VOTES AND PROCEEDINGS, NOVEMBER SESSION, 1808. 61

five, for reasons therein explained, he would certainly have been provided for agreeably to his said rank; and
they therefore recommend the following resolution:

RESOLVED, That the treasurer of the western shore be and he is hereby authorised and directed to pay te
David Hopkins, late a major of the horse in the revolutionary army, a sum of money, annually, in quarterly
payments, equal to the half pay of a major, instead of the sum granted to him annually in virtue of a resolution
passed at November session, eighteen hundred and five.

All which is submitted.

By order, S. LOWDERMILK, clk.
Which was read.

On motion, the question was put, That leave be given to bring in a bill, entitled, An act for a re-valuation
of the work done by Baltimore county on the Frederick-town road? The yeas and nays being required, appear-
ed as follow:

AFFIRMATIVE.

Brice Reynold Brown Ennalls Spencer Streett Bayard Downey
Welch. Stansbury Stevens Mitchell Wright Sanders R Steuart Hilleary
Belt Harryman Seth Porter Scott Davis Gabby Tomlinson 29
Merriken Randall Cottman Boyle Forwood

NEGATIVE.

Blakistone P Stuart Early Herbert Wilson Sappington Toting S Thomas
Hopewell Chapman Frazier Beall Bennett J Thomas Bowles Veatch
O Williams Dorsey Griffith Muir Baer Willis Carroll M'Mahon
Ireland Parnham Hart Hopper J H Thomas Hughlett Gaither Reid 36
Grahame Edmondson Perrie Hayward

So it was determined in the negative.

Mr; Stansbury, from the committee, delivers to the speaker the following report:

THE committee to whom was referred the memorial of the commissioners appointed to superintend the
building of a Penitentiary near the city of Baltimore, beg leave to report, that it is with the sincerest pleasure
they are enabled to state the very advanced stage of this great public work, which will rank Maryland among
the most wise and humane of her sister republics.

The centre building, the west wing, and more than one third of the wall, enclosing the grounds, are nearly
complete; it only remains to erect the necessary work-shops, to raise the enclosing wall quite round the build-
ings, and to finish the apartments, the greater number of which; are already plastered, in order to put the whole
in a state for the reception of criminals.

Your committee beg leave to congratulate this legislature on the near approach of that period when the state
will be enabled to banish for ever that merciless code which inflicts punishment in the blood and shame of our
fellow men. Punishment is an act of painful necessity, the practice of Which is temporarily imposed upon go-
vernment by the corruption and ignorance that reign among mankind. When we recollect the numbers, even in
this country, who are turned adrift to all the ills of poverty, and who are reduced to feel the churlish fang of
necessity, they cannot view the cruel European system of punishment, which has been adopted by us, without
the most painful emotions. Who can calculate the pangs that fly from breast to breast, and the violence that is
done to eery generous sentiment of the soul among those who witness a public legal infliction of death! The
general propensity of man is to venerate mind in his fellow man, and our religion enjoins us to love one another.
How completely does the executioner of such a tragic act reverse the scene. Instead of impressing lessons of
virtue, ail the wholesome avenues of mind are closed, and on every side we see them guarded with a train of
disgraceful passions, hatred, revenge, despotism, cruelty, hypocrisy, conspiracy and cowardice, man becomes
the enemy of man.

Your committee conceive, that there can be no principle more correct, than that in republican and simple forms
ef government, punishments should be rare, and that the punishment of death should be almost unknown. On the
other hand, the more there is in any country of inequality and oppression, the more punishments are multiplied,
and the more the institutions of society contradict the genuine sentiments of the human mind, the more severe-
ly is it necessary to avenge their violation. The government of this state, fully convinced that reformation, not
terror, should be the object of punishment, has heretofore thought proper to consign those unhappy wretches
who have fallen under the censure of the law to hard labour on the public highways. The motives for doing so
were certainly humane, but years of experience have proven, beyond a doubt, that those unfortunate beings,
thus doomed to punishment, had infinitely better have been suspended, as unworthy of either this world or the
nest, than to be chained and manacled to hard labour, and exposed day by day to the scorn, contempt and de-
vision, of the passing world. The human mind, thus exposed, desponds, is humbled, broken and case-hardened;
every chord that should respond to the intonations of virtue and benevolence is cruelly rent asunder; the tender
feelings of sensibility are seared over; every throb of the heart, in unison with humanity, is hushed, and com-
manded to be still; and the hardened and abandoned wretch is disenthralled and turned loose upon society to
wage war upon his fellow man, and an enemy even to himself.

Your committee are impressed with a belief that the penitentiary system of punishment is the true if not only
mode by which the genuine object of punishment can be attained, that is, the reformation of the offender. They
view it as a mode eminently calculated to inculcate lessons of morality, to promote habit of industry, to re-