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degree, proportionate to the extent of the means em-ployed, much misery must be prevented, and manyevils be exterminated. Your efforts in establishing a preventive system, and in diffusing a knowledge ofthe means of self-correction to the lower classes ofsociety, are the wisest that can be imagined; youstrike at once at the root of the tree of evil, instead of lopping a branch here and there, which, sooneror later, shoots out again in new vigour. The United States, particularly those states in which slavery is unknown, or almost eradicated,possess signal advantages for securing themselvesfrom the dreadful evils which oppress society in Eu-rope; happy will they be, if they have foresight andwisdom enough rightly to estimate, and use, themeans that Providence has been pleased thus to putinto their hands. A law passed our state legislature, authorizing thecorporation of this city to erect a prison for solitaryconfinement, to be solely for the punishment of pettyoffenders, to be kept on low diet, and in solitary apartments, for a term not exceeding ninety days; some accounts of this plan may be seen in theaccount of the State Prison, page 62. From observingthe effects of this mode of punishment, in the StatePrison, where it is used to correct those who violatethe rules of the prison, by profane swearing, quar-relling, want of cleanliness, or neglect of their allotedtask of labour, &;c., I have been led to believe it isthe most efficacious that can possibly be adopted.The average number of convicts is nearly 400, mostof whom observe a uniform, regular, and peaceablecourse of conduct; the hardened and refractory arekept in good order, by occasional punishment in thecells, which strikes such a terror on their minds, thatit often happens, that not a single person has beenpunished for eight or ten days. Certain I am, that apunishment of this kind will be far more beneficialthan that of the Bridewell, or even the State Prison,