To Europe--France, Italy, Germany--Extracts from Journal.

WHILE Mr. Parker was waiting in New York for the ship to
sail in which he had taken passage, he made a visit to the city
prison called the "Tombs."

The taste which would expend all that architecture on a building so
loathsome as a jail is most wretched. Shame that the disgrace of
society should be thus arrayed in costly dress, and made to flaunt
before the public eye. In New England we hide our jails; for we are
ashamed of them, and very justly. You shall go through our shire-
towns again and again and never see the jail. I went into the court-
house to see justice administered. A negro was on trial in the Court
of Sessions for abusing his wife. It seemed to me the place was well
called "Egyptian," for the darkness that covered over justice in that
place; and "Tombs," for it appeared the sepulchre of equity. This poor
negro at trial for a crime showed me in miniature the whole of our
social institutions. 1. He was the victim of Christian cupidity, and
had been a slave. 2. From this he had probably escaped, by what was
counted a crime by his master. 3. He was cast loose in a society
where his colour debarred him the rights of a man, and forced him to
count himself a beast, with nothing to excite relf-respect either in his
condition, his history, or his prospects. Poor, wretched man, what is
life to him! He is more degraded than the savage, has lost much in
leaving Sahara, and gained infamy, cold, hunger, and the white man's
mercy--a prison of marble. Oh, what wrongs does man heap on
man!

Here was a man who had got drunk, and was clapped into the
Tombs." His wife and two children were left with no protector.
He had waited five days for his trial. This was a hard case, truly. I
might have got drunk at the Astor House and have gone to bed every
day; the police would take no notice of that. This poor fellow must
smart.

He sailed on the 9th in the Ashburton. After five or six
days of sea-sickness he attacks books again, and makes ob-
servations of a practical nature.

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