Daily National Intelligencer

A Novel Proposition.

The Inspectors of the State Prison of New-York, in an address to the Legislature, through the Governor of the State, lament the excess of numbers condemned to the Penitentiary, which makes frequent pardons indispensable, and otherwise detracts from the utility of the institution. They then proceed thus:-

"With these facts before us, it has become matter of serious consideration whether the state prison has not a tendency to demoralise rather than to reclaim criminals; for whenever punishment is so far mitigated as not to be dreaded, the law fails in the effect it proposes to produce. We are, therefore, firmly of opinion, that some different plan for the punishment of crimes of the first magnitude, such as arson, forgery and other felonies of the deepest die, ought to be adopted, or a state prison in every district will be required to contain the delinquents. Permit us, then, to suggest to your excellency and the honorable the legislature, the propriety of recommending, through our representatives in congress, the establishment, by the general government, of a colony on the north west coast of America, at or near the Columbia River, or at Madison Island, to which convicts of the aforementioned class shall be transported. If, however, the government of the United States should object to this plan, why may not this state adopt a similar one, on a smaller scale, and fix on some place on the frontiers of the state, where they may be sent and usefully employed, to keep them from committing, in future, their depredations on society? Believing that the utility as well as the necessity of some distant place being fixed upon to which certain convicts in the different states of the union may be transported will be generally acknowledged by congress, we feel anxious that the subject should be submitted to their consideration as early as possible."