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PRIOLO, or PRIOLUS (Benjamin), an eminent Italian historian, born in Venice, in 1602, and descended from the illustrious family of Prioli, some of whom had been doges of Venice. He studied at Orthez, Montauban, and at last at Leyden, under Heinsius and Vossius. He went to Paris to visit Grotius, and studied Aristotle at Padua, under Cremonius and Licetus. He became a confident of the duke of Rohan; afterwards married and retired to Geneva; became intimate with the duke of Longueville, cardinal Chigi (afterwards Alexander VII.), and cardinal F. Barberini, and became a Roman Catholic. The civil war breaking out in France, he joined the malecontents, and his estate was confiscated. He then retired to Flanders, where he wrote his History of France, in Latin. He died at Lyons, in 1667, aged sixty-five.

PRIOR (Matthew), an eminent English poet, born in London in 1664. His father dying while he was very young, an uncle, a vintner, having given him some education at Westminster school, took him home to bring him up to his own trade. However, at his leisure hours, he prosecuted his study of the classics, and especially

of his favorite Horace. This introduced him to some polite company, who frequented his uncle's house; among whom the earl of Dorset took particular notice of him, and procured him to be sent to St. John's College in Cambridge, where, in 1680, he took the degree of A. B. and afterwards became fellow of that college. Upon the revolution, Mr. Prior was brought to court by the earl of Dorset; and in 1690 he was made secretary to the earl of Berkeley, plenipotentiary at the Hague; as he was afterwards to the ambassador and the plenipotentiaries at the treaty of Ryswick in 1697; and in 1698 to the earl of Portland, ambassador to the court of France. He was in 1697 made secretary of state for Ireland; and in 1700 was appointed one of the lords commissioners of trade and plantations. In 1710 he was supposed to have had a share in writing the Examiner. In 1711 he was made one of the commissioners of the customs; and was sent minister plenipotentiary to France, for the negociating a peace with that kingdom. Soon after the accession of George I. to the throne in 1714 he presented a memorial to the court of France, requiring the demolition of the canal and new works at Mardyke. In 1715 he was recalled; and upon his arrival being taken up by a warrant from the house of commons, and strictly examined by a committee of the privy council, Robert Walpole, Esq., moved the house of commons for an impeachment against him; and Mr. Prior was ordered into close custody. In 1717 he was excepted out of the act of grace; at the close of that year, however, he was set at liberty. The remainder of his days he spent in tranquillity; and died in 1721. His poems are well known and justly admired.

PRIOR, adj. Lat. prior. Former; being PRIORITY, n. s. before something else; anterior; state of being antecedent.

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Men still affirm that it killeth at a distance, that it poisoneth by the eye, and by priority of vision.

Browne.

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PRIOR, n. s. PRIORESS,

Broome.

Fr. prieur. The head of a convent of monks, inferior in

PRIORY. Sdignity to an abbot: prioress, the feminine of this noun: priory is, the convent or establishment over which a prior is placed : prior, says Ayliffe, is such a person, as, in some churches, presides over others in the same churches. Our abbies and our priories shall pay This expedition's charge.

Shakspeare. King John. When you have vowed, you must not speak with But in the presence of the prioress. Shakspeare.

men

The reeve, miller, and cook, are distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing lady prioress and the broad speaking wife of Bath. Dryden.

Neither she, nor any other, besides the prior of the convent, knew any thing of his name.

Addison's Spectator.

