MEMORIAL TO THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW-YORK, BY THE SO- ISM, IN THE SAID CITY, ON THE HOUSE SUBJECT OF ERECTING A To the Honorable, the Legislature of the State of New-York, in Senate and Assembly convened :-The Memorial of the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, in the City of NewYork, respectfully sheweth, THAT having received an Act of Incorporation, at the last session of the Legislature, your Memorialists, with such means as were placed at their disposal, by the liberality and public spirit of such of their fellowcitizens as were applied to for their assistance, have proceeded to the fulfilment of the objects of their Institution. They have procured from our City Corporation a lease of a piece of land eligibly situated for the establishment of a HOUSE OF REFUGE, which had been formerly used for the purpose of a National Arsenal. And they have purchased from the Government of the United States, a cession of their improvements, consisting of various buildings, outworks, sheds, &c. These improvements, the Society have put in the best state of temporary repair possible, and they are now ready to receive under their care, a limited number of young persons, whose vagrancy, or whose crimes, may have rendered them fit objects for the care and discipline of this Society. But in the very commencement of their operations, they are presented with the fact of a treasury nearly exhausted by the purchase of the above-mentioned improvements, and the necessary repairs of them, and the furnishing of a quantity of materials with which to employ the objects of their care, in the great purpose of their reformation and amendment. And the small amount of their funds has enabled them to pre pare accommodations for the number only of about seventy persons. Under these circumstances it is evident, that, in the course of a few months, at most, the proceedings of this Society, having for their object the reformation and restoration to society, under circumstances favorable to their future prosperity, of the hundreds of youth who are annually thrown upon our municipal government for correction and punishment, must be entirely suspended, and the humane effort that has been made under the protection and fostering care of your Honorable Body, and the no less distinguishing liberality of our private citizens, must be abandoned, unless the bounty of the State shall be added to the private contributions that have already been made in behalf of this Society. We therefore address your Honorable Body, as the guardians of all portions of the community, and particularly of those institutions which are formed for the benign and necessary purpose of reforming the abandoned and profligate, of rescuing them from the deplorable consequences of ignorance, of bad example, and of guilt; and of mingling the salutary lessons of reformation, with the indispensable administration of punishment, especially to those young and inexperienced convicts, of whose future usefulness a reasonable hope may be entertained. And when your Honorable Body shall take into consideration, the peculiarly exposed situation of the city of New-York, to the migrations of the wandering and restless subjects of poverty and vice, not only from foreign parts, but from our own country and state, the Managers of this Society entertain the confident expectation, that your Honorable Body will feel the necessity and propriety of extending towards them such portion of the patronage of the State, as shall enable them to erect the necessary buildings, and to introduce extensive and permanent plans for the employment and education of such juvenile offenders as shall be committed to their charge. The Society beg leave to refer your Honorable Body to the annexed Abstract of a Report of a Committee of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism in the city of New-York, for a full account of the origin of their Association, and a developement of the principles and objects which are to govern them in its administration. CADWALLADER D. COLDEN, PRESIDENT. ROBERT F. MOTT, Secretary. REPORT, &c. It will be admitted by every person conversant with human nature, and with the great objects of political association, that there are few judicial considerations of greater importance,, than the wise adaptation of punishment to crime. The safety of life and property; the enjoyment of personal liberty; the blessings of social intercourse; and the strength and stability of governments themselves; are essentially interwoven with those penal regulations, which coerce the refractory, and operate as dissuasives from the indulgence of passions, hostile to the general good. Of the various institutions of civil government, there are none, perhaps, which more clearly mark the progress of refinement, and the growth of enlightened feeling, than the meliorations which are visible from time to time in the criminal code of nations. In the savage and barbarous state, vengeance is the ruling principle in the infliction of punishment, and death is seldom decreed, without the accompaniment of lingering and merciless torture. As knowledge increases, men learn to discriminate more clearly between actions and their motives: and although the divisions of the statute book become more artificial, there is an obvious attention to the natural distinctions of crime; a more cautious inquiry into the quo animo-the nature and force of the temptation; and more humanity in the retributions of legal justice. But the most important step in the enactment and administration of penal laws, is the full admission of the principle, that it is not revenge which stimulates society to the infliction of punishment, and arms the law with its severest denunciations;-that neither in the prescriptions of the Legislature, nor in the progress of juridical investigation and decision, are the vindictive passions to be allowed to operate :-but that the great ends of punishment are, to deter others from crime, to prevent the aggressor from the repetition of his offences, and, if possible, to effect the moral reformation of all those who become amenable to the laws. It cannot but afford the highest gratification to every humane individual, to witness the solicitude which now prevails in relation to this subject. The zeal which is observable in various countries, with respect to the improvement of prison discipline, to the reformation of abuses, to the perfection of criminal laws, and to the more discreet and consistent treatment of those whom offended justice visits with its severe but needful inflictions, is an indubitable indication of that expansive benevolence which is the genuine fruit of Christianity. It is creditable to this country, young as it was in experience, to have given to the world one of the first effective impulses in