The Penitentiary contained, at the time of my visit, about three hundred and forty male, and thirty-five female prisoners.  In this celebrated prison, hard labor is combined with solitary confinement, an arrangement which is technically known as the “separate system.”  Silence and seclusion are so strictly enforced as to be almost absolute and uninterrupted; even the minister who addresses the prisoners on the Sabbath is known to them only by his voice.  A marked feature of this institution is security without the aid of any deadly weapon, none being allowed in the possession of the attendants, or indeed upon the premises.  As compared with the “silent system,” exhibited in the not less famed prisons of the State of New York, this is much less economical, as the mode of employing the prisoners, in their solitary cells, greatly lessens the power of a profitable application of their labor.  If prisoners exceed their allotted task, one-half of their surplus earnings is given to them on being set at liberty.  My visit was too cursory to enable me to give a decisive opinion on the “separate system,” but I confess my impression is, that the punishment is one of tremendous and indiscriminating severity, and I find it difficult to believe that either the safety of society, or the welfare of the prisoner, can require the infliction of so much suffering.  Criminals are sometimes condemned for very long periods, or for life; and in these cases, I was informed, occasionally manifested great recklessness and carelessness of their existence.  I am also not quite convinced that the reformation of prisoners is effected to the extent sometimes inferred from the small number of recommittals.  A statistical conclusion cannot be drawn from this datum, unsupported by other proofs.

On the 2d of the 6th Month, (June,) I proceeded to Wilmington, Delaware, with my friend John G. Whittier.  Here we met a company of warm-hearted and intelligent abolitionists, with whom we discussed the prospects of the cause.  It was calculated that if compensation were conceded, to which many would on principle object, a tax of less than one dollar per acre would buy up all the slaves in the State for emancipation.  It was admitted by all, that the abolition of slavery would advance the price of land in a far greater ratio; probably ten or twenty dollars per acre.

We went forward the same evening to Baltimore, accompanied by one of our Wilmington acquaintance, and in the railway carriage was a member of the Society of Friends from North Carolina, who, though a colonizationist, appeared to be a man of candor.  He gave it as his opinion that the majority of the free people of that State are in favor of the abolition of slavery.  We also had the company, a part of the way, of Samuel E. Sewall, Counsellor at Law, in Boston, an early and tried abolitionist, and a faithful friend and legal adviser of the free people of color.

The next morning, we left Baltimore for Washington, two hours’ ride by railway.  The railroads of this country being often extremely narrow, the trains frequently pass almost close to the piers of the bridges and viaducts, a circumstance which explains the following printed notice in the carriages:  “Passengers are cautioned not to put their arms, head, or legs out of the window.”