crime and poverty, or, in other words, the 'court prisoners' from the vagrants. It will relieve the penitentiary of more than half its population, and remove the embarrassments created by its present crowded state."

We regret that the limits to which any one paper in this journal must be confined will forbid our following the Prison Association, year by year, along the entire track of its honorable and useful career in the work of reforming prisoners, and the still more important work of reforming the prisons themselves. Both these objects were prosecuted with much zeal and vigor, and the latter in the way of prison inspection as extensively as the limited means at command would permit, during the first ten or twelve years of the Society's existence. During the last six or eight years of its history, as we learn from the Reports of those years, owing to a want of funds for the purpose, and perhaps also from some decay of zeal in the cause, the work of visiting, inspecting, and examining prisons has been almost totally suspended. In all that time, no State prison or penitentiary, and but very few county jails, have been examined and reported on.

But while this branch of the society's work appears to have fallen into some degree of neglect, that department of its labors which embraces the cities of New York and Brooklyn, which is directed to the care and reformation of detained and discharged prisoners, has been conducted by Mr. Abraham Beal, general agent of the Association, with eminent industry, zeal, wisdom, energy, and success. Mr. Beal has, from year to year and from day to day, systematically visited the various prisons and detention houses in these two cities, attended upon the criminal courts, and given special attention to such cases as seemed to call for his interposition. The child or youth of tender years, the novice in crime, the emigrant to whom our language and laws are unknown, the wrongfully arrested, the guilty but penitent prisoner, and those in whose cases mitigating circumstances are found to exist, have received from him, as the representative of the Association, that consideration which philanthropy should bestow upon the young, the weak, the ignorant, the tempted, and the unfortunate. To show the extraordinary activity and devotion of this gentleman, we pre'sent to our readers a summary statement of his labors for a sin

gle year. We select that of 1861. During that year he visited six thousand one hundred and fifty persons, comparatively poor and helpless, in our city and detention prisons. He examined one thousand three hundred and thirty-eight complaints, giving counsel and aid to the persons against whom they had been made. He procured the abandonment of four hundred and sixty-one complaints, most of which were the result of prejudice or passion, or too trivial to be entertained. He procured the discharge of five hundred and six persons, either very young or clearly innocent, or manifestly penitent and resolved to sin no more. He assisted with board and aided to reach their friends or employment remote from the city six hundred and seventy-six discharged convicts. He supplied with clothing, less or more, one hundred and fifty-two others of the same class. And he procured work, in town or country, for two hundred and forty-one released prisoners. This is a catalogue of labors for a single year, which places in a very clear point of view both the zeal and usefulness of this devoted philanthropist.

There is a feature in the work of the Association, as conducted by their general agent, of very great importance and utility, and which ought to be distinctly brought before the public eye. It is well known that in some countries there are regularly constituted tribunals called Courts of Conciliation, the design of which is to prevent as well family and neighborhood feuds as tedious and expensive litigation, by an amicable settlement of differences. The labors of the Society's agent supply, in a great measure, the want of such a court in this community. Innumerable difficulties, originating in mistake, passion, drink, sudden temptation, or the like, many of which would otherwise grow to formidable proportions, are adjusted through his agency. In this way husbands and wives temporarily alienated are reunited in feeling; hostile parties are reconciled; offenders are reclaimed; much expense is saved to the community; and the sum total of human happiness is greatly augmented. These, and such as these, are declared in the last Annual Report to be every-day results of Mr. Beal's judicious interposition; results, as the Report truly adds, most important in themselves, as well as cheering to every humane and philanthropic heart.

The economic relations and bearings of the Prison Association constitute an aspect of it well worthy of attention. We conscientiously believe that, as a measure of public economy, the wealthier part of our citizens, who have the bulk of the taxes to pay, cannot lay out a portion of their money to better advantage than in aiding this society in its work. While the Association thus far has cost the community less than $50,000, there can be no doubt that it has saved it hundreds of thousands in a diminished expenditure for the administration of criminal justice on the one hand, and, on the other, in the accumulations of an industry which would otherwise, at least a considerable part of it, have been but a negative quantity. The Association, then, in a merely economic view, must be regarded as a great public and social benefit, since it costs far less to prevent crime than to punish it; and the prevention of crime by raising the fallen is the foundation principle of this organization. The surest and cheapest protection to society against the bad is to make them good; a result which, by the blessing of God on honest and patient effort, can be effected, as experience has shown, in a much larger number of cases than is commonly supposed possible; for be it known to our readers that all is not evil within the walls of our prisons, any more than all is good outside of those walls. Self-interest, therefore, even if there were no higher motive, should enlarge the charities of the benevolent toward the guilty and the fallen. They return to society, on their discharge, either pirates or penitents; and it lies mainly with society itself to say which it shall be.

