The Governor and Council have the power of granting pardons, and once in every year they meet to attend to this and other duties assigned them by the Constitution. The prisoner who hopes to share in their mercy, procures petitions from his friends and former acquaintances in his behalf, and causes them, with his own petition, to be laid before them at their annual meeting. The principal officer of the prison has been generally depended upon to lay the petitions before the Governor and Council; but the conduct of this officer has so far failed to place him in the confidence of the prisoners, that they never trust their cases in his hands, if they can get any one else to attend to them. The common opinion is, that he is never willing to let a prisoner go who is any profit to the Institution; and for this opinion there is as much evidence as there is that a merchant never wishes to lose a good customer, or a doctor to hasten the cure of a rich patient. I was more confirmed in this opinion after my release than I had been before. A friend of mine who had been for several years, and was then, a member of the Legislature, told me that the fall before, he called on the principal officer of the prison to get my petition, and be prepared to lay my case before the pardoning authority, and was told by him that I "had not petitioned." When my friend told me this I was thunderstruck. That officer knew that I had petitioned, for I conversed with him on the subject, and gave the petition into his hand; and he informed me when he returned, that he laid it before the Governor and Council, and told me some of the observations that were made upon it. What shocked me the most was the hypocrisy of the man. He had professed to be my friend—and was a member of a christian church; and yet he was so unwilling to lose my labour, that he prevented the interposition of my friend for my release. I have the most unshaken confidence in the veracity of my friend; he could not have been mistaken, and he had no motive to misrepresent. This fact is directly to the point. It speaks a great deal. And it shews why the prisoners are not willing to trust their cases to the officers of the prison.

It is a fact, and I wish to have it known, that it is very difficult for a prisoner who is any profit to the Institution to get a pardon. I will not pretend to apply the fault, but I know the fact; and hence some of the convicts, acting on the base principle of opposing craft to craft, and returning evil for evil, render themselves of as little use as possible. It has become a proverb in the prison, that a good weaver is sure to be kept as long as he is able to weave. This proverb is inscribed on the facts that transpire every fall, and it ought to find a humbling and condemning application somewhere. Deprived thus of all confidence in their keepers, the petitioners, who have the means, generally call to their assistance some of the lawyers in the village. These men are always ready to work for cash; and when they know that their assistance can be of no service, they will take from a prisoner those very dollars which he has ruined his health and destroyed his constitution to earn. Like blood suckers, a few of them gather around the prisoners every pardoning time, and carry off all the money that the poor creatures have been able to scrape together.

Now I find no fault with these lawyers, for such is their trade; but I condemn the authority for permitting them to practice on the credulity of the captives, and trick them out of their hard earned dollars. It is a libel on the principles of the Governor and Council to suppose that such lawyers can plead them into the exercise of mercy. They know what some of that profession will do for money, and there is no instance in which they have been of any real service to their clients in the prison, in applications for pardon. The Executive meet to decide from facts, and these facts should come to them from the authority of the prison, and from other sources. The authority of the prison ought to do its duty, and secure the confidence of the prisoners; and thus prevent the unprincipled and avaricious interference of these lawyers. I do not mean to reflect generally, on the profession of the law. There are in that bright array of learning and talent, as many high, noble, and ethereal spirits as any other profession can boast of—and some of the meanest souls that ever lived.

There is but one general rule, according to which all pardons should be granted, and this rule is JUSTICE. It may be just to pardon one man and not another; and if it is right on any account to pardon one man, it is right to pardon all who are in the same circumstances—indeed it would be criminal not to. Justice holds an even scale. So does mercy, which is only that exercise of justice, which relates to the wretched. And the reason why one man should be pardoned and another not, is, that, according to all the facts in the two cases, community would be safe in the pardon of that man, but not of this. The design of all punishment should be the reformation of the sufferer. When this is presumptively effected, the object is attained, and all further suffering for the crime from the hand of the law, would be purely vindictive, and infernally cruel. This is the only principle on which God punishes; and hence endless punishment under his government, and all capital punishments by human laws, would be equally unjust and inconsistent. In this respect, men often err, but God never can; and human laws will not be perfect until they abolish capital punishments and chastise only to reform.

If this principle had been acted upon in the Windsor Prison, many years of suffering would have been spared to human hearts, and many a soul would have gone with less guilt to judgment. That prison is called a Penitentiary.—As properly might hell be called heaven. The spirit of the penitentiary system finds there no place to lay its head. Not the reformation of the convicts is sought, but their earnings; and they are treated just as an intelligent but heartless slave-holder would treat his negroes—made to work as long as they can earn their living, and then cursed with freedom that they may die on their own expense. The keepers lay it down as an axiom in their practice, that it is impossible to reform a prisoner. Perhaps they will admit that God could do it, and I cheerfully agree with them that none but He can reform a sinner after he has fallen into their hands. And it is equally plain to my mind, that nothing less than omnipotent power will ever reform them.