" Society grown weary of the load, Shakes the incumbered lap, and casts them out." The public safety imperiously demands the measure.
Criminals, it is said,§ are 64 a miserable kind of material for new settlements. It is inexcusable in any nation to resort to it, until the accumulation of distress, and petty offences in consequence, have increased to an inconve nient and alarming degree." The idea of "new settle ments," implies that we arc to hold future intercourse with the convicts, but this is far from entering into my views. After having placed them in a secure spot, from which their escape would be impossible, furnished them with the means of temporary and future sustenance, and even comfort by the aid of their own labour ; and, lastly, having provided for their moral improvement, they ought, as I have already said, to be left to themselves, and all intercourse with them provided against under the severest penalty. An argument in favour of effectually relieving ourselves from certain convicts by the proposed measure, is derived from the actual existence of the state of things which, in the opinion of the Reviewers, could alone justify it, viz. " the accumulation of petty offences,'' and I will add, of heinous crimes, to " an inconvenient and alarm ing degree ;" for do we not daily sec accounts of them in every part of the union, and do not the criminal courts of our capitals exhibit abundant proofs of them, from the gentlemen-robbers of banks, (who commonly contrive to escape punishment,) parricides, and every species of daring crime, down to the sly pilfering of a fruit stall ? But " transportation" is said to be of "modes of pu nishment, the most costly, and of little importance in de terring the unprincipled from crime, as they do not sec the punishment." Of the comparative cost of transporta tion, and confinement at home in prison, I shall presently speak. It is certainly a singular argument, at this clay, against the salutary influence of transportation upon the wicked, " that they do not see the punishment," because it was taken for granted, that the principle was fully esta blished by the experience derived Irom European penal codes, that " public examples," as they are called, so far from deterring front the commission of crimes, increase their number, and that their enormity is proportioned to the severity and publicity of the punishment.* The use of the argument is the more extraordinary, considering that the inefficacy of the barbarous corporal inflictions of the old American, and present European penal codesf is fully portrayed by the writer himself : and any one who believes in the influence of such examples in re straining crimes, may be satisfied of the delusion under which he labours, by resorting to the next public execu tion with one end of his handkerchief a little out of his pocket. On the day of the public execution of Lechler,
at Lancaster, (Nov. 1822.) for murder, Thomas Burns who was present, stabbed Wilson, and killed him. Fif teen persons were also taken up for thefts committed un der the gallows. At the late execution of the murderer, Johnson, in New York, it was stated that the pick-pockets were very busy ; one man lost S230. On both these oc casions, thcre were solemn processions, and all the" pomp, pride, and circumstance" of military parade. These facts show in stronger light, the inutility of the punishment of murder by death. Why therefore ought it to be continued So fully am I convin ed of the inefficacy of public pun ishments, in preventing crimes, that it is firmly believed, the execution of a convict, at midnight, in the jail yard, in the presence of his fellow convicts, and by torch light, would have a much greater effect upon them, and the public at large, than the most solemn and ostentatious parade. But as it is possible, that some persons, who from prejudice or want of information on the subject, are still persuaded of the admonitory and moral effects of public punishments on society, I beg leave to recommend to their perusal, the unanswerable arguments against them, by our late eminent philanthropist Dr. Rush,' which laid the foundation for their abolition in Pennsylvania, for all crimes, except murder in the first degree. lie has proved that public punishments make men worse ; that they never reform ; never terrify, and so far from prevent ing crimes, tend to increase them, by destroying the sense of shame ; by exciting revenge against the community, and from a strange propensity among fanatics and the mi serable, even to commit capital crimes, that they may imitate an heroic death, and draw forth a repetition of ex pressions of admiration and praise for fortitude and suf fering, which they may have heard uttered by spectators of a public execution.