_Former severity of the Penal Code._—According to the penal code existing in Pennsylvania at the commencement of the American Revolution, nearly a score of crimes were subject to capital punishment. In 1794, just eighteen years after the Declaration of Independence, it was ordained that murder in the first degree should be the only crime punishable with death,—a transformation truly remarkable, as being accomplished in so short a time. Many other features of the old code and its administration would, in these days, be considered in Pennsylvania to be highly barbarous; such as exposing the offender in the public streets, with the clogg and chain upon the neck or leg, and not unfrequently on both, or punishing by cropping or the branding iron, the pillory or the whipping-post, all of which were at one time conspicuous features of the code and its administration in our city; and thus the victim was exposed to the gaze and taunts of the rabble, and almost necessarily hardened by the cruel system, instead of being reformed. Ten years proved sufficient to change all this, and instead of these relics of barbarity, to introduce a more rational, humane, and Christian system, by which restraints and “punishments were adopted, better fitted to reclaim the transgressor, and not less effective in penal suffering.” _Reforms Applied for._—On account of this odious state of things, so abhorrent to the better feelings of humanity, the Society, as early as August, 1787, appointed a committee to inquire into the effects produced upon convicts, then at work in the streets, and also its influence on society, and to collect such observations as might assist in correcting any abuses suffered therein. As a result of their inquiries, the Society adopted a memorial to the Legislature, asking that private, and even secluded labor should be substituted for that which had been public and disgraceful in the manner of its imposition. They also suggested that the mingling of the sexes, and the use of intoxicating drink in the prisons, were evils requiring legislative remedy. _Abuses Indicated._—In the autumn of 1788 the Society indicated the following defects and abuses in the treatment of prisoners. 1. Insufficiency of clothing for the untried, and that clothes which the Society had supplied to poor prisoners had been exchanged for rum. 2. The daily allowance to persons committed for trial was only a half of a four-penny loaf, while those detained as witnesses had no allowance at all.