The ground being thus got ready by a very
rude diet, and an utter deprivation of all
interesting employment during the first three
months, the system comes into play; and this,
curiously enough, by explaining the system to
him. It is impressed upon him—not in a cold,
official fashion, but in free personal interviews,
and by the means of lectures over and over
again repeated, like a course of scholastic training
—that the length or shortness of his
imprisonment is to depend upon himself; that his
prison existence is not to be one weary blank of
monotony—the cheerless, unchanged interior of
cell from' the first day to the last—but a
progressive ascent, marked by change and variety,
improvement, moral and physical, encouragement
and co-operation from superiors, and,
finally, as just mentioned, an early and speedier
enlargement. These advantages are enforced
on him as entirely depending on his own
conduct—not merely a negative observance of
prison rules or sanctimonious demeanour—but a
positive good behaviour under probation and
trial and different circumstances. Daily it is
instilled into him that there are to be stages in
his probation, that it is actually possible for him
to irifprove his condition—not at the end of six
years' time, which would be so remote as to
have, practically, little or no influence—but
within the next eight or nine months, which is
a point near enough to be a sufficient spur to
hard labour. Thus, though Messrs. Murphy
and Callaghan may have entered their separate
cells full of a dogged scowling hostility, and a
rooted conviction that governors and jailers
were their natural enemies, it must gradually
break on them that these odious officials are
(for whatever object) strangely anxious to co-
operate with them in improving their condition
and shortening their imprisonment. Or it will
at once strike those gentlemen that it is in
their interest to strive and rise by good
conduct from stage to stage; and they will not be
slow to follow in prison the calling they have
followed all through life. And, though this would
be but a very unsatisfactory motive, taken as
a state of mind suited for reformation, it is
quite sufficient for the managers of the system,
at the beginning, as a basis for their future
efforts.

In their separate cells, then, Messrs. Murphy
and Callaghan are yet to pick oakum for the first
three months of their term. This labour is
chosen as being of a monotonous and
unintellectual sort. The diet is rough and low. After
the three months the labour is changed to
something of a sort where the mind can find some
variety and a little interest, such as boot-
closing, and the diet is improved. All, too,
look forward to the shortening of that nine
months into eight; and the result of this appeal
either to the interest or better feelings of the
criminals in the year eighteen hundred and sixty
was, that out of two hundred and thirteen tenants
of the prison, no fewer than one hundred and
seventy were found not to have committed even
the slightest breach of the rules, and thus
shortened this portion of the punishment by a
month.

Mr. Murphy has possibly been refractory, and
is, perhaps, detained to work out his ninth month.
Mr. Callaghan has been docile, possibly hypocritical,
or has, perhaps, shrewdly seen that a change
would be for his advantage. He is, therefore,
removed after only eight months' residence. He
has been in early life a labourer in the fields
before he took to evil courses, so he is
despatched to Spike Island. Or, he has been
a skilled handicraftsman, and is sent to Philipstown
—the tradesman's prison. Railway
travellers in Ireland often discover that they
have some strange fellow-passengers dressed in
the unmistakable prison livery of blue frieze,
guarded by the wonderfully-trained Irish police,
armed with Enfield rifles. These are Mr. Murphy
and Mr. Callaghan shifting their quarters.

Spike Island is a huge convict depôt which, a
few years back, was bursting with nearly three
thousand convicts. Nature has bountifully laid
it out, especially for prison treatment, and the
Royal Engineers have made extensive fortifications
heartily co-operate with nature. Mr.
Callaghan and Mr. Murphy are set busily to work
—quarrying, trimming and chipping stone, in
excavations, and other severe " hodman's work."
They are also put to carpenter's and smith's
work, if they have any skill in that way. They
are, moreover, taught the various trades of
masons, carpenters, smiths, shoemakers—a
practice common enough in other convict prisons;
but which is here made an element of the system
by being held out as a reward to the deserving
and well conducted.

At this stage, sets in the " mark " system
on which it is scarcely necessary to dwell,
being a matter of pure detail. The principle of
a steady and gradual promotion—marked by nice
shades—is carried out, and the convict is made
to perceive the advantage by small but perceptible
advantages, and is stimulated by a little
personal distinction in the shape of badges, which
proclaim his progress conspicuously. If he
attain the highest number of marks—which is nine
each month—for twelve months successively, he
steps into a superior class of this Spike Island
stage—is kept apart from the common and more
degraded herd, which is an appeal to his self-
respect and pride, as though they were not
worthy to associate with him; thus, in spite
of himself, there is a sort of emulation excited,
the fruits of which may at once be realised, in
the shape of presents and tangible rewards—
which, too, at the same time are helping him on
to an abridgment of his term. Every mark is
therefore coveted and greedily contested; and
the directors assure us that any sacrifice of
physical comfort would be cheerfully submitted
to, sooner than risk the loss of a mark; for that
implies instant degradation.

Pausing here, it will be seen that this sort of
prison vitality, even if it did not go further, must
be a far healthier state of mind than the dull
inaction of the common prisons. All the common
inducements which sweeten the labour of free