The Massachusetts Spy

The paragraph in our last on the subject of the House of Correction, is published in the Boston Daily Advertiser, with the following remarks:

"The Worcester House of Correction.—The following paragraph is from the Worcester Spy. The complaint we believe is well founded.—When a law was lately passed requiring the several counties to build prisons with accommodations for giving employment to the convicts confined in them, Worcester was the only county that complied with the requisition; and to exonerate the other counties from the expense, the law was repealed. When afterwards the county of Worcester offered to sell this building to the State, at a price much below its cost, the legislature declined the offer, and yet the convicts of other counties are sent there, to be supported at the expense of the county of Worcester. We presume that the Legislature, at the next session, will be disposed to provide some remedy for the unequal burden which now falls on that county."

We did not intend it should be inferred that the convicts are "supported at the expense of the County of Worcester." Our complaint was, that the State has almost the exclusive use, and that gratuitously, of a prison built at the expense of the County.

The Advertiser has alluded to what we, last week, forbore to mention, viz. that the Legislature passed an Act requiring (and that too under a penalty,) each County to build such a prison as ours; and, when this County had complied with the Act, repealed the law, and authorised convicts from other counties to be sent here. But this is not all. The Legislature authorised one of the State Courts to allow the accounts of expenses incurred for the support of State prisoners, and to order their payment from the Treasury of this County; and, when money had been so paid from our County treasury, refused to refund the whole amount, on the ground, we suppose, that the charges were too high—as if the people of this County were responsible for the making or allowance of those charges!

Again, then, we say "it is unbecoming the Commonwealth of Massachusetts" to subject the County of Worcester to bear an expense from which other Counties were exempted, and which has in fact been incurred for the benefit of the State: and the subject need only be rightly understood, to induce the Legislature to remedy the injustice that is suffered.