The Life of William Roscoe
Chapter XVI. 1819
William Roscoe to the Marquis de Lafayette, [1825?]
“Whilst you are enjoying the purest and most honourable
triumph that history records, you have friends and admirers in this country,
who have traced your progress, and shared in your gratifications, with that
sympathy which binds together the common friends of mankind throughout the
civilised world; but, although I have the ambition to include myself in that
number, I should not, for that reason, have intruded myself, at present, on
your indulgence, had it not been from a wish to interest you on a subject
respecting which, I am certain, you cannot be indifferent, as it regards one of
the most important questions that can affect the security, the welfare, and the
character of the human race.
“The system of penitentiary discipline for the
reformation of offenders, adopted in the United States of America, has in many
places been eminently successful, and has, in the estimate of the rest of the
world, given a credit and character to that country not less honourable than
that which it derives from so many other causes. I have, however, just received
from Mr. Hopkins of New York, (one of
the three commissioners appointed by the legislature of that state to examine
the state prisons, and report such ![]()
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plan of discipline as
they may think best calculated for the improvement thereof,) a copy of such
report, in which I am surprised, and mortified beyond description, to find that
it is proposed to abandon the reformatory system altogether, and to substitute
for it a plan of severe and compulsory labour, under the immediate discipline
of the whip, and the continual dread of solitary confinement; both of which may
be inflicted at the absolute will of the agent or jailer. On this plan I have
lost no time in drawing up such hasty remarks as occurred to me on its perusal,
copies of which I have sent to the commissioners, and to some of my friends in
New York; and as I am well convinced that your influence would, at this moment,
be more extensively felt than that of any other person in the United States,
and as it can never be better exerted than in preventing such a disgrace to the
country, and such an outrage against human nature as this plan proposes, I have
so far ventured to intrude on your leisure as to submit to your perusal a copy
of these remarks, accompanied by a small volume, being the third and last part
of my Observations on Penal
Jurisprudence, which I am now on the point of publishing here; being
an attempt to prevail on my countrymen to adopt an improved system of
penitentiary discipline, of which, however, I fear there is but little chance
whilst those insti-![]()
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tutions which I had pointed out as my
models are in danger of being overturned. Whether it may be consistent with the
situation in which you stand to express your opinion on the subject, you are
the sole judge; but that your heart will plead for the wretched and oppressed
criminal—for a criminal may be oppressed—I have no doubt; and it is in that
feeling alone that I can hope to find an excuse for the great liberty I have
thus taken.”
Samuel Miles Hopkins (1772-1837)
Educated at Yale College, he was a lawyer, congressman from New York, and judge of the
state circuit court (1832-36). He was concerned in the construction of the construction of
Sing Sing Prison.
