At this distant time it is indeed interesting to observe how thoroughly John Howard understood the subject to which he had devoted his life. In his prepared plan for the erection of the prison he anticipates exactly the method we are pursuing to-day, after more than a century of experience. “The Penitentiary Houses,” he says, “I would have built in a great measure by the convicts. I will suppose that a power is obtained from Parliament to employ such of them as are now at work on the Thames, or some of those who are in the county gaols, under sentence of transportation, as may be thought most expedient. In the first place, let the surrounding wall, intended for full security against escapes, be completed, and proper lodges for the gatekeepers. Let temporary buildings of the nature of barracks be erected in some part of this enclosure which will be wanted the least, till the whole is finished. Let one or two hundred men, with their proper keepers, and under the direction of the builder, be employed in levelling the ground, digging out the foundation, serving the masons, sawing the timber and stone; and as I have found several convicts who were carpenters, masons, and smiths, these may be employed in their own branches of trade, since such work is as necessary and proper as any other in which they can be engaged. Let the people thus employed chiefly consist of those whose term is nearly expired, or who are committed for a short term; and as the ground is suitably prepared for the builders, the garden made, the wells dug, and the building finished, let those who are to be dismissed go off gradually, as it would be very improper to send them back to the hulks or gaols again.” Suggestions such as these may have seemed impossible to those to whom they were propounded; but that the plan of action was simple and feasible, is now most satisfactorily proved. Elam Lynds, the celebrated governor of Sing-Sing prison, in the State of New York, acted precisely in this manner, encamping out in the open with his hundreds of prisoners, and compelling them in this way to build their own prison-house, cell by cell, as bees would build a hive. De Tocqueville, commenting on this seemingly strange episode of prison history, observes that “the manner in which Mr. Elam Lynds built Sing-Sing would no doubt raise incredulity, were not the fact quite recent, and publicly known in the United States. To understand it we have only to realize what resources the new prison discipline of America placed at the disposal of an energetic man.”