The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1835-09-25 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

AMERICAN PRISON DISCIPLINE.  I had not been long on board, ere I observed, sitting in. the fore-part of the boat, a half-starved, half-clad human being. He bad terror and misery strongly marked on his countenance ; all the social feelings seemed dead in him for ever. I found on inquiry he had lately been,an inmate of,Sing Sing prison. His had been sentenced, for foOrteen 1 ears, but I could not learn his crime. I was anxious to know some particulars of this famous prison, where 1000 convictsare kept at hard labour, and •doomed to perpetual silence, during the term of their confinement. I got into conversation with the poor wretch, and he certainly described the horrors and the cruelties of that prison to be such as must shock the feelings of humanity. The prisoners. are worked hard, and allowed but a scanty share of provisions. They never get a meal full, so there is a constant craving for food; and yet, if any, of the prisoners, through illness, have any of their provisions left over, they are flogged severely if detected in giving it to another, and the receiver is also flogged. This prohibition is so strictly enforced, that my informant declares he was once flogged for picking up an old chew of tobacco which one of the keepers spat out of his mouth. No wonder that such cruel treatment breaks dOwn the health and. the spirits of those unfortunate wretches. Some of them commit suicide; others are taken sick, and when death comes to their relief, one would think some sympathy might be shown to the dying man ; but no----with a refinement in cruelty peculiar to the Yankees, no friend, not even a father, a brother; or a wife, is allowed to sooth his, dying conch; lie sees before him the dark valley of the shadow of death, and in that awful hour he looks. around 'fo'r some one he loves to soothe the agonies of his soul, but he looks in vain. These prisoners, who have transgressed the laws of their country, are still human beings; -they are all more or less. suseeptible to kind treatment ; they have a sense of natural justice about them; they feel that the punishment i,ntlicterf is far beyond even what is due to the crimes they have committed ; a spirit of revenge is first cherished in their bosoms against their keepers; they next become dejected and almost heart-broken under the merciless eastiizations which they see inflicted every day around them; their constitutions fail, and if they survive the t6rrit of their imprisonment, they come out objects only for the charity workhouse. I sincerely trust that our free and happy country may never be disgraced by the adoption of such a system 'of brutal tyranny and oppression. While I listened to the narrative told me by this man, I bad' occasion to put some questions to him, and I noticed when I spoke that he gave an involuntary shudder; I asked him, the cause, and he said, that for 14 long years he had hardly ever heard a human voice, except that of his keeper, .aril eyqn that he had scarcely ever-heard,-but it was to order him to strip to be flogged. I felt deeply for this miserable outcast, and gave him a trifle, of tnoney, and left him sitting where .I first saw hith.---Excursion ix Americo, by a citizen of Edinburgh.