Jo. 
 
 University of California. 
 
 r AKY <! 
 
 . F R A N C IS LI i 
 
 /.ud Law in Columbia (.' Y 
 
 
 MICHAEL REESE 
 
 1" S 7 3' . 
 
 ' 
 

 
! 
 
SUGGESTIONS 
 
 FOB THE 
 
 REPRESSION OF CRIME, 
 
 CONTAINED IN 
 
 CHARGES DELIVERED TO GRAND JURIES 
 
 OP 
 
 BIBMINGHAMj 
 
 SUPPORTED BY 
 
 ADDITIONAL FACTS AND ARGUMENTS. 
 
 TOGETHER WITH ARTICLES FROM REVIEWS AND NEWSPAPERS 
 
 CONTROVERTING OR ADVOCATING THE CONCLUSIONS 
 
 OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 BY 
 
 MATTHEW DAVENPORT HILL. 
 
 'Ictibus crebris." 
 
 Hor. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND. 
 
 1857- 
 
LONDON : 
 
 SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, 
 COVENT GARDEN. 
 
. 
 
 I USTSCKIBE THIS BOOK 
 
 TO 
 
 HENRY LORD BROUGHAM AND VAUX; 
 
 WHOE GENIUS AND ENERGY, 
 DIRECTED TO THE NOBLEST OBJECTS, 
 
 WON THE ADMIRATION OF MY YOUTH j 
 WHOSE FRIENDSHIP HAS BEEN THE PRIDE OF MY MANHOOD, 
 
 AND NOW SOLACES 
 MY DECLINING YEARS. 
 

 
PREFACE. 
 
 TUDGING, perhaps, too hastily, from the public attention 
 directed towards many of these Charges on their delivery, 
 my friends have decided that they ought to be published, in a 
 form likely to obtain a place for them among works consulted 
 by the student of the various interesting branches of know- 
 ledge, which using the term in a wide sense may be classed 
 under the head of Criminal Jurisprudence. 
 
 As the limits of a Charge necessarily exclude very much 
 that a reader engaged in the investigation of the subject might 
 desire to have before him ; and as uninterrupted argument 
 becomes wearisome, I have separated the Charges from each 
 other by matter which, I trust, will furnish a variety both 
 useful and acceptable. 
 
 The views which I have from time to time submitted to my 
 countrymen, though rarely original, have nevertheless had the 
 fortune to provoke controversies in the Press, of a nature to show 
 that the questions thereby raised had then for the first time 
 earnestly occupied the public mind. Consequently, they were 
 sifted with greater zeal, and by a greater number of writers, than 
 had ever before been employed upon them. And, in order that 
 the reader may not lose the benefit to be derived from con- 
 sidering the subject under a multiplicity of aspects, I have 
 presented to him, in rapid succession, the conflicting opinions 
 set forth in the journals and other periodical works, which have 
 done me the honour to notice my labours whether for approval 
 or for censure. 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 The volume, thus composed, will, to no inconsiderable extent, 
 show the progress of opinion during eighteen years, in relation 
 to the various topics on which it treats. It will therefore, I 
 trust, not be without its use, in offering encouragement to those 
 who feel it their duty to abide steadfastly by sound principles, 
 however unpopular, patiently awaiting the day when public 
 opinion shall range itself on their side. 
 
 STAPLETON, BRISTOL, May, 1857. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO CHARGE OF JULY, 1839 I 
 
 First Sessions i 
 
 Dangerous Meetings i 
 
 Police Defeated 2 
 
 Sessions Court guarded by Military Force 2 
 
 CHARGE OF JULY, 1839 2 
 
 Painful Circumstances of First Charge 2 
 
 Justice best Administered on the Spot 5 
 
 Necessity for Permanently Disposing of Convicts who make 
 
 Crime their Calling 7 
 
 Use and Abuse of Grand Juries . '. TO 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF JULY, 1839 TI 
 
 Riots, with Incendiary Fires 1 1 
 
 Distinction between Political Prisoners and ordinary Cri- 
 minals should not be obliterated 13 
 
 Effect on Prisoners of Degrading Observances .... 15 
 
 Public ought to bear Cost of Witnesses for Prisoners . . 19 
 
 History of Prisoners' Counsel Bill 25 
 
 Convictions and Executions for Forgery 42 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ARISING OUT OF CHARGE DELIVERED IN MAY, 
 
 1840 46 
 
 Uttering Counterfeit Coin 46 
 
 Circumstances incidental to this Offence changed since 
 
 1840 46 
 
 Criminal Class below the average in Intellect .... 48 
 
 Phrenological Treatment of Prisoners 48 
 
 CHARGE OF APRIL, 1841 52 
 
 Reformatory at Stretton-on-Dunsinore 52 
 
 Its Results 53 
 
 Letter thereon from Sir J. E. Eardley Wilmot, Bart. . . 55 
 
 Necessity for multiplying Reformatory Schools .... 63 
 
Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHARGE OF JANUARY, 1845 6 4 
 
 Strikes and Intimidation 65 
 
 Receivers of Stolen Goods 66 
 
 Marine Store Dealers 69 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF JANUARY, 1848 69 
 
 Local Act in Liverpool for regulating the Licenses of 
 
 Marine Store Dealers 69 
 
 CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1845 7 1 
 
 Embezzlement 7 1 
 
 Masters and Servants . . 73 
 
 Prevention of Crime 74 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1845 75 
 
 Preventive Checks to Crime 75 
 
 Charity 76 
 
 Duties of Employers towards Employed 77 
 
 Belmont Candle Company 78 
 
 Recreation 81 
 
 THE LAYING OF THE FIRST STONE OF BIRMINGHAM GAOL . . 101 
 
 Recorder's Speech 102 
 
 The Gaol should be a Moral Hospital 103 
 
 CHARGE OF MARCH, 1847 107 
 
 Sudden Increase in Crime 107 
 
 Evils of Short Imprisonments 108 
 
 SEQUEL TO THE CHARGE OF MARCH, 1847 109 
 
 Causes affecting quantum of Crime 109 
 
 CHARGE OF APRIL, 1848 112 
 
 Chartist Demonstration 112 
 
 Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite 113 
 
 CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1848 117 
 
 Juvenile Offenders 117 
 
 Stretton-on-Dunsmore 119 
 
 Mettray 119 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1848 130 
 
 Mettray 130 
 
 Letter from M. Blanchard on Results of Mettray . . . 130 
 
 Extract from Le Journal d'Indre et Loire 134 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. IX 
 