PRIORY, ALIEN. These priories were cells of the religious houses in England which belonged to foreign monasteries: for, when manors or tithes were given to foreign convents, the monks, either to increase their own rule, or rather to have faithful stewards of their revenues, built a small convent here for the reception of such a number as they thought proper, and constituted priors over them. Within these cells there was the same distinction as in those priories which were cells subordinate to some great abbey; some of these were conventual, and, having priors of their own choosing, thereby became entire societies within themselves, and received the revenues belonging to their several houses for their own use and benefit, paying only the ancient apport, acknow ledgment, or obvention, at first the surplusage, to the foreign house; but others depended entirely on the foreign houses, who appointed and removed their priors at pleasure. These transmitted all their revenues to the foreign head houses; for which reason their estates were generally seized to carry on the wars between England and France, and restored to them again on return of peace. These alien priories were most of them founded by such as had foreign abbeys, founded by themselves or by some of their family. The whole number is not exactly ascertained; the Monasticon has given a list of 100. Weever says 110. Some of these celis were made indigenous or denizon. The alien priories were first seized by Edward I. 1285 on the breaking out of the war between France and England; and it appears from a roll that Edward II. also seized them, though this is not mentioned by our historians: and to these the act of restitution 1 Edw. III. seems to refer. In 1337 Edward III. confiscated their estates and

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let out the priories themselves with all their lands and tenements, at his pleasure, for twentythree years; at the end of which term, peace being concluded between the two nations, he restored their estates in 1361, as appears by his letters patent to that of Montacute, county of Somerset, printed at large in Rymer, vol. vi. p. 311, and translated in Weever's Funeral Monuments, p. 339. At other times he granted their lands, or lay pensions out of them, to divers noblemen. They were also sequestered during Richard II.'s reign, and the head monasteries abroad had the king's licence to sell their lands to other religious houses here, or to any particupersons who wanted to endow others. Henry IV. began his reign with showing some favor to the alien priories, restoring all the conventual ones, only reserving to himself in time of war what they paid in time of peace to the foreign abbeys. They were all dissolved by act 2, Henry V., and all their estates vested in the crown, except some lands granted to the college of Fotheringay. The act of dissolution is not printed in the statute books, but it is be found entire in Rymer's Fædera, and in the Parliament Rolls, vol. iv. p. 22. In general, these lands were appropriated to religious uses. Henry VI. endowed his foundations at Eton and Cambridge with the lands of the alien priories. Others were granted in fee to the prelates, nobility, or private persons. Such as remained in the crown were granted by Henry VI., 1440, to archbishop Chicheley, &c., and they became part of his and the royal foundations. PRISAGE, n. s.

tract.

From prise. See the ex

Prisage, now called butlerage, is a custom whereby the prince challenges out of every bark loaden with wine, two tuns of wine at his price. Cowell.

PRISCIANUS, an eminent grammarian, born at Cæsarea, who taught at Constantinople with great reputation about the year 525. He composed a work De Arte Grammatica, which was first printed by Aldus at Venice in 1476; and another, De Naturalibus Questionibus, which he dedicated to Chosroes king of Persia; besides which he translated Dionysius's description of

the world into Latin verse. PRISM, n. s. French prisme; Gr. PRISMATIC, adj. pioμa. See Sir I. PRISMATICALLY, adv. Newton's definition below: the adjective and adverb correspond.

Take notice of the pleasing variety of colours exhibited by the triangular glass, and demand what addition or decrement of either salt, sulphur, or mercury befalls the glass, by being prismatically figured; and yet it is known that, without that shape, it would not afford those colours as it does.

Boyle.

A prism of glass is a glass bounded with two equal and parallel triangular ends, and three plain and well polished sides, which meet in three parallel lines, running from the three angles of one end to the three angles of the other end. Newton.

If the mass of the earth was cubick, prismatick, or any other angular figure, it would follow that one too vast a part would be drowned, and another be dry. Derham.

False eloquence, like the prismatick glass, Its gaudy colours spreads on every place;

The face of nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction gay. Pope.
Here, awful Newton, the dissolving clouds
Form, fronting on the sun, thy showery prism.
Thomson.

and calcined for about half an hour, and then brought If oyster-shells were thrown into a common fire in a dark room, that many of them would exhibit to a person who had previously been some minutes beautiful irises of prismatic colours.

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Darwin.

