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We hardly see how the slow process of reformation can go on under these circumstances. Yet the most humane of all systems of prison disciplines-that of Pennsylvania-has been called, and by an excellent man too (Mr. Roscoe), "the most inhuman and unnatural that the cruelty of a tyrant ever invented, no less derogatory to the character of human nature than it is in direct violation of the leading principles of Christianity." We have already shown why we believe that it is not only not " unnatural," but founded on the deepest principles of human nature; that, so far from being " inhuman," it is founded on the very principle of mercy, because it affords the fullest opportunity for reformation, and prevents all exposure to shame and contamination. And is it cruel? All agree, that contamination must be prevented at any price, or reformation entirely given up. The question, then, can only be a comparative oneWhat is the cruelty of this compared with the Auburn system? Perfect solitude, alleviated only by the permission to work, and to read the Bible, may be a hard situation; but is it more so than being placed in the company of many fellow-prisoners, with whom all intercourse is prevented by the threat of whipping? This must be torture indeed, like that of Tantalus, with the tempting viands constantly before him, and constantly receding from the approach of his famished lips. Solitary confinement, as practised in the Eastern prison of Pennsylvania, is rather a deprivation of most of the comforts of life, than the infliction of positive punishment. It is severe; it ought to be so; it ought to be feared. Is it cruel in a phys ical respect? Let us answer this question in the words of Mr. Vaux, page 7 of his Letter to Mr. Roscoe, who represents the cells to be "destined to contain an epitome and concentration of all human misery, of which the Bastile of France, and the Inquisition of Spain, were only prototypes and humble models." To which Mr. Vaux replies "The rooms of the new penitentiary at Philadelphia are fireproof, of comfortable dimensions, with convenient courts to each, built on the surface of the ground, judiciously lighted from the roof, well ventilated and warmed, and ingeniously provided with means for affording a continual supply of excellent water, to insure the most perfect cleanliness of every prisoner and his The exact size of the chambers is 8 feet by 12 feet, the highest point of the ceiling 16 feet. The yards are 8 feet by 20 feet.

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apartment. They are, moreover, so arranged as to be inspected, and protected, without a military guard, usually, though unnecessarily, employed in establishments of this kind in most other states. these chambers no individual, however humble or elevated, can be confined, so long as the public liberty shall endure, but upon conviction of a known and welldefined offence, by the verdict of a jury of the country, and under the sentence of a court, for a specified time. The terms of imprisonment, it is believed, can be apportioned to the nature of every crime with considerable accuracy, and will, no doubt, be measured in that merciful degree which has uniformly characterized the modern penal legislation of Pennsylvania. Where, then,-allow me to inquire,— is there, in this system, the least resemblance to that dreadful receptacle constructed in Paris during the reign of Charles V, and which, at different periods, through four centuries and a half, was an engine of oppression and torture to thousands of innocent persons? Or by what detortion can it be compared to the inquisitorial courts and prisons that were instituted in Italy, Portugal and Spain, between the years 1251 and 1537 ?" Or is it believed that the influence of solitary confinement on the mind is cruel? that the human mind cannot bear it, and must be driven to madness? We believe this by no means to be the case. Mr. Vaux's testimony on this point is important. Cases of insanity, he says, in the pamphlet just quoted, seem not to be more frequent in jails than among the same number of persons in the ordinary condition of life. The cells of the old penitentiary are small and badly contrived, and yet many individuals have, for acts of violence committed in the prison, been confined in them for six, nine, and twelve months in succession, generally in irons, and always on a low diet; but no case of mental alienation has ever occurred there. When the mind becomes hardened by a career of vice, ultimately reaching a point of degradation which fits it for the perpetration of those crimes that are punishable under the penal statutes, no fear of exciting its tender sensibilities need be entertained, by its mere abstraction from equally guilty minds, so as to induce either melancholy or madness. All experience proves how difficult it is to make any impression whatever upon the feelings of the benighted and unhappy subjects of criminal punishment. As to the influ

