Recollections of Windsor Prison Part 12

Nothing can be more absurd than such conduct; and no course of treatment could be more pernicious in its effects. It must necessarily frustrate the most benevolent objects. Do all that can be done to reform the guilty while they are in confinement, by _bread and water_, _chains_ and _cells_, and all the wonderful discipline of the _lash_ and the _lock-step_, with the much better means of _tracts_, _bibles_, _priests_ and _sermons_; but if they are left, on their release from prison, unprotected from the insults of mankind, and not helped to get into decent employment, nor surrounded by the kind attention of christians, nothing has been done effectually. The man should not be neglected in prison. That is the place to begin, but not to complete his reformation. Let mercy's angels meet him at the door of his cell as it opens to let him out, and let them be his guardian spirits through life; and then they may take him to heaven. The time of his release is the turning point in his moral history. Like the unclean spirit that went out of the man, if he has to go through dry places seeking rest and finding none, he will, from necessity, return to his house whence he came out; but if he is received as was the returning prodigal by his father, no more will be heard of his wanderings.

Christians! think of this. You who exhaust all science to compute the worth of one soul, and send the emanations of your love for sinners to the furthest verge of the other hemisphere, take a few thoughts for those of your own country. Look at home. And if all souls are of equal value, and he who converts one sinner from the error of his ways, saves a soul from death and hides a mult.i.tude of sins, try at least not to _prevent_ the conversion of a sinner, by mentioning to him the sins of which he has repented.

2. The good that would flow to _community_.

It is presumed that a general exemplification of the principle laid down in the text, would not only prevent penitent offenders from relapsing into crime, but would fully confirm them in habits of virtue. In more than nine cases out of ten, this would be the happy result; while the _opposite_ course would in full as many cases, lead to an opposite result. G.o.d always acts on this principle, and because he is good to all and his tender mercies are over all his work, his saints love him and praise him, and sinners are led to repentance. His kingdom is a kingdom of mercy. Every part of his administration is governed by mercy and love, and these traits of its character are visible every where--in the golden flood of morning, and the dark and howling demons of the midnight storm; in the soft and harmonious tones of the gospel, and the harsh and thundering notes of the gloomy and fiery mount. He is the Lord G.o.d, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and of great kindness; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin; but by no means clearing the guilty.

He will not contend for ever nor be always wroth. He will not cast off for ever. His anger continues only for a moment, but his mercy is everlasting--it endureth for ever. When desired to display his _glory_, he shows his _goodness_. He loves not only his saints, he also commendeth his love towards _us_, in that while we were yet _sinners_ Christ died for us. And we are commanded to love _our_ enemies, to bless them that curse us, to do good to them that hate us, and pray for them that despitefully use and persecute us; that we may be the children of our Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and unjust.

Such being the principles of the divine administration, and such the certainty that they will result in the reconciliation of all beings to the Father, it is inferentially presumable that the same principles fully acted out by men, would produce the same happy and desirable results.

If these remarks and inferences are just, then the good that would result to community by exemplifying the principle in the text is obvious. It would exchange bad men for good ones. It would throw a wall of security around its inst.i.tutions, its peace, its prosperity and its virtue, stronger than mountains of bra.s.s. Under such a firmament of heavenly principles and conduct,

"All crimes would cease and ancient fraud would fail, Returning Justice lift aloft her scale; Peace o'er the earth her olive wand extend, And white-rob'd Innocence from heaven descend; The world would smile with boundless bounty bless'd, And G.o.d's pure image glow in ev'ry breast."

Towards this glorious state of society I confidently look, with the strong emotions of a fixed and unwavering faith; but I invariably a.s.sociate it with the universal prevalence of benevolent principles and beneficent deeds. Good will to all mankind must be the inspiring motive of every action. The shepherd must go into the wilderness after his lost sheep, and rejoice when he returns with it; and the father must go out to meet his returning prodigal.

3. The good that would flow to the cause of _religion_ by such conduct, is my last topic.

It would be redeemed from the charge of _inconsistency_. Religion is judged of by the conduct of its professed friends, and condemned or applauded from their exhibitions of it. Every inconsistency in their conduct is written as a mark against their creed, and all their excellences are placed to its credit. The truth of this no one will deny. What verdict then will mankind render against a religion, the professors of which continue in a course of conduct which crosses their principles at every step? How can they call that a good religion, which does not exert sufficient influence over its votaries to make them even _consistent_? But if the friends of religion act according to their principles, and never depart from those maxims of propriety which they inculcate on _others_, they will at least obtain for their religion the credit of _consistency_. Now the text contains _one_ of the principles of the Christian religion, and all who profess to be christians acknowledge it to be genuine; but where is their consistency if they depart from it in practice? Christians, will you be consistent? For G.o.d's sake let the blessed Jesus be wounded no longer in the house of his friends!

