From official reports to both branches of the Legislature of the State of Louisiana, at its late session, it appears that imprisonment for debt is taxed with horrors which, we trust, it has never experienced in any other country of the earth. A Committee of the Senate, for example, at the last session, reports to the Legislature as follows: Your Committee would betray their duty, did they not denounce to you the continuance of the same abuses and inconveniences, which have been made known to you at the last session: the unfortunate sharing the couch of the assassin or pirate, condemned to the most ignominious death: the slave and the white man have died together, as are also numbers of every complexion; the insane are the laughing stock and mockery of the other prisoners. This is a summary of the afflicting scenes that have struck your committee. It is the province of the Legislature to remedy, as speedily as possible, ills that degrade the virtuous man, and which ought to call up a blush on the cheek of those whose duty it is to remove these evils, and who have not done their duty. And well might they call up the blush of shame on the cheeks of all concerned in such inconceivable abuses! Much more, on the cheeks of those who themselves denounce these abuses without applying the remedy within their power. A Committee of the House of Representatives also reports upon the same subject as follows: It is painful duty of your committee to report the continuance of the same evils and inconveniences which were made known to you at your last session. Prisoners of every class are mingled: and the insane are exposed to mockery and derision; for these most helpless and wretched beings your committee pray the interference of this honorable House, &c. These reports were both unanimously adopted, it appears, and there the matter ended! The same abuses and inconveniences, and evils and inconveniences-(it is evident, by the way, that both the reports are the fruit of one mind)-the same atrocities, we will call them, continue to exist. The Legislature adjourned without acting further on the subject. How shall we reconcile this indifference to misery, and to the rights of their fellow-beings, with the general character of the State for liberality and nice notions on honor and propriety? Have the ends of justice been defeated, have the cries of humanity been stifled, in the conflict of contending factions in the Legislative Bodies? We cannot imagine any other way of explaining the cause of this reproach to the State. Whatever may be the cause of it, there cannot be the least doubt that the first act of the succeeding Legislature will be to remedy this crying evil. It would be gross injustice to the People of the State, to suppose that they, now apprised of the abuse, would suffer their Representatives longer to tolerate it.
