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[Governor's Message]

with imprisonment such a system of penitentiary discipline, as will have a tendency to reform the criminal, as well as to deter him and others, by the punishment, from a repetition of the offence.

In some instances, where penitentiaries have been established under favorable circumstances this effect in a considerable degree may have been produced. But the experience of this country will not warrant the belief, that confinement to hard labor, where the convict is in habits of daily intercourse, which the vigilance of the keeper cannot prevent entirely, with others whom the laws have pronounced infamous, and who perhaps had become hardened in iniquity, has much tendency to reform the criminal. The number of culprits reclaimed in our State penitentiaries, bears a very small proportion to the whole number sentenced, and will not perhaps equal the number of those who are fortified in their vices and confirmed in their evil habits, by the contagion of bad example, and the corrupting influence of prison society. It may be added, that constant occupation, and the society of such persons as, from the temper and habits of the prisoner, he would be likely, under any circumstances, to select for his companions, mitigates in no inconsiderable degree, the sense of confinement. Solitary imprisonment is more terrible to the guilty, as a punishment, and reason and experience warrant the belief that it is more effectual to reclaim them. In unoccupied solitude, the want of other objects to engage his attention, obliges the guilty convict to turn his thoughts inward on his own mind, and reflect on his past life and future prospects. Such reflections can hardly fail in many instances to lead to contrition, to soften the most rugged and obdurate temper, and prepare the criminal for the reception of moral and religious impressions.

The humanity of our penal code revolts from the infliction of corporal punishment, except for a few crimes of such enormity, and fraught with such danger to society, that they are thought deserving of death. There is indeed, little reason for leaving to