This course would also stop the triumphs of Infidelity. This monster subsists on the faults of professors, and his triumphal car is stained with the blood of christian wars. Preach to him the excellences of your faith till the day of doom, and by one single reference, he can silence the most eloquent tongue. He unfolds the long catalogue of sainted crimes, and the christian must be dumb. The christian conduct cannot be vindicated on the christian's principles, and the enemy can be put to silence only by the abstract excellence of the faith which he despises. Between christianity and christians there must be a distinctive line drawn, or they will obscure its brightness and beauty by the a.s.sociation. When they come up in their doings to the high, pure, and stainless criterion of their professed principles, then, and not till then, will Infidelity be put to the blush.

It is high time to commence a reform in the conduct of professors; and no where is this reform more needed than in the principle of the text.

I will not stop to argue this point, for no one dares deny it. Look abroad, christians, and see the characters specified in the verse read at the commencement of this discourse, roving up and down the earth.

How are they treated? How do _you_ treat them? Who wipes their tears?

who gives them a shelter from the rude storms of winter? who gives them a kind look or a civil word? who leads them into the vineyard in the morning and gives them a penny at night? Rather who does not shun them?--insult them?--spurn them from his door?--force them to die in innocence or live by crime? Who dares confront these charges? You that kneel at the altar of Jesus, and commemorate his dying love, are you innocent? Ministers of the everlasting gospel, are your garments clean? Missionary, Tract, Bible and Prison Discipline Societies, how stands your accounts? Christians of every rank and denomination, when have you fed, clothed, ministered to, and visited your hungry, naked, sick, and imprisoned Jesus in the person of his followers? In the name of Jesus Christ, then, and for the honor of his cause, I pray you, in behalf of repentant criminals, to REFORM.

In concluding this Essay, which has cost me many a painful hour, I cannot help remarking the vast difference that exists between the conduct of G.o.d and of his creatures, in relation to repentant sinners.

He not only pardons, he also forgets; but men do neither. My experience on this subject leads me to results very different from those which the sanguine professions of christians led me to antic.i.p.ate. Such is the gloomy fact, and I must endure it. From man, even the man of the _altar_ and the _desk_, I have nothing to hope for. Within the limits of the wide world, and beneath the heavens, my prospects are as dark as the "noon of night;" despair has hung her dreadful curtains round all things, and in its chilling, stiffening shade, the frost of endless blight is fast gathering upon me. I meet at every turn the scorn of every eye, and I have only to bury myself in some distant clime, till my race on earth shall close. "O for a lodge in some vast wilderness!"

But though all earth is dark, and mankind will be my enemies for ever, there is a G.o.d who will never desert any that trust in him; and conscious that he loves me, and will defend me, I will endure without a murmur all the evils of life, and wait all the days of my appointed time till my change come; in the humble hope, that, in the grave, I shall not hear the voice of the oppressors, and that the reproaches and scorn of mankind, which is too much for me to bear on earth, will not follow me into the world to come.

Fly swift, ye intervening days, Lord, send the summons down; The hand that strikes me to the earth, Shall raise me to a crown.

THE CONNEXION BETWEEN INTEMPERANCE AND CRIME, AS VISIBLE IN PRISON.

Intemperance is not the cause of _every_ crime that is committed, though it is of very many of them. It is _itself_ one of the greatest of crimes. It is a violation of not one law only, but of _many_. The drunkard outrages the law of his nature, tramples on the laws of morality, and flings contempt on the law of the Almighty; and it is not at all wonderful that so manifold a sin should meet with a various and adequate retribution. Intemperance unfits its votaries for every thing good, and qualifies them for, and spurs them onward to the commission of every base and sinful work; and it is impossible to estimate the crimes it has committed, or the miseries it has produced.

I saw, in the Windsor Prison, many of the criminal votaries of this Moloch of modern idolatry, and my soul was often severely pained in contemplating the certain and lasting misery with which he rewarded his most faithful wors.h.i.+ppers. I have not time, in this place, to enter into a full discussion of the connexion of intemperance with the crimes and misery of state prisons; but I will present a few striking ill.u.s.trations of the subject, which may answer in the place of a volume.

L. N. was a very intemperate drinker. Rum had _marked_ him for her own. He had wors.h.i.+pped his idol in gaols and prisons for a thousand miles round; and he was always punctual and regular in his devotions.

The consequence was--the loss of public confidence--a straw pillow for his head, and a grated dungeon for his home--the pollution of his soul, and the ruin of his body--a death in shrieks of agony, and a prison-yard for his grave.

C. C. learned while a youth to drink the poisoned gla.s.s. He was well educated, and of a respectable family. His habit of intemperate drinking unfitted him for business, and he became the scoff and scorn of the giddy rabble. He fled his country for a crime, and remained at a distance for years, adding sin to sin. At length he returned home and repeated his former crime, for which he was sent to Windsor.

