are become sinks of sloth and vice, of iniquity, impiety, and every abomination; directly contrary to the design of law-givers and laws, in confining and punishing offenders; and these infect their fellows, till the infection spread for and wide. Whereas if every prison contained in itself an Ergastulum, a workhouse or bridwell, adapted to every prisoner's strangth and talents, under good masters and regulations, together with a diligent, serious, and good instructor, in plain, sound principles of true religion and morality; both which employments of work and instruction, should be carefully attended to by the prisoners at proper hours, on pain of enforcing the apostles rule, He that will not work neither let him eat, we should soon see another face of things both within and without our prisons.

And this, I may venture to advance, would be truer charity both to the souls and bodies of prisoners, than suffering them under the chimeric notion of enjoying a liberty, which they have lost and forfeited, to languish and perish in sloth and ignorance; only taking their turns to beg at the grate, being a dead weight on wellmeaning charity, and mispending the rest of their time in bad schemes, filtby conversaiton, and vicious practices: not one in ten, regarding the call, either of industry, or devotion, perhaps during the whole time of their confinement, before or after their trail, till transported, or delivered.

This evil neglected fills our streets, and peoples our colonies, with pests of society, practised and bardened in every sharping trick, and art of villainy, in those schools and seminaries of wickedness and vice, our present prisons; which, if well governed and regulated, would become hospitals for healing and restoring the mind and monners to a good state of moral and spiritual health, as orginally intended, and as by all law and reason they should be; and as the other excellent foundations of hospitals, restore health to their bodies.

Nor is the evil confined to prisons; it extends itself to some of every rank and degree, too long left at large, and more formidable in proportion to their power and inclination to do evil.

It was so, at least in the days of one of the greatest, the wisest, and wealthiest of king. And moreover, I saw under the sun and place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there. Eccles. iii. 16.

If this mighty monarch saw this under his own eye, that neither courts, temples, nor tabernacles, were sanctuaries from iniquity, much more are we forbidden to wonder or repine if it proved as bad, or worse in distant conquests and colonies.

If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province; marvel not at the matter, for he that is higher than the highest, regardeth, and blessed be God, that there be higher than they, Eccles. v. 8.