is generally admitted that it is the master's decided interest to treat and feed them well, as the only means of obtaining a fair portion of their labour. Add to this the convict's prospect at the end of a few years of becoming master of his own labour, and obtaining its very high value, the frequent escapes, and the great facility of procuring his wife and family from England to join him, and it is clear his condition carries with it little or nothing of the proper severity of punishment. That this mischievously indulgent system may possibly be altered by making all convicts work for a time in gangs on the roads, by a stricter police, and other improvements, appears probable; but while the system remains as it is, it is obvious to common reason (without the positive testimony of the gaolers and magistrates, who almost all agree on the point) that transportation can possess few effective terrors for those classes of persons against whom it is the business of the laws to secure property and society. What, then, are the terrors of the hulks?

The Committee of 1829, say

The system adopted on board the hulks appears, from the evidence of Mr. Hoare, Chairman of the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline, to be very defective. The labour performed is said to be too light, and the want of separation exposes the men to the continual influence of vicious society.'-p. 15.

Improvements appear, from the (somewhat partial) evidence of Mr. Capper, the superintendent (1831), to have been lately made in the hulks-and greater discipline and harder labour to have been introduced. But though Mr. Capper says the convicts have greater dread of the hulks than of transportation, Mr. Wakefield and Mr. Wontner, the active governor of Newgate, agree in thinking that the hulks possess no terror for criminals, and have the reputation of being a place of lax discipline, considerable indulgence (they have meat six days in the week), and great chances of escape; and Mr. Estcourt, M. P., a magistrate of Wiltshire, confirms their opinion.

But if an abode in the convict colonies or the hulks is little calculated to inspire terror into criminals, no one can think that a few years passed in a county or borough gaol are likely to appear more formidable. The Committee, of 1829, judiciously

observe

Formerly a prison was dreaded on account of the filth and disease which were held to be its constant accompaniments. A certain terror was inspired by these associations. Perhaps the general notion cannot be better described than by the old phrase of sending a man to "rot in a gaol." It was discovered that this system was unwise as well as inhuman: that the prisoners became worse by contamination, while

P 2

they

they excited sympathy by their wretchedness. Prisons were cleaned, ventilated, and put in order; but in making this change, a prison altered its character; men no longer dreaded being confined in a place where, under a good roof and with good, wholesome food, they are kept employed at labour less severe than their usual work. Hence it has become necessary to find some other means of inspiring dread; and it is this problem which has engaged the more sensible advocates of the new discipline of prisons for many years. We wish to deter others from crime, and for that reason to make punishment irksome and disagreeable.'-p. 15.

In no

Has the excellent Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline, have any other persons who have considered the subject, been yet able to solve this important problem? degree. And would it not be the height of impolicy and rashness to remove capital punishment, while the law as yet confessedly provides not one other penalty holding forth terror to criminals, adequate to the repression of the heavier and more dangerous offences? Paley well observes - The frequency of capital executions in this country owes its necessity to three causes much liberty, great cities, and the want of a punishment short of death possessing a sufficient degree of terror.' Has liberty declined, have cities diminished, has any terrific secondary punishment been discovered since this sound thinker wrote? Many of the punishments inflicted in other countries would not be tolerated in England, and would be found to excite even more repugnance to the law, than can be said to be now produced by the penalty of death. It would be shocking to all the notions of Englishmen, to see a forger or a horsestealer working on the public roads for life, in irons or with a cannon-ball tied to his legs, or even in the parti-coloured clothing of the gaol. The punishment of branding, which was tried above a century since, was laid aside on account of its mischievous effects. The punishment of solitary confinement is a tremendous and critical weapon, which may, at some future day, probably be the basis of an effective system of punishment. In Gloucester gaol, however, where it has succeeded well for one month, the magistrates and gaoler have been afraid of applying it for longer periods. Mr. Hoare, long a magistrate for Middlesex, and the active chairman of the Prison Discipline Society says,

I should be afraid of inflicting solitary confinement for a few weeks-the habits and temperament of the mind vary so much.'

At the Penitentiary, strict solitary incarceration (in a light cell) is only ventured on for five days at the commencement of the imprisonment; and the prisoners say it is the most painful part of the whole five years. The experiment has been made

in America, in the state of Maine, at Auburn in New York, and in New Jersey, where the results are highly unfavourable. In the gaol of Maine, eleven persons were in one year confined in soliude for short periods, none exceeding six months. Of these, two committed suicide in their cells; another, sentenced to sixty-two days, could scarcely endure fifty-six days, and this only by the help of four removals, for several days at a time, into the hospital, for the recovery of his health. When last removed from the cell, he shivered like an aspen leaf-his pulse was very feeble-his articulation could scarcely be heard at the distance of eight feet, and he could with difficulty stand alone. Another, who was sentenced for six months, endured little more than two months, when he was necessarily removed to the hospital, where he remained near three months, and was then pardoned on account of ill health. The experienced superintendent of this prison thought, that nearly as much time was necessary in the hospital, to fulfil long terms of solitary confinement, as in the cells; and the legislature of Maine abolished solitary confinement as a punishment, and enacted that all punishments by imprisonment should be by confinement to hard labour. At Auburn in New York, the experiment was equally unsuccessful, and the punishment was abandoned. In New Jersey, where the cells were so arranged, that the men could converse freely, though not see each other, and where the evil of corrupt society was therefore not avoided, the prisoners' health did not materially suffer.*

