of desire and fear. This was the place to learn what survived of a well-exercised and much-tried man. He made mistakes; they are transient evils, for others have been sent to rectify them. He felt certain of some things still dubious; this is a transient evil, for he is gone where he will obtain greater clearness; and men have arisen and will arise to enlighten us, and those who will follow us. He exploded errors; this was a real, but second-rate good, which would have been achieved by another, if not by him. He discovered new truths; this is a real good, and as eternal as truth itself. He made an unusual progress towards moral perfection; this is the highest good of all, and never ending. His mistakes will be rectified; the prejudices against him on their account will die out; the hands that injured him, the tongues that wounded him, are all, or nearly all, stilled in death; the bitter tears which these occasioned have long since been all wept. These things are gone or going by; they have reached, or are tending to the extinction which awaits all sins and sorrows. What remains? Whatever was real of the man and of the work given him to do. Whatsoever truth he discovered will propagate itself for ever, whether the honour of it be ascribed to him or not. There remain other things no less great, no less real, no less eternal, to be reckoned among the spiritual treasures of the race; things of which Priestley, the immortal, was composed, and in which he manifestly survives; a love of truth which no danger could daunt and no toil relax; a religious faith which no severity of probation could shake; a liberality proof against prejudice from within and injury from without; a simplicity which no experience of life and men could corrupt; a charity which grew tenderer under persecution and warmer in exile; a hope which flourished in disappointment and triumphed in the grave.
These are the things which remain, bearing no relation to country or time; as truly here as there, now as hereafter.
These realities are the inheritance of those who sit at home as well as of those who wander abroad; yet it may be forgiven to the weak, whose faith is dimsighted and whose affections crave a visible resting-place, if they find their sense of privilege refreshed by treading the sh.o.r.es of the exile's chosen Susquehanna.
PRISONS.
”In the prison of Coldbath Fields, in which the silent system is believed to be brought to the greatest degree of perfection, under the management of a highly intelligent and able governor, who has at his command every possible advantage for working the system, there were in the year 1836 no less than 5138 punishments 'for talking and swearing.'”--_Second Report of the Inspectors of Prisons of Great Britain, 1837._
”Silence and Secrecy!... Do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day; on the morrow how much clearer are thy purposes and duties!
what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut out!”--_Sartor Resartus._
I have shown in my account of Society in America that, after visiting several prisons in the United States, I was convinced that the system of solitary confinement at Philadelphia is the best that has yet been adopted.[10] So much has been heard in England of the Auburn prison, its details look so complete and satisfactory on paper, and it is so much a better system than the English have been accustomed to see followed at home, that it has a high reputation among us. But I think a careful survey of the inst.i.tution on the spot must lessen the admiration entertained for this mode of punishment.
Footnote 10: ”Society in America,” part iii., chap. iv.
The convicts are, almost without exception, pale and haggard. As their work is done either in the open air or in well-ventilated shops, and their diet is good, their unhealthy appearance is no doubt owing chiefly to the bad construction of their night-cells. These cells are small and ill-ventilated, and do not even answer the purpose of placing the prisoners in solitude during the night. The convicts converse with nearly as much ease, through the air-pipes or otherwise, at night, as they do by speaking behind their teeth, without moving the lips, while at work in the day. In both cases they feel that they are transgressing the laws of the prison by doing an otherwise innocent and almost necessary act; a knowledge and feeling most unfavourable to reformation, and destructive of any conscientiousness which retribution may be generating in them. Their anxious and haggard looks may be easily accounted for. They are denied the forgetfulness of themselves and their miseries which they might enjoy in free conversation; and also the repose and the shelter from shame which are the privileges of solitary confinement. Every movement reminds them that they are in disgrace; a mult.i.tude of eyes (the eyes of the wicked, too) is ever upon them; they can live neither to themselves nor to society, and self-respect is rendered next to impossible. A man must be either hardened, or restless and wretched under such circ.u.mstances; and the faces at Auburn are no mystery.
