It is easy, however, to show that this would have been unnecessary and injurious to the simplicity of the plan that has been adopted.

By our excellent system of civil law, a plaintiff can succeed only by stating such facts as entitle him to relief according to law; and by proving those facts. In these two operations he must be directed by two different codes. The Civil Code informs him what circumstances give him the right to recover; and it is the province of the Code of Evidence to direct in what manner the proof shall be made; not of the facts in that suit only, but of all facts in any action. To direct what facts are necessary to be proved, in order to be restored to a possession which is wrongfully withheld, to enforce the payment of a debt, or obtain damages for a wrong-could only be done by repeating the substance of the Civil Code, and would, therefore, be misplaced in the law of evidence, which ought to contain only general rules, applicable to the different species of evidence, not to particular actions in which that evidence may become proper or necessary. It is the same as regards the defence: the Civil Code directs what circumstances will justify an act that would otherwise be wrongful: and the Code of Evidence tells us, by the application of its general rules, how those circumstances are to be proved. So in criminal prosecutions; the acts or omissions which constitute an offence, are designated in the Code of Crimes and Punishment, and consequently we need no other guide to discover what is necessary to be proved in any particular prosecution. Why, then, should it be repeated in the Code of Evidence?

A contradictory practice on this point, together with the necessity of arranging and weighing the authority of the contradictory or explanatory decisions, in every controverted case, has rendered the English law of evidence so extremely voluminous and contributed to increase its uncertainty.

INTRODUCTORY REPORT

ΤΟ

THE CODE OF REFORM AND PRISON DISCIPLINE.

IN offering to the legislature a system of penal law, the principal sanction of which is imprisonment, it is scarcely necessary to remark, that its whole efficacy must depend on the manner in which confinement is to be inflicted as a punishment, or used as a means of detention; in other words, on the wisdom of the Code of Prison Discipline. In preparing the plan now submitted, I kept in view, as the great objects to be attained-restraint, example and reformation. To discover what species of seclusion would best produce these ends, rigidly to direct every privation necessary to attain them, but to inflict no evil greater than was required to produce these consequences, would seem at first view a comparatively easy task; but the selection of proper means, and the details required for their application, presented difficulties in the execution only to be overcome by the closest attention to facts, and the most cautious calculation of consequences. A statement of these facts, and an exposition of the consequences drawn from them, will enable the House better to understand and decide on the plan which I have the honour to propose.

At a time when the penal law of Great Britain, still liable to the reproach of unnecessary severity in its enactments, and barbarity in its executions, had received none of those improvements which the true principles of jurisprudence have since produced, the benevolent heart and enlightened mind of the legislator of Pennsylvania, suggested the substitution of solitary imprisonment and labour for the punishment of death. The beneficial effects of this change were felt until they were counteracted by the intolerant and sanguinary system of the common law of England, enforced by the paramount authority of the mother country. But no sooner did independence confer the power of consulting the public good, than the people of Pennsylvania made the reformation of the penal code a constitutional obligation on their representatives; and, amidst the confusion produced by foreign invasion and civil discord in the Revolutionary war, a society worthy of the city of "brotherly love" was formed for the relief of distressed prisoners. With persevering benevolence, they not only relieved the victims of the inhuman system that then prevailed, but, by unceasing appeals to true principles, induced the legislature of that state to begin the great reform. In all but two or three cases, the punishment of death was

abolished labour was substituted for loss of life and stripes; but, contrary to the opinion early expressed by the society in favour of solitary labour, that on the public works was adopted. The error was a radical one: debasement, corruption, and an immediate repetition of crime, were the consequences; and the failure of this experiment with any but a wise and reflecting people, might have been fatal to the system. But, happily for Pennsylvania, and perhaps for the world, she had enlightened men to frame her penal laws; and happier still, she had a class of citizens admirably calculated to execute them with the zeal of enthusiasm. The founder of that state, and his first associates, belonged to a sect which fitted them, by its principles, and by the habits and pursuits which it created and prescribed, to be the agents of a reform in jurisprudence similar to that which they adopted, and perhaps, carried to excess, in religion. Their descendants, with less of that enthusiasm which, in their ancestors, was exalted by persecution, had all the active benevolence and Christian charity necessary to prompt, and the perseverance and unwearied industry to support their exertions. Abstracted by their tenets from the pleasures which occupy so large a portion of life among other sects; equally excluded from other pursuits in which so many find occupation; freed from the vexations of mutual litigation, by submitting every difference to the umpirage of the elders, and from the tyranny of fashion by an independent contempt for its rules; the modern quakers devote all that time which others waste in dissipation, or employ in intriguing for public employment, to the direction of charitable institutions, and that surplus wealth which others dissipate in frivolous pursuits, to the cause of humanity. In every society for promoting education, for instructing or supporting the poor, for relieving the distresses of prisoners, for suppressing vice and immorality, they are active and zealous members; and they indemnify themselves for the loss of the honours and pleasures of the world by the highest of all honours, the purest of all pleasures-that of doing good.