No one can describe the pain he endured when taken away from the bottle. "_Horrors!_--_Blue_ horrors!--_Ruffled_ horrors!" were the words in which he expressed the agony of his body and soul, under the cravings of an intemperate thirst for rum. After several years he was pardoned, but he returned to his former habit; and in one of his paroxysms of intoxication he inflicted a mortal wound on a fellow-being, and was sent back to prison, where he now is.

B. F. H. was a victim of drunkenness. Few men ever received from the hand of their Creator a richer store of intellectual capacity than this man, and on none were such gems more wastefully lavished. He abandoned a most amiable wife; and after spending many years in different prisons, the last I heard of him he was fitting for another.

Over this victim, intemperance might boast, for he was like a star of superior brightness; he was learned, ingenious, and eloquent, qualified for a high station, but self-d.a.m.ned to the lowest.

P. D. ill.u.s.trated very affectingly the legitimate consequences of intemperance. After he became its victim, it made him the author of a crime for which he was sent to prison for eighteen months. When this term had expired, he enjoyed liberty about three months, during which time he added another crime to the effects of rum, for which he was sent back to prison for three years. When these had expired, he was let out into the fields of liberty again; but in less than _seven hours_ he was in gaol for a crime which he had had but just time enough to get drunk and commit, and in less than _seven days_ he was back again in prison for six years.

This was entirely the effect of rum. He was not a criminal of _choice_, but when filled with rum, he would always steal. I never knew a man of better or purer moral feelings, when he was sober; and what is by no means common, he had such a sense of the crimes he committed, that he justified his punishment, and always considered it merciful. What a pity that _such_ a man should have been ruined by intemperance.

I need not dwell on particular cases.--How great a proportion of the crimes which sent so many prisoners to Windsor, were directly or indirectly caused by the sin of intemperate drinking, I have not sufficient data to ascertain; but I have no hesitation in saying, that one half of the entire number would never have been in that gloomy mansion, if there never had been any intoxicating liquors. The victims of this prevailing sin, which I saw in that dreary house, are pa.s.sing through the field of memory, and they appear like the armies of Gog and Magog. It would be well for the dealers in this ruinous article to dwell a few minutes every night on the _moral character_ of their employment. They are earning their daily bread, and growing rich, on the profits of a poison which sends the _body_ of the purchaser through flames of torment to an untimely grave, and prepares his _soul_ for the miseries of the second death.--Let rum, and all the family of intoxicating drinks, be banished from the land, and half the rooms in our prisons will be soon found without an inhabitant.

I have known many prisoners who had gone to such excess in drinking, that for a year after they came into prison they endured a trembling of their hands, and a burning thirst for rum, which rendered their existence a real curse. Very many have I heard lamenting their crimes as having been occasioned by rum. Their language was--"If it had not been for liquor, I should not have done so;" and this was no doubt the fact. But though the prisoners so deeply lament their past folly and sin in drinking, it is not easy to cure them of it. After spending years in prison, and after many a "dolorous lament" over the effects of intoxication--after writing and publis.h.i.+ng against intemperance, it is no strange thing to hear that they are drunk the day they are released. With one instance of this kind I will close this article. B.

F. H. while in prison, wrote several essays on the sin of intemperance, to which he had been given, and delivered an oration on the subject in the prison chapel; and he professed to have been thoroughly reformed. Through the influence of his friends he was pardoned, and the journal of the prison contains the following entry in respect to him;--"Benj. F. Harwood _pardoned_--returned at night--DRUNK."

INFLUENCE OF "FREE MASONRY" ON THE REGULATIONS OF PRISONS, AND THE DECISION OF COURTS.

On this contested point, I am, from occular demonstration, a perfect sceptic. I have known many Freemasons in prison, and I have known _masonic_ keepers treat them with a severity for which there can be no excuse. I have known many instances of this kind. And so thoroughly is it understood that MASONRY is of no use to a man in that prison, that when a masonic prisoner is in punishment, the common remark is,--"This is rather hard treatment to receive from a brother."

I am not a _mason_, and should there be any real necessity for me to take sides in the contest on this subject, I should be an ANTI. I am not then under the influence of any prejudice in favor of the order, and I wish to record it here as a historic fact, that masonry was not of any obvious advantage to a single prisoner in Windsor, during my whole acquaintance with it. I never heard it mentioned as a matter of complaint by the prisoners, that any one had been favored in the least because he was a mason, which was not the case in respect to other things. It was often said of the Master Weaver, that he was partial to the IRISH, and to ROMAN CATHOLICS. The Superintendent was often accused of shewing favor to the BAPTISTS. One of the Visiters was often cursed because he was thought to be a particular friend to professors. But it was never said of Judge Cotton, or Captain Hunter, that they were partial to the masons. Indeed I always thought that they retained a little _wrath_ against such prisoners as had belonged to _lodges_, on account of their having disgraced the order. As an instance of the treatment which masons have to endure in Windsor, I will relate the case of H. M.

