The Governor and Council have the power of granting pardons, and once in every year they meet to attend to this and other duties assigned them by the Constitution. The prisoner who hopes to share in their mercy, procures petitions from his friends and former acquaintances in his behalf, and causes them, with his own petition, to be laid before them at their annual meeting. The principal officer of the prison has been generally depended upon to lay the petitions before the Governor and Council; but the conduct of this officer has so far failed to place him in the confidence of the prisoners, that they never trust their cases in his hands, if they can get any one else to attend to them. The common opinion is, that he is never willing to let a prisoner go who is any profit to the Institution; and for this opinion there is as much evidence as there is that a merchant never wishes to lose a good customer, or a doctor to hasten the cure of a rich patient. I was more confirmed in this opinion after my release than I had been before. A friend of mine who had been for several years, and was then, a member of the Legislature, told me that the fall before, he called on the principal officer of the prison to get my petition, and be prepared to lay my case before the pardoning authority, and was told by him that I "_had not petitioned_." When my friend told me this I was thunderstruck. That officer _knew_ that I had petitioned, for I conversed with him on the subject, and gave the petition into his hand; and he informed me when he returned, that he laid it before the Governor and Council, and told me some of the observations that were made upon it. What shocked me the most was the _hypocrisy_ of the man. He had professed to be my friend--and was a member of a christian church; and yet he was so unwilling to lose my _labour_, that he prevented the interposition of my friend for my release. I have the most unshaken confidence in the veracity of my friend; he could not have been mistaken, and he had no motive to misrepresent. This fact is directly to the point. It speaks a great deal. And it shews _why_ the prisoners are not willing to trust their cases to the officers of the prison. It is a fact, and I wish to have it known, that it is very difficult for a prisoner who is any profit to the Institution to get a pardon. I will not pretend to _apply_ the fault, but I know the fact; and hence some of the convicts, acting on the base principle of opposing craft to craft, and returning evil for evil, render themselves of as little use as possible. It has become a proverb in the prison, that a good weaver is sure to be kept as long as he is able to weave. This proverb is inscribed on the facts that transpire every fall, and it ought to find a humbling and condemning application somewhere.