 P A G R 
 
 CHARGE OF APRIL, 1850 135 
 
 Petitions on behalf of Prisoners 135 
 
 Facility with which Signatures are obtained 136 
 
 Evil Effects thereof 140 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF APRIL, 1850 141 
 
 Instances illustrating the Statements made in the Charge. 142 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1850 146 
 
 Burglaries in Birmingham and elsewhere 146 
 
 CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1850 151 
 
 Crimes of Violence 151 
 
 Suggestion for Restraining Persons known to be living by- 
 Crime 155 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1850 157 
 
 Law existing in India similar to that suggested in the 
 
 Charge 158 
 
 Opinions of the Press on the Suggestion 159 
 
 CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1851 180 
 
 Suggestion contained in preceding Charge more fully 
 
 Explained 181 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1851 191 
 
 Burglary at Mr. Holford's 191 
 
 Opinions of the Press on the Author's Suggestion . . . 194 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1853 232 
 
 Cruelties in Birmingham Gaol 232 
 
 CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1853 238 
 
 Birmingham Gaol 238 
 
 Captain Maconochie 239 
 
 Prison Discipline 240 
 
 Reformatory Treatment 243 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1853 262 
 
 Mark System 262 
 
 Testimonial to Captain Maconochie 265 
 
 Norfolk Island 273 
 
 Inefficiency of Deterrents '...274 
 
 Letter from the Author to Mr. Adderley thereon . . . 276 
 
 Societe de Patronage 287 
 
 Lord Brougham on the Criminal Class 294 
 
X TABLE OP CONTENTS. 
 
 ^PAGB 
 
 CHARGE OF MARCH, 1854 "299 
 
 Connexion between Disease and Crime ....... 300 
 
 Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of 
 
 the Industrious Classes 302 
 
 Common Lodging Houses Act 304 
 
 Its Effect in Birmingham and other Provincial Towns . . 305 
 
 London 306 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OP MARCH, 1854 -311 
 
 Conversation with Dr. Southwood Smith 311 
 
 Report by Medical Officer of Birmingham 312 
 
 Sanitary Condition of that Town 317 
 
 Overcrowding in London 320 
 
 Bristol Lodging Houses 326 
 
 Duties and Responsibilities of Houseowners . . . . . 327 
 
 CHARGE OF SEPTEMBER, 1854 335 
 
 Youthful Offenders Act 336 
 
 Reformatory Schools 338 
 
 Parental Responsibility 339 
 
 Voluntary Principle 339 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF SEPTEMBER, 1854 . . 342 
 
 Birmingham Conferences 342 
 
 Bristol Meeting 346 
 
 Warwick Meeting , 346 
 
 Returning Juvenile Offenders to Parents or Employers . 351 
 
 Industrial, Ragged, and Reformatory Schools . . . . . 353 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO CHARGE OF JANUARY, 1855 367 
 
 Operation of the Maine Law 367 
 
 CHARGE OF JANUARY, 1855 372 
 
 Intemperance a Fruitful Source of Crime 372 
 
 Restriction in Sale of Intoxicating Drinks 374 
 
 Prohibition , . 376 
 
 Maine Law , . . 382 
 
 Addendum 389 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF JANUARY, 1855. 390 
 
 Objections to the Charge Answered 390 
 
 Table showing the Progress of the Maine Law in the 
 
 United States 412 
 
 Effect of Good or Bad Times on Amount of Crime . . . 415 
 
 Effect of Prohibition in the United States 423 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. XI 
 
 PAGB 
 
 CHARGE OF APRIL, 1855 439 
 
 Grand Juries . 440 
 
 Limited Utility of Grand Juries . ... 451 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF APRIL, 1855 455 
 
 Birmingham Debtors' Gaol 455 
 
 CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1855 462 
 
 Ticket-of-leave System 462 
 
 Rapid Mitigation of the Criminal Code , , . . . . 463 
 
 Stoppage of Transportation ..464 
 
 Necessity for Adopting Reformatory System, . . . , 469 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1855 474 
 
 Archbishop Whately on Time Sentences 474 
 
 Hulks 475 
 
 Transportation Committee, House of Commons, 1856 . . 476 
 
 Opinions of the Press on the Charge 478 
 
 CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1856 529 
 
 Resolutions of the Transportation Committee, House of 
 
 Commons, 1856 529 
 
 Hope, an essential element in Reformatory Treatment . 531 
 
 Penal Servitude . . 533 
 
 Ticket-of-leave System not administered in its Integrity . 536 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1856 543 
 
 Prisons of Munich and Valencia 544 
 
 Sinithfield Penitentiary, at Dublin 586 
 
 Re-commitments of Ticket-of-leave Men 589 
 
 Photographic Portraits of Criminals 594 
 
 List of Ticket-of-leave Men in Birmingham 596 
 
 Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society at Birmingham . . . 599 
 
 Letter to the Times in defence thereof . . . . . . . 604 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO CHARGE OF DECEMBER, 1856 610 
 
 CHARGE OF DECEMBER, 1856 610 
 
 Crimes of Violence 611 
 
 Discharge from Gaol of Unreformed Criminals . . . .615 
 Ticket-of-leave System, if faithfully administered, would 
 
 mitigate present evils 619 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF DECEMBER, 1856 622 
 
 Repression of Crime the end aimed at by Criminal Juris- 
 prudence 622 
 
 Letter to the Daily News thereon 623 
 
 Opinions of the Press on the Charge 638 
 
XU . TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHARGE OP MARCH, 1857 6 5 r 
 
 Sir George Grey's Transportation Bill 651 
 
 Necessity for Reformatory Treatment 655 
 
 Tickets-of-leave 658 
 
 The Ashover Burglary 666 
 
 SEQUEL TO CHARGE OF MARCH, 1857 669 
 
 Crime in 1856 670 
 
 Prison Discipline in Ireland 672 
 
 Smithfield Penitentiary, Dublin 673 
 
 Thomas Wotton 683 
 
 Tickets-of-leave and Penal Servitude Men 687 
 
CHARGES, 
 
 ETC. 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO CHARGE OF JULY, 1839. 
 
