and levelled. Enormous sums were sunk in
costly prison palaces, and architects ran riot in
ingenious devices of separate cells, galleries,
lanes radiating from a centre like the spokes of
a large wheel. Convicts were experimented
on with ingenious devices—made into imitations
of the misericordia society at Florence,
by wearing caps with eye-holes in them, and
were pampered in a substantial basis of good
sound diet—the very best per contract. This
was the new system which, being carried out at
a startling cost, might reasonably be expected
to be prolific in results. Some doubting spirits
whispered, indeed, that here prisons were
reformed, but prisoners scarcely. And no doubt
certain gross things being swept away did
produce amelioration. The herding of criminal
cattle together in one indiscriminate shed was
no more; and thus those who were but
partially tainted were prevented from becoming
utterly rotten by contamination. But still, on
looking for facts as a test of the efficacy of the
new system in turning criminals into innocent
members of society, it is ascertained beyond a
doubt that a large proportion of arrested evil-
doers, are old offenders. There is a suspicion
abroad that tickets-of-leave are no more than
letters of marque.

This is scarcely cheering as the result of a system
on which enthusiasm, earnestness, money,
and the labour of good men, have been lavished.
And yet it is a little remarkable that in a
contiguous island there has also been at work a new
prison system, in which costly jails, separate
systems, galleries, wheel-spoke promenades, and
the rest, have their place; but with this difference:
that these elements are not considered
the reform of the prisoners. They are not the
system, but adjuncts of the system. And the
remarkable result of the practice in the island
alluded to, is this:

THAT OUT OF EVERY HUNDRED CRIMINALS
DISCHARGED AS REFORMED, ONLY TEN RETURN
ON A FRESH CONVICTION.

This comes of no other than the famous Irish
convict system, worked and perfected on the
basis of Captain Machonochie's plan, by its
zealous prophet Sir Walter Crofton, of which
shall be given a detailed account.

We may suppose for a moment that the
English judges of assize are on their rounds. We
will suppose, also, that Messrs. Sheppard and
Wild, two professionals of eminence, have been
satisfactorily convicted, and just " put forward"
to hear their respective sentences. Mr. John
Sheppard has entered a house " burglariously,"
and is " impressively " sentenced to seven years'
penal servitude. Mr. Wild, who has beaten a
fellow-creature with a bludgeon to within a
hair's-breadth of murder, is also impressively
consigned to fifteen years' penal servitude—
a sentence acknowledged by that gentleman with
an easy and familiar leer.

About the same time we may assume that the
Irish judges are busy with their task of sifting
and filtering the calendar, and that Messrs.
Murphy and Callaghan, two offenders, are " set
forward " to receive sentence. Mr. Murphy is
consigned to a duress of seven years, like his
English brother, but in the case of Mr.
Callaghan, even at this early stage, something
testifies to the excellence of the Irish system; for
the jail governor steps forward with a tabulated
form, which states that Mr. Callaghan has been
a previous offender, and in consequence receives
the severer penalty of fifteen years. This profitable
result, the true test of gauging the punishment
by the offence, has been arrived at through
the machinery of the perfect Irish police organisation;
for, on the arrest of every prisoner who has
the slightest appearance of familiarity with his
calling, either a photographic portrait, or a
sort of " signalement" of the minutest
description, is forwarded to Dublin Castle, and
by careful indexes the offender is hunted down
in the books of the convicts' prisons. Thus even
at the outset, before punishment is suffered, a
juster apportionment is arrived at, and, as will
be seen presently, the system is ensured that
length of time which in the case of habitual
offenders is absolutely necessary to give it fair
play.

We shall first trace the progress of Messrs.
Murphy and Callaghan through their various
stages of reformation; and it will be seen
whether, without any reference to results, the system
recommends itself.

Messrs. Murphy and Callaghan are presently
brought to Dublin, from whatever quarter of
the country they may have had their trial in,
and are conducted to a huge fortress-like building,
situate in a healthy suburb, and whose
quality is marked out with a fatal distinctness,
by the huge tower-like pair of chimneys which
rise in the centre of every model jail. This
is the Mountjoy Prison, where, what may be
called, the annealing process takes place. It
is felt that, with the criminal native fresh from
crime, and inflamed and resentful at the punishment
just inflicted, it would be idle attempting
any experiments through mere moral appeals;
and this, too, becomes precisely the time when
the penal portion, or physical suffering with
which to a certain degree every crime should
be visited, may be fitly applied. Accordingly,
here the wholesome terrors of the silent system,
and the separate system, are put in force. It is
conceded even by its most determined opponents,
that the effect of this treatment, if not efficacious
for reformation, is at least sure and certain
as a terrible deterrent—if anything, almost too
severe: setting into operation, even at this
gloomy stage of this famous Irish system, the
secret and power of which lies not in this special
point or that, but in a general leaven through
the whole, seasoning every portion. The mystery
lies in treating each prisoner as though he were
the solitary tenant of the prison; and not as a
vile single cast from a corrupt matrix, which has
cast a thousand others precisely similar to
himself. He is not held to be a number, or a name,
an abstraction in pen and ink on the books of the
establishment. But he is held to be a living man,
with a soul, and with reason.