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penal-colonies in Sing Sing and Auburn, we should establish agricultural and industrial penal colonies on our great western plains, on the grazing grounds of the buffaloes, in the Rocky mountains, on the Mexican frontiers, for the alarmingly-increasing great number of convicts. This local advantage renders the plan very practicable.

Statesmen or politicians who really wish to manage the state according to St. Paul's sound doctrine, that is, for the true benefit of the fallen man, should take warning from the rapid progress of kindred arts and sciences. The noble medico-surgical art, which aims at the delivery of man from physical sufferings, but half a century ago shed streams of blood to cure fevers, which are in most instances simple curative reactions of the system, now controlled by a few harmless medicaments or water, and crippled thousands by perilous operations, now obviated by simply assisting nature in restoring the injured limb. What immense change has also come over theology, the time-honored art of curing sin? Is there now a single common-sense man in Christendom who thinks or believes that religion without good works is of any use? where are the votaries of idolatry, self-castigation, witchcraft? I dare not describe the stupendous progress of the mechanical arts in all their branches. Where are the caravals, show-coaches, wooden telegraphs, blunderbusses, etc.? Shall then the most noble art of politics, which has to cure lawlessness, dishonesty, aud crime, remain with its penitentiary and workhouse castles, and other clumsy contrivances for ever behind time? It should be the greatest ambition of a free generous people to reform those antiquated things. Neither man, animal, nor plant will ever improve in prison confinement. Liberty is the basis and essence of the development of everything. If the good old book says: "let the captive free," it means, place him there where liberty does not tempt him to do wrong. Congress and states must, in this regard, act in harmony. Both are appointed for the realization of justice. They have nothing else to do.

The acquisition of immense tracts of wild land by Congress, on general grounds of doubtful policy, may become a source of infinite benefit for society, if made use of for penal colonies. Circumstances make the man; alter these and you will alter him, for the worse or better.

None of our constitutions are against the establishment of such settlements. If Congress has a right to bore for water in our western desert and introduce camels there, it can not object to the locating of colonies calculated to make use of that water and the ships of the desert. If the riding on camels shall not remain an amusing occupation of our lieutenants, we must plant our own thriving Arabs in the desert to profit by them.

Our state constitutions in particular are also not against this plan. If they allow to shut men up in castles, and force them to work there against their will and inclination, even interfering thus with the labor of honest business men outside, they can not forbid to place men under the canopy of heaven, on common land, in order to found by labor a new home and better life. There is obviously nothing unconstitutional in the plan.

The actual practice of the governors of New York state is in favor of penal colonies; for they begin to pardon criminals under the condition that they will quit the county or state, as the case may be. This seems to be an imitation of the English circumlocution practice in Australia, where convicts are set at liberty under the condition that they will quit her Majesty's dominions. Still, however this may be, it will terminate in something like a penal colony; for no state will permit such expelled criminals to take up their residence therein. The "Sydney Ducks," as these Australian legal exiles were called in California, were hung by the vigilance committees, after they had played for a while with the courts the game of hide-and-seek. Our politicians have no time to attend to such business as the realization of justice; their office affairs absorb it entirely. People therefore must turn their minds to this subject, if they wish to have their property and lives protected by a good administration of justice.

That part of the judiciary, which has to maintain order in large towns is better known now under the name of police, a force which in large cities is organized, uniformed, drilled, and paraded like standing-army soldiers. Its business is to find out offenders, arrest them, and deliver them to the courts for trial and punishment. Its operation is local, and therefore a part of the local jurisdiction of cities, towns, and villages. As it works at present, its reputation is at stake, unless a regular thinning off of the villains, especially in densely-built towns, shall soon be resorted to

by transporting them; for the rogues and police, as matters now stand, play, indeed, a kind of hide-and-seek game, to the apparent satisfaction of all concerned, except the people, who have to pay the police bills. If the rogues are not out on their peculiar nightly business cruises, the police accommodate them also with lodging in the station-houses. The punishment amounts in the main to nothing but the providing of the villains in fine castles with better board and lodging than they enjoy when they are at liberty. When they leave those castles, the hide-and-seek game with the police is generally played over and over again, at the expense of the generous people, who, although grumbling, pay the enormous costs good-humoredly. These remarks apply to all large cities here and in Europe, London and Paris included. They are all wretchedly managed in this respect. We complain that this game is especially enjoyed by immigrants. Well, in the name of common sense, why not at once transport those amateur rogues and voyageur villains to regions where stern necessity will force them to become honest laborers? To give land to those villains whose greatest fault is that they have none and are not honest laborers, is most certainly sounder doctrine than to bestow it on schools or universities. The state institution has to coerce and tame villains, and not to teach good children and educate nice young men. By doing the first, it protects the lives and property of those good men who support the institution; by doing the latter, it unbecomingly tampers with private business. Are not those castles, then, mere monuments of unsound doctrine and political errors? Moreover there is a mass of forces already at work which may easily be turned to very good purposes in this direction.