A PRISM is an oblong solid, contained under more than four planes, whose bases are equal, parallel, and alike situated. See OPTICS. PRIS'ON, n. s. & v. a. PRISON BASE, PRISONER, PRIS'ONHOUSE,

PRISONMENT.

Fr. prison. A strong hold in which per sons are confined; a gaol to confine or captivate prisonis a kind of rural play, described in the extract: house is synonymous with prison: prison-base prisoner, one confined in a prison; a captive: prisonment, confinement; captivity.

The spachies of the court play every Friday at giocho di canni, which is no other than prisonbase upon horseback, hitting one another with darts, as the others do with their hands. Sandys.

So oft as homeward I from her depart,

I go like one that, having lost the field,
Is prisoner led away with heavy heart.

He hath commission

Spenser.

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Then did the king enlarge

Bacon.

The spleen he prisoned. Chapman's Iliad. A prisoner is an impatient patient, lingering under the rough hands of a cruele physitian; his creditor knowes his disease, and hath power to cure him, but takes more pleasure to kill him.

Essayes and Characters, 1638. He that is tied with one slender string, such as one resolute struggle would break, he is prisoner only at his own sloth, and who will pity his thraldom? Decay of Piety.

For those rebellious here their prison ordained." Milton.

Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs, They, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul, And lap it in Elysium.

The tyrant olus,
With power imperial curbs the struggling winds,
And sounding tempests in dark prisons binds.

He yielded on my word,

Id.

Dryden.

And, as my prisoner, I restore his sword. Id. A prisoner is troubled, that he cannot go whither he would; and he that is at large is troubled that he does not know whither to go. L'Estrange.

He, that has his chains knocked off, and the prison doors set open to him, is presently at liberty. Locke.

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A PRISON, lord Coke observes, is only a place of safe custody, salva custodia, not a place of punishment. Any place where a person is confined may be said to be a prison; and, when a process is issued against one, he must, when arrested thereon, either be committed to prison, or be bound in a recognizance with sureties, or else give bail according to the nature of the case, to appear at a certain day in court, there to make answer to what is alleged against him. Where a person is taken and sent to prison in a civil case, he may be released by the plaintiff in the suit; but, if it be for treason or felony, he may not regularly be discharged, until he is indicted of the fact and acquitted. See LAW.

PRISON DISCIPLINE. This is a topic upon which every patriotic feeling of the Christian moralist will be exercised; and has been exercised in this country, very salutarily, we may add, for the last ten years. If no second Howard has arisen, investigations into the state of prisons more extensive than his have been successfully carried on in every part of Great Britain during this period, and, in the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline, an important centre of communication has been established for the benefit of the civilised world. In the retrospect of their proceedings much that is humiliating to our national pride will appear; but as the exposure of the evils in question has led to a very important diminution of them by legislative enactments, and to the full understanding of the chief causes of the rest, they may be adverted to with considerable satisfaction.

Mr. Buxton's Enquiry whether Crime and Misery are produced or prevented by our present System of Prison Discipline, and his personal exertions in this cause both in and out of parliament, were the first great means of arousing the late attention of the benevolent to the subject. There is a singular honesty in the fabrication of his book; and it is one of those rare cases in which no victory has been gained over the candor and veracity of the writer, by the strong persuasions of a mind under the fullest conviction and most glowing impressions upon the subject of his publication. For the truth of the facts, as they stand in his statements, Mr. Buxton declares himself to require no indulgence: 'Nothing is stated,' says he, (with the exception of the account of the Philadelphia gaol), which has not come within my own observation, and which has not been confirmed by the concurrent testimony of the gentlemen who have been my companions. The description of the Borough Compter, Tothill Fields, the Penitentiary, the gaols at St. Alban's, at Bury, at Ghent, and at Bristol, have been read to their respective gaolers; and that of Guildford was handed to a magistrate of the county of Surrey, with a request that he would point out any mistakes. Mr. Buxton adds, I have generally mentioned the days on which I visited the gaols, the persons with whom I went, and, where I could do it with propriety, the names of any prisoners whose