ence of this system upon the health, we refer the reader to doctor Franklin Bache's letter to Mr. Vaux, contained in No. 8 of the Journal of Law (Philadelphia, October, 1830), which concludes with the words "We may assert that the entire seclusion of criminals from all association with their fellow criminals, is altogether compatible with their profitable employment at useful trades, and with the preservation of their health.” And in his letter to bishop White and others, Mr. Vaux adduces facts to confirm this statement. Not one case of the Asiatic cholera appeared in the Eastern prison of Pennsylvania, whilst the disease swept away numbers in the city of Philadelphia and its environs; and the prison stands close by the city.* The report mentioned above will be, we understand, entirely satisfactory on the point of the health of the prisoners. The expense of the Pennsylvania system has always been considered a great objection to it. It is true that the Eastern prison has cost much; but another prison could be built much more cheaply; and, probably, experience will show the possibility of further reductions, though this system may always be more expensive than the other. Yet the advantages are so great; the final saving of the government, by preventing all the prisoners from leaving the prison worse than they were at the time of entering it, and by dismissing many who will return to duty and usefulness, is so decided; and the necessity of the system, if any of the desirable objects are to be obtained, so imperious, that we believe the greater expense ought not to be considered an objection wherever means exist to meet it. We shall quote Mr. Vaux also respecting this point. It is certain that the prisoners do not leave the Pennsylvania penitentiary worse than they entered it, are not irritated and embittered against mankind, and, if they have truly resolved to become better, are not exposed to be driven by associates in the prison to the commission of new crimes, which has hitherto been so common an occurrence, as every one knows who has paid attention to the history of convicts. Men confined in common prisons, or even in those conducted on the Auburn system, find it extremely difficult, after their release, to disentangle themselves from the net of vice, though they may earnestly wish to do so. But the Pennsylvania system does not even allow the convict to know the names of his fellow prisoners. The wish to return to a * See note, p. 527, post, respecting the report of Messrs. Beaumont and Toqueville to the French gov.

life of honest industry is not so rare in released convicts as most persons suppose, provided the prisoner has not been kept in a state of constant contamination. A vicious life is not comfortable; generally the causes which make a wicked person prefer the path of crime to an honorable life, are twofold-idleness, reluctance to regular labor, and the love of excitement. If you can overcome these two dispositions; if you can instil into the convict a love of labor, and make it a habit with him; and if you can cure him of the craving for excitement, you will, in most cases, have laid the firmest foundation for a thorough reformation. Now, labor appears to the prisoner in solitary confinement as the sweetest comfort. He asks, he begs for it; and no punishment could be harder than denying him the comfort of labor in his lonely cell. They all will tell you so. And as regards the second point, what more effectual means can be found of curing a man of a vitiated love of excitement (such as is found in robbers, pirates, burglars, &c.) than uninterrupted confinement in solitude for years? It is a severe infliction, indeed; but it is effectual, and not more severe than is necessary. Another objection to perpetual solitude is, that the convicts cannot worship together; but in the Eastern prison of Pennsylvania, they have preaching addressed to them. A curtain is drawn along the corridor, the sound-hole of each cell is opened (see the description of the building in the article Prison Discipline), and the preacher stands at one end of the corridor, from which he may be heard by all the prisoners in that corridor, though no convict can see into the opposite cell, being prevented by the curtain.-In our opinion, the Pennsylvania penitentiary system is the creation of a spirit of enlightened humanity, which reflects the greatest bonor on the disciples of Penn, and has solved one of the most difficult problems presented to the lover of mankind. If widely adopted, as it probably will be, it bids fair to accomplish all that can be attained in the way of prison discipline. We would direct our reader's attention to an interesting letter on the subject of solitary confinement, written by a convict, and appended to Mr. Vaux's letter, quoted above, and will conclude our remarks with a summary taken from Mr. Vaux's letter to Mr. Roscoe :-" By sepa rate confinement, it is intended to punish those who will not control their wicked passions and propensities, and, moreover, to effect this punishment without ter

minating the life of the culprit in the midst of his wickedness, or making a mockery of justice by forming such into communities of hardened and corrupting transgressors, who enjoy each other's society, and contemn the very power which thus vainly seeks their restoration, and idly calculates to afford security to the state, from their outrages in future. In separate confinement, every prisoner is placed beyond the possibility of being made more corrupt by his imprisonment. In separate confinement, the prisoners will not know who are undergoing punishment at the same time with themselves, and thus will be afforded one of the greatest protections to such as may happily be enabled to form resolutions to behave well when they are discharged. In separate confinement, it is especially intended to furnish the criminal with every opportunity which Christian duty enjoins, for promoting his restoration to the path of virtue; because seclusion is believed to be an essential ingredient in moral treatment, and, with religious instruction and advice superadded, is calculated to achieve more than has ever yet been done for the miserable tenants of our penitentiaries. In separate confinement, a specific graduation of punishment can be obtained, as surely, and with as much facility, as by any other system. Some prisoners may laborsome may be kept without labor-some may have the privilege of books others may be deprived of it-some may experience total seclusion-others may enjoy such intercourse as shall comport with an entire separation of prisoners. In separate confinement, the same variety of discipline, for offences committed after convicts are introduced into prison, which any other mode affords, can be obtained (though irregularities must necessarily be less frequent), by denying the refractory individual the benefit of his yard, by taking from him his books or labor, and lastly, in extreme cases, by diminishing his diet to the lowest rate. By the last means, the most fierce, hardened and desperate offender can be subdued. From separate confinement other advantages of an economical nature will result: among these may be mentioned a great reduction of the terms of imprisonment; for, instead of from three to twenty years, and sometimes longer, as many months, excepting for very atrocious crimes, will answer all the ends of retributive justice, and penitential experience, which, on the actual plan, the greatest detention in prison alto

