The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

PHILADELPHIA, August 4.
On Monday last, the Mayor of this
city, accompanied by two Aldermen,
two county Magistrates, two county
Commissioners, and one of the gaol
Inspectors, met at the gaol in this city,
in order to lay out the ground for erecting solitary cells, agreeably to the late
penal law of this state, for the purpose
of confining those criminals who cannot
be reclaimed simply by hard labor. The success which has attended
similar institutions in other countries,
gives us the utmost reason to expect
the most beneficial effects from the
proposed penitentiary building. There
is no human creature so hardened by
vice, as to be able wholly to silence the
clamours of conscience when the avenues to the senses are shut up by confinement and solitude. It is to be
hoped, the conduct of Pennsylvania towards those neglected or deluded part
of their fellow men, who disturb the
peace, or violate the laws of society,
will be followed by her sister states.
It becomes them to recollect, that all
their penal laws are copied from a
country which we now consider as corrupted and enslaved, and that they all
partake of the cruel and absurd spirit of
monarchy and aristocracy. To punish
crimes by death is a proof of ignorance,
weakness or indolence in governments.
Nor is this all: It is giving a sanction
to murder, for in the eyes of heaven,
it can be of little consequence, whether
death be inflicted upon a criminal by
an angry or injured individual, or by
an angry and bloody minded law.
The gratification and establishment of
the principle of revenge, are nearly
the same in both cases-but worse in
the last. The injured individual transfers his resentment to the laws of his
country--but these murder, not suddenly and in a passion, but deliberately
and in cold blood.