prisoners' feelings, and to gain a control almost
over their very wills.

Yes; but at what a cost! What advantage
can there be in controlling a mind which you
have first of all deprived of its natural power?
You might as well talk of the pride of teaching
a man to read with his fingers when you have
put out his eyes.

Much about the same.

This really ought to be looked to. I have
always thought that when you once clap a bad
fellow into jail you ought to treat him in such
a way as to make him feel pretty sharply that
he has done wrong, and that a prison is a place
for him to avoid for the rest of his life; but
he certainly ought not to go out of jail less of
a man—mental or physical—than he was when
he came in. If by judicious discipline I could
improve him in both respects, I should be glad.

My object would be to strengthen and invigorate
his mental energy, by familiarising his mind
to the contemplation of better and nobler things
than had been previously presented to it; and
by storing it with as much wholesome practical
knowledge as for the future should afford him
no excuse for not living by the fruit of his honest
industry.

We have already seen that the cost of the
system, as at present administered, has of late
years monstrously increased. In the year 1851,
the cost of each prisoner's maintenance and
control in Portland prison, was twenty-three
pounds fifteen shillings and threepence; in
1860, it was thirty-five pounds eight shillings
and eightpence. In the other convict prisons
of Portsmouth and Chatham, and in the labour
hulks, the increase has been in the same
proportion. It must be borne in mind, too,
that these sums are exclusive of the expenses
which may be fairly charged to each prisoner
for buildings and repairs, for the charges
incidental to general superintendence, for annual
reports, books, and stationery, and for the
cost of removing convicts from one prison
to another. Add these to the account, and
the gross annual cost of each convict may be
taken at upwards of forty pounds. This
increased expenditure has occurred chiefly in the
victualling, clothing, and gratuities of the
prisoners. In 1852, a convict was victualled in
Portland prison for seven pounds ten shillings;
in 1857, the cost of his victualling was twelve
pounds. In 1859, taking one convict prison
with another, and including the female
prisons, the cost of victualling and clothing a
convict was thirteen pounds sixteen shillings
and fourpence, while the prisoners confined
in county and borough jails, for crimes of
less enormity, were maintained and clothed
during the same year for an average of
seven pounds six shillings and fivepence.
Nor is this the only advantage that the
grave offender of the penal prison possesses
over the minor offender of the borough jail.
In the penal prisons the convicts are entitled to
gratuities varying from fourpence to a shilling a
week, for what is called good conduct—that is
to say, for avoiding any irregularity which would
subject them to additional punishment—for
steady application to the labour assigned to them,
and for the length of time that they may have
been inmates of the prison. Under this system,
convicts, on their return to society, have little
excuse, from any immediate want, for again
taking to criminal habits. In the last year, the
gratuities payable to six hundred and seventy-six
who were discharged from Chatham, averaged
ten pounds fifteen shillings and fivepence a man—
in addition to which every one of them was
supplied with an entire new suit of clothes, with
change of under-clothing, and his travelling
expenses paid to his destination. Contrast the
condition of this criminal of the gravest class,
with that of the petty offender who is
maintained in the borough jail on a diet costing
only half that allowed to the convict, and who is
ultimately turned out of the prison walls with
only his own rags upon his back, and as much
money in his pocket as may suffice to afford him
the means of subsistence for a single day.
What is this state of things but a premium
upon crimes of the graver kind? The boy
who robs an orchard must undergo the rigours
of the borough jail; the hardened scoundrel
who breaks into your house and steals your
plate, secures to himself all the privileges and
good living of the convict prison. Is this
right? Is it reasonable? MR. MEASOR tells us
that "the respective advantages of a jail and a
convict prison are thoroughly well appreciated
by the criminal classes, and as long as there is
no different system for the reconvicted, an old
'lag' will invariably be knowing enough, if
possible, to get upon the better scale which the
convict service affords."

But if you keep these men so well, I suppose
you make them work for it? There is such a
thing as convict labour, is there not?

Undoubtedly; but the labour of convicts is
much mismanaged. Rightly conducted, there
seems to be no reason why the value of the
convict's labour should not be equal to the
cost of his maintenance. At present this is
far from being the case. Admitting it to be true,
that the labour of convicts at the present day is
more profitable to the State than it was at a
bygone period, still the vice remains, that it is not
half as profitable as it might be made. There is
no economy, no right method, in the system under
which the labour is allotted, supervised, and
executed. A convict-artisan, whose skilled labour
might be beneficially employed to the value
of five or six shillings a day, is yoked to a handcart
in company with a dozen or sixteen others,
and made to draw a few hundreds of bricks or a
few bushels of mud and rubbish for days,
perhaps weeks, together. On the other hand, the
totally unskilled convict is frequently employed
under the keels of ships, between decks, and
down in their holds, where no proper supervision
can be maintained, and where he probably passes
his time either in complete idleness or in
quarrelling and fighting with his companions.
A notion of the manner in which convicts are