traying the consequences of yielding too much to common temptations, and falling into vices from amiable motives, can hardly fail of attaining such moral results as fiction is enabled to accomplish. The novelist should ever remember that the class he addresses is the very widest an author can command—that it comprehends all dispositions, all ranks, all ages, all countries. He ought to be aware that a fiction can never so thoroughly open all the bearings of a truth, but that a truth itself should be presented to the world with every possible precaution against such one-sided views of it as are ever most fatally productive of error. Physical anatomy is a most useful science, but there have been writers who have made anatomy subservient to the grossest impurities. There is a mental anatomy as well as a physical one, by which we may render intellectual instruction but the pander to the passions. To be moral is ever to be philosophical-but to be philosophical is not always to be moral.

ART. III.-1. Du Système Pénitentiaire aux Etats-Unis, et de son Application en France; suivis d'un Appendice sur les Colonies Pénales, et de Notes Statistiques. Par MM. G. DE BEAUMONT, et A. DE TOCQUEVILLE, Avocats à la Cour Royale de Paris. 8vo. Paris: 1833. 2. Report of William Crawford, Esq., on the Penitentiaries of the United States, addressed to his Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 11th August, 1834. 3. First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Reports from the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to enquire into the present state of the several Gaols and Houses of Correction in England and Wales, with Minutes of evidence, an Appendix, and a General Index. Session 1835. 4. Reports of the Inspectors appointed under the provisions of the Act 5th and 6th Will. IV. e. 38, to visit the different Prisons of Great Britain. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 22d March, 1836.

5. De la Réforme des Prisons, ou de la Théorie de l'Emprisonnement, de ses Principes, de ses Moyens, et de ses conditions pratiques. Par M. CHARLES LUCAS Inspecteur-Général des Prisons du Royaume. Tome premier. 8vo. Paris : 1836. 6. Gaol Returns, under 4 Geo. IV., c. 64 and 5 Geo IV., c. 12. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 17th February, 1836.

7. Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Laws relating to Prisons, with Appendix. Ordered to be printed, 15th July, 1836.

HE art of managing prisons is one which, within the last few TV years, has made considerable progress in this country, as well as on the Continent. It is an important branch of public administration, requiring the aid of much knowledge and observation, combined with the exercise of sound practical judgment. Prison discipline is, however, entirely a business of adapting means to ends of making prisons answer the purposes for which thelaw has intended them. The theory of imprisonment, in itself, falls within the province of the jurist, as part of a system of penal law. But the good management of prisoners is so material an instrument in the working of a criminal code, that, without it, the best directed legislation may fail altogether of its object. And the welfare of that unfortunate portion of the community, who are condemned to the loss of liberty for the benefit of the remainder, has peculiar claims to attention, upon principles not less of justice than of humanity.

But

There can be no more striking mark of the advance of European civilisation, than the transition from the dungeons and fetters of the middle ages, to the penitentiaries of modern times. it is only about sixty years since Howard began to expose the wretchedness and misery which then characterised our prisons, and roused a spirit of sympathy for the unhappy prisoner, which led to the correction of many flagrant abuses. To the suggestions of that benevolent man, with the aid of Sir William Blackstone, is owing the first act passed by the British Legislature for the establishment of penitentiaries in the year 1776.* Howard, in conjunction with two colleagues, was appointed supervisor of the buildings to be erected under that act, but at the end of two years resigned his office, without any step having been taken towards the erection of the proposed penitentiary;-Howard having fixed upon Islington for its site, whilst his surviving colleague persisted in having it at Limehouse. The plan was suspended until 1785, when a penitentiary was erected at Gloucester, on the principle of solitary confinement, under the care of the magistrates of that county. A few years after came Bentham's remarkable proposal of the Panopticon Penitentiary, which he offered to erect, and, as gaoler, to contract for the maintenance and management of one thousand

* 19 Geo. Ill. c. 74.

convicts. Mr Bentham's original scheme is said to have been thwarted by the personal prejudice against him of George the Third; but a Penitentiary Act was passed in 1794,* which, owing to various difficulties, was never carried into execution. In 1810, Sir Samuel Romilly brought Bentham's plan again under the notice of a committee of the House of Commons, who reported unfavourably to it, but recommended a prison for London and Middlesex upon the principles of Howard's Act, and that the penitentiary system should also be extended to other parts of the kingdom. That costly edifice, the Millbank Penitentiary, was accordingly commenced, under the authority of an act passed in 1812; † but the legislature was reluctant to incur the expense of district penitentiaries; and finally determined on making Millbank the general penitentiary for England and Wales, adapting it for the confinement of 600 males, and 400 females. The limit of the number of male convicts has lately been raised to 800.+

6

The labours of the London Prison Discipline Society, the persevering investigations of the late Mr. Grey Bennet, and Mr. Fowell Buxton's Enquiry into Prison Discipline,' published in 1818, attracted the attention of Parliament again in 1819 to the state of our prisons; and in 1822 a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to revise the existing laws. This committee framed the Gaol Act of 1823, § for the regulation principally of county prisons, and its supplement relating to gaols under local jurisdictions; in 1824.** These measures have been undoubtedly the cause of considerable improvements in the construction and discipline of many prisons; but the benefits which were at the time anticipated from them have been but partially realized; and the method of classification which they established, has in particular, as we shall presently show, been proved by subsequent experience, a signal failure.

