Vicksburg Herald clipping

More Thieves Turned Loose – Gov. Davis as the Champion Pardoner.

We learn from a gentleman from Jackson, who received his information direct from Mr. Noonan, the Superintendent of the Penitentiary, that Lieut.-Gov. Davis is proving himself the champion pardoner of the age. Within a week that functionary has pardoned fourteen virtuous gentlemen in striped breeches, and if Ames will only keep away from the State for three or four months longer, there is a good prospect that Mississippi will be able to boast of a Penitentiary without a solitary inmate! This will be a decidedly economic arrangement, for, if there are no prisoners kept in the Penitentiary, there will, of course, be no occasion for Superintendents, officers, and guards! Then there will be no outlay for food and clothing, nothing to pay for doctor’s bills; in short, the Penitentiary will be entirely self-supporting, for, as nothing from nothing leaves the same gigantic product, it follows as the night the day, that Gov. Davis being generous in turning the thieves out as fast as the courts can turn them in, he cannot be false to any man for the “keep” of thieves and murderers! Some benighted individual may be stupid enough to suggest that it is hardly worthwhile for the people to pay taxes to support the courts of the country, if the criminals whose cases are adjudicated are not punished in accordance with law, but this is taking a very narrow view of the subject. The way to avoid all difficulty in the premises is to empty the Penitentiary at one fell swoop, by a single dash of the pen, and convert the building into a grand joss house, or voodoo temple for the negroes. This being done, let all courts be abolished and the Courthouses of the several counties be transformed into dance houses – the most of them are used for that purpose now – and this will be a great saving of money in the shape of compensation to Judges and Chancellors, with a great retinue of clerks and bailiffs. This accomplished, we can abolish all law and refuse to make any more; everybody will be the equal of everybody else; everyone will enjoy the largest liberty, and take what he pleases, without money and without price, and thus, we shall reach and realize the dream of the philanthropist, and have perfect social equality! Can anything be more delightful?