 FOR some ten days prior to the holding of my first sessions, 
 a Jarge concourse of people assembled every evening in the 
 open market -place, called the Bullring, under the influence of 
 certain Chartist leaders. By their numbers they obstructed 
 the thoroughfares, and became obnoxious to the shopkeepers of 
 the district ; creating impediments which lessened the resort of 
 customers, and thereby caused considerable pecuniary loss to these 
 tradesmen, who naturally complained to the authorities of the 
 injury which they were sustaining, from a course which appeared 
 to be growing into a habit. It did not seem that the leaders 
 had any immediate object in view, except to display the num- 
 bers of their adherents, and thus act on public opinion, and 
 perhaps on the public fears. These gatherings did not take 
 the form of an organized meeting, with a chairman at its head, 
 and there being no common object to engage the attention of 
 the multitude, nor presiding power to hold it in check, appre- 
 hensions not unreasonably arose, that tumults might suddenly 
 break out pregnant with serious danger to the peace of the 
 town. 
 
 At that time Birmingham had not the advantage of the new 
 police ; and the old constabulary force was, from the paucity of 
 its numbers, quite unable to cope with such assemblies. The 
 authorities, however, although their warnings and exhortations 
 to the populace to desist from these alarming exhibitions of 
 physical force were of no avail, felt reluctant to call in military 
 aid ; and considering that little or no actual violence had then 
 been committed, recourse to such an extreme would not have 
 been advisable. 
 
 
2 Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of sending to the barracks for soldiers, 
 they applied to the Secretary of State for the Home Depart- 
 ment for a body of police from London, who quickly came 
 down by railway. They arrived in the dusk of the evening 
 before the day of sessions, and were immediately led to the 
 market-place, under the conduct of the mayor ; and, after the 
 proper formalities had been gone through, were ordered to 
 disperse the crowd. Finding themselves, however, in a strange 
 place, and in the twilight, they became confused and alarmed ; 
 and the populace, taking advantage of its numbers, and 
 observing, probably, the unfortunate state of its opponents, 
 made such head against them as to defeat their attack. Many 
 of the police were so rudely handled, that it became necessary 
 to carry them to the hospital. The consequences, in all pro- 
 bability, would have been more serious had not the military 
 been quickly summoned ; these, by their mere presence, turned 
 the fortune of the day, and scattered the rioters the mob 
 happily giving no occasion for the use of weapons. 
 
 But having regard to the exasperation produced by this 
 conflict, it was thought prudent that a few dragoons should 
 mount guard over the court a precaution which, I am glad to 
 say, it has never been necessary to repeat. 
 
 CHABGrE OF JULY, 1839. 
 
 GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND JURY, 
 
 IT has fallen to my lot to address you, for the first time, 
 under circumstances very painful, and by me quite unexpected. 
 It has so happened that the eve of the day on which, by the 
 gracious command of our Sovereign, we are called upon to bring 
 that noblest institution of our country, trial by jury, into action, 
 amidst the homes by which we are surrounded, should be the 
 time chosen by evil-disposed men to meet in tumultuous assem- 
 bly, in that same place with the intention, as was clearly evinced 
 by their subsequent proceedings, to defy the law, and overpower 
 its ministers by main force. 
 
 My disappointment you doubtless all share with me, because 
 you know that Birmingham has been celebrated throughout the 
 
Charge of July, 1839. 3 
 
 whole kingdom for the good order with which its vast assem- 
 blages of the people have been conducted. 
 
 These peaceful meetings had been supposed to have put to 
 rest all questions as to whether large numbers could be allowed 
 to meet at their will and pleasure, without any other control 
 than their own good sense and loyal feelings, which it has been 
 thought would always lead every class of the community to 
 consider the subversion of public order as a heavy calamity to 
 honest men, and only to be desired by plunderers and incendiaries. 
 And so long as these congregations appeared to hold any law- 
 ful object in view, however wild or unreasonable indeed, so 
 long as their objects remained in doubt so long did the ma- 
 gistracy of this borough do quite right not to interpose any 
 obstacle to their fellow-townsmen assembling together ; whether 
 the grievances which they proposed to themselves to discuss 
 were real or imaginary. But when it became clear to all eyes 
 that the only intention and effect of those meetings, so fre- 
 quently repeated, was to disturb and overawe the loyal inhabi- 
 tants of the town, whose comfort was destroyed, and whose safety 
 was endangered, the just limits of toleration were passed. The 
 magistrates had to choose between forbearance to the disaffected 
 and tumultuous on the one hand, and on the other that support 
 which they were sworn to give to the peaceful and unoffending 
 who claimed their protection. In such a state of things, for- 
 bearance, far from being a virtue, would have become a crime. 
 The magistrates, therefore, have acted as became the upholders 
 of the law in calling in the aid of an armed force to restore 
 and preserve the peace of the borough ; and notice and admoni- 
 tion having proved unavailing, they were bound to employ that 
 force with promptitude and vigour. 
 
 On this topic I shall say no more, for the sufficient reason 
 that some persons are in custody awaiting their trial upon 
 charges founded on their alleged conduct on the occasions to 
 which I have referred. It would ill become me, and would 
 argue a strange forgetfulness of my duty, to utter a single word 
 which could operate to deprive such persons of a fair trial ; 
 which, as it is the highest boast of Englishmen that all persons 
 accused should enjoy, so it is peculiarly incumbent on me, filling 
 the seat of justice, to be cautious that nothing falling from my 
 lips should in the least degree impair. But I must be allowed. 
 
