"'The people of Pennsylvania think,' said Lafayette, 'that the system of solitary confinement is a new idea, a new discovery. Not so;--it is only the revival of the system of the Bastile. The State of Pennsylvania, which has given to the world an example of humanity, and whose code of philanthropy has been quoted and canvassed by all Europe, is now about to proclaim to the world the inefficacy of the system, and to revive and restore the cruel code of the most barbarous and unenlightened age. I hope my friends of Pennsylvania will consider the effect this system had on the poor prisoners of the Bastile. I repaired to the scene,' said he, 'on the second day of the demolition, and found that all the prisoners had been deranged by their solitary confinement, except one. He had been a prisoner twenty-five years, and was led forth during the height of the tumultuous riot of the people, whilst engaged in tearing down the building. He looked around with amazement, for he had seen nobody for that space of time, and before night he was so much affected, that he became a confirmed maniac, from which situation he has never [never was] recovered.'"[183] [183] Eighteenth Annual Report of the Prison Discipline Society, pp. 95, 96. With regard to this, also, several things are to be observed. 1. It invokes the authority of Lafayette against the Pennsylvania System, and quotes as his _opinion_ of that system words used with regard to _solitude without labor_, as in the Bastile. In fact, Lafayette never condemned what in 1843 was known as the Pennsylvania System, nor ever expressed any opinion impugning it in any degree. His family are at this moment among its warmest advocates in France. 2. It withholds or suppresses the date of the extract, and the source whence it is drawn, and does not in any way disclose to the uninformed reader that it was actually written before the origin of the Pennsylvania System. 3. The extract purports to be from a letter of Lafayette to Roscoe; whereas this is true only of the first paragraph. The second is from an anonymous letter from Paris, in the "National Intelligencer" of November 17, 1826, where the writer relates a conversation with Lafayette concerning the prison then building in Philadelphia, in which it was proposed to introduce _solitude without labor_. 4. After the words "unenlightened age," in the very heart of this extract, an important passage is omitted,--without asterisks or other mark denoting omission,--which, if inserted, would have shown conclusively that Lafayette's opinion was directed to a system of solitude, "without the least employment, and without the use of books." May it not be said justly, that the opinions of Lafayette are misrepresented and garbled?