But although confinement in absolute solitude, for any considerable period, can never, we are convinced, be used as an efficient punishment, yet we believe that the combination of a certain degree of solitude with hard labour, rigid discipline, moderate diet, and religious instruction, which is now adopted in the Penitentiary in London, and at various large prisons in America, (especially that of Sing Sing, described by Captain Hall in the first volume of his Travels,) forms a scheme of punishment from which much good may be expected, and which ought gradually to be extended. That the strict discipline of the Penitentiary is regarded with some terror by criminals, is clear, from the evidence of Mr. Wakefield, Mr. Wontner, and other witnesses in 1831;-but, unhappily, the building, enormous as it looks, contains but 650 convicts (costing 561. per annum each, instead of 381., which is the average expense in gaols) out of the many thousands whose punishment is to be pro

See Appendix to Report of Committee on Criminal Commitments and Convictions in 1829.

vided

vided for. These, it must be remembered, are picked individuals; and there is the greatest doubt whether the system could be advantageously applied to the more heinous and depraved criminals. At all events, it must be the work of years, at an expense of millions, to establish any such system as a general substitute for the convict colonies and the county gaols.

Who must not cordially wish success to all efforts directed to the end of rendering secondary punishments terrific and effectual? But as long as they possess their present character, we can hardly believe that any legislature, composed of practical and reflecting men, will consent to put in hazard the security of commerce and of private property by further reducing capital punishments, however strongly humanity may prompt to such a proceeding, and however warmly every man must desire to pave the way for it by the improvement of secondary penalties.

We mean, in a future Number, to take up the subject of Penitentiaries in detail; meantime we beg leave to offer our readers an extract from a Letter to an Irish Judge, which was published, and, though anonymous, excited a good deal of attention, eighteen years ago; and which, on turning it up the other day among a world of long-forgotten things, struck us as having a most close and remarkable applicability to too many of the circumstances of the present time. Thus wrote, in 1815, a great living poet and philosopher; and we humbly recommend what he then wrote to the consideration of the ministers of the crown.

Etiam in falso verax, the true lover of his country, even by his mistakes, presents a contrast with the insidious ingenuity of the demagogue, whose character it has been in all ages, and in all countries, to convey falsehood even when he utters truth. No wise and good man will wilfully draw the attention of the multitude to errors and calamities which he himself knows to be either not at all, or only gradually and slowly, remediable. A Christian and a lawyer, in reverential gratitude to the framers and enacters to the guardians and enforcers of public law, your Lordship must abhor all attempts to exasperate or embitter the popular mind on any occasion; how much more when the attempt is made by a mischievous display of evils which both the executive and legislative powers have long and anxiously struggled to remove; with how much intenser feeling when their wisest plans and best intended efforts are known to have been mainly baffled by the very prejudices and antipathies which the too exclusive and too passionate attention to these evils first kindled, and still continues to feed and furnish.

'Let us not delude ourselves. The bulwarks and temples of ancient institutions, which had been undermined and thrown prostrate, are now indeed rebuilding. By the heroic persistance of Great Britain,

and

and the inherent elasticity of her commercial system; by the natural reaction of all human events, and the subsequent final explosion of imprisoned and compressed Europe, we have shattered or blasted the terrific engineer in the mine of his own digging. The visible organization of Jacobinism has been crushed or torn asunder;-but the life, the evil principle, cannot die, as long as the soil of a half-knowledge and a proud ignorance supplies its own specific juices to the envy, ambition, and revenge, which, alas! are the indigenous growth of poor human nature. Many and strangely various are the shapes which the spirit of Jacobinism can assume. Now it is philosophy contending for indifference to all positive institutions, under the pretexts of liberality and toleration, and yet with all the bigotry of self-conceit, and all the diligence of bigotry, through every channel of communication-and by all the implements of annoyance-by contempt, by ridicule, by opprobrious charge or implication, persecuting all, as persecutors, who will not believe their forefathers fools and tyrants! Now it appears as refined sensibility and philanthropy, declaiming piteously concerning the wrongs and wretchedness of the oppressed many, and, in play or novel,'-(alas! we have got further than plays and novels now!)-' amending the faulty and partial schemes of Providence, by assigning every vice and folly to the rich and noble, and all the virtues, with every amiable quality, to the poor and ignorant-but, mark you, not to flatter them into greater contentment with their lot: no, but to teach them to pity themselves alone, and at once to despise, hate, and envy their superiors. Their very crimes, forsooth, are not their own, but the crimes of their hard and neglectful guardians; their very crimes are not crimes, but brave acts of natural vengeance on their plunderers and task-masters.

These are its shapes and dresses when the spirit of Jacobinism travels incognito, and in which it prepares and announces its approaching public entry. Behold it in that, its next and boldest metamorphosis, like the Kehama of our laureat, one and the same, yet many, and multiform, and dividuous, assaulting with combined attack all the gates and portals of law and usage, in all the blazonry of open war! -as journalist ladling out his "hell-broth" of

Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,

Gall of gnat and owlet's wing,

from his midnight caldron of slander and blasphemy; as club president, committee man, commissary-denouncer, accuser, and moborator; as septembrizing and petitioning Poissarde with lips of obscenity and hands of murder, and as incurable orator in the mad-house of a tumultuary legislature, in which all the blindness, presumption, ignorance, dupery, fraud, cupidity, and malice of a wicked nation are fairly represented by universal suffrage! a modern Solon, crushing and creating, till vaporous theorems concrete into meteor constitutions, the executive of which is entrusted to Massacre, with Peculation as First Lord of the Treasury, and Rapacity as Collector of the Revenue.

6

Yet, amid all these fierce and feverish vexations, through all these

whirling