“Your so very interesting letter has reached me at a
proper point of my rapid and extensive visits through every state in the union.
I have been able to confer with several appropriate persons in Philadelphia,
and new York: I have been answered that Mr.
Hopkins’s personal opinion, although in the name of a
committee, was not the opinion of the legislature; and I believe your
observations will have a good effect. As to Philadelphia, I had already, on my
visit of the last year, expressed my regret that the great expenses of their
new penitentiary building had been chiefly calculated on a plan of solitary
confinement. This matter has lately become an object of discussion; a copy of
your letter, and my own observations, have been requested, and as both opinions
are actuated by equally honest and good feelings, as solitary confinement has
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“It must be said, in justice to my friends of the other opinion, that solitary confinement was never considered by them as has been the case in the prison of Inquisition and the Bastille, but merely as an effective reformation-punishment, and as a preventive against mutual teaching of corruption. The difference is, that we allow it as a punishment of a few days to refractory prisoners, properly inflicted, and they as a more extensive method to make them reflect and reform—a very mistaken notion in my opinion.
“I have had occasion to confer on this matter with
friends in New Hampshire, Vermont, and the state of Maine. They are satisfied
with their penitentiaries, which are less crowded on
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