Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/349

 exhibition deadens the felon's shame, and because it cannot become an actual punishment under any circumstances of a lépero's life. Indeed, what object in existence can the lépero propose to himself? His day is one of precarious labor and income; he thieves; he has no regular home, or if he has, it is some miserable hovel of earth and mud, where his wife and children crawl about with scarce the instinct of beavers. His food and clothing are scant and miserable. He is without education, or prospect of improvement. He belongs to a class that does not rise. He dulls his sense of present misery by intoxicating drinks. His quick temper stimulates him to quarrel. His sleep is heavy and unrefreshing, and he only rises to a day of similar uncertainty and wickedness. What, then, is the value of life to him, or to one like him? Why toil? Why not ''steal? '' What shame has he? ''Is the prison, with certainly of food-more punishment than the free air, with uncertainty?  On the contrary, it is a lighter'' punishment; and as for the degradation, he knows not how to estimate it.

Mexico will thus continue to be infested with felons, as long as its prison is a house of refuge, and a comparatively happy home to so large a portion of its outcast population.

I have collected some statistical information on these subjects, which I think will be interesting in connection with Mexican prisons, and prove how necessary it is, in the first place, to alter their whole system of coercive discipline; and, in the second, to strike immediately at the root of the evil, by improving the condition of the people—by educating, and proposing advantages to them, in the cultivation of the extensive tracts of country that now lie barren over their immense territory.

Without specifying each of the several crimes, for which these persons were committed to prison, or being able, from all the accounts furnished me, to state the exact number of those who were finally convicted, I will