He was sent to the prison for ten years. He was a man of good habits, was industrious and orderly, and I know not that he did any thing that should make him an object for particular wrath; and yet he was made to stay nine years out of ten, and was, moreover, treated rather unmercifully all the time. It is said by some that the rule of the masons is to _hide_ a brother's faults, while they _can_ be hidden, and to withdraw their protection from those whose faults are known.

If this is true, it accounts for the treatment which I have mentioned.

But however this may be, I have two facts in relation to masonry which I learned in Windsor, and I shall make this the place to record them. The first relates to a stranger who was apprehended in Burlington and committed to gaol for pa.s.sing counterfeit money. He was a man of gentlemanly appearance, and there was no doubt of his being guilty of the crime alleged against him. Soon after his commitment a letter from him to some of the princ.i.p.al men of the place, drew a number of them to his room. He was taken out on bail, and permitted to go on his way. He was a mason, and those who visited him were masons; and from a full conversation with him, which was overheard, it is certain that his masonry was the sole cause of his release. There was, however, no bribery of officers, no polluting of the streams of Justice, in this case, as the men who befriended him, did it legally, and they were private individuals.

Another fact is couched in a conversation which I had with a mason while in prison. We were personal friends, and what was proper for him to say, as a mason, he said to me very freely. He remarked that as a prisoner under sentence, he was exiled from the charities and the interference of the Fraternity of Free Masons; but still, he said, masonry was useful under other circ.u.mstances. "It would be very convenient," said he, "for a person in distress at midnight, even in a strange place, to be able to call at a house, and by giving a particular sign be secured and protected."

This is all that my observation in prison enables me to say of the influence of masonic principles in that place, or their interference in any way, with the administration of justice.

A great stir was made about Burnham, and much craft and skill were employed to make the public believe that, instead of dying and being buried as was the fact, he was let out of prison by bribery on account of his being a mason. But this was all a political farce, and evinced only the length to which political factionists will go, to effect their purposes.

One remark more and this article will be finished. It is this. The Superintendent and Warden were both masons of a high rank. It is said that the pure principles of the craft are always developed in holy friends.h.i.+p and brotherly love. The enemies of the Order say that Masons will defend each other, "right or wrong." But so far were these men from acting on the principles ascribed to them, that if they were _friends_ to each other, may all creatures and the Creator too, be my _enemies_ to all eternity.

THE PRISON DISCIPLINE SOCIETY.

I advert to this society, not to give it my approbation, but to avail myself of some of the facts which it has collected and published in its Reports, as evidence of the truth of several positions which I have taken in the course of these sketches.

This society was formed in Boston, June 30, 1825. Its avowed object is "THE IMPROVEMENT OF PUBLIC PRISONS." This object, with the motives prompting to it, is expressed in THE FIRST REPORT, page 5, in the following pertinent and emphatic language:--

"The object of the Society, in which they were a.s.sociated with us, is "THE IMPROVEMENT OF PUBLIC PRISONS." This object, we have reason to believe, is approved by the Saviour of the world; for he will say to his disciples on the day of judgment, '_when I was hungry, ye gave me meat; when I was thirsty, ye gave me drink; when I was a stranger, ye took me in_; SICK AND IN PRISON, YE VISITED ME." These words we regard as our authority and our encouragement; teaching us to _go forward_ in the work in which we are engaged, and to expect, if we do it with penitent and believing hearts, to meet the approbation of him whose favor is life. We learn also, from these words of the Saviour, the guilt of those who neglect or oppose the performance of the duties, in which we are engaged. And, as we proceed, and see from month to month, the disclosure of facts of which we had never heard, or formed a suspicion, we feel that the Saviour knew vastly better than we can ever know, how great the necessity of practical obedience to the duty implied, in the benediction which he has promised to p.r.o.nounce upon those who, in memory of his sufferings, seek to relieve misery, wherever it shall be found. We earnestly pray, that we may be sustained, '_by looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our Faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of G.o.d; where he ever liveth to make intercession for us_:' for we are sure, that we must visit places and discharge duties, in the prosecution of this work, where there can be no sufficient support, but the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ."

Not to approve of a society whose object is so _benevolent_ and whose motives are so _heavenly_, may at first thought, be regarded by many as an evidence of inhumanity and impiety. Such is the opinion of the society, and it denounces as _guilty_, "_those who neglect or oppose the performance of the duties in which it is engaged_." This is courting patronage in a style rather too arrogant and d.a.m.natory. Its simple meaning is this--All mankind must think and act in concert with _us_, in relation to prisons, or be _guilty_.