case attracted my particular attention. I have done this as inviting enquiry, as placing my statements in a more tangible shape, and as furnishing a facility for the detection of errors.' For the honor of the writer of the severe censures on our past proceedings which this book contains, such proofs of authenticity speak very forcibly; but, for the honor of the British character, we have only to regret that they carry so high his pretensions to be believed. Of the reasoning in the introductory chapter, we do not hesitate to say that it is in a high degree moral, acute, and manly. We are not of opinion that prisoners should be indulged with Turkey carpets; and we agree in the positions of the committee of aldermen, that debtors should not be placed within the walls of a prison, with greater comparative comforts than the families of the citizens whom they have wronged, or perhaps ruined; neither do we feel any of that contumacious compassion for prisoners because authority and the law have made them such, which, we are persuaded, many do; but we cordially join with Mr. Buxton in opinion, that, where imprisonment is the legal consequence of debt, it should be only imprisonment, without any aggravations, or superadded sufferings; for it is not to be disputed that all beyond mere confinement is beyond the law, which has nowhere authorised any infliction for this cause beyond the evil necessarily implied in the suspension of personal liberty. It is still more plainly evident, that persons under confinement for imputed offences ought not to be subjected to any rigors beyond what may be necessary to secure their detention. Even on convicted delinquents, where safe custody is all that the law has in contemplation, any annexation of unnecessary hardship carries the punishment beyond the law; and, where imprisonment is part or the whole of the punishment, all that is inflicted of suffering or privation, beyond what the sentence has defined, or the common regulations of the prison require, is excess and abuse, so much the more to be dreaded, because it takes place where the eye of the public does not often pierce.

It is quite evident that as little as possible of judicial punishment should be submitted to the discretion or disposition of the gaoler, however necessary it may be to invest him with some degree of coercive authority to preserve the order and peace of the prison. A system of general rules only may and ought to be maintamed, in which at least ordinary humanity suffers nothing suppliciary beyond the sentence of the court, in which respect should be had, as far as justice towards all will allow, to the common presumable differences of sentiment arising from previous habits, and in which all mischiefs that may affect the prisoner consequentially and permanently, after the law is satisfied, may, as far as possible, be prevented.

No language can better state the rights of a prisoner accused even of serious crimes than the following: You have no right to abridge him of pure air, wholesome and sufficient food, and opportunities of exercise. You have no right to debar him from the craft on which his family depends, if it can be exercised in prison. You

have no right to subject him to suffering from cold, by want of bed-clothing by night, or firing by day; and the reason is plain, you have taken him from his home, and have deprived him of the means of providing himself with the necessaries or comforts of life, and therefore you are bound to furnish him with moderate indeed, but suitable accommodation.

You have for the same reason no right to ruin his habits by compelling him to be idle, his morals by compelling him to mix with a promiscuous assemblage of hardened and convicted criminals, o his health by forcing him at night into a damp unventilated cell, with such crowds of companions as very speedily render the air foul and putrid, or make him sleep in close contact with the victims of contagious and loathsome disease, or amidst the noxious effluvia of dirt and corruption. In short, attention to his feelings mental and bodily, a supply of every necessary, abstraction from evil society, the conservation of his health and industrious habits, are the clear, evident, undeniable rights of an unconvicted prisoner. He should be brought to his trial as speedily as possible; for every hour of unnecessary delay, in furnishing him with the opportunity of proving his innocence, is, or at least may be, an hour of unjust imprisonment.

