The Society looks back with much gratification upon its labors. The existing active members feel how much they owe to the philanthropic efforts of the founders of the Association, and to those, who, having exerted themselves with corresponding zeal in the good cause, have bequeathed to men of this day the improved work, and the augmented duties. Every point gained developes the resources of humanity, while it presents new objects for its exercise. How prisons are conducted, and how prisoners are treated, where there is no voluntary organization to alleviate their suffering, history and the report of travelers tell. Undoubtedly religion meliorates the condition of the incarcerated, whether his offence be vice or crime; but religion supplies itself with means and instruments for its holy work, and we look for good results only where there have been corresponding means. To find the effects of unalleviated punishment upon tried offenders, is not necessary to look far back into ages which the world calls “dark,” because light was less diffused than at present; it is only to seek the nation or community where arbitrary power not only inflicts the wrong of too severe punishment, but, by its terrors, prevents the suggestion and adoption of means by the humane which may lessen the effect of the severity, by keeping between the sufferer and the world a connection of feeling and sympathy that will lead him to resolve some good when the punishment for the bad shall have been all inflicted, which shall make him feel, indeed, that this will be a use to him of virtue, and that he may hereafter have a reward in the recognition of its existence in him by the society to which he may be spared. Seek the government that understands by criminal law only the punishment of the guilty, and we shall see that authority seizes the violator of its enactments or decrees, and treats him as if all of humanity had perished in him with the conception of his crime, and, dragging him from the decencies, the enjoyments and the hopes of society, it

The difference between that mode of dealing with the convict and the lesser evil, that of allowing him to perish in inactivity, and acquire strength in bad resolves, and instruction for future crimes, is what policy and unaided humanity have wrought out of the condition of the offender. The difference between the latter condition and that of the inmates of the Philadelphia County Prison, and especially the Eastern Penitentiary, is what results from the labor of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Prisons. It is something, in the first contrast, that the convict has a prison; it is more, in the latter, that the prison is made a school of physical and moral reform.

To have been instrumental in working out such a difference is an occasion for felicitation and thankfulness, even though there be felt a consciousness that with such objects so well defined, and means so complete, much less has been done to alleviate the miseries of prisons, and arouse the attention of society to the good work, than might have been hoped for. But a work of this kind once begun, must, of course, go on. The hands that are now stretched forth may lose their power, but others will be employed; and year by year, as we have seen, so shall we see, volunteers dedicating themselves to a duty which, though painful and often repulsive, has with it the promise of reward from Him who by precept and example devolved it upon us.

The important work of convincing society that it has a greater interest in the reformation of a public offender, than in his punishment, or that it is its true interest to make his punishment a means of his reformation, must not be allowed to fail for want of efforts or advocacy. The great work of demonstrating the truth that crimes are multiplied by the companionship of the culpable, must be forwarded. The construction of prisons, and the administration of their affairs, must still be carefully considered as one of the great objects, a leading object of this Society, and a means of alleviating existing miseries.

The discipline, the labor, the compensation of prisoners, must have constant attention; and the results of investigations and experiments be made public, for the promotion of the great object of this Society.

The great work of establishing auxiliaries to the Society must be carried forward with prudent zeal, so that, by co-operation, the labors of all who unite with us in objects and views, may be more effective; and, indeed, that we may by argument and illustration, increase the number of those who unite with us in object and views.

We must augment our correspondence also, that we may fully understand the plans and labours of philanthropists in other States and other nations, and make them comprehend our own views, and the means by which we seek to accomplish our object.

All these considerations, and others that seem to regard the physical condition of prisoners, must continue to occupy the attention of our members, and chiefly because, through those physical aids, we are to reach his moral life. But with all these efforts towards the instruments of good, we must continue, with unwavering, with augmented exertion, our endeavors to reach directly the hearts and consciences of those whom we would benefit. To do this effectively, we must have patience, as well as good will,—we must endure, as well as do: we must learn the great lesson of teachers, before we undertake the business of instruction; we must feel it the great duty to ourselves, and our mission, to “bear and forbear.” We must learn to labor and to wait,—to bestow our toil this day and every day, but to look at a distance for the reward of our efforts, in the fixed reformation of its objects, and to be “instant in season and out of season,” to admonish, advise, induce and encourage. The experience of those who have spent years at the doors of the prison cells, is not that of multiplied fruits. The value of a single soul must be fully appreciated, that the one redeemed from vice may be regarded as a consolation for the hundreds that make no improvement from efforts in their behalf. In short, we must find our pleasure in the discharge of a duty, and leave to Him, whose commands we obey, to give the increase for which we labor.