The finis.h.i.+ng of the day's work and the housing for the night are sights barely endurable. The governor saw my disgust, and explained that he utterly disapproved of strangers being allowed to be present at all this; but that the free Americans would not be debarred from beholding the operation of anything which they have decreed. This is right enough; the evil is in there being any such spectacle to behold. The prisoners are ranged in companies for the march from their workshops into the prison. Each fills his pail and carries it, and takes up the can with his supper as he pa.s.ses the kitchen; and, when I was there, this was done in the presence of staring and amused strangers, who looked down smiling from the portico. Some of the prisoners turned their heads every possible way to avoid meeting our eyes, and were in an agony of shame; while the blacks, who, from their social degradation, have little idea of shame, and who are remarkable for exaggeration in all they do, figured away ridiculously in the march, stamping and gesticulating as if they were engaged in a game at romps. I do not know which extreme was the most painful to behold. It is clear that no occasion should be afforded for either; that men should not be ignominiously paraded because they are guilty.
The arrangements for the women were extremely bad at that time; but the governor needed no convincing of this, and hoped for a speedy rectification. The women were all in one large room, sewing. The attempt to enforce silence was soon given up as hopeless; and the gabble of tongues among the few who were there was enough to paralyze any matron.
Some rather hopeful-looking girls were side by side with old offenders of their own colour, and with some most brutish-looking black women.
There was an engine in sight which made me doubt the evidence of my own eyes; stocks of a terrible construction; a chair, with a fastening for the head and for all the limbs. Any lunatic asylum ought to be ashamed of such an instrument. The governor liked it no better than we; but he pleaded that it was his only means of keeping his refractory female prisoners quiet while he was allowed only one room to put them all into.
I hope these stocks have been used for firewood before this.
The first principle in the management of the guilty seems to me to be to treat them as men and women; which they were before they were guilty, and will be when they are no longer so; and which they are in the midst of it all. Their humanity is the princ.i.p.al thing about them; their guilt is a temporary state. The insane are first men, and secondarily diseased men; and in a due consideration of this order of things lies the main secret of the successful treatment of such. The drunkard is first a man, and secondarily a man with a peculiar weakness. The convict is, in like manner, first a man, and then a sinner. Now, there is something in the isolation of the convict which tends to keep this order of considerations right in the mind of his guardians. The warden and his prisoner converse like two men when they are face to face; but when the keeper watches a hundred men herded together in virtue of the one common characteristic of their being criminals, the guilt becomes the prominent circ.u.mstance, and there is an end of the brotherly faith in each, to which each must mainly owe his cure. This, in our human weakness, is the great evil attendant upon the good of collecting together sufferers under any particular physical or moral evil. Visiters are shy of the blind, the deaf and dumb, and insane, when they see them all together, while they would feel little or nothing of this shyness if they met each sufferer in the bosom of his own family. In the one case, the infirmity, defying sympathy, is the prominent circ.u.mstance; in the other, not. It follows from this, that such an a.s.sociation of prisoners as that at Auburn must be more difficult to reform, more difficult to do the state's duty by, than any number or kind of criminals who are cla.s.sed by some other characteristic, or not cla.s.sed at all.
The wonderfully successful friend of criminals, Captain Pillsbury, of the Weathersfield prison, has worked on this principle, and owes his success to it. His moral power over the guilty is so remarkable, that prison-breakers who can be confined nowhere else are sent to him to be charmed into staying their term out. I was told of his treatment of two such. One was a gigantic personage, the terror of the country, who had plunged deeper and deeper in crime for seventeen years. Captain Pillsbury told him when he came that he hoped he would not repeat the attempts to escape which he had made elsewhere. ”It will be best,” said he, ”that you and I should treat each other as well as we can. I will make you as comfortable as I possibly can, and shall be anxious to be your friend; and I hope you will not get me into any difficulty on your account. There is a cell intended for solitary confinement, but we have never used it, and I should be sorry ever to have to turn the key upon anybody in it. You may range the place as freely as I do if you will trust me as I shall trust you.” The man was sulky, and for weeks showed only very gradual symptoms of softening under the operation of Captain Pillsbury's cheerful confidence. At length information was given to the captain of this man's intention to break prison. The captain called him, and taxed him with it; the man preserved a gloomy silence. He was told that it was now necessary for him to be locked in the solitary cell, and desired to follow the captain, who went first, carrying a lamp in one hand and the key in the other. In the narrowest part of the pa.s.sage the captain (who is a small, slight man) turned round and looked in the face of the stout criminal. ”Now,” said he, ”I ask you whether you have treated me as I deserve? I have done everything I could think of to make you comfortable; I have trusted you, and you have never given me the least confidence in return, and have even planned to get me into difficulty. Is this kind? And yet I cannot bear to lock you up. If I had the least sign that you cared for me....” The man burst into tears.
