which, however, admit of future correction. With
respect to the plan of a Prison, requested at the same time, I had heard
of a benevolent society, in England, which had been indulged by the
government, in an experiment of the effect of labor, in solitary
confinement, on some of their criminals; which experiment had succeeded
beyond expectation. The same idea had been suggested in France, and an
Architect of Lyons had proposed a plan of a well contrived edifice, on
the principle of solitary confinement. I procured a copy, and as it was
too large for our purposes, I drew one on a scale less extensive, but
susceptible of additions as they should be wanting. This I sent to the
Directors, instead of a plan of a common prison, in the hope that it
would suggest the idea of labor in solitary confinement, instead of
that on the public works, which we had adopted in our Revised Code. Its
principle, accordingly, but not its exact form, was adopted by Latrobe
in carrying the plan into execution, by the erection of what is now
called the Penitentiary, built under his direction. In the mean while,
the public opinion was ripening, by time, by reflection, and by the
example of Pennsylvania, where labor on the highways had been tried,
without approbation, from 1786 to '89, and had been followed by their
Penitentiary system on the principle of confinement and labor, which was
proceeding auspiciously. In 1796, our legislature resumed the subject,
and passed the law for amending the Penal laws of the commonwealth. They
adopted solitary, instead of public, labor, established a gradation in
the duration of the confinement, approximated the style of the law more
to the modern usage, and, instead of the settled distinctions of murder
and manslaughter, preserved in my bill, they introduced the new terms of
murder in the first and second degree. Whether these have produced more
or fewer questions of definition, I am not sufficiently informed of our
judiciary transactions, to say. I will here, however, insert the text of
my bill, with the notes I made in the course of my researches into the
subject. [See Appendix, Note E.]

The acts of Assembly concerning the College of William and Mary, were
properly within Mr. Pendleton's portion of the work; but these related
chiefly to its revenue, while its constitution, organization, and scope
of science, were derived from its charter. We thought that on this
subject, a systematical plan of general education