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have the privilege of converse with books. Food of a healthy kind,-sufficient exercise,-instruction in many useful branches of education, and in a trade. This is solitary imprisonment at Perth. A cheerful gaiety is diffused over the severe brow of penal discipline. The suffering of the past is forgotten in the hilarious glow of present enjoyment. All goes merry as a marriage-bell. If this be punishment, what is pleasure? What have the best of us different from this, except the freedom-useless without leisure-to take a longer stroll than a comfortable airing-yard permits? What depressing contrasts these things create! Compare them with the living in the noisome garret, or still more noisome cellar of the honest poor, who have never qualified themselves by a life of crime for the service of skilful teachers during life, and who have not as good a funeral when life shall be no more!

In reading the various reports of the inspectors, one loses patience at the extreme minuteness with which these gentlemen describe their anxiety to have everything clean and tidy. If a miserable spider has been left unmolested in a corner of a cell, or a bluebottle is found buzzing about the ears of a prisoner, these circumstances will be duly chronicled. The prisoners would be the most ungrateful of mankind if they did not consider themselves contented; accordingly, the chaplains and the inspectors of the prisons duly record as a great fact, that John Thomson, or Michael O'Grady, or Betty Mulligan, "expressed themselves happy and satisfied;" as if it was for their satisfaction they are kept in such comfortable quarters. The directors, however, with that candour which is due to themselves and their office, have arrived at a different conclusion, and entertain apprehensions that the murmurings which are heard in Scotland are justified. The Lord Justice-Clerk has truly said that this circumstance has produced much discontent here.-Appendix, p. 76. But Mr. Whigham, Sheriff of Perthshire, clenches the matter by stating the results of his more varied and more frequent observations.

"In periods of difficulty in getting work, when those parties know how comfortable the prisons are, they are less unwilling to commit an offence because they may be sent there."-First Report, p. 349.

Nay, according to the system upon which they began, prisoners were allowed the value of any overwork that their industry might get through; but this most pernicious course was properly given up, though contrary to the opinion of the inspectors.

Lord Brougham asks the question

"What part of the reformatory system is it which you think makes

People better tended in Prison than out of it.

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the expectation of the prison less hateful to those people who are to be reformed? because our general experience shews us that these people very much dislike that which is reformatory."

Ans. "The feeling seems to be that when they get useful and profitable labour, books to read, and the instruction of the teachers, and society for the time, the mind is relieved of the tedium of imprisonment." He adds that all these things "go to diminish the deterring effect. I do not think that our system has worked well with reference to prisoners generally, in so far as that combination of reformation and deterring has hitherto gone." He describes the prisons in Scotland formerly as being "very bad." "Now they are perhaps more comfortable than the houses the same classes of persons have to reside in while out of prison; there is not the slightest doubt of it as regards accommodation, food, and clothing.”—Minutes of Evidence before Lords' Committee, p. 350.

Lord Brougham also put this question to the learned sheriff:— "You say that the attempt to combine those two results--the reformation of the criminal and the deterring of evil disposed persons--has hitherto failed; do you think your experience of it has gone so far as to enable you to give that opinion generally?"

Ans. "I would speak with the caution which I feel to be proper in such a case, because we have not had very long experience; but looking to the experience of five years, and the result, which shows that sixty-seven per cent. of those who have passed through the General Prison have been ascertained to have been recommitted, it does not seem to me that the combined system is producing such good effects as could be wished."-First Report, Lords, p. 350.

This is a very cautious answer; but when divested of the hesitation which might naturally be looked for from a gentleman speaking with such authority, we find it to be the deliberate opinion of the Director best acquainted with the working of the institution, that it is nothing more than a large manufactory, in which criminals recover health and spirits, and are turned out again with renewed energies upon the world.

The whole scheme, in truth, is an audacious paradox. We give the dues of labour without the counterpart, and allow fraud to extract from us what we refuse to poverty and misfortune. It is a resuscitation of those schemes of benevolent visionaries with which the world has often been made merry. Men will never be deterred from the gratification of their passions by holding out to them the reward of a comfortable subsistence as the consequence of their gratification. It reverses all our notions of good government to find the industrious poor feeding upon husks, and those of them who have committed crimes, carefully tended. Is this consistent with any correct notion of retributive justice? Is it not, on the contrary, an anomaly in the world of morals

holding up law and order to contempt, by presenting a caricature in place of a resemblance? It is certainly the introduction of a new code, when its practice is to find the road to knowledge and virtue through the gate of sin. In a frantic impatience to remove the stigma of injustice to the condemned, we have "leapt on the other side," and trampled down all justice to the public.

"Inani sapiens nomen ferat, æquus iniqui,

Ultra quam satis est, virtutem qui petat ipsam."

Institutions divine and human corrupt by their nature or by ours; but even where they contain a principle of inherent rottenness, the evolution of it is seldom so rapid as in the case of this unfortunate establishment. In the public estimation its empire has perished almost ere it began; and it now exists only from an anxious wish that an experiment, devised from motives both of enlightened philanthropy and civil polity, should not be endangered by a too hasty impatience of apparent errors.