Within a few years after the passing of the Gaol Acts, the American penitentiaries appear to have forced themselves upon the attention of European disciplinarians. The accounts of several travellers in the United States gave sufficient details of these institutions, to show that there was much in them that might be worthy of official notice. Accordingly, the French Government, in 1831, permitted MM. de Beaumont and de Tocqueville (at the solicitation and expense of these two excel

*

lent and enlightened men themselves) to proceed as its Commissioners to inspect the penitentiaries of the United States; and the result of their visit is contained in their report prefixed to this article; a work highly honourable to its distinguished authors, and scarcely inferior, as a literary production, to M. de Tocqueville's profound and admirable essay on American Democracy, which we cannot mention without expressing our regret at having so long delayed to examine it. In respect, however, of the practical information obtained, the French Commissioners have been surpassed by Mr Crawford, † the Commissioner despatched for a similar purpose by our own Government in 1833, whose report not only comprises every thing that can be known on the subject of his mission, but offers valuable suggestions for the improvement of prison discipline in this country.

During the Session of 1835, a Committee of the House of Lords was engaged in an enquiry into the state of the prisons of England and Wales. The Duke of Richmond took the leading part throughout; and his Grace, with other Lords, personally inspected the metropolitan prisons, and also the hulks. The first topic noticed in the Lords' Reports is the state of Newgate, Giltspur Street, and the Borough Compter, which are represented, in their actual condition, as having the effect of corrupting the morals of their inmates, and manifestly tending to the extension rather than to the suppression of crime. They then proceed to a series of resolutions, which are in substance as follow:

1st, 2d, and 3d.-That one uniform system of discipline be established;-that the prison rules be submitted to the Secretary of State instead of the Judges;-and that inspectors of prisons be appointed. These suggestions were carried into effect by the act 5th and 6th Wm. IV. c. 38.

4th and 5th. That entire separation, except during the hours of labour, and of religious worship and instruction, is absolutely necessary; and that silence be enforced so as to prevent all communication between prisoners both before and after trial. Upon these points the committee observe, that the greatest mischief is proved, by the whole tenor of the evidence, to follow from the in

* Dr Francis Lieber's Translation (Philadelphia, 1833) is valuable for his introductory essay and notes.

†This gentleman was selected for the mission on account of his great experience on the subject of prisons, derived from his services to the Prison Discipline Society, of which he was the secretary for a period of twenty years.

tercourse permitted in many prisons; and that every motive of humanity as regards the individual prisoners, and of policy as regards the good of society in general, requires the most efficient regulations, to save all prisoners, and especially the untried, from the frightful contamination resulting from unrestricted intercourse. The exceptions from the rule of separation should, therefore, not be extended to periods of exercise, which object may be attained by allowing the prisoners to take walking exercise in single file, with a certain interval between each person, and under the immediate superintendence of an officer of the establishment. The principle of separation would involve the propriety of making separate compartments upon each tread wheel and crank machine.

6th. That no insane persons be confined in prisons.

7th and 8th. That the prison officers be not permitted to receive any portion of the prisoners' earnings, and that the earnings of convicted prisoners be paid to the prison fund. The Lords do not intend that a convict should quit prison in a state of positive destitution; but they conceive that as prison labour must be deemed a part of the punishment assigned, the convict should not derive resources from the punishment itself. This operates also unequally, they say; as the unskilled offender does not derive the same advantages from his labour as his more robust or ingenious partner in guilt.

9th, 10th, and 11th.-That prison diet be subject to the approval of the Secretary of State, and be not increased except by order of the surgeon-that no money be paid to prisoners in lieu of food or fuel-and that tobacco be prohibited.

12th. That convicted prisoners be not permitted to receive visits or letters, during the first six months, unless under peculiar circumstances. The object is to prevent the weight of imprisonment being lightened, and the minds of prisoners unsettled; and the effect would be to exclude entirely from visits and letters those sentenced for six months or any shorter period.

13th. That the use of day rooms, as such, be discontinued. Bases, however, may occur, as with female prisoners having infants, in which such receptacles may still be useful.

14th. That no wardsman, monitor, yardsman, or prisoner, be permitted to sell or let any thing to any prisoner. Officers of the establishment are already prohibited by the Gaol Act from doing this, and the prohibition ought to be extended to prisoners employed in the establishment.

15th and 16th.—That where there are fifty prisoners, the whole time of the chaplain be devoted to his duties without his holding other preferment; and that a schoolmaster, not being a prisoner, be appointed. The committee, looking at the satisfactory effects