a board to sleep on; and the only furniture
of the cell is a water-closet. On a former
visit to Millbank, some months ago, I was
told there was a person in one of these cells.
"He is touched, poor fellow! " said the
warden, "in his intellects." But his madness
was very mild. He wished to fraternise with
the other prisoners; declared that all mankind
are brethren; sang hymns when told to be
silent; and when reprimanded for taking these
unwarranted liberties, declared that he was the
"governor." They said he pretended to be
mad; which, seeing that his vagaries
subjected him to continual punishments, and
procured him no advantages, was very likely!
They put him into darkness to enlighten his
understanding; and alone, to teach him how
unbrotherly men are. Poor wretch! He was
frightened with his solitude, and howled
fearfully. I shall never forget his wail as we
passed the door of his horrid dungeon. The
tones were quite unearthly, and caused an involuntary
shudder. On hearing footsteps, he
evidently thought they were coming to release
him. While we remained in the corridor, he
did not cease to shout and implore most
lamentably for freedom: when he heard us
retreating, his voice rose into a yell; and when
the fall of the heavy bolts told him that
we were gone, he gave a shriek of horror,
agony, and despair, which ran through the
pentagon, and can never be forgotten. God
grant that I may never hear such sounds
again! On coming again, after three or four
months' absence, to this part of the prison, the
inquiry naturally arose, "What has become of
the man who pretended to be mad?" The
answer was, "Oh, he went mad, and was sent
to Bedlam!"'

What happens at Pentonville, and what
takes place at Millbank, is done under the
same eye, under the same legislative supervision.
The two "great experiments" of iron
and feather-bed prison reform are worked out
by the same power. The despots of Russia,
Austria, and China, are at least consistent.
They have not carried on opposite systems—
one of extreme severity, and another of
superlative 'coddling.' In no other country but
this does Justice—blind as she is—administer
cocoa and condign misery to the same degree
of crime with the same hand.

We have thrown these facts together,
merely to awaken attention to them. We
purposely abstain from suggestive comment.
We know that the subject of reformatory
punishment is fraught with difficulties, to
conquer which all the "great experiments" have
been tried. But they have only been "great"
because of their great expense and their great
failure; and when the failure is incontestable
—proved beyond doubt by the direst results,—
should they not be abandoned, and something
else tried, instead of being made an absolute
matter of faith, and a test to which certain
county magistrates, whom we could name,
bring every man who is unhappy enough to be
within their power? The cause of it is plainly
and constantly presented at the bar of every
Police Court and in the dock of every
Sessions House. It has resulted from an utter
misapprehension of means to end, and a lofty
disregard of the good old adage, "prevention
is better than cure." Although it has been
daily observed that ignorance—moral more
than intellectual ignorance has been the
forerunner of all juvenile crime, we have
never tried any very great experiment upon
that. On the contrary, we spend hundreds
of thousands every year to effect the manifest
impossibility of re-forming what has never
been formed. We have tried every shade
of system but the right. Ingenuity has been
on the rack to invent every sort of reformatory,
from the iron rule of Millbank, to the
affectionate fattening at Pentonville—except
one, and that happens to be the right one.
Punishment has occupied all our thoughts,—
training, none. We condemn young criminals
for not knowing certain moralities which we
have not taught them, and—by herding them
with accomplished professors of dishonesty in
transit jails—punish them for immoralities
which have been there taught them. Instances
of this can be adduced in so large a proportion
as to amount to a rule; to which the
appearance of instructed juvenile criminals at
the tribunals is the exception. Two or three
glaring cases occurred only the past month.
We select one as reported in the "Globe"
newspaper of Tuesday, May 7:—

'BOW-STREET POLICE-COURT.—This day, two
little children, whose heads hardly reached the
top of the dock, were placed at the bar before
Mr. Jardine, charged with stealing a loaf. Their
very appearance told the want they were in.
The housekeeper to Mr. Mims, baker, Drury
Lane, deposed, that they, about eight o'clock last
evening, went into the shop and asked for a
quartern loaf, and while her back was turned
to get it for them, they stole a half quartern loaf,
value 2½d,, which was lying on the counter, and
made off with it. Police constable, F 14, deposed,
that he was on duty in Drury Lane, and seeing
them quarrelling over the loaf, he asked them
where they had got it. One of them answered,
they had stolen it. After ascertaining how they
came by it, he took them into custody. In
defence, the prisoners said they were starving.
Mr. Jardine sentenced them both to be once
whipped in the House of Correction.'

These children were without means, friends,
or any sort of instruction. They were whipped
then for their ignorance and want, for both
which they are not responsible. After whipping
and a few imprisonments they will
doubtless be boarded and instructed by
fellow prisoners into finished thieves. The
authorities tell us, that five-eighths of the
juvenile criminals—and a few become professional
after the age of twenty—who are
received into jails, have not received one
spark of moral or intellectual training!

These, and a thousand other facts too obvious