4 Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 in quitting the subject, to express my deep regret, and the bitter 
 humiliation I feel, that the first introduction of trial by jury 
 into the town of Birmingham should be made unhappily memo- 
 rable by the circumstances under which I am now speaking ; by 
 the necessity in which I now find myself of sitting under the 
 protection of the sword : but to this unhappy necessity we must 
 all submit. To my feelings as a lawyer, and an admirer of 
 our constitution, nothing can be more abhorrent than that the 
 administration of justice should be carried on in the presence of 
 a military array. In common with yourselves I am imbued to 
 the full with jealousy of military interference. In the admi- 
 nistration of justice, soldiers, under pretence of guarding the 
 ministers of the law from outrage, have been employed in some 
 periods of our history to overawe their proceedings; their 
 attendance, therefore, is never permitted except when required 
 by an overwhelming necessity, to which all rules must give way. 
 Meanwhile our care must be to perform our duties, forgetting 
 as much as possible the untoward circumstances under which 
 we meet. 
 
 I can scarcely suppose that the gentlemen whom I am 
 addressing, many of whom I have known from my earliest 
 youth that men, filling your eminent position in the borough, 
 and feeling, as I know you all do, sincere and ardent interest in 
 its welfare, can have witnessed the change which our Queen has 
 wrought in granting her charter of incorporation, and in com- 
 manding me to hold my sessions in your town, without having 
 your minds directed to the reasons for the course which has 
 been taken, and to the benefits which may be expected to flow 
 from this application of the great maxim of our jurisprudence, 
 that, ' Justice ought to be brought home to every man's door/ 
 
 The consideration of these questions, as might be expected, 
 has much occupied my own mind; and as principles are in- 
 volved in them which will have a practical bearing on your 
 duties and mine, on your duties as persons of influence among 
 your fellow-townsmen as well as in your present capacity, I 
 shall proceed to offer such remarks as it has occurred to me 
 might be profitably submitted to your attention. 
 
 That crime will be repressed in proportion to the certainty 
 of the detection and punishment of the criminal, is an obvious 
 truth. And experience has at length taught us, that a certain 
 
Charge of July, 1839. 5 
 
 punishment, though slight, is far more effectual to deter from 
 crime, than the terror of the heaviest penalty that man can 4 
 inflict where the chances of escape are numerous. 
 
 Much has been done of late years to make a nearer approach 
 to certainty of punishment. Formerly, the whole expense of 
 prosecutions fell on the injured party, who, having suffered 
 once from the inability of the public to protect him, was made 
 to suffer again, and often with much greater severity, that he 
 might protect the public. 
 
 It is easy to see that so heavy a tax on prosecutions must 
 have operated as a bounty to crime. Defraying the expenses 
 from a public fund has greatly diminished this evil; but it is 
 quite evident that, unless prosecutors and witnesses were remu- 
 nerated to an amount which might furnish a motive to fabricate 
 charges against the innocent (to say nothing of the burthens 
 which would be accumulated on the ratepayer), much loss and 
 inconvenience must still fall on individuals taken frem their 
 occupations and detained at a place remote from their dwellings. 
 Nor would money, however lavishly expended, be in all cases a 
 compensation for this enforced absence. 
 
 To remove every motive to supineness in the injured party 
 to relieve him and his witnesses in the performance of a public 
 duty from unnecessary sacrifice it is indispensable that he 
 should find the seat of justice at hand. And to the prisoner, if 
 innocent, the benefit of being tried on the spot where the offence 
 is alleged to have been committed must be equally clear. 
 
 It has often occurred to me to hear a poor and ignorant 
 man, who has been carried to a distance from the scene of his 
 imputed crime, and of necessity, therefore, separated from his 
 friends, fixed as they were by poverty to the spot where they 
 lived, asked if he had any witnesses on his behalf. His answer 
 has painfully struck upon my ear ; he has said, ' I have wit- 
 nesses, but I have no money to bring them before you/ In 
 Belgium, the cost of the witnesses for the prisoner is paid by 
 the public. It is not easy to find a satisfactory reason for our 
 English practice ; but we clearly diminish its evils when we 
 bring the accused to trial on the spot where his witnesses may 
 be expected to be found. 
 
 Gentlemen, although I have put the advantages to the inno- 
 cent prisoner last in order, they stand first in my estimation. 
 
6 Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 That the administration of the law should be the adminis- 
 tration of justice) is the most sacred of human duties. The 
 fearful power assumed by erring man to inflict pain and disgrace 
 on his brother, can only be justified when, feeling his awful 
 responsibility, and conscious of the imperfection of his faculties, 
 he spares nothing within the compass of his means to judge 
 according to the truth. God forbid that to ensure the de- 
 struction of the guilty, we should put to peril the safety of the 
 innocent. 
 
 And, Gentlemen, if we could bring ourselves to act on a prin- 
 ciple so abhorrent to the maxims of English law, and so revolting 
 to the feelings of Christian men, how short-sighted would be our 
 policy ! how miserable the attempt to repress crime by crime ! 
 
 For on what, after all, are we to depend for upholding the 
 law ? In the present state of things, assuredly not on punishing 
 all offences. To that certainty of punishment, of which I have 
 spoken, we have as yet made but distant approaches, for causes 
 to which I shall presently advert. 
 
 If, therefore, the people of this country were only deterred 
 from crime by fear of legal punishment, there is little reason 
 why offenders should not multiply a hundredfold. But they 
 are withheld by better motives ; and among them I give a high 
 place to that veneration for the law which results from the 
 confidence of the country in its just administration. To this 
 confidence we owe the proud distinction, that here the people 
 range themselves on the side of the law, while in many coun- 
 tries a prisoner is always treated by his fellow-subjects as a 
 persecuted man, suffering from a tyranny only the more power- 
 ful and the more to be detested, because clothed with the forms 
 and armed with the weapons of justice. 
 