* At his trial, either he is acquitted,-in which case the least you can do is to replace him in the situation you found him, to pay his expenses bome, and to furnish him with sufficient to support him till he has had an opportunity of looking out for work: or he is convicted, and then it is for the law to appoint the punishment which is to follow his offence. That punishment must be inflicted; but you must carefully guard that it be not aggravated, and that circumstances of severity are not found in his treatment which are not found in his sentence. Now no judge ever condemned a man to be half starved with cold by day, or half suffocated with heat by night. Who ever heard of a criminal being sentenced to catch the rheumatism, or the typhus fever? Corruption of morals and contamination of mind, are not the remedies which the law in its wisdom has thought proper to adopt. We should remember, to use the words of a former writer on the subject, that disease, cold, famine, nakedness, a contagious and polluted air, are not lawful punishments in the hands of the civil magistrate; nor has he a right to poison or starve his fellow creature, though the greatest of criminals. The convicted delinquent then has his rights. All measures and practices in prison, which may injure him in any way, are illegal, because they are not specified in his sentence :he is therefore entitled to a wholesome atmosphere, decent clothing and bedding, and a diet sufficient to support him.

'But besides the rights of the individual, there are duties to the community :-Parum est improbos coercere pænâ, nisi probos efficias disciplinâ. One of the most important of these duties is, that you should not send forth the man committed to your tuition in any respect a worse man, a less industrious, a less sober, or a less competent man, than when he entered your VOL. XVII.

walls. Good policy requires that, if possible, you dismiss him improved.

"For the improvement of the unconvicted prisoner you should labor, as a recompense for his confinement before trial-that thus you may convert the suspicion of crime into its prevention in future-that thus you may addict him to such habits, and instil such principles, and impart such instruction, as may repair the damage you have done him; and that he, being amerced of one period of his life, may be enabled to spend the remainder more respectably.

For the improvement of the debtor you should labor, because the grand causes of debt are sickness, idleness, or intemperance:-you must, therefore, provide against its recurrence by those measures which may secure the health, the industry, and the sobriety of your prisoners. The convicted criminal is also entitled to your care. Our law is not, in its true spirit, whatever it may be in its modern enactments, a system of bloody vengeance; it does not say, so much evil is repaired by so much misery inflicted. A merciful and enlightened jurisprudence, like the Author of all that is merciful and wise, does not rejoice in the death of a sinner; but rather that he should turn from his wickedness, and live. Punishments are inflicted that crime may be prevented, and crime is prevented by the reformation of the criminal. This may be accomplished. The prisoner, being separated from his former associates, ceases to think as they think; he has time for recollection and repentance; and seclusion will humble the most haughty, and often reform the most abandoned.

'It is then necessary that he sleep alone, and that he be alone during a great portion of the day.

But, as idleness is one great cause of sin, in dustry is one great means of reformation. Mea sures must therefore be taken for his constan employment, and for making that employment agreeable, by allowing him to share largely in its profits.

'The use of stimulating liquors is often the cause, and always the concomitant of crime. These, therefore, must be forbidden. The want of education is found to be a great source of crime; for this, therefore, a provision must be made. The neglect of religious duties is the grand cause of crime. Ministers of religion must, therefore, be induced to give their active and zealous labors to the prisoners daily, reading prayers in public, and giving private instruction. The assiduous services of such men will not be fruitless. Mr. Robinson of Leicester declared that no part of his ministry had been so signally successful as that in the gaols; and the Ladies' Committee of Newgate have many proofs that reformation may be accomplished, even amongst the most dissolute and abandoned.'-Buxton, p. 11—15.

Mr. Buxton maintains, that, as our prison discipline stood in 1815, the prisoner, immediately on his commitment, was made to experience the violation of all these rights. In language still but too applicable in various parts of the country,' You give him,' says he (the priI

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soner) leisure, and for the employment of that leisure you give him tutors in every branch of iniquity. You have taken no pious pains to turn him from the error of his ways, and to save his soul alive. You have not cherished the latent seeds of virtue; you have not profited by the opportunity of awakening remorse for his past misconduct. His Saviour's awful name becomes, indeed, familiar to his lips, because he learns to use it to give zest to his conversation, and vigor to his execrations; but all that Saviour's office, his tenderness, and compassion, and mercy to the returning sinner, are topics of which he learns no more than the beasts that perish.'