We find in the last Annual Report the following paragraph: The Association has made an important modification in its arrangements during the past year. We have long felt the need-indispensable to the most effective prosecution of our work-of an Executive Officer who would devote his whole time and energies to the interests of the Society. We have accordingly invited to the office of Corresponding Secretary, heretofore rather nominal and honorary than otherwise, the Rev. E. C. Wines, D.D., late President of the City University of St. Louis. He has accepted the position tendered him, and has entered upon the discharge of its duties. It will be the business of the Corresponding Secretary, besides providing the needful funds, to carry on an extended correspondence, both in our own country and Europe, with gentlemen connected with the administration of penal justice; to collect and examine reports of penal institutions at home and abroad; to present our cause in such pulpits as may be open to him; to

inspect and examine prisons; to make himself familiar with the doings of other organizations similar to our own, and with the whole range of penal literature; and to digest, arrange, and render available, in tabulated and other forms, the statistics of crime gathered from all quarters.

As the writer of the present article is the incumbent of the said office, it would be a violation of modesty for him to say more than that, under the new arrangement, the Association has entered with ardor upon a broader field of labor than heretofore, and one more in accordance with the original design of its formation. For the first time within its history pecuniary aid has been obtained, both from the city and state governments, and there was a prospect, as stated in the last Report, that every prison in the state, of whatever grade, would be visited and thoroughly explored within the current year, and the results reported to the Legislature in the next annual communication to that body. This promise, we have reason to think, will be redeemed.

We find, in the Report for 1862, the following summation of results accomplished by the Association during the eighteen years of its existence: 54,714 detained prisoners visited and counseled; 5,630 detained prisoners discharged on the recommendation of the Association; 18,911 complaints examined d; 4,908 complaints withdrawn at the instance of the Society; 7,676 discharged convicts aided with money or clothing, or both; 2,729 discharged convicts provided with situations; and seventy inspections of prisons made. Less than five per cent. of those provided with situations have ever returned to prison, according to the best information obtained; and a very large proportion appear to have been thoroughly reclaimed, and those of them who are still living are pursuing a career of virtuous and useful industry. .

The Executive Committee close their eighteenth Annual Report in these words:

The appeal of the criminal and the prisoner is to that high and noble philanthropy which can overlook the past and stoop to raise the fallen; that philanthropy which whispers words of consolation to the erring, and guides the feet of the wanderer back into the path of virtue. It is a philanthropy akin to that Divine benevolence which, in calling backsliders to return, promises to "heal their backslidings;" nay, even to be "merciful to their unrighteousness," and to "remember their sins and iniquities no more."

It is to such a philanthropy that we would appeal in behalf of the discharged convict. We say to society:"Give him another chance. Speak kindly to him. Let him have your sympathy. Meet him with a smile instead of a frown. Open the heart and the hand to his relief. He starts at his own shadow. He feels that, like Cain, he is a 'fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth.' Terrible indeed are his struggles; for he has foes within as well as without to combat. His soul is driven to and fro between the frowns of the world and the upbraidings of conscience. These awaken remorse; those despair. Does not a being thus agitated and distressed need sympathy and encouragement? And shall his appeal, shall our appeal for him, be in vain to those whom a kind Providence has guarded in the hours of temptation, and whose cup overflows with blessings? Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, at once so condescending and so gracious: 'I was in prison, and ye came unto me:' inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.''

ART. VII.-JAMES FLOY, D.D.

THE life-stories of the great and good are among the most valuable treasures of the commonwealth of humanity. They at once supply the incentives to noble actions, and show the methods by which such actions may be made effective of the greatest good. This general truth is, however, especially and most emphatically applicable in the associations of religious life. The Church is strengthened and made effective by the active devotion of her living members, while her garnered wealth is constantly augmented by the unforgotten virtues of life and character of those who have finished their course and entered upon their reward. As the children of a provident father are first served and blessed by him while living, and at his dying are endowed with his treasured wealth, so the living members of the militant Church are not only profited by their godly services, but they also have each an inheritance in the good name and remembered excellencies of those who have lived and died in the faith. Hence the high value that has ever been accorded to Christian biography, and the occasion for the careful diligence with which the Church collects and transmits the mem