this new sphere of wise and charitable regulation-the Penitentiary System of Prison Discipline. Had that system been pursued among us with the same intelligent and disinterested zeal with which it was commenced, our prisons would at this time exhibit the best models for the world to imitate ;-their influence would be far more decisive upon the public welfare; and we should not now have to lament that disrepute into which the Penitentiary System has partially fallen, in consequence of doubts of its superiority. Among the evils and abuses which obstruct the operation of this system, and most powerfully counteract the reformatory influence of imprisonment, is the want of classification among prisoners, the indiscriminate assemblage of persons of all ages and degrees of guilt, and the inevitably corrupting tendency of such an intercourse. The very imperfect structure, and the crowded state of our prisons, absolutely forbid the application of an adequate remedy for this deplorable evil. So notorious is the demoralizing nature of some of those institutions which are called Penitentiaries,-so generally do those who are liberated from them come out more vile and corrupt, and more skilful in the various modes of depredation than when they entered;-and so seldom do they manifest any signs of reformation, that these places have acquired the appellation of Schools and Colleges of crime. The amount of injury sustained by the lamentable defects in the regulations of our city and state prisons, is so great,—to such an extent is the younger class of prisoners initiated in the mysteries of wickedness, by this exposure, it is a questionable point, in the estimation of many persons, whether the present system, with all its expensive apparatus, and all its show of lenity and moral treatment, is not more inauspicious to public tranquillity, than the simple incarceration and corporal chastisements, the whipping-posts, pillories, and croppings of former times. The experience, nevertheless, of some of the prisons of the United States, whose discipline is the most exact, and where classification is an object of careful attention; and the growing experience of England, and other countries of Europe, where the sanguinary codes which have been for ages in operation, are beginning to yield, in practice, to the more rational and humane substitution of hard labor, restricted diet, solitary confinement, and judicious classification, afford unquestionable evidence, that the energies of the law in the suppression of crime, are most potent and availing, when directed with a constant reference to the moral faculties of our nature; and when clothed with that spirit, which seeks to restore, in order that it may safely forgive. The great object of the institution of civil government, is to advance the prosperity, and to increase the happiness of its subjects. The agents of the government, become, in this point of view, the fathers of the people; and it may surely be ranked among the duties incident to this paternal care, not only that those who are guilty of crime should receive the chastisement due to their offences, but that no pains should be spared to remove the causes of offence, and to diminish, as far as possible, the sources of temptation and corruption. This obligation applies with peculiar force to the case of juvenile offenders;-a class whose increasing numbers, and de plorable situation in this city, loudly call for the more effective interposition of its police, and the benevolent interference of our citizens in general. To this class of guilty unfortunates, the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, beg leave to solicit the attention of their fellowcitizens, in the earnest hope, that means may be devised to rescue from the lowest degradation, and from the danger of utter ruin, hundreds and thousands of the youth of this city, of both sexes, whose crimes and misery arise, in a very marked degree, from the neglect of those who ought to be their guardians and protec tors. Every person that frequents the out-streets of this city, must be forcibly struck with the ragged and uncleanly appearance, the vile language, and the idle and miserable habits of great numbers of children, most of whom are of an age suitable for schools, or for some useful employment. The parents of these children, are, in all probability, too poor, or too degenerate, to provide them with clothing fit for them to be seen in at school; and know not where to place them in order that they may find employment, or be better cared for. Accustomed, in many instances, to witness at home nothing in the way of example, but what is degrading; early taught to observe intemperance, and to hear obscene and profane language without disgust; obliged to beg, and even encouraged to acts of dishonesty, to satisfy the wants induced by the indolence of their parents,- -what can be expected, but that such children will, in due time, become responsible to the laws for crimes, which have thus, in a manner, been forced upon them? Can it be consistent with real justice, that delinquents of this character, should be consigned to the infamy and severity of punishments, which must inevitably tend to perfect the work of degradation, to sink them still deeper in corruption, to deprive them of their remaining sensibility to the shame of exposure, and establish them in all the hardihood of daring and desperate villainy? Is it possible that a christian community, can lend its sanction to such a process, without any effort to rescue and to save? If the agents of our municipal government stand towards the community in the moral light of guardians of virtue, if they may be justly regarded as the political fathers of the unprotected, does not every feeling of justice urge upon them the principle, of considering these juvenile culprits as falling under their special guardianship, and claiming from them the right which every child may demand of its parent, of being well instructed in the nature of its duties, before it is punished for the breach of their observance? Ought not every citizen, who has a just sense of the reciprocal obligations of parents and children, to lend his aid to the administrators of the law, in rescuing those pitiable victims of neglect and wretchedness, from the melancholy fate which almost inevitably results from an apprenticeship in our common prisons. In order to arrive at a more correct understanding of the amount of the evils alluded to, the committee have to state, that they have been furnished by the District Attorney, H. Maxwell, Esq. with an abstract of those persons who were brought before the Police Magistrates, during the year 1822, and sentenced either to the City Bridewell from 10 to 60 days, or to the Penitentiary from 2 to 6 months. The list comprehends more than 450 persons, all under |