The other was a young Irishman, who had been dragged to jail in his shirt, pantaloons, and hat, on suspicion of having stolen seven dollars from a comrade. He had been in jail very near four months, and in regard to filth and vermin was a counterpart of the other. A death-like smell, so offensive that we stopped upon the threshold, escaped from the room as soon as the door opened, enough to destroy a common constitution, which his emaciated limbs bore the strongest evidence of.
The prisoners upon the second story were allowed the privilege of the yard during certain hours in the day, and the debtors at all hours in the day; yet, all were subjected to the same fare. In the yard were a number of very close cells, which, as we have said before, were kept for negroes, refractory criminals, and those condemned to capital punishment. These cells seemed to be held as a terror over the criminals, and well they might, for we never witnessed any thing more dismal for the tenement of man.
IT is our object to show the reader how many gross abuses of power exist in Charleston, and to point him to the source. In doing this, the task becomes a delicate one, for there are so many things we could wish were not so, because we know there are many good men in the community whose feelings are enlisted in the right, but their power is not coequal; and if it were, it is checked by an opposite influence.
The more intelligent of the lower classes look upon the subject of politics in its proper light--they see the crashing effect the doctrine of nullification has upon their interests; yet, though their numbers are not few, their voice is small, and cannot sound through the channels that make popular influence. Thus all castes of society are governed by impracticable abstractions.
The jail belongs to the county--the municipal authorities have no voice in it; and the State, in its legislative benevolence, has provided thirty cents a day for the maintenance of each prisoner. This small sum, in the State of South Carolina, where provision is extremely high, may be considered as a paltry pittance; but more especially so when the magnificent pretensions of South Carolina are taken into consideration, and a comparison is made between this meagre allowance and that of other States. Even Georgia, her sister State, and one whose plain modesty is really worthy of her enterprising citizens, takes a more enlightened view of a criminal's circumstances-allows forty-four cents a day for his maintenance, and treats him as if he was really a human being. But for this disparity and the wanton neglect of humane feelings South Carolinians excuse themselves upon the ground that they have no penitentiary; nor do they believe in that system of punishment, contending that it creates an improper competition with the honest mechanic, and gives countenance to crime, because it attempts to improve criminals. The common jail is made the place of confinement, while the whipping-post and starvation supply the correctives.