a gaol, or place of confinement.

Lord Coke observes, that a prison is only a place of safe custody, salva custodia, not a place of punishment. If this be the case, prisons ought not to be, what they have been in most, and still are in some places of Europe,

(a) Apportus or apportagium (from portare), an acknowledgement, oblation, or obvention, to the mother house or church. Du Cange. rope, loathsome dungeons. Any place where a person is confined may be said to be a prison; and when a process is issued against one, he must, when arrested thereon, either be committed to prison, or be bound in a recognizance with sureties, or else give bail, according to the nature of the case, to appear at a certain day in court, there to make answer to what is alleged against him. Where a person is taken and sent to prison, in a civil case, he may be released by the plaintiff in the suit; but if it be for treason or felony, he may not regularly be discharged, until he is indicted of the fact and acquitted. See INDICTMENT.

But a prison is not only to be considered as a place of safe custody, according to its original design, but also as a place of temporary punishment for certain crimes, and perhaps this punishment might be substituted more frequently than it is, for transportation and death. Probably this is done in no country to better purpose than in Pennsylvania; and no where has imprisonment been more abused than in Venice under the old government.

By the laws of Pennsylvania, imprisonment is imposed, not merely as an expiation for past offences, but also for the reformation of the criminal's morals. The regulations of the gaol are calculated to produce this effect in the speediest manner possible, so that such a building may rather be denominated a penitentiary house, than a gaol. When a criminal is committed to prison, he is made to wash; his hair is combed, and he is furnished with clean apparel, if he has no decent clothes of his own. He is then put into a solitary cell, where he is excluded from the sight of every living being except the gaoler, whose duty is to attend to his mere necessities, but not to converse with him upon any account. If committed for an atrocious crime, he is even barred from the light of heaven. The treatment of each prisoner varies in proportion to the nature of his crime, and his symptoms of repentance. The longest period of confinement is for a rape, which is not to be less than ten years, nor to exceed 21; and for high treason it is not to be under 6, nor above 12.

The prisoners must bathe twice in the week, having proper conveniences within the prison, and they are regularly supplied with a change of linen. Prisoners in solitary confinement subsist upon bread and water; such as labour are allowed broth, puddings, &c. They are allowed meat in small quantities twice a week, and no beverage except water is brought into the prison. One room is set apart for shoe-makers, another for tailors, and so of every other trade. There are stone-cutters, smiths, sailors, &c., in the yards. Such a prison has all the advantages of the rapping house of Amsterdam, without any of its enormous defects.

The following account of the common prison at Venice, is given by Dr Mofely who visited this horrible place in September 1787.

"I was conducted (says he) through the prison by one of its inferior dependants. We had a torch with us. We crept along narrow passages as dark as pitch. In some of them two people could scarcely pass each other. The cells are made of maffy marble; the architecture of the celebrated Saniovini.

"The cells are not only dark, and black as ink, but being surrounded and confined with huge walls, the smallest breath of air can scarcely find circulation in them. They are about nine feet square on the floor, arched at the top, and between six and seven feet high in the highest part. There is to each cell a round hole of eight inches diameter, through which the prisoner's daily allowance of twelve ounces of bread and a pot of water is delivered. There is a small iron door to the cell. The furniture of the cell is a little straw and a small tub; nothing else. The straw is renewed and the tub emptied through the iron door occasionally.

"The diet is ingeniously contrived for the perpetration of punishment. Animal food, or a cordial nutritious regimen, in such a situation, would bring on disease, and defeat the end of this Venetian justice. Neither can the soul, if so inclined, sink away, wrapped up in floundering delusion, or sink to rest; from the admonition of her sad existence, by the gaoler's daily return.

"I saw one man who had been in a cell thirty years; two who had been twelve years; and several who had been eight and nine years in their respective cells.

"By my taper's light I could discover the prisoner's horrid countenances. They were all naked. The man who had been there thirty years, in face and body was covered with long hair. He had lost the arrangement of words and order of language. When I spoke to him, he made an unintelligible noise, and expressed fear and surprise; and, like tame wild animals in dens, which have suffered by the treachery of the human race, or have an instinctive abhorrence of it, he would have fled like lightning from me if he could.

"One whose faculties were not so obliterated; who still recollected the difference between day and night; whose eyes and ears, though long closed with a silent blank, still languished to perform their natural functions—implored, in the most piercing manner, that I would prevail on the gaoler to murder him, or to give him some instrument to destroy himself. I told him I had no power to serve him in this request. He then entreated I would use my endeavours with the inquisitors to get him hanged, or drowned in the Canal' Orfano. But even in this I could not serve him: death was a favour I had not interest enough to procure for him.

"This kindness of death, however, was, during my stay in Venice, granted to one man, who had been from the cheerful ways of man cut off? thirteen years.

"Before he left his dungeon I had some conversation with him; this was six days previous to his execution. His transport at the prospect of death was surprising. He longed for the happy moment. No saint ever exhibited more fervour in anticipating the joys of a future state, than this man did at the thoughts of being released from life, during the four days mockery of his trial.

"It is the Canal' Orfano where vessels from Turkey and the Levant perform quarantine. This place is the watery grave of many who have committed political or personal offences against the state or senate, and of many who have committed no offences at all. They are carried out of the city in the middle of the night, tied up in a sack with a large stone fastened to it, and thrown into the water. Fishermen are prohibited, on forfeiture of