 Long, Gentlemen, may this wholesome feeling remain among 
 us ; but it can only be retained and perfected by a sincere 
 determination to let no impression, however strong and how- 
 ever well-founded, of the mischiefs resulting from the escape of 
 the guilty, produce the slightest bias on our minds against the 
 prisoner,, or narrow by a single hair's breadth the full proof 
 which the law demands. 
 
 And yet, Gentlemen, I should be much concerned if I could 
 be supposed to think lightly of criminals escaping from justice. 
 It is a grave misfortune : its example is most pernicious. One 
 
Charge of July, 1839. 7 
 
 unjust acquittal may raise hopes of a career of impunity in the 
 breasts of hundreds exposed to seduction. In short, Gentle- 
 men, I hold the acquittal of the guilty only less to be deplored 
 than the conviction of the innocent. 
 
 But there are better means of repressing crime than by 
 wresting the rules of law against the accused. And this leads 
 me to occupy your attention for a short time upon the present 
 state of crime in this country, so far as our scanty materials 
 enable us to frame an estimate of its nature and extent. This 
 done, we shall see more clearly the means for its repression. 
 
 By far the greater number of offences which are found in 
 our calendars are offences against property. This alone, if 
 other evidence were wanting, would prove, what indeed is 
 notorious, the existence of a class of persons who pursue 
 crime as a calling, and are not led astray by casual temptation, 
 or by temporary indulgence of the passions. The numbers of 
 this class it is impossible to assign with accuracy. From the 
 best information I am able to obtain, I cannot place it much 
 lower for England and Wales than a hundred thousand. The 
 greater number of these unhappy persons are engaged in petty 
 thefts. Those who are best acquainted with their habits, and 
 who know how small a part of the value of what they steal 
 they are able to retain for themselves, are of opinion that each 
 one must, on the average, commit several offences per day to 
 be maintained in the manner in which they are known to live. 
 It is also found that, before the thief is finally withdrawn from 
 society by transportation or death, his course of depredation 
 extends over several years. These general facts, which are well 
 ascertained, show how great must be the number of offences 
 which are never detected, or, at all events, never prosecuted, as 
 compared with those which find their way into our calendars, 
 and are treated in most of our statistical tables as if they com- 
 prised the total amount of offences committed. How fallacious 
 it must be to confound the number of convictions with the 
 number of offences committed has been established by a valu- 
 able document published in the Report of the Commissioners 
 for inquiring as to the best means of forming an efficient Con- 
 stabulary Force. The paper to which I refer is a table show- 
 ing the number of forged notes presented at the Bank of 
 England, and the number of convictions for the forgery of bank 
 
8 Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 notes, between the years 1805 and 1837; and I find the pro- 
 portion of convictions compared with that of offences was as i to 
 164. Now when it is recollected that the uttering of forged 
 notes is the most difficult of all offences to commit with im- 
 punity, inasmuch as it cannot be done in secret, and behind the 
 back of the injured party, it will be felt that if the proportion 
 of forgeries committed with impunity is so large, that of thefts 
 which escape detection must be much larger. It is equally 
 clear that, while these proportions remain unchanged, it is vain 
 to hope that the terrors of the law will avail to prevent those 
 who follow depredation as a calling from being a numerous, 
 and, in one sense, a flourishing class of the community. When, 
 however, the public mind shall be practically conscious of the 
 facts to which I have adverted, and in consequence shall with- 
 hold its sympathy from a prisoner, though for the first time 
 convicted, if he shall appear to have resorted to depredation as 
 a stated means of livelihood, then something may be done to- 
 wards diminishing the numbers of the class, by permanently 
 withdrawing the criminal upon his first sentence from his 
 career of crime ; either by transportation, or by imprisonment 
 for a long term, whenever the discipline of our prisons shall be 
 so far improved as to make them places where their inmates 
 may be reformed, instead of more deeply corrupted. 
 
 But no change in the sentences of prisoners, or in the dis- 
 cipline of prisons, will avail to destroy, or in a very large pro- 
 portion to lessen, this class, until by a more perfect system of 
 police, and by a greater alacrity among prosecutors, the number 
 of offences escaping detection and prosecution shall be dimi- 
 nished in a manifold ratio. Upon the ignorant and hardened 
 thief conscience has no hold. The danger of his calling he 
 looks upon as the necessary price of its pleasures ; the applause 
 of his associates stands him in the place of reputation. Even 
 death upon the gallows, which is thus to his mind stripped of 
 disgrace, he regards with feelings akin to those of the soldier 
 looking forward to the perils of honourable war. Nothing, 
 therefore, but such a multiplying of the risks of detection for 
 each offence, as shall render it impossible to ply his trade, will 
 break up his class. And to aid, as far as his means will allow, 
 in this good work, is the duty of every man, and in an especial 
 manner of persons like yourselves, who, by your position in 
 
Charge of July, 1839. 9 
 
 society, are possessed of power and influence. Birmingham 
 has long been favourably distinguished from many other towns 
 by the comparative excellence of its police : certain members of 
 that body I have known for many years, and can bear testi- 
 mony to the value of their services. But their force is too 
 small. Though much has been done, much remains to do. 
 The staple manufactures of the town being in metals, tempta- 
 tions to dishonesty are of necessity more numerous here than 
 in many other places. They fall, too, on persons of tender age, 
 often ill instructed to withstand them. They are held forth by 
 the most cunning and nefarious of all the predatory classes I 
 mean the receivers of stolen goods. When these things are 
 well considered the loss of property, and the feeling of in- 
 security among the honest part of society, the degradation and 
 misery of the guilty then will the great subject of the re- 
 pression and prevention of crime expand in every mind to 
 its due measure of importance. Nor will the means of 
 repressing crime be crippled, I am persuaded, by a false 
 economy; for even contracting our views to a mere ques- 
 tion of expense, it will not be forgotten that a depredator 
 at large is maintained by society, and maintained in a most 
 expensive manner. His prison must indeed be badly managed 
 if he do not cost the country far more when at liberty than 
 when in confinement. 
 