We may spend days and weeks, as indeed many have spent months, in seeking to awaken the conscience of the hardened offender to the evils of his course, and arousing him to the danger of their tendencies; and when the object of this solicitude shall have passed from our care, and ceased to hear our lessons, we may hear of him in the midst of debauchery and villainies, apparently ten-fold more a child of the devil than when we sought to soften his heart, and succeeded in raising his tears in the criminal cell. This is the experience of all who undertake to reclaim those who are hardened in crime or steeped in vice. But are we, on that account, to relinquish our labors or to forego hope? Are we to say that this backsliding is the last of the seventy times seven, and therefore we may stand excused from further effort? That very backsliding ought to be expected. The return of the offender to his offence is in the course of the timid, half-repentant wrong-doer, we know. We see it in regard to amendments of life that have relation to private interests and individual character. We must look for it in those who have for a long time cast off respect for social proprieties and wholesome regard to statute laws. The probability that few to whom we address ourselves in the cells of the incarcerated will give much heed to our exhortations, and their liability to return to their ways of sin and shame, notwithstanding their apparent desire to accept our ministration and profit by the means of improvement which we present, are known to us all before we enter upon the service. We accept the appointment with a knowledge of the difficulties it presents. We receive the mission to those whom the schoolmaster and the preacher have failed to influence to good; and we are to thank God for even the small returns from our laborious gleanings, rather than to arraign his providence or dishonor our pursuit by complaining of small returns.

Charities have their grades, and they are entitled to commendation not always for the amount of benefit they have conferred, or the number that they have assisted, but rather from a consideration of the difficulties they encounter, and the spirit in which they are conducted.

Colleges and schools have received and instructed the sound minded at all times, and the asylums for the insane and the orphan have been working wonderful good among the mentally afflicted and the fatherless children; but it was left for the present age to see men of character and science stooping to the wants of the idiot, and by painful, protracted labor and unheard of patience, irritate into some kind of life, the low faculties of the mentally infirm, and call into usefulness and love, those who had been condemned, by universal judgment, to helpless idiocy. And if this is going on in our midst,—if the wretched, drivelling child, whose mind and body seems to be given over to utter helplessness, can be and is called into profitable exercise and lofty accountability, shall we hesitate to dedicate some portion of our time to the reformation and right direction of those whose physical powers are all that vice has left them, or whose sense of responsibility to God and man is only clouded by the indulgence of vicious appetites, or deadened by a repetition of those enormities which make a sense of responsibility a curse? It is most true, as is often asserted by those who have some experience of the faithlessness of a prisoner’s promises, that few who seem to listen with respect to moral instruction at the doors of their cells, ever carry into execution their solemn promises. The state which made them contemplate and promise reformation is changed, and they seem to feel released from their pledges. They have before them a sense of the degradation to which their vices have reduced them, and they shrink from a contemplation of a perpetuation of that degradation. They feel that they stand in the presence of those whose superior moral or social position is only the result of superior virtue, and they think it easy to check the appetites whose indulgence is vice, when the reward is near. They promise, and they go forth into a world that remembers only their follies or their crimes. The means of gratifying their appetites are available, virtue is difficult, because the rewards are postponed; and while they are in probation with their best friends, and under condemnation among the many, they have fewer present inducements to virtue than they had thought, and so they fall back into the very faults which had made them prisoners before, and which send them again to the cells with drunkards and vagrants, who harden them into shamelessness.

But are we to forbear to seek to reform because they have failed to keep their promise? Are we to cease to advise kindly, and warn earnestly because they have again yielded to their degraded and vitiated taste? Shall we say that this man or that woman has shown himself or herself irreclaimable, and therefore we will spend no more time, no more kindness, on such an one? Who shall say that all is lost while life remains? Who shall say that the seeds of moral truth are dead in his heart because they have not yet germinated? How long vitality remains in vegetable seeds we all know. Shall there be less vitality in the seeds of moral truth? The wild grass grows, the useless weed, or the poisonous plant springs up into life, and seems to invoke and warrant entire condemnation of the soil; but let these be cut down, and how often come forth the sweet herb and the profitable grass, whose seeds have lain dormant while those profitless or poisonous productions were covering the surface. At some later day, in some season of great emergency, some hour of bitter trial, truths that seemed to have fallen profitless on the heart of the miserable prisoner, may come forth and bless with usefulness and peace the few closing days of a life that has been heretofore dedicated to folly and vice. Let us, then, sow the seeds by all waters; let us not withhold, morning or evening, our hands; and, when we have reason to believe that these seeds have found a place in the consenting mind of the listener, let us water them with the refreshing influences of our experience, and warm them into growth by that affection which is the basis of true philanthropy. It is thus we may alleviate the miseries of prisons, and make the criminal’s cell the vestibule to the temple of virtue and piety.

In conclusion, let it be repeated with emphasis, that we are not to be driven from our efforts at personal reformation, by any failure of the prisoner to justify, in liberty, the hopes which he had warranted while in confinement. As often as he returns to his cell, he should return to our care,—our instruction. The last resolve may be permanent. The last “repentance may be unto life, never to be repented of.” And we shall have occasion, perhaps, in our observations upon life, to conclude that the best of mankind will find the fruition of their highest hopes less in the amount of their innocency than in the frequency of their repentance.

JAMES J. BARCLAY,

President.

JOHN J. LYTLE, Secretary.

Philadelphia, January 1864.