But let us believe, for an instant, that one prisoner has resisted the ill effects of wicked association--let us suppose him to have escaped the contamination of a jail, to have received no moral hurt from bad example, to be untainted by the corrupting atmosphere of congregated vice--in short, to return into the world at the end of his imprisonment a better man than he was at its commencement. Let us suppose all this, although the supposition, it must be confessed, is unsupported by experience, and directly in the teeth of probability. He sallies forth from his prison, full of good resolutions, and determined to win the character of an honest man. Perhaps he has a small sum of money, which helps him to reach a part of the country most distant from the scene of his disgrace. He seeks for work, and is fortunate enough to obtain it. For a short time, all goes well with him. He is industrious and sober, and gains the good-will of his employer. He is confirmed in his good intentions, and fancies that his hopes of regaining his position in society are about to be realised. Vain hopes! Rumour is busy with his name. His fellow-labourers begin to look coldly on him. The master does not long remain in ignorance. The discharged convict is taxed with his former degradation, and made to suffer again the consequences of a crime he has well and fully expiated. His brief hour of prosperity is over. He is cast forth again upon the world, denied the means of gaining an honest livelihood, with nothing before him but starvation or a jail. What wonder should he choose the latter! Goaded by despair, or stimulated by hunger, he yields to the first temptation, and commits a crime which places him again within prison walls. It is his second conviction. He is a marked man. He were more than mortal if he escaped the deteriorating effects of repeated association with the hardened and the vicious. His future career is certain. He falls from bad to worse, and ends his life upon the scaffold.
We have imagined, for the sake of argument, a case which, in one of its features, is unfortunately of very rare occurrence. Criminals seldom, perhaps never, leave a jail with the slightest inclination to a course of honesty. Their downward progress, when they have once been exposed to the contamination of a prison life, may be calculated almost with certainty. No sooner is the term of their imprisonment expired, than they step forth into the world, eager to recommence the old career of systematic villany. Good intentions, and the desire of doing well, are almost always strangers to their breasts. But should they, perchance, be alive to better things, and be moved by wholesome impulses, what an awful responsibility rests upon those who, by individual acts, or by a pernicious system, check and render abortive the efforts of a dawning virtue! In the case we have supposed, there is doubtless much that must be laid to the score of human nature. Men will not easily be persuaded, that he who has once made a grievous lapse from the path of honesty, will not be ever prone to repeat the offence. None but the truly charitable (an infinitesimal portion of every community) will expose themselves to the risk of employing a discharged convict. But whilst this much evil is justly attributed to the selfish cruelty of society, a much larger share of blame attaches to the system which affords too plausible a pretext for such uncharitable conduct. It is not merely because a man has offended against the laws, and been guilty of what, in legal parlance, may be a simple misdemeanour, that he is regarded with suspicion and treated with ignominy; but much more, because he has been confined in a jail, and exposed to all the pernicious influences which are known to be rife within its walls. It is deemed a thing incredible, that a man can issue from a hot-bed of corruption, and not be himself corrupt. To have undergone a term of imprisonment, is very generally thought to be equivalent to taking a degree in infamy. On the system, therefore, rests much of the blame which would otherwise attach to the world's cold charity; to its account must be charged every subject who might have been saved, and who, through despair, is lost to the service of the state.