 These remarks have done little towards exhausting the sub*^ 
 ject. I have only touched on the means of repressing crime 
 by acting on the criminal. The means of preserving the honest 
 from falling into the snares of vice the diffusion of knowledge 
 the formation of virtuous habits by moral and religious train- 
 ing these are topics on which I must resist the temptation to 
 enlarge. The inhabitants of Birmingham have not been want- 
 ing in their attention to these important duties. This I well 
 know ; for, having spent my youth in this my native town, and 
 having, in some small degree, assisted in the labours of your 
 Sunday-schools, I can testify to their zeal and perseverance. 
 What they have done will convince them better than any words 
 of mine both of the value of their labours and of the necessity 
 for still further extending them. For it is to education, in the " 
 large and true meaning of the word, that we must all look as the 
 means of striking at the root of the evil. Indeed, of the close 
 
io Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 connexion between ignorance and crime, the calendar which I 
 hold in my hand furnishes a striking example. Each prisoner 
 has been examined as to the state of his education, and the 
 result is set down opposite his name. It appears, then, that of 
 forty-three prisoners, only one can read and write well. The 
 majority can neither read nor write at all; and the remainder, 
 with the solitary exception which I have noted down, are said 
 to read and write imperfectly; which necessarily implies that 
 they have not the power of using these great elements of know- 
 ledge for any practical object. Of forty-three prisoners, forty- 
 two then are destitute of instruction ; and what the one remain- 
 ing individual has been taught probably comprehends no more 
 of education than the ploughing and harrowing of the soil does 
 of agriculture. There can be no harvest without these intro- 
 ductory labours, it is true ; but neither will they alone produce 
 the crop. 
 
 Gentlemen, it now only remains that I should address a few 
 words to you on your own peculiar functions. Anciently, as 
 you know, grand juries filled the character of prosecutors, 
 presenting such offences as came to their knowledge, or as were 
 brought under their notice by inferior officers having the care 
 of the public peace. In those early times, that preliminary 
 examination before magistrates, which now in almost all in- 
 stances precedes the exercise of your duties, was little known. 
 Your functions would, therefore, be almost essential to the due 
 administration of justice. At the present day, the necessity for 
 imposing your labours upon you is not so obvious ; and in the 
 metropolis it has been found that the secrecy with which by 
 law witnesses give their evidence before grand juries has offered 
 facilities to criminals to tamper with them, and to procure bills 
 of indictment to be ignored, upon which, if a trial had been 
 had, and the witnesses had given their evidence under the 
 responsibility arising from public examination, convictions would 
 certainly have been obtained. I shall use all such means as I 
 possess for preventing justice from being thus defeated ; and 
 you on your parts will recollect that the sole question for your 
 consideration is, whether or not there is sufficient evidence laid 
 before you to justify a conviction, unless the facts are answered 
 on behalf of the prisoner. 
 
 But, Gentlemen, although the original utility of the grand 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. n 
 
 jury may have decreased, or even passed away, it is neverthe- 
 less an institution of great importance. It is of the genius of 
 our constitution to interest and employ all ranks and conditions 
 of men in the administration of justice. By this provision, 
 courts are made really public ; not only as they are open to all 
 to become auditors, but inasmuch as the representatives of the 
 various classes are called upon to give their attendance. In an 
 assembly so collected you have a right to be heard ; you have 
 a right to address to the Bench any matter connected with the 
 administration of the law which, in your opinion, requires 
 public animadversion; and your suggestions will be, in this 
 Court, as they are in all others, received with respect. It is 
 through you, also, that the Bench addresses the public at large, 
 knowing that what you consider worthy of your attention will 
 be treated with deference by all those whose duties or interests 
 are involved in what is laid before you. 
 
 Perhaps you may be of opinion, Gentlemen, -that I have too 
 fully availed myself of my privilege. If so, I trust you will 
 find my excuse in the deep interest I feel in the people among 
 whom I am to administer the laws a people to whom I am 
 allied by the strong ties of birth and of friendship. 
 
 On the conclusion of their labours, the Grand Jury requested 
 the Recorder to print his charge. 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 IN a day or two after the conflict to which I have more than 
 once adverted, the leaders put forth a placard, referring, in 
 seditious language, to what had happened. Several of them 
 were apprehended, and, in default of bail, were committed for 
 trial at the ensuing Warwickshire Assizes, but afterwards pro- 
 curing bail, were received on their return to Birmingham by a 
 riotous mob, who set on fire several shops in the market-place, 
 before the military were summoned ; which was not done until 
 after it was found that the body of London police, though still 
 remaining in the town, were too much discouraged by their 
 defeat to venture upon another attack. A considerable amount 
 of damage was caused by these incendiary fires. Some of the 
 
J2 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 riotors were apprehended, and convicted of a felonious riot and 
 of arson. The leaders, whose return to Birmingham had been 
 so disastrous, were convicted of seditious libel, and imprisoned 
 for twelve months in the county gaol. 
 
 The opportunity thus afforded them for reading and reflec- 
 tion was not thrown away. One of them, Mr. Lovett, a man 
 of ability, wrote a book while in prison for the use of Chartists, 
 containing a plan of education well adapted to the requirements 
 of working men, which I read on its publication with great 
 pleasure. One passage, I remember, struck me very much. 
 Lamenting the ignorance of the labouring classes, he candidly 
 expresses his satisfaction that he and his coadjutors had hitherto 
 failed in their aims at investing them with political power ; .for 
 although he still looked forward to the time when they will possess 
 it as not very distant, yet he was of opinion that if it had come 
 before they were prepared by education to make a good use of it, 
 the consequences would have been fatal to the public welfare. 
 
