Note Type
Historical NoteNote
From Fox:
"An Enquiry into the Justice and Policy of Punishing Murder by Death--By the Author of the Enquiry into the Effects of Public Punishments upon Criminals and upon Society." American Museum 4 (July
1788): 78-82. Included in Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical (see
1798-1). Butterfield (Letters, 480, n. 1) says that "this was the earliest form of BR's assault on capital punishment, an assault that was to become a fierce and protracted campaign... As a result of the movement he had initiated, BR could announce in a postscript to his article when it was reprinted in his Essays (1798) that capital punishment had been abolished in Pennsylvania for all crimes except first-degree murder." A critical reply to Rush's "Enquiry," written by Robert Annan under the pseudonym "Philochoras," appeared in the American Museum 4 (November 1788):-54, and (December 1788): 547-53. For Rush's "Rejoinder" to Annan's "Reply," see RUSH- FOX:1789(23) in this collection.Note Type
Historical NoteNote
In 1786, Rush's schemes for reform had not yet extended to criminals when Constitutionalists and Republicans, urged on by Quakers, had united to carry through the assembly a revision of Pennsylvania's penal laws that sharply reduced the number of offenses calling for the death penalty. The revision did not alter, however, the long-accepted proposition that criminals punishment should be public and humiliating. To that end the new code required prisoners to work on public projects-dig ditches, clean streets, repair roads. A distinctive prison garb and shaved heads made them conspicuous wherever their work took them, and the wheelbarrows they pushed elicited the epithet "wheelbarrow men."
Rush did not comment on the legislation when it passed. "It is your duty," he had said in a stern tone a few years earlier, "to rejoice in seeing punishment inflicted upon a criminal who has disturbed the peace of the society to which you belong." It took an accidental meeting with a group of "wheelbarrow men" to arouse his interest in penal reform. He came upon them sweeping the street before his house. He offered the men molasses beer, and while chatting as they refreshed themselves he found that he had sympathy, perhaps even respect, for the way they bore their humiliation, overcoming the distaste he would have felt.
As a result of that incident, Rush became among the first to attack Pennsylvania's much praised penal law. He did so in a speech given in March 1787 before the recently created Society for Promoting Political Inquiries, which held its meetings in Benjamin Franklin's living room.
"There was no formality of discussion," one member later recalled. "Dr. Rush, who had great powers of conversation, commonly took the lead; another member, however, held that Rush's "incessant talking disturbed us very much." Rush advanced two radical propositions: first, he called for a reversal of the centuries-old Anglo-Colonial tradition that criminals be publicly punished and demanded "that crimes should be punished in private, or not punished at all'; secondly, he took an extraordinary stand on penology-that "the only design of punishment is the reformation of the criminal." These views reveal once again the influence of the humanitarian movement on Rush. He could have drawn some thoughts from William Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy or Cesare Beccaria's Essay on Crimes and Punishments, both of which pressed similar notions and were written by favorite authors of his greatest influence came from the English reformer John Howard's the Prisons in England and Wales, with Preliminary Observations Account of Some Foreign Prisons, first published in 1777. Rush knew the book well enough a decade later to call himself "a pupil and admirer of the celebrated Mr. Howard," and to confess still later "that all the improvements in the treatment and punishment of criminals in our country are derived from it "
The reforms to reform the criminal that Rush advanced in the talk at Franklin’s home came directly from Howard. He advocated a large house mose name shall "convey an idea of its benevolent and salutary design." There will be cells for the solitary confinement of the refractory, a room for carrying on handicrafts, another for worship, and a garden adjoining the house. Prison terms will be adjusted to the crime and fixed by law, but the prisoner will not know the length of his sentence, for uncertainty agitated the imagination and hastened the reformation. The prisoner's "labor should be so regulated and directed as to be profitable to the state." They would derive their food from gardens "cultivated by their own hands." Punishments should consist in general "of bodily pain, labor, watchfulness, solitude and silence," but when it came to attaching a specific punishment to a specific crime he confessed "my subject begins to oppress me." He knew tery crime had "its cure in moral and physical influence" just as every disease had its antidote-but the trick was "to find the proper remedy or remedies for particular vices."
Those who heard the speech praised it enough to encourage publication. It came forth as an anonymous pamphlet which in some quarters was attributed to Franklin, a mistake Rush only half succeed in correcting.
Public reception contrasted with the private one. "The principles contained in this pamphlet were opposed with acrimony and ridicule in the newspapers," a friend reported. "They were considered as the schemes of a humane heart but a wild and visionary imagination which it was impossible from the nature of man and constitution of his mind ever to realize, and as being much more adapted to the government of an Utopia than to those living under that of Pennsylvania." Rush ignored the outery, and as usual spread his work everywhere. When a Boston newspaper ascribed it to Franklin he told a friend there he had "no objection to that mistake being corrected."
The pamphlet helped to encourage the creation of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, most of whose mem-riety for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, most of whose mem-Is were Quakers. Rush became one of the four consulting physicians who advised on health measures for local prisons. Soon after assuming the assignment he told Lettsom about the reformation that "has lately taken place in the jails of this city in favor not only of humanity but of virtue in general." He did not know how much permanent good would be achieved y the program, but "men grow good by attempting it." Of that he was certain. "A prison sometimes supplies the place of a church and out-preaches the preacher in conveying useful instruction to the heart. "
A toe dipped into the pool of prison reform quickly led to complete immersion. In 1788 Rush elaborated into a pamphlet a remark on capital punishment in his original essay. He argued that it contradicted both reason and divine revelation and noted in passing that even the Indians opposed capital punishment except for prisoners of war. "There are many crimes," he said, "which unfit a man much more for human society than a single murder." He suggested several substitutes for "punishing murder by death": for murder of the first degree-solitude, darkness, "and a total want of employment"; of the second degree-"solitude and labor, with the benefit of light"; and of the third degree-confinement and hard labor. Rush had a high opinion of the reforming qualities of solitude. "A wheelbarrow, a whipping post, nay even a gibbet are all light punishments compared with letting a man's conscience loose upon him in solitude," he said. "Company, conversation, and even business are the opiates of the Spirit of God in the human heart. For this reason, a bad man should be left for some time without anything to employ his hands in his confinement. Every thought should recoil wholly upon himself."
This second essay was judged the "boldest attack I have ever made upon a public opinion or a general practice." Out it went to friends at home and abroad. He urged reprinting it in local papers and let it be known he did not mind public acknowledgment of his authorship. A few months later the assembly repealed the law that had brought Rush into penal re-form. With the abandonment of public punishment, it inaugurated a reform of the prison system. Hard labor behind prison walls, solitary confinement, and a system of fines were substituted for the old punishments.
General regulations for the new program were drawn up and provisions made for inspectors to initiate revisions as needed. The legislature saw the reform as an experiment and, said a contemporary, "as if apprehending that the new system would not ultimately answer, limited the law to five years." Rush judged the innovations highly satisfactory: "Truth has at last prevailed upon the subject of our penal laws."
"Benjamin Rush: Revolutionary Gadfly. By David Freeman Hawke. (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1971. pp 363-366