To these men, and others who participated in their principles, was committed the task of uniting reformation and punishment, when secluded was substituted for the public labour to which the convicts had before been exposed. The most encouraging results justified the change in the law, and the selection of persons to whom its execution was committed; and from the year 1790, when it took place, until 1793, we have the official attestation of one of the inspectors(a), that, out of two hundred convicts who had been pardoned, only four were returned on a second conviction; that only two cases of burglary, and not one of privately stealing from the person, had occurred; that the streets and roads were freed from robbers, and that in all the prisons for the populous city and county of Philadelphia, immediately before the sitting of the court, only four persons were in custody for trial. This last is a striking fact. The city and county of Philadelphia, at that time, contained upwards of sixty thousand inhabitants, and, prior to that time, more than thirty had been condemned at a session, a number which supposes at least fifty commitments; so that, in the short space of two years, the effect of the system was the entire suppression of some

(a) A member of the Society of Friends, who has rendered the name of Lowndes as celebrated for active, enlightened benevolence, as a late lamented statesman has since done for eloquence, patriotism and integrity.

crimes, and the reduction of others in the proportion of ten to one, in the place where the example might be supposed to have had the greatest effect. The operation of the system in the whole of the state, was nearly as encouraging. Although its population was increasing in a very rapid ratio, yet conviction decreased from one hundred and twentyfive, in the year 1789, to the respective numbers of one hundred and nine, seventy, sixty-three, forty-five(a), in the four succeeding years. Thus we find that, although the population of the state was increasing in a ratio of four and a half per cent a year, offences(b) had decreased in the proportion of forty-five to one hundred and twenty-five, or nearly two-thirds less; and in the last year I have mentioned, there were no convictions for one half of the crimes that had figured on the preceding calendars. So remarkable a diminution of crime in a regular decreasing series, is a fact worthy our most profound attention, when we are considering the effects of this species of punishment. Nothing can develop the true principles of legislation on this subject more clearly than the history of the reform in Pennsylvania in all its stages. In 1786, we find that the various system of labour in the public works was established. Under it, in the three years of its operation, and the first year after its repeal, but before the effects of the system could cease, the average number of convictions in each year was one hundred and nine; in 1791 it decreased under the new system to seventy-six; in 1792 to sixty-three; and in 1793 to forty-five: all this while the population of the state and, what is more worthy to be noted, of the city, was rapidly increasing. This was the lowest point of depression: from that time the increase has been in a more rapid ratio than the diminution: for the first four years afterwards, the average was one hundred and nineteen, and it has gradually progressed until the average of the last twelve years is three hundred and eleven; that is, within a fraction of eight times as many as it was in 1793; but the population of the state in that time had very little more than doubled (c), so that crime has increased in proportion to the population nearly as eight is to two. Most fortunately for the cause of truth, humanity and wise legislation, the cause of this ebb and flow of crime is not difficult to discover; and when pointed out, it will be more persuasive to show that there is a check that may be effectually applied to the increase of offences than the most ingenious argument that could be suggested.

In the three years previous to the year 1790, when Philadelphia prison was first used for the purpose of inflicting punishment by solitary confinement, three hundred and twenty-eight convicts had been confined. Of these, about two-thirds were committed for short terms, and others were discharged by pardon; so that at the commencement of the year 1790, not more than about two hundred remained. The accommodations of the prison afforded the means of separation for this small number, and the humane zeal of the inspectors, quickened by the natural desire to give efficacy to the plan which they had themselves formed, urged on the labour and superintended the instruction of the convicts. In that year, the first of the experiment, but before its result could be known, one hundred and nine convictions took place. In the next, its

(a) Vaux's Notices.

(b) Seybert's Statistics.

(c) Four hundred and ninety-five thousand one hundred and eighty-five, in 1793. One million forty-nine thousand four hundred and fifty-eight, in 1820.