 That Mr. Lovett and his colleagues were sincere men, how- 
 ever mistaken or hotheaded, I entertain no doubt ; and here I 
 may say, that the prevalent opinion which stigmatizes the dema- 
 gogue as a designing person, promoting selfish objects under 
 pretence of advancing the public weal, lays down a rule which, 
 to say the least, contains a great number of exceptions. The 
 accidents of life have enabled me to see much of these agitators, 
 and I have often found them persons only differing from their 
 followers in the preponderance of the higher qualities. 
 
 What they believe to be true, their zeal, courage, and sense 
 of duty impel them to act upon as true; whereas many who 
 hold the same tenets, and who love to expatiate upon them, 
 shrink from any sacrifice in their support. 
 
 The prevalent opinion to which I have adverted is strength- 
 ened by circumstances which, if well understood, would not 
 infrequently lead the candid mind to an opposite conclusion. 
 
 Sudden and somewhat violent changes of sentiment often 
 occur among demagogues. These changes, which are not un- 
 naturally attributed by those who are acquainted only with the 
 bare fact, to want of principle, are often the result of a conscien- 
 tious adherence to opinions, until they have been seen to lead, 
 by a necessary consequence, to unexpected and injurious results. 
 
 The earnest sincerity which urges these men to reduce to 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 13 
 
 practice what they profess gives them the teaching of experience, 
 and engages them in reflection ; whereas the lazy and the timid, 
 who feed their minds upon mere speculation, have little motive 
 and little opportunity for discovering their errors. 
 
 Leaders in every class, high or low, soon find very often to 
 their great surprise that to succeed in governing others, some- 
 thing more is required than good qualities and right meaning 
 on the part of governors ; and their attention is necessarily 
 drawn to defects in the body to be governed. Indeed they view 
 the whole affair of government under a new aspect ; and 
 although for a time they may be hurried on by excitement and 
 the power which associates have over each other, yet the truth 
 will eventually force its way ; and that period is often acce- 
 lerated by some event, like imprisonment or a fit of sickness, 
 which withdraws them for a time from the field of action. 
 
 From these considerations I have regretted that of late years 
 the distinction between political prisoners and ordinary crimi- 
 nals has been well nigh obliterated. The general instinct of the 
 civilized world in all ages has recognised the difference. Politi- 
 cal offenders have been felt to be, if not exactly prisoners of 
 war, yet bearing some resemblance to such captives. To keep 
 their persons in safe custody, or even to take their lives on 
 great occasions, gives no shock to public sentiment : but to 
 subject them to degrading treatment, to crop their hair, clothe 
 them in a prison dress, march them to and fro under the com- 
 mand of a turnkey, prevent them from supplying themselves 
 with books and the comforts which habit has changed into 
 necessaries, and, above all, to lay harsh restrictions on the 
 visits of their friends, is so revolting to the most ordinary sym- 
 pathies, that magistrates and governors of prisons will not sub- 
 ject them to such indignities and hardships unless the legislature 
 has made their infliction imperative. 
 
 The political prisoner, when his treatment is left to the ordi- 
 nary feelings of mankind, is dealt with as a person in misfortune, 
 who must undergo the sufferings attached to his position, but 
 whose feelings are not to be wounded by contumely. I admit 
 it would not be difficult to find instances in every age wherein 
 the principle has been grossly violated, but such violations have 
 been condemned by universal consent whenever the excited feel- 
 ings by which they were caused have subsided. 
 
34 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 Political actions assume such different hues as time rolls on, 
 that society is often spared much regret perhaps remorse 
 by having treated them in a forbearing spirit. 
 
 I am old enough to remember Sir Francis Burclett sent to 
 the Tower for a letter which, if published now, would, after the 
 high seasoned language in the use of which the press has for 
 many years been permitted to indulge, be remarked, if noticed 
 at all, for tameness. He subsequently passed a year in the 
 King's Bench Prison for writing a letter to Mr. Bickersteth 
 (afterwards Lord Langdale), censuring the conduct of the 
 magistrates and yeomanry with regard to the conflict popularly 
 called the Manchester massacre. 
 
 Still later, upon a supposed change of opinions, which he never 
 admitted, he was taken into favour by the political party to 
 which he had been obnoxious ; and although after this event 
 he did not stand as formerly with his old partisans, yet it would 
 have been a subject of painful remembrance to the whole nation 
 if this high-bred English gentleman had been made to undergo, 
 in any part of his life, treatment which would have outraged 
 his feelings of self-respect. 
 
 Mr. Bickersteth, who published the letter in the newspapers, 
 rose to be Master of the Rolls, and died a peer of the realm. 
 
 Mr. Leigh Hunt, who was imprisoned in the gaol of Horse- 
 monger-lane for a libel on the Prince Regent, had assigned to 
 him spacious and airy apartments, which he was permitted to 
 decorate and furnish at his pleasure ; and he is now in the en- 
 joyment of a pension granted by the niece of the Sovereign 
 wio was the object of his attacks. 
 
 | The poet, James Montgomery, lately deceased, who had un- 
 dergone imprisonment more than once for political libels, had 
 also a pension derived from the same source ; and neither with 
 regard to himself nor Mr. Hunt was a single voice raised to 
 object against the bounty of the Crown being so applied. 
 
 Poor Fergus O'Connor was not so fortunate. His treatment 
 in York Castle, when convicted of sedition, was harsh and de- 
 grading; and necessarily so, as the law then stood, the visiting 
 magistrates having had no power to alleviate his condition. 
 
 Again, the distinction is defensible on other grounds which 
 would extend the exemption from degrading discipline to a 
 larger class. As it is intended that the criminal shall be, after 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 15 
 
 the expiration of his sentence, restored to the world a free man, 
 in the expectation that he will earn his livelihood by honest 
 means, and so conduct himself as not to fall again under the 
 animadversion of the law, nothing can be more pernicious than 
 to have set a mark of degradation upon him. The difficulties 
 to be encountered in reforming offenders are of two kinds ; the 
 first arise out of their evil desires, the second from their bad 
 habits. It is obvious that no progress can be made in reform- 
 ing the habits of criminals until their aspirations are raised, and 
 until they are brought into a frame of mind in which they 
 desire to do right, however they may be prevented from 
 acting in conformity with this desire by the inveterate habit of 
 doing wrong. No discipline which fails to ally itself with the 
 good feelings of prisoners will have any permanent effect on 
 them. They may be made outwardly to conform to a pre- 
 scribed routine, * with eye-service as men-pleasers;' but the 
 moment they are again their own masters, they will assuredly, 
 as every day's experience amply proves, fall back, or, indeed, 
 rush back, to their former courses. 
 
