objection was made to them as members, but that at the present time tickets are refused to colored persons, and membership is also refused practically, though, by special vote recently adopted, they are allowed to attend the lectures without expense, provided they will sit in the north gallery.

From these facts it appears that the New Bedford Lyceum has undertaken within its jurisdiction to establish a distinction of Caste not recognized before.

One of the cardinal truths of religion and freedom is the Equality and Brotherhood of Man. In the sight of God and of all just institutions the white man can claim no precedence or exclusive privilege from his color. It is the accident of an accident that places a human soul beneath the dark shelter of an African countenance, rather than beneath our colder complexion. Nor can I conceive any application of the divine injunction, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, more pertinent than to the man who founds a discrimination between his fellow-men on difference of skin.

It is well known that the prejudice of color, which is akin to the stern and selfish spirit that holds a fellow-man in slavery, is peculiar to our country. It does not exist in other civilized countries. In France colored youths at college have gained the highest honors, and been welcomed as if they were white. At the Law School there I have sat with them on the same benches. In Italy I have seen an Abyssinian mingling with monks, and there was no apparent suspicion on either side of anything open to question. All this was Christian so it seemed to me.

In lecturing before a Lyceum which has introduced the prejudice of color among its laws, and thus formal

K

ly reversed an injunction of highest morals and politics, I might seem to sanction what is most alien to my soul, and join in disobedience to that command which teaches that the children of earth are all of one blood. I cannot do this.

I beg, therefore, to be excused at present from appointing a day to lecture before your Lyceum; and I pray you to lay this letter before the Lyceum, that the ground may be understood on which I deem it my duty to decline the honor of appearing before them.

I hope you will pardon the frankness of this communication, and believe me, my dear Sir,

Very faithfully yours,

To the Chairman of the Committee

of the New Bedford Lyceum.

}

CHARLES SUMNER.

PRISONS AND PRISON DISCIPLINE.*

ARTICLE FROM THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER, JANUARY, 1846.

IT

T is with a feeling of deference that we welcome Miss Dix's "Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline." Her peculiar labors for humanity, and her renunciation of the refined repose which has such attractions for her sex, to go about doing good, enduring the hardships of travel, the vicissitudes of the chang

1. Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States. By D. L. DIX. Second Edition. Philadelphia. 1845. 8vo. pp. 108. 2. Nineteenth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Prison Discipline Society. Boston. 1844. 8vo. pp. 116.

3. Prisons and Prisoners. By JOSEPH ADSHEAD. With Illustrations. London. 1845. 8vo. pp. 320.

4. Report of the Surveyor-General of Prisons on the Construction, Ventilation, and Details of the Pentonville Prison. London. 1844. fol. pp. 30. 5. Revue Pénitentiaire des Institutions Préventives, sous la Direction de M. MOREAU-CHRISTOPHE. Tom. II. Paris. 1845. 8vo. pp. 659.

6. Du Projet de Loi sur la Réforme des Prisons. Par M. LÉON FAUcher.

Paris. 1844. 8vo.

7. Considérations sur la Réclusion Individuelle des Détenus. Par W. H. SURINGAR. Traduit du Hollandais sur la seconde Edition. Précédées d'une Préface, et suivies du Résumé de la Question Pénitentiaire, par L. M. MoREAU-CHRISTOPHE. Paris et Amsterdam. 1843. 8vo. pp. 131.

8. Nordamerikas Sittliche Zustände. (The Moral Condition of North America.) Von Dr. N. H. JULIUS. 2 Bände. Leipzig. 1839. 8vo.

9. Archiv des Criminalrechts, herausgegeben von den Professoren ABEGG, BIRNBAUM, HEffter, MitterMAIER, WÄCHTER, ZACHARIÄ. (Archives of Criminal Law, edited by Professors ABEGG, etc.) Halle. 1843. 12mo. PP. 597.

ing season, and, more trying still, the coldness of the world, awaken towards her a sense of gratitude, and invest her name with an interest which must attach to anything from her pen.

The chosen and almost exclusive sphere of woman is home, in the warmth of the family hearth. Rarely is she able to mingle with effect in the active labors which influence mankind. With incredulity we admire the feminine expounder of the Roman law, illustrating by her lectures the Universities of Padua and Bologna, and the charities of St. Elizabeth of Hungary are legendary in the dim distance; though, in our own day, the classical productions of the widow of Wyttenbach, crowned Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Marburg, and most especially the beautiful labors of Mrs. Fry, recently closed by death, are examples of the sway exerted by the gentler sex beyond the charmed circle of domestic life. Among these Miss Dix will receive a place which her modesty would forbid her to claim. Her name will be enrolled among benefactors. It will be pronounced with gratitude, when heroes in the strifes of politics and of war are disregarded or forgotten.

"Can we forget the generous few

Who, touched with human woe, redressive sought
Into the horrors of the gloomy jail,

Unpitied and unheard, where misery moans,

Where sickness pines?"

Miss Dix's labors embrace penitentiaries, jails, almshouses, poor-houses, and asylums for the insane, throughout the Northern and Middle States, all of which she has visited, turning a face of gentleness towards crime, comforting the unfortunate, softening a hard lot, sweetening a bitter cup, while she obtained information of

their condition calculated to awaken the attention of the public. This labor of love she has pursued earnestly, devotedly, sparing neither time nor strength, neglecting no person, abject or lowly, frequenting the cells of all, and by word and deed seeking to strengthen their hearts. The melody of her voice still sounds in our ears, as, standing in the long corridor of the Philadelphia Penitentiary, she read a Psalm of consolation; nor will that scene be effaced quickly from the memory of any then present. Her Memorials, addressed to the Legislatures of different States, have divulged a mass of facts, derived from personal and most minute observation, particularly with regard to the treatment of the insane, which must arouse the sensibilities of a humane people. In herself alone she is a whole Prison Discipline Society. To her various efforts may be applied, without exaggeration, those magical words in which Burke commemorated the kindred charity of Howard, when he says that he travelled, "not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of temples, not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art, not to collect medals or collate manuscripts, but to dive into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain, to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt, to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the distresses of all men."

Her "Remarks" contain general results on different points connected with the discipline of prisons: as, the duration of sentences; pardons and the pardoning