I mention first the prison associations. It must be clear to them that as long as the usual state-prison system prevails their exertions will turn in an eternal circle. To free a man from prison upon the pledge of reform is very well; but the frequent relapse of the mischievous into their old sins proves that society gains nothing by it.

Another force to be made available here is the missionary societies. No convict likes his prison with all its appendages of chapels, schools, shower-baths, chains, whips, etc. And this is natural. Set him free in a distant settlement, under penalty of death upon leaving it voluntarily, and he will organize schools,

build churches, appoint instructors himself, and like them in the bargain. A missionary will be his real comforter. Scoffers, who in their old homes would never listen to a sermon, opened with alacrity, in the California mining ranges, their saloons to the itinerant preachers.

The occasion is proper to speak further that the abolitionists are bound to second this plan. Their professed object is to deliver man from involuntary slavery or bondage. Now there are in our society no greater involuntary slaves than criminals shut up in state-prisons. It is true that our African bound laborer has a limited sphere of action; can not wander, can not use his full time and abilities as he pleases; still, he is reared in this condition; it is his habit, and habit, a kind of bondage, is second nature. He has no higher aspiration, and, as a general thing, is perfectly satisfied with his situation as the slave of labor, so that he even honestly and voluntarily returns to his master, if once decoyed away from him. He obviously is not in need of a liberator, and does not ask for one, and if he wishes to be free he can become so by his own exertion. But compare with him the slave of crime-the convict. He is brought up in liberty; perhaps the spoiled son of wealth, and, if the child of poverty and vice, has tasted the sweets of freedom, although perhaps consisting only in grog-shop revelry and gratuitous harangues of demagogues. What a hell must be for him a penitentiary, established by law by the same men with whom he used to associate on equal terms! With what infinite pleasure would such a man, if there is but a spark of humanity in his heart, bear all deprivations in the loneness of God's wild nature, if he only can thus escape from the drear cell-existence in a watch-surrounded state-prison! No man need be a slave of crime; but no man can help being more or less a slave of labor. The Bible teaches this.

All agree that our criminal-law system and its working is radically wrong. It is nowhere much better in view of the reform of the villains. But it must be admitted that colonizing has always produced the best results. Siberia becomes thus an inhabited and even civilized country. Criminals have made Australia inhabitable. How much of our far west has been cultivated by outcasts is difficult to prove, but easily imagined. Our

great west is a fit home for used-up men to recruit morally and financially. The greatest and most efficient lever of our culture is honest labor. In dense society the chances of it for a criminal are but few; but in the mentioned regions, most abundant and brilliant. If this well-tried and very practical plan is carried out with circumspection and energy, the telegraphs and railroads which must soon span those regions will find much support by it. This may suffice for my purpose.

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LETTER XXII.

Large Cities. Baltimore, Maryland. - Political History. - The People One Assembly. - First Constitution, 1650.-Extract. - Voting. - Slavery. - Abolition. — Divided Legislature. - Trouble. - Revolution.- Constitution of 1776. — Amended. —Judiciary Appointed. — Constitution of 1851. Elective Judiciary. — Executive elected by Districts. - City and Country Jealousy. - Cities Republics of the Middle Age. — Feuds with the Country Nobility. - Free Cities of Germany. - Switzerland. — Large American Cities. · Their Separation from the Country. More such Separations. Apathy and Disgust with the City Affairs. - New Orleans. - Baltimore Vote on the Amending the Constitution. - Hanse Towns. Crimes of English Law. — Macaulay. — Atlantic Telegraph States.

FROM a paternal desire to make my politico-constitutional explorations as complete and instructive as possible, I beg your attention a little longer for a few stray remarks on large cities. These are not only the hiding places of rogues, but also the centres of enterprise, arts, sciences, munificence, and, moreover, the germs of young states and empires.

Who would forget what Boston, with her Hancocks, has done for this great republic? Alas! for human inconsistency! The same city is now the nucleus of an implacable faction against this Union! Of New York, state and city, I have written enough. Turn now your eyes to Maryland, with Baltimore as a centre, even more overtowering the little Oyster-bay state than stately New York city the Empire state. It is in the same labor-pains

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