Connecticut western news., 1892-11-24


 to Siberia, in the vast majority of cases It gives him an opportunity to make new start under the best possible cir cumstances. The criminal Is allowed to
 take his or her family along, and that Is
 mercy no other country grants. In
 the quicksilver mines of Siberia the
 hardest place of repatriation, only one
 fourth of the miners are criminals The
 other three-fourths go there because they
 choose It as a place to earn their living
 After being in Siberia awhile the con
 demned go to earning livelihood, and
 they come to own their own farms and
 orchards and vineyards, many of these
 people coming to wealth, and thousands
 or them under no inducement would
 leave those parts of Siberia which are
 paradises for salubrity and luxuriance Now which do you think is the best
 style of prison-Siberia or many of our American prisons? When man com-
 mlts big crime in our country the
 judge looks into the frightened fuce of
 the culprit and says: You have been
 found guilty. l sentence you to the pen
 itentiary for ten years" He goes to
 prison. He is shut in between four walls.
 No sunlight. No fresh air. No bath
 room. Before he has served his ten
 years he dies of consumption, or is so enervated that for the rest of his life he
 sits with folded hands-a wheezing in-
 valid. In preference to the shut in life
 of the average American prisoner give
 me Siberia. Besides that, when offend
 CTS come out of prison in America, what chance have they? Ask the poorly SUD- ported societies formed to get these peo pie places for work. Ask me, to whom the newly liberated come from all the prisons imploring what they shall do. No one will commend them. The pallor of incarceration is on their cheek. Who
 wants to employ in factory or store man or woman who in answer to the question, "Where did you live lastT should make for reply, States prison at
 Auburn or Moyamensing." Now in Si- beria they have better chance. They
 are never spoken of as criminals, but as
 unfortunates, and they are allowed every opportunity of retrieving their lost rep
 utation and lost fortunes.
 1 talked with the president of the National Society of Russia for the Ed
 ucation and Moralization of the Children of Siberian Convicts. The president of that society, appointed by. the emperor, | is lady of great accomplishments and much sympathy, which illumines her | face and makes fearful her eyes and | tremulous her voice. The evening l | passed at her house in St. Petersburg was one of the memorable events of my | lifetime. I will not attempt to pro- | nounce the name of that noble woman | appointed by the emperor as the presi- | dent of the National Society of Russia for the Education and liberalization of | the Children of Convicts. Please to name any such national society in our | country supported by government for | taking care of the children of convicts. | You know, if you know anything, that | there is no chance in this country for, a | man who has been imprisoned or for his | children. God pity them and hasten | the time when we shall, by some national
 institution established by the congress of of the United States, initiate the mercy | of the Russian government toward the | innocent children of imprisoned offend CTS, He who charges cruelty on the | imperial family and the nobility of l Russia bellies men and women as gracious | and benignant as ever breathed oxygen. | The merciful character of the present | emperor was we'll illustrated in the fol- | lowing occurrence: The man who super | vised the assassination of the father of | the present emperor, standing in the | snow that awful day when the dynamite
 shattered to pieces the legs of Alexander | the Second-1 say the man who super vised all this fled from St. Petersburg and | quit Russia. But after awhile the man | repented of his crime and wrote to the
 emperor asking for forgiveness for the | murder of his father and promising to be good citizen, and asking if he might | come back to Russia. The emperor | pardoned the murderer of his father, and the forgiven assassin Is now living in
 Russia unless recently deceased. When talked to the empress concerning the 1 sympathy felt in America for the suffer ' -l.A .4~ ,lr 1~E Russia, she evinced an absorbing inter est and compassion and an emotion of | manner and speech such as we men can | hardly realize, because it seems that God | has reserved for woman as her great | adornment the coronet, the tear jeweled | coronet of tendernessan commiseration, | If you say that 1t was man, divine | man that came to save the world, l say | yes, but it was woman that gave the | man. Witness all the Madonnas-Ital- ian, German, English and Russian-that | bloom in the picture galleries of Chris | tendom Son of Mary, have mercy on us! | But how about the knout, the cruel Russian knout, that, comes down on the bare back of the agonized criminals? | Why, Russia abolished the knout before | it was abolished from our American | navy. But how about the political pris- | oners hustled off to Siberiap According | to the testimony of the most celebrated | literary enemy of Russia. only four hun-
 dred and forty three political prisoners | were sent to Siberia in twenty years.
 How many political prisoners did we put in prison pens during our four years of civil war? Well. I will guess at least one | hundred thousand. Americas one hun | dred thousand political prisoners versus
 Russia's four hundred and forty-thr | political prisoners. Nearly all these
 four hundred and fortv-three of twenty | years were noblemen or people des- | perately opposed to the emancipation | of the serfs. And none of the political | prisoners are sent to the famous Kara
 mines. For the most part you are
 dependent for information upon the
 testimony of prisoners who are sent to Siberia. They all say they were inno- | cent. Prisoners always are innocent.
 Ask all the prisoners of America today,
 Guilty or not guilty? and nineteen out
 of twenty will plead, Mot guilty" Ask | them how they like their prison, and | how they like sheriffs. and how they like
 the government of the United States,
 and you will find these prisoners admire
 the authority that arrested them and
 punished them just about as much as
 the political prisoners of Russia like | Siberia.
 | put, you aSk, now VIII InlS huSSOpnO-
 bia, with which so many have been bit
 ten and poisoned. be cured? By the
 God of Justice blessing such books and I pamphlets as are now coming out from Professor de Arnaud, of Washington; | MT. Horace Cutter, of San Francisco;
 MT. Morrill,, of England, and by the | opening of our American gates to the
 writings of some twenty-four of the
 Russian authors and authoresses, in
 some respects as brilliant as the three
 or four Russian authors already known
 the translation of those twenty-four
 authors which I atn authorized from
 Russia to offer free of charge to any re- l sponSible American nuhlishinp house