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gether fails to accomplish. Besides this abatement of expense in maintaining prisoners, very few keepers will be required on the new system; and the females should be intrusted wholly to the custody of suitable individuals of their own sex, whose services can, of course, be secured for less compensation than those of men. Such of the prisoners as may be employed, will necessarily labor alone; and, the kinds of business in which they will be engaged not being as rough and exposing as those now adopted, the expenditure for clothing must be much diminished. On the score of cost, therefore,-if that indeed be an object in a work of this magnitude, the solitary plan recommends itself to the regard of the public economist. But the problem of expense, in my opinion, can only be truly solved by showing the cheapest method of keeping prisoners to be, that which is most likely to reform them, to deter others, by the imposing character of the punishment, from preying upon the honest and unoffending members of society, afterwards involving heavy judicial costs to establish their guilt, and becoming, at last, a charge to the country as convicted felons."

PÉRIER, Casimir, died at Paris, May 16, 1832.

PETS. (See Funfkirchen.)
PHANARIOTS. (See Fanariots.)

PHANSYGURS, or THUGS; a remarkable race of professional murderers in some parts of Hindoostan. Having been compelled, in a great measure, to abandon their sanguinary trade in the original territories of the British government, they have, of late years, pursued their operations principally in the newly-acquired provinces of North-western and Central India, where, from the scantier population, and comparatively backward state of the country, they run less hazard of. interruption. A thug is a Hindoo of a low caste, or a Mussulman, who, at the conclusion of his agricultural labors, about the commencement of the hot season, in March and April, quits his village, and goes forth to make a little money by strangling-an art in which he sometimes becomes a great proficient, always, if dexterous, performing it with a pockethandkerchief, in preference to a noose, to avoid suspicion. The hot season is chosen for this excursion, because then people travel by night, and thus afford better opportunities for attack. When the rainy season begins, in July or Aúgust, the thug returns, with his share of

the booty which the gang have accumulated, to his usual residence, and takes to ploughing the field, like a peaceable husbandman. In this alternation of agricultural and homicidal pursuits, the thug lives on, often undetected, till age obliges him to remain at home, and send out his son in his stead. "I am a thug of the royal records (meaning one of sufficient notoriety to have been recorded as such), and my forefathers before me, for seven generations, have followed this profession," was the boast of one of these wretches, who attach some pride to the number of generations through which they can trace the adherence of their family to this pursuit. In the wild and unsettled parts of the country, their associations assume a more distinct and separate character; and in such places the leaders are to be found, around whom, at the beginning of the season, the mere operative thugs assemble. The abodes of the latter, however, are often mingled with those of the inhabitants of the most civilized stations and villages, where their conduct is usually quiet and inoffensive. On assembling at the beginning of the season, the line of road which they are to pursue is settled, and then they separate into small parties, under all sorts of disguises, sometimes travelling as sepoys returning home on a furlough; sometimes appearing, one as a merchant and another as his attendant; sometimes personifying pilgrims. In these characters they insinuate themselves into acquaintance with travellers, and, if they find them to be rich, take an opportunity of despatching them, either by means of some stupefying drug, which they use in the tobacco of their hookahs, and the dagger, or else by throttling them with a pocket-handkerchief, when they have persuaded them to halt, at some convenient spot, under pretence of being fatigued, or wishing to take

rest.

The bodies of the victims are then buried, or thrown into a well or neighboring cavern. In this manner, a single gang, consisting of twenty-five thugs, has been proved, on trial, to have, in an excursion of six weeks, despatched thirty victims.

