f New Orleans is very different from that of the southern
states in general, being composed of Americans from the eastern states,
English merchants, and French creoles. Vigorous laws and an efficient
police were established; and one of the southern planters, of good
family and connexions, having committed a murder, was tried and
condemned. To avoid the gallows, he committed suicide in prison. This
system having been rigorously followed up, New Orleans has become
perhaps the _safest_ city in the Union; and now, not even a brawl is
heard in those streets where, a few years back, murders occurred every
hour of the day.

In another chapter I shall enter more fully into this question: at
present I shall only say that there is a great unwillingness to take
away life in America, and it is this aversion to capital punishment
which has directed the attention of the American community to the
penitentiary system. Several varieties of this species of punishment
have been resorted to, more or less severe. The most rigid--that of
solitary confinement in dark cells, and without labour--was found too
great an infliction, as, in many cases, it unsettled the reason, and
ended in confirmed lunacy. Confinement, with the boon of light, but
without employment, was productive of no good effect; the culprit sank
into a state of apathy and indifference. After a certain time, day and
night passed away unheeded, from the want of a healthy tone to the mind.
The prisoners were no longer lunatics, but they were little better than
brute animals.

Neither do I consider the present system, as practised at Sing Sing, the
state prison of New York, as tending to _reform_ the offenders; it
punishes them severely, but that is all. Where corporal punishment is
resorted to, there always will be feelings of vindictiveness; and all
the bad passions must be allowed to repose before the better can gain
the ascendant.

The best system that is acted upon in the Penitentiary at Philadelphia,
where there is solitary confinement, but with labour and exercise. Mr
Samuel Wood, who superintends this establishment, is a person admirably
calculated for his task, and I do not think that any arrangements could
be better, or the establishment in more excellent hands. But my object
was, not so much to view the prison and witness the economy of it, as to
examine the prisoners themselves, and hear what their opinions were.
The surgeon may explain the operation, but