Another great fault in the operations of the benevolent in favour of prisoners, is, they are objects of attention _only_ while they are _in prison_. A wise physician will take care to _prevent_ disease, and be equally careful to prevent a _relapse_. Not so with _these_ physicians. They visit the patient at his sick bed for the first time, and there they remind him very graciously of the _cause_ of his sickness, and leave him as soon as he can leave his bed. Intelligent good will embraces its objects the moment they are discovered, and never abandons them. The grand outlines of expansive and understanding benevolence are--the prevention of crime or any other misery--the comfort of the sufferer and the reformation of the criminal--and the prevention of future distress and relapse into crime. Let the pious, and virtuous, and compassionate, keep these outlines constantly in view, and never permit their efforts to relax, but increase and multiply them over every part of the ample field which the above landmarks describe. It would be unavailing for me to propose any _plan_ of operation in this great work. I am by far too microscopic an object in the public eye to hope for the smallest attention to any thing that I can offer. I do not, however, regret this, for I am not much enamoured with _plans_. The best plan would not avail any thing, without a proper spirit in the management of it, and _with_ this, the poorest would be better than any which has yet been devised. On the _spirit_ of prison discipline, then, I rely for success, and on this, whether they are heeded or not, I shall make a few remarks. Those who go on errands of mercy to prisons must convince the prisoners that they are their _friends_, or they can do them no good; and this can be done only by _being_ their friends. When they shall have accomplished this--when the prisoners feel that they have found _friends_, they will become better. With this lever, the hardest heart can be turned. Goodness finds a worshipper in the wickedest heart, and no sooner is it perceived in the holiness of its nature and the benevolence of its exercise, than the heart instinctively does it reverence and receives its impression. The first thing then for a minister of reformation to prisons to do, is, to be good and feel a love for the sinner; and the next is, to make this goodness and love apparent by long and steady perseverance in acts of mercy.