That the reader may have before him a sort of specimen of some modern British prisons, we will exhibit a few particulars of the former condition of the Borough Compter. Of thirteen persons confined on criminal charges, there were five cases of fever. In a room, seven feet by nine, three persons had slept the night before his first visit, one of whom was ill with fever, with which the other two were infected, and so found on his second visit. Till lately no surgeon or apothecary; no infirmary; no separation of a sick criminal, however infectious his disorder. The apartments of the male debtors on the same floor with the female prisoners, and separated only by doors seven feet asunder, which are always open in the day time, and in hot weather at night. One yard only for male and female debtors; no cooking utensils-no soap-no work or employment provided-no school. We are not to wonder at the gaoler's declaration that, in an experience of nine years, he had never known an instance of reformation. In Guildford gaol at this period, there was no infirmary -no chapel-no work-no classification.

So far back as 1815 we find from Mr. Buxton that a committee of aldermen of London was appointed to visit several gaols in England, and directed to compare the allowances, and the rules and orders, then existing in the prisons of the metropolis, with those of Gloucester, and elsewhere, and to draw out such new system of allowances, and such new code of laws, as should appear to them to be salutary, and adapted to the prisons in question. That such of our readers as have not yet acquired any knowledge of this subject may have their attention drawn towards it, we offer to their notice the following improvements which their reports suggested,

1. That the gaol should be divided into dayrooms, and distinct yards, having arcades in each. 2. That warm and cold baths should be provided, as also ovens, for fumigating clothes.

3. Circular apertures of open iron work, for the purpose of a thorough ventilation, should be made.

4. Such shutters and windows shall be constructed as shall exclude the possibility of the prisoners' looking into any other apartment or yard.

5. That day cells for labor should be distinct from the sleeping cells, as also exclusive cells for refractory prisoners.

6. King's evidence should be precluded from a possibility of communication with the other prisoners.

7. That gratings should be fitted up in the apartments where the visitors of felons are admitted; and so constructed as not to admit of any dangerous instrument being passed through. 8. Apartments for the reception of friends of the debtors should be constructed.

9. The chapel should be so constructed that one class of prisoners should not be seen by another class.

With respect to the classification of prisoners, according to their several degrees of offence:

10. That those before trial should never be mixed with those convicted; and that the respective classes should be arranged as nearly as possible in the following order :1. Capital felons.

2. Simple felony, and first offence.
3. Criminals under sentence of death.
4. Misdeameanors and persons wanting

sureties.

5. Misdemeanors of the grossest kind.
6. Children.

With respect to the internal regulations of the prison:

11. That all prisoners on coming in should be examined by the surgeon, and should be immediately washed, and their clothes purified; and proper apparel should be provided for their use

in the mean time.

12. That the prisoners should be required to wash themselves, at least once every day, at places appropriated for that purpose; and that clean towels of open network be supplied for their use, twice a week.

13. That no beer should be admitted; nor wine, nor other strong liquors, except to the infirmaries, by direction of the surgeon, or to the debtors. No debtor to be allowed to have to himself more than one pint of wine, or one quart of strong beer per day.

14. The friends of criminals to be admitted between the hours of nine in the morning, and two in the afternoon; and not to be allowed to converse with the prisoners, but in the presence of the keeper or turnkey, except solicitors for the purpose of preparing defences.

15. The visitors of debtors to be admitted only at stated hours, into the rooms allotted for their reception, and not into the interior of the gaol, unless by order of a magistrate.

16. Not any description of prisoners should be permitted to enter into the sleeping-rooms during the day.

17. The transports, and those sentenced to hard labor or solitary confinement, to be kept in constant work suitable to their ability and strength; such prisoners not be excused from work, unless on account of total inability, ill health, or other sufficient cause certified by the surgeon.

18. Prisoners to be discharged in the morning, and, if they have acquired any trade in the prison, proper tools to be given to them.

19. That gaming of every kind should be strictly prohibited.

With respect to the allowances of food:20. That one pound and a half of bread, at least one day old, should be allowed to each pri

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