Mr. Charles Forster, of Charlestown, says, in a letter to me: 'I have
been connected with the Massachusetts State Prison for a period of
thirty-eight years, and have always felt a strong interest in the
improvement, welfare, and happiness, of the unfortunate men confined
within its walls. I am conversant with many touching cases of deep and
heartfelt gratitude for kindly acts and sympathy bestowed upon them,
both during and subsequent to their imprisonment.' And the same
gentleman says further, 'I think that the proportion of persons
discharged from prison by executive clemency, who have subsequently been
convicted of penal offences, is very small indeed.' To some, whose
imaginations have pictured a broad waste or deep gulf between themselves
and the prisoner class, these may seem strange words; but there is no
mystery in this language to those who have listened to individual cases
of crime and punishment. Men are tried and convicted of crimes according
to rules and definitions which are necessarily arbitrary and technical;
but the moral character of criminals is not very well defined by the
rules and definitions which have been applied to their respective cases.
Our prisons contain men who are great and professional criminals,--men
who advisedly follow a life of crime themselves, and deliberately
educate generation after generation to a career of infamy and vice. As a
general thing, mercy to such men would be unpardonable folly. Of them I
do not now speak. But there is another class, who are involved in guilt
and its punishment through the defects of early education, the
misfortune of orphanage, accident, sudden temptation, or the influence
of evil companionship in youth.
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