“It was in the capacity of a Minister to Justice, that the pure spirit, whom it is my glory to praise, first conceived the idea of those unrivaled labours that have rendered his memory a treasure to mankind.  In discharging a temporary office, that exposed to him the condition of criminals, he was led to meditate on the evils which had grievously contaminated the operations of Justice.  He perceived that Law herself, like one of her most illustrious Delegates (I mean the immortal Bacon), was grossly injured by the secret and sordid enormities of her menial servants:  that Captivity and Coercion, those necessary supporters of her power, instead of producing good, often gave birth to mischiefs more flagrant, and more fatal, than those which they were employed to correct.  He found, even in the prisons of his own humane and enlightened country, an accumulation of the most hideous abuses:  he found them not nurseries of penitence and amendment, but schools of vice and impiety; or dens of filth, famine, and disease:  not the seats of just and salutary correction and punishment, but the strong holds of cruelty and extortion.  The irons of the prisoner, which he only beheld, entered into his soul, and awakened unextinguishable energy in a spirit, of which companion and fortitude were the divine characteristicks.  In the noble emotions of pity for the oppressed, and of zeal for the honour and interest of civilized society, he conceived perhaps the sublimest design that ever occupied and exalted the mind of man, the design to search and to purify the polluted stream of Penal Justice, not only throughout his own country, but through the various nations of the world.  How low, how little, are the grandest enterprizes of Heroic Ambition, when compared with this magnanimous pursuit!  How frivolous and vain are the highest aims of Fancy and Science, when contrasted with a purpose so beneficently great!  But, marvellous as the magnitude of HOWARD’S enterprise appears, on the slightest view that magnitude becomes doubly striking, when we contemplate at the same time the many circumstances that might either allure or deter him from the prosecution of his idea.  Consider him as a private gentleman, possessed of ease and independence, accustomed to employ and amuse his mind in retired study and philosophical speculation; arrived at that period of life, when the springs of activity and enterprize in the human frame have begun to lose their force! consider that his health, even in youth, had appeared unequal to common fatigue! his stature low! his deportment humble! his voice almost effeminate!  Such was the wonderful being, who relinquished the retirement, the tranquillity, the comforts, that he loved and enjoyed, to embark in labours at which the most hardy might tremble; to plunge in perils from which the most resolute might recede without a diminution of honour.  Under all these apparent disadvantages, unsummoned, unauthorized by any Prince, unexcited by any popular invitation, he resolved to investigate