a criminal once placed in proper custody
shall so remain until he can be returned upon
the country with a reasonable hope that he
will not go out to prey again upon his fellows.

There is another point upon which Mr. Hill
has a good deal to say. There never (according
to him) was a more absurd mistake made
in social science than when prisoners were set
to work upon a labour machine, to toil hard
and produce nothing, for the absurd reason
that honest men would suffer if the wealth of
the country were increased by prison industry.
Honest working people gain by the result of
productive labour in the prisons, and must
gain by every addition to the country's
wealth, however produced, as they must lose
by every deduction from it.

Mr. Hill is of opinion that a short-sighted
view of this extremely simple question leads
not a few people frequently into the companion
error that when waste makes want, such
want is good for trade. A man's house is
burnt down with all its contents. At once
there is employment for the bricklayers,
there is a demand for tables and chairs,
carpets, glass, &c. To a few people there has
been an obvious gain, but to the community
there has occurred a loss. The man whose
house was burned down, and upon whose
purse those sudden calls were made, finding
his capital reduced, reduces thenceforward
in a proportionate degree his expenses, and
for years afterwards abstains from the
employment of much labour, which would otherwise
have been receiving wages from his
wealth. The fallacy arises from the gain to
the few being immediately perceptible; while
the loss to the many is invisible, because it is
so widely spread.

The capital being the same, the wages rise
and fall in proportion to the number of men
among whom the wages-fund has to be divided.
But when the criminals produce nothing, the
capital is less than when they help to swell it,
and whether they produce or not, they eat.
A consideration of the interest of honest men
does not, therefore, as many have supposed,
call us off from our plain answer to the
simple question: is it better that the taxes of
the honest working people should be spent on
feeding criminals in idleness; or should not
prisoners be made, as far as possible, to earn
their board and lodging in the jail? In Mr.
Hill's opinion, prisons could be made nearly
self-supporting.

Mr. Hill says, that those criminals who
least deserve our mercy, find the discipline
of a well-regulated prison, in proportion to
their stubborness, a most unmerciful infliction
upon their ill-regulated minds and
bodies. A burglar accustomed to sloth,
drunkenness, and the excitements of debauchery
and vice, finds himself tortured by the
wholesomeness of the new life he leads in prison.
"However great a sluggard, he must rise, the
very morning after his admission, even in the
middle of winter, when the clock strikes six."
(In English gaols, however, it is to be owned
that he has too much bed.) " Then, although
he would probably prefer remaining in his
dirt to the trouble of making himself clean,
he must immediately wash himself, and that
thoroughly. So soon as that is done, he must,
if he has been tried, begin a task of labour,
with the prospect of losing his dinner if he
be sullen and refuse to complete it. Should
he ask for a companion he will be at once
refused. Between times he may wish to
comfort himself with a pipe, or, at least with a pinch
of snuff; but no, the rules inexorably and most
properly forbid all luxuries, especially such as
foster habits of expense. At dinner, he may
ask for at least a little beer; but he is again
refused, and he finds that, however much
against his will, he has suddenly become a
member of a total abstinence society. As for
opportunities of gambling, he has neither
anything to stake, nor any person with whom to
play. When it is considered how painful an
effort is generally necessary to break through
a single bad habit, it may be judged how
much a person, under such circumstances,
must suffer." When Mr. Hill's labours began,
men were often found declaring that they had
rather be in jail than out of it, " since they
were full fed and had no work to do." In one
case a prisoner sent repeated complaints to
the magistrates of various defects in the building
in which he was confined, and, getting no
attention, he at last threatened their
worships that if they did not make the place more
comfortable he should be obliged to leave.
On another occasion, the tenant of an old-
fashioned prison under Mr. Hill's inspection,
being informed that his term had expired,
and that he was at liberty, replied, that
having been in jail twelve months for other
people's pleasure he should now stop for his
own. To this determination he adhered with
so much obstinacy, that the jailer reported
the case to the town clerk. The town clerk
having in vain expostulated with the man,
summoned a meeting of the magistrates, and
the wisdom of the whole bench not sufficing
to get over the difficulty in any other way, it
was at last proposed by the town clerk, and
carried unanimously, that the man should be
smoked out of his cell with brimstone.

Though prison discipline should be
reformatory, it must at the same time be
penal; and upon this Mr. Hill also insists.
It appears to him quite possible to make
a change in the dietaries of the English
prisons. The average daily cost of food to a
prisoner is fourpence halfpenny in England,
and a penny less in Scotland. To reduce this
expense in England to the same rate as in
Scotland would save forty thousand pounds a
year. There is no reason why this should not
be done, Mr. Hill thinks, by a free use of
maize and oatmeal.

Under the prison system at which it is the
desire of Mr. Hill that the country should
arrive by slow and careful steps, as much care