em; since, in a
country like the United States, a liberated felon may very easily choose
another locality for his sphere of action. In favor of the "separate
system," it is occasionally pleaded that the prisoner is under a veil of
secresy; and that when he goes forth, neither the censorious public, nor
his fellow-prisoners, can point him out; and thus, his character being
comparatively unblemished, he can, with less difficulty, procure
employment. It is obvious that this would induce, in many cases, a
degree of dishonest concealment from an employer, and encourage
dissimulation. It would be much better that the prisoner should depend
for a situation on the good character which the superintendent would
give him if reformed; and I was glad to find at Sing Sing guarded
situations had been procured, in numerous instances, for the liberated
prisoners, and that their employers, with very little exception,
represented them to be most valuable servants. I could hear of no case,
in either of the prisons I visited, of any permanent injury to the
health of a prisoner from the entire disuse of intoxicating drinks,
however intemperate their previous habits might have been. The same
remark is true with regard to tobacco. I will only add, that it is
notorious that the prison discipline of Great Britain, notwithstanding
all its recent improvements, is yet lamentably deficient; and that
though the United States justly claim precedence of us in this respect,
they have, by no means reached perfection. The greatest deficiency of
all, however, in each nation, is that of institutions like the
Philadelphia Refuge, co-extensive with the wants of the community, for
the reformation of juvenile delinquency; thus suppressing crime in its
small beginnings. So long as this want is unsupplied, and the juvenile
offender is contaminated by contact with the hardened criminal, the
statesmen and those who control the legislatures of both countries,
dishonor their profession of Christianity.

On the 26th, I accompanied my friends, J. and M. Candler, to the steamer
which was to convey them on board the "Roscius" packet, to sail for
Liverpool this afternoon. I afterwards called upon Charles Collins, who,
for many years past, has dealt exclusively in articles of free labor
produce, and for which he said he had found the demand to increase of
late. I am more and more convinced that this branch of the abolition
question has not received the attention it deserve