”Sir,” said he, ”I have been a very devil these seventeen years; but you treat me like a man.” ”Come, let us go back,” said the captain. The convict had the free range of the prison as before. From this hour he began to open his heart to the captain, and cheerfully fulfilled his whole term of imprisonment, confiding to his friend, as they arose, all impulses to violate his trust, and all facilities for doing so which he imagined he saw.
The other case was of a criminal of the same character, who went so far as to make the actual attempt to escape. He fell, and hurt his ankle very much. The captain had him brought in and laid on his bed, and the ankle attended to, every one being forbidden to speak a word of reproach to the sufferer. The man was sullen, and would not say whether the bandaging of his ankle gave him pain or not. This was in the night, and every one returned to bed when this was done. But the captain could not sleep. He was distressed at the attempt, and thought he could not have fully done his duty by any man who would make it. He was afraid the man was in great pain. He rose, threw on his gown, and went with a lamp to the cell. The prisoner's face was turned to the wall, and his eyes were closed, but the traces of suffering were not to be mistaken. The captain loosened and replaced the bandage, and went for his own pillow to rest the limb upon, the man neither speaking nor moving all the time. Just when he was shutting the door the prisoner started up and called him back. ”Stop, sir. Was it all to see after my ankle that you have got up?”
”Yes, it was. I could not sleep for thinking of you.”
”And you have never said a word of the way I have used you!”
”I do feel hurt with you, but I don't want to call you unkind while you are suffering as you are now.”
The man was in an agony of shame and grief. All he asked was to be trusted again when he should have recovered. He was freely trusted, and gave his generous friend no more anxiety on his behalf.
Captain Pillsbury is the gentleman who, on being told that a desperate prisoner had sworn to murder him speedily, sent for him to shave him, allowing no one to be present. He eyed the man, pointed to the razor, and desired him to shave him. The prisoner's hand trembled, but he went through it very well. When he had done the captain said, ”I have been told you meant to murder me, but I thought I might trust you.” ”G.o.d bless you, sir! you may,” replied the regenerated man. Such is the power of faith in man!
The greatest advantage of solitary confinement is that it presents the best part of a prisoner's mind to be acted upon by his guardians; and the next is, that the prisoner is preserved from the evil influences of vicious companions.h.i.+p, of shame within the prison walls, and of degradation when he comes out. I am persuaded that no system of secondary punishment has yet been devised that can be compared with this. I need not, at this time of day, explain that I mean solitary imprisonment with labour, and with frequent visits from the guardians of the prisoner. Without labour, the punishment is too horrible and unjust to be thought of. The reflective man would go mad, and the clown would sleep away his term, and none of the purposes of human existence could be answered. Work is, in prison as out of it, the grand equaliser, stimulus, composer, and rectifier; the prime obligation and the prime privilege. It is delightful to see how soon its character is recognised there. In the Philadelphia penitentiary work is forbidden to the criminal for two days subsequent to his entrance; he pet.i.tions for it before the two days are out, however doggedly he may have declared that he will never work. Small incidents show what a resource it is. A convict shoemaker mentioned to a visiter a very early hour of the winter day as that at which he began to work. ”But how can you see at that time of a winter's morning? it must be nearly dark.” ”I hammer my leather.