the difficulties which a discharged convict must necessarily have to encounter fall on him with the same weight. These considerations have led to a farther change, and 3. Imprisonment with a prohibition of communication by speech with other convicts, called "The Silent System," has been adopted in the United States of America, and lately in the Model Prison of Pentonville. Here, corruption from the society of other convicts is entirely precluded, and the prisoners receive instruction calculated to enable them to maintain themselves by honest industry when they leave the prison. This is a great improvement on the old system; but this too is not free from weighty objections: for man has been placed by his Creator in a varied scene, calculated to develop all the faculties and capacities of his nature, and the very description and regularity of such a life deprive him of a part of the better discipline appointed for him by his Maker. The sight of his fellow-creatures, indeed, is not denied him, but he cannot hold the intercourse which gives man a greater interest in others than himself. The man condemned to silence for a year or two necessarily becomes a selfish man: what is the grief or pain of another to him? He sees it not,-he hears it not, he may guess indeed that it is felt, but few of us voluntarily contemplate suffering, and the silent man will soon restrict his thoughts to his own affairs merely: the regularity of the employment, and the certainty of food and raiment, leave the mind but small exercise, till at last the pains, or impulses, or appetites of the body become the predominant objects of contemplation, and all the better motives which should lead to better actions, are rather weakened than strengthened by this mechanical sort of life; and the remark made upon monasteries, probably with great truth, that the absence of external communications, and the sameness of the life then led, give the bodily appetites a disproportionate power over the recluse who has nothing to draw his mind away from them, will be in great measure applicable to this system also. It is in the activity of constant and varied occupation that the voice of the animal nature is unheard, and the spiritual has the best chance of recovering its rights; and it is by the colli sion with other minds, not by the unvarying return upon our own, that this better part of man acquires power to control the animal propensities and to take that place in creation which the human race was originally destined to fill. 4. Solitary confinement. This is open to all the objections which attend the silent system; but it has also many peculiar to itself. It has been tried in other countries to a much greater extent than it ever was in England, and therefore its working," as it is called, is well known. None are now ignorant that if it be prolonged, both health and sense fail under the terrible infliction, but it is liable to a still farther, and very grave objection: for though in itself so pregnant with evil, it is not terrible in perspective. Every one has been alone for a few hours, or a day or two perhaps, and he thinks nothing of it: he will be fed and clothed without labor or pains on his part; what cares he for being a little dull? for this is all that he anticipates from solitary confinement. Thus it does not operate to deter from crime by the dread it inspires, and the man probably incurs it with reckless hardihood; it leaves him a maniac or an idiot! II. Forced labor. This too has been adopted more in other countries than in England: but this again, like solitary confinement, does not seem frightful, whatever it may be in fact. Labor is no evil to the working man ;-the chains to the ankles do not appear to be so great an evil as they really are;-and besides all this, it is an unequal punishment; for the shame of being thus exhibited to the public is nothing to the hardened villain, while it is heartbreaking to the more sensitive offender. Reform of the individual under such circumstances is hopeless: the only safety to society therefore consists in putting on the chains for life. III. Transportation to distant colonies, which has been mainly adopted in England as a minor punishment, is hardly less open to animadversion; for first, during the very long voyage to Australia, the part of the world which has been selected for this purpose, the impossibility of classification affords ample room for the more hardened to finish the work of corruption in those minds where any good remains; and next, the punishment itself is by circumstance rendered exceedingly unequal both in its effects on the criminal, and its influence on the minds of others in the way of deterring from crime. For a long time the only object of this kind of punishment appeared to be that of putting offenders against the laws out of sight: they were a defect in the body politic which was to be hidden, and what their condition might be when removed, or what might be the state of society where the main population consisted of such persons, was little considered. Within a short time, however, there has been a considerable amendment in this respect, and Lord Stanley's order, whereby convicts are classified, so as to give them a hope of obtaining benefits by good behavior, has done something towards the introduction of a better system.* Still, notwithstanding these attempts at amendment, the system of English criminal law is not founded on any general principles which can enable it to work usefully as a whole; in proof of which we have only to consult the credited returns of trials and convictions. Crime has increased in a quintuple ratio as compared with the population, for it appears from official reports that during the four years ending Dec. 31st, 1842, the population had increased only four and a half per cent., whilst crime, as compared with the average of the four previous years, had increased 24-7 per cent., thus giving a clear increase of 20 per cent. As a system which has existed long is usually reviewed with a degree of reverential affection by those who have grown up under it, I shall endeavor in the two following sections, 1. To show the practical working of the present system of criminal law. 2. To give a sketch of such an amendment of it as may render it conformable to the great principles of all social law. * Vide Appendix, where the order is set out. CHAPTER II. PRACTICAL WORKING OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM. Or the above-mentioned three classes of punishment, only two are usual in England, for confinement in the hulks is generally only preparatory to transportation: these two are 1. Imprisonment with or without hard labor, 2. Deportation to distant colonies. The first is allotted to all minor offences, and to some even of a more heinous character. For a first or small offence the imprisonment is usually of short duration, just enough to remove the dread which was felt in contemplating it from a distance, and to introduce the prisoner to able instructors in the arts of depredation. The following passage from the work already quoted offers, it is to be feared, but too true a picture of the evils attendant on the present plan of imprisonment for small offences. "Newgate itself," says the writer, "is the great nursery of capital crime;" but "London abounds with smaller nurseries of petty offences... I had the opportunity of strictly examining more than a hundred thieves between eight and fourteen years, as to the immediate cause of their becoming thieves, and in nineteen cases out of twenty it appeared that the boy had not committed his first crime spontaneously, but had been persuaded to commence the career of thieving by persons whose business it is to practise this kind of seduction. The most numerous class of such seducers consists of experienced thieves, both men and boys, who look out for boys not criminal, to whom they represent the life of a thief as abounding in pleasure. The object of these representations is, to obtain instruments with which experienced thieves may commit robberies with less danger to them. selves." The writer goes on to describe the nature of the places where boys are trained for such purposes, and adds, "Let twenty boys selected by the Newgate schoolmaster be from time to time discharged from prison, and every one of them shall straight proceed to one of these pest houses, shall leave it with money in his pocket, and, if watched, shall be seen to pursue the sort of career which I have described. I know the fact to be, that the greater number of the smallest boys discharged from Newgate for want of prosecution or evidence, or after undergoing a sentence of whipping, do instantly proceed to a place of this description, as to their home, and at one time I knew the names and addresses of more than twenty persons who lived by this villainous trade."* In confirmation of this statement it may be added, that of the 3625 convicts sent on board the hulks, in the year ending Dec. 31, 1841, only 1451 were not known to have been in prison before. The numbers stand thus:-† Not known to have been in prison before 1451 487 1625 10 52 Thus it appears that very nearly two-thirds of the whole number were persons who had undergone a training in crime; and that of the above stated gross number, 1174 were under twenty years of age. In all likelihood, therefore, nearly half the number of those under twenty * Facts relating to the Punishment of Death, by E. G. Wakefield, Esq., p. 16-23. + Vide Capper's Reports on Convict Establishments, 1842, page 10. |