PHIGALIAN MARBLES; a series of sculptures, in alto relievo, in the British museum, so called because they were discovered in the year 1812, near Paulizza, supposed to be the ancient town of Phigalia, in Arcadia. They are from the temple of Apollo Epicurius; and the subjects represented are the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapithæ, and the contest between

the Greeks and Amazons. There is great ability displayed in the execution of these marbles, although some heaviness and disproportion are observable in the figures. The conception of the whole, and the composition of the various groups, are, however, remarkably fine, and compensate, in a great measure, for the defects above mentioned. The circumstance which renders these marbles particularly interesting is the knowledge of the time at which they were executed; for Pausanias (Arcad., c. 14) says that the temple of Apollo Epicurius was built by Ictinus, the architect who superintended the construction of the Parthenon at Athens; and, though the Phigalian marbles want the purity of design and execution which distinguish the Athenian works, the high qualities they do possess give them an elevated place among the remains of ancient art.

PHRYGIAN CAP. (See Mitre.)
PIE. (See Magpie.)
PINE-SNAKE. (See Serpent.)
PITHECUS. (See Ape.)
PITHYUSE. (See Baleares.)
PLEA, PLEADINGS. (See Issue.)
PLINLIMMON. (See Snowdon.)
PLUVIOMETER. (See Rain-Gauge.)
POLECAT. (See Skunk.)
POLIZIANO. (See Politianus.)
PONT DU GARD. (See Gard.)
PRAIRIE DOG. (See Marmot.)
PRESUMPTIVE HEIRS. (See Apparent.)
PRIMER SEISIN. (See Tenures.)
PTARMIGAN; a species of grouse. (See
Grouse.)

PTISAN. (See Tisan.)
PYCNITE. (See Topaz.)
PYRENEITE. (See Garnet.)
PYROPE. (See Garnet.)
PYROTARTARIC ACID. (See Tartaric

Acid.)

PYTHON. This enormous genus of serpents, which is very often confounded with the boas of the new continent, is found only in some of the hot regions of the eastern continent. The pythons have the ventral plates narrow, like the boas, but differ from the latter in having double plates under the tail. Their head has plates on the end of the muzzle; and there are fossets to their lips. Some species of this genus approach, and even equal, the boas in size; and the ancients appear to have had some acquaintance with several of them. Aristotle speaks of African serpents as long as vessels, by which a galley with three oars might be overturned. Pliny talks of Indian serpents capable of swallowing deer.

Ælian mentions dragons of eighty to one hundred cubits in length; and, finally, Suetonius mentions that there was exhibited at Rome, under Augustus Cæsar, a serpent of fifty cubits in length. With its enormous length twisted round a tree, the python awaits in ambuscade the arrival of its fated victim, which it immediately envelopes in its tortuous folds, and strangles in its murderous embrace. It then breaks its bones by squeezing it, extends it on the earth, covers it with a mucous saliva, and begins to swallow it head first. In this sort of deglutition, the two jaws of the serpent dilate excessively, so that it seems to swallow a body larger than itself. In the mean time, digestion begins to take place in the œsophagus. The serpent then becomes lethargic, and is very easily killed, as he neither offers resistance nor attempts to fly. Among the species of this genus, the one most worthy of remark is the ular sawa (P. amethystinus, Daud.), Java snake (col. Javanicus of Shaw). This serpent, which is as large as any boa, reaching to more than thirty feet in length, inhabits the island of Java. The meaning of its Japanese name is serpent of the rice-fields, because it lives in them habitually. Its bite is not venomous. It usually lives on rats and birds, but sometimes devours larger animals, which it finds in the mountains. Of the P. bora, Russel was the first who gave us any account. It is a native of Bengal, and not venomous, notwithstanding the assertion of the natives, who affirm that persons bitten by it have a cutaneous eruption over the entire body in the course of ten or twelve days.

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Bark.)
SAINT UBES. (See Setuval.)
SALOP. (See Starch.)
SAMSCRIT. (See Sanscrit.)
SANCTION. (See Assent.)
SARDINE. (See Sprat)
SARDOIN. (See Sard.)

SARDONIC LAUGH; a convulsive affection of the muscles of the face and lips on both sides, which involuntarily forces the muscles of those parts into a species of grinning distortion, and forms a species of malignant sneer. It sometimes arises from eating hemlock, or other poisons, or succeeds to an apoplectic stroke. SATI. (See Suttee.)

SAWS. [The following article is from the treatise on manufactures in metal in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia.] The saw is, undoubtedly, next to the axe, the instrument most effectual in the hands of man when the trees of the forest are to be appropriated to his convenience. The earliest and most obvious method of preparing timber for use would be to split the trunks with wedges, and afterwards to smooth and fashion the planks by means of the hatchet. This wasteful and slovenly process had allowedly one recommendation of no small importance in ages when the strength and management of timber were less perfectly understood than they are at present. In

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