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HONORED SIR: -- My object and subject is punishment for crime, especially capital punishment. To abolish suffering unto death for any crime. St. Paul was the most zeal-ous of all persecutors, but he was suddenly convicted by a light that shone around about him. So this letter may, like the light from Heaven, unexpectedly influence those that otherwise were set upon a contrary course. Let us look at the teeth of the murderer and his victim; there can be no comparison. The government shall be upon his shoulder, and while the murderer is alive, he is a stronger bulwark against the like offence. -- It is life for life you say, but the death of one is unprepared, unexpected, the other is premeditated, anxiety, torture, time wasted and worn out, literally the tree of knowledge in all respects. We do not live by bread alone, and the life unexpectedly taken by violence is a mite in the balance compared to the life of the man sentenced on such a day to be hung on the gallows. You must hear me, hanging or punishment by death must be done away. Two for one invariably. -- Always the aggressor for the aggressee. -- These laws were made by Moses, in a new country among uncivilized people, dissatisfied and quarrelsome, settling their disputes by personal conflict, wrestling with each other, and killing each other, only burying them in the sand, as the story of the Israelite and Egyptian gives us to understand. -- We are a christian people. Bibles and school-books on every table, our Sabbath day is changed from Saturday to Sunday, why not do away these old laws in a measure, or alter them to our enlightened age. We are a new and a growing country, over a vast expanse of territory. If this sinking land of crime and poverty is kept up, we shall become worse than Russia, there is now one hundred thousand beggars in Europe to two hundred thousand that support themselves. We cast our pearls before swine, when we hang the man, and if you could minutely trace effects to their cause I believe you would find that one murder is invariably followed by another, that is punished by death, as the certain consequence. I would pardon if I was Governor, besides it is an odds if he is not crazy. You must not judge of me and hang the crazy man, because I show so much rationality as to render offence sufficiently heinous for punishment. I am suffering under pitiful misrepresentation and unlawful authority and restraint, rest assured that I never was crazy, and any one perjures their own conscience that affirms that I am, and yet though I have been an inmate of four Asylums, I have never met the magistrate or the christian who expressed any dissatisfaction, although no one but must be sensible that the laws of our Country are outraged in my person, by my being confined and forced to endure all the restraint and confinement of those called Lunatics, and will the law allow a member of society to be confined except for crime or lunacy? and by what authority. Governor, I am not crazy I tell you, never was and never shall be unless injured by unlawful means or treatment. And how do you know but there are persons hung, as little deserving of the punishment as I am of being here. Are subjects of grace lunatics? I have been in a progressive state of study and conversion to divine truth for this ten years. I am no criterion to judge the insane by. Build a house for the murderer only, in some conspicuous situation, and confine him for life, or until he gives sufficient warrantee for a pardon, you will thus effectually expiate offence, let it be of whatsoever kind it will. When Shiloh comes to him shall be the gathering of the people. The gathering of the people is salt. The man's labor is of value, and if allowed communication to visitors and physicians he would throw more light upon the effects of crime upon the wind than all that can be learned by the inmates of an insane Asylum. Confusion and every evil work are united in the same sentence by the conjunction, and, as you will find them in like manner united in every wit of life. The evil that men do, lives after them. Such a building would be more a monument of terror, than a thousand hanged men on the gallows. If I was hung, could I come to life again, I would assuredly repeat the offence out of revenge, whereas were I pardoned I could not but be good, the idea of being hung makes me in a rage. The grateful incense of the pardoned man, would have more of the dew of blessing in it, than the extravasated blood of the suffering criminal. We can hang cats and dogs, but is immortality the end and aim of all being, to be done away with for any offence? Our fine ladies have dreadful corns on their feet. Cain was assured that his life should be held sacred. I have for myself a dreadful callous spot on the ball of my foot that I have been unable to remove for years, and it increases since I have been here, to a painful degree, I should not wonder if it was the hang-man's gallows.

Build a house exclusively for those sentenced to death, treat them kindly, and the repentance of the sinner will be more acceptable than punishment. When Shiloh comes, give him the gathering of the people, by fresh salt applied by the hand, and it is my belief that it would more effectually restrain crime and its repetition than all the gallows in the world. I will have mercy and not sacrifice. Heaven has golden streets and must not a course that sinks us in irrecoverable poverty be a wrong one? Will not want and poverty lead to crime? Our Bible does not in a single instance tell us to punish crime, but to repent and believe, and ye shall be saved, it does not say hang this man because he killed his brother, but it says your force is not right. Build thou the walls of Jerusalem, make your paths straight in the wilderness, this can only be done by salt. This I learn in all places. Christ says that salt will take away all offence. Job says that Leviathan puts salt upon the mire and that we cannot come nigh with his double bridle, this is the same as the gallows and salt so applied would have all the effect that punishment now does. In another place it says that the Prophet is the snare of the fowler in all his ways. The snare fowler is salt, and not bird lime, salt will kill birds. It did seem to me before I began this letter, as if I could say somewhat that would be listened to, but perhaps I am mistaken, but I do solemnly protest against hanging, it is my individual conviction that it is a error in judicial authorities, and entirely consistent and irreconcilable to all benevolence and refinement. If the sinner turneth from his ways he shall live, how can he turn when he is sent out of the world. It is written that your force is not right. I am afraid you make crazy people by coming to the gallows with the man, and cursed is he that perverteth the judgement. If hanging is the right course why is the crime repeated? it ought to prevent the repetition of the crime, or else it does not answer purpose, yet our newspapers become a daily record of these dreadful violations. Now let the man live, and grow old, and who that ever saw or conversed with him would ever go and do the like. I attended Mr. Amos Eaton's lectures when I was at school, he was confined ten years for forgery, and although he declares his innocence, yet its effect upon me was such, that it would be a moral impossibility for me to imitate the hand writing for a fraudulent purpose, a feeling of horror that I cannot describe, and known only to myself, for I never heard the subject canvassed by anyone influences me, and this arises only from my personal acquaintance with the man himself. I describe it only to an internal wall, that shrinks with dread and aversion from an embodied crime. Might it not operate so in instances? To see the guilty old man, makes a deeper and more painful impression than one that is young. We can often see ourselves pictured out, when we look at the inferior race of beings, as we read it exemplified in fables, as in the story of the mice in council, and Pope's battle of the frogs and mice. Now if they were to punish offenders in the way that we do, when one killed another all the rest set upon the survivor and make an end of him, we would look upon it as absurd in the extreme, and cruel. How do we know that a superior being does not look upon our ways, in this respect, towards each other in the same light we would look upon them. Suppose the cows were to do so, would it not be dreadful? and would not we take effectual means to stop the double loss of these useful and innocent creatures. "In trouble to be troubled, is to have your trouble doubled," is a rhyme I have often heard. Do we not double trouble in this way? There is no device or work in the grave, and the balances have no weight after death, it is mere blasphemy to carry the yoke into another world. In the Revelations where it speaks of the third seal, it says he that carried the balance upon a black horse, black is not death. -- I am sensible that all that I can say is weak and feeble in comparison to the awful responsibility of the alternative, but the opinion of one that has studied and practiced what they knew as faithfully as I have, does not deserve to be despised.