The country would willingly subscribe to any scheme for the reduction of criminal gangs. In this, our duty runs in unison with our interest. But it rouses the gorge of a people not altogether impatient of burdens to find their substance wastedtheir sympathies misapplied-their best efforts turned against themselves. A heavy debt of just expectation remains undischarged. The object of punishment appears to be forgotten. We have proceeded from the cruelty of former days to all the liberalities of a well-meant, but foolish generosity. Experience has only illuminated the track we have passed; and nothing can more illustrate the failure which has overtaken our experiments both in England and here, than the aimlessness and contradictory character of measures for the future. There is no unity of purpose, no confidence in any one principle-no perseverance in a plan. Every year brings its vernal promise, and its autumnal disappointment. All is a chaos of inconsistencies-a medley of contradictions—a series of experiments, in which none is pursued far enough to give much prospect of success, although for the time, the prisoners are kept labouring away with much energy on the edifice of their own social and moral regeneration, and compelled to take it all down again when they have got it half erected. There is no simple and consistent code of regulations. This, with the eminent authorities that direct our institutions, must arise from that philosophical doubt consequent on enlargement of understanding; though the disgrace which has overtaken in Scotland the Separate System of Prison-discipline is attributable greatly to allowing the judgment to be dragged headlong by generous and amiable sensibilities which have no juris

diction here.

Constant Work in Prison an evil.

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Amid the controversial speculations which penal justice has evoked, there is none more important than the dispute as to its object. It is undoubtedly twofold; the first, and most important, being the prevention of crime; the second, subsidiary and subordinate-the reformation of the criminal. In endeavouring to effect the subordinate object by instruction, kindness, and the display of all the tender charities and sympathies of life, the first principle has been forgotten. It is no longer a punishment, when everything calculated to excite remorse, or to inflict bodily pain, is carefully removed. We make the punishment a premium by our visits, our anxieties, and our benefits. In the wildest audacity of speculation, who would ever maintain that such a system would operate to deter?

The character of Scotsmen shines particularly out in the Prison Reports. There is nothing upon which inspectors, jailors, and chaplains speak with more complacency than the quantity of work they have got out of the prisoners, and no complaints are more grievous than those made as to a small demand for the produce. There are three evils which this generates. First, It depresses the profits of honest tradesmen out of prison, who cannot sell so cheaply. Secondly, It prevents the prison effecting the object for which it was established. It ceases to be a penal institution, becomes a place of amusement, or a bad manufactory. Thirdly, It may be a question whether any permanent habit is ever acquired by all this compulsory industry. With regard to old offenders especially, we believe the whole system to be based upon a delusion. A thoroughly regenerated man, who has run the gauntlet of two or three convictions, is a phenomenon about whom all Prisonauthorities have expressed themselves curious. Few, if any, of the older criminals are ever reformed. Often "they ridicule what the parson says, directly after he turns his back, but cry before him."-1 Field, p. 47. They display penitence in prison, and their history constitutes a considerable portion of the Chaplain's Report. But this penitence is only a mere negation of virtue, consequent upon the impossibility of doing otherwise. Freedom is no sooner acquired, than the mind returns by an instantaneous impulse to obedience to its old and familiar instincts. The good resolutions which had excited the clergyman's thankfulness under the influence of low diet, melt away like frost-work before the first appearance of temptation. The religious conversion through which they passed, in its turn passes off with the regular life, the solitude, and necessity by which it was evoked. Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. In consequence, the sad conclusion is recorded in every form of varied and emphatic expression by judges and by magistrates, that there is

small hope for the reformation of adult criminals.*

Their habits,

long indulged, assume a despotic, though it be a prescriptive empire. Nature herself is not more elastic in her rebound against restraint.

The Separate System is only useful when applied to those of whom we have hopes of reformation. Had it been intimated that the adults should be exercised in gangs, and taught in classes, we believe that few would have uttered a remonstrance. But when the Directors resign the ductile and plastic mind of youth, without taking advantage of the effects of that solitude which is at their command, they resign all chance of making their system effective. The establishment, while it instructs, must also alarm. It may be, that in carrying out the great scheme, some of the unhappy objects of the discipline may sink beneath it. These are the accidents to which we must look, in all general systems intended to regulate the masses of mankind. Perhaps some such instance has occurred; and the authorities, proceeding from a particular instance to general principles, have pushed their conclusions to principles more general. Tested by such a rule, all systems, principles, and institutions would fail. We should in vain legislate, if our legislation must be adapted to the particular character of every unit. If death or madness has been the result of a strict enforcement of solitary confinement in a few cases, these are misfortunes which must be endured. They are counterbalanced by the benefits resulting to the general herd; and the question is resolvable into the simple rule of proportion, whether it is better that society should be for ever tortured by the evils arising from a universal contamination, or whether by the sacrifice of a few, the rest should be restored to the world they had wronged?

"I select a jail," says Mr. Field, "in which this industrial training has been attempted under circumstances the most favourable. In the General Prison at Perth the officers are exemplary; the order maintained is excellent; all prisoners are in separate confinement, and none for less than twelve months. But there the fatal plan which has been referred to is followed, and the effects are disastrous both to the culprits and their country. The Inspector's Reports, and the evidence quoted, (vol. ii.) show us that not less than eighty (sixty-seven?) per cent. of the criminals discharged from this prison are recommitted! How, then, shall we account for the fact, that of criminals of the same class, released from the jail at Reading, the proportion recommitted does not amount to one-tenth of that number? The cause is easily described; because at Reading, whilst industrial training is not

* See 13th Report of Inspectors, p. 36, per Lord Mackenzie App. to Lords' Report, p. 89, Lord Denman, ibid. p. 5, Lord Justice-Clerk, ibid. pp. 70-2-6, Lord Cockburn, ibid. pp. 93-6.

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