 Now, any observances which degrade a prisoner, and more 
 especially if he is conscious that such is the object with which 
 they have been instituted, create so strong a feeling of hostility in 
 his mind towards those under whose control and guidance he is 
 placed, as to neutralize their efforts, and very often to urge him 
 into an opposite line of thought and action to that which they 
 are exhorting him to pursue. At all events, he is made reckless ; 
 and finding that he is the object of contempt on the part of society, 
 as evinced by the law which afflicts him with degradation, self- 
 respect is gradually annihilated, and he becomes an alien to his 
 race, an outcast in heart as well as in social position. 
 
 We will, however, suppose that all difficulties are surmounted, 
 that he is truly repentant, lends a willing ear to religious and 
 moral instruction, and aids to the best of his ability in the work 
 of his reformation, striving to overcome his vicious habits with 
 zeal and perseverance. Even then he will find that the 
 degrading circumstances under which he has been placed have 
 strengthened the barrier already but too formidable against his 
 being received into honest employment a most lamentable 
 state of things, which has been, and still continues to be, the 
 daily cause of relapse into crime. 
 
1 6 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I must not be supposed to 
 contemplate or even to desire that crime should be unaccom- 
 panied by disgrace. Fortunately, the disseverance is impossible. 
 The connexion was not created by the law; it would have 
 come into existence had human legislation never interposed. 
 Therefore no change in the law can prevent its operation. The 
 mischief to which I am directing attention is that of an artificial 
 disgrace created by expedients which the law has prescribed, 
 and which the sufferer will regard as dictated by malice prepense. 
 Prisoners are not so devoid of discrimination as to be unable to 
 feel the distinction. The natural disgrace which belongs to 
 their crimes does not irritate them. They submit to it, as we all do 
 to the inevitable events of life, with such fortitude as the cha- 
 racter of the individual supplies to him; and this natural disgrace 
 has, therefore, no tendency to produce in his mind feelings of 
 ill-will towards those about him. 
 
 It is, however, worthy of remark that the object of the 
 observances to which I have referred was not in its origin to 
 inflict disgrace. They were imposed upon classes already 
 degraded in manners and habits with a view to their improve- 
 ment in decency, cleanliness, and health. Personal cleanliness, 
 so conducive to health, and so essential to self-respect, becomes 
 all-important in a prison ; for confinement is at the best un- 
 favourable in its effects on the human frame, and every counter- 
 acting expedient must, therefore, be rigidly enforced. And as 
 voluntary ablutions are not to be expected, these duties must be 
 made compulsory, or they would soon pass into disuse and oblivion 
 among the majority of those who are the inmates of our gaols. 
 Then, again, as to dress. The clothing of prisoners is often 
 ragged and dirty ; and when his clothes are in a good 
 state, it is a kindness to the needy prisoner to lay them by 
 that he may leave the prison "in. decent apparel. With regard 
 to the hair, it is obvious that cleanliness and freedom from 
 vermin are promoted by keeping it well cropped. That a large 
 class is therefore benefited by these arrangements, and conse- 
 quently rather raised than depressed, cannot be doubted ; and 
 the benefits are so obvious as to be soon recognised by the 
 prisoner, however reluctant he may have been to the experiment. 
 
 Touching visits from friends, it is unhappily true that, as re- 
 gards the majority of prisoners, unrestricted visits would be an 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 17 
 
 enormous evil, both to the individual and the public, since 
 nothing could more tend to paralyse the better influences under 
 which he is placed than to suffer him to come into contact with 
 his former associates. 
 
 But these considerations by no means justify, on the con- 
 trary they offer strong grounds for condemning, an iron rule 
 which shall impose observances upon all because they are salu- 
 tary as regards a part, even though that part may be the majority. 
 A sound discretion should, I think, be exercised in each case. 
 Let the criminal Avho, whatever his offences may be, has the 
 merit of personal decency, have the benefit of such merit. To 
 produce artificially an equality in abasement is neither wise nor 
 just. Such equality, moreover, is eminently deceptive, and in 
 truth is inequality of the worst kind. Take the case of a young 
 woman, who has not been able to resist the temptation of pur- 
 loining some coveted article of dress from the shop of a haber- 
 dasher. Is it equal treatment to subject her to the discipline 
 which befits a drunken harridan, brought for the tenth or fiftieth 
 time back to prison in the stupor of intoxication, covered with 
 the mud and filth collected upon her person and her clothes in 
 her disgusting orgies ? If you cut off the hair of the young 
 shop-lifter, and if you compel her to wear the same dress with 
 her loathsome fellow-prisoner, have you inflicted equal pain by 
 this equality of treatment ? Certainly not ; in the latter case 
 you have relieved the prisoner from a portion of the revolting 
 misery produced by her own misconduct, and restored her to 
 something approaching to comfort ; whereas in the former case, 
 you have shocked and violated all her feelings of self-respect, 
 thereby inflicting exquisite pain, which will not be forgotten, but 
 which, nevertheless, is calculated to plunge her still deeper into 
 crime than she has yet fallen. Let us remember, above all, that 
 the pain which she endures is caused by feelings which the public 
 interest demands should not only be treated with respect, but 
 should be cultivated ; and that although she is sent to prison to 
 be punished for doing wrong, the keenest suffering which she is 
 made to undergo does not arise out of her offence, but out of 
 those desires and sentiments which, however they may have been 
 ill-regulated in her particular case, are nevertheless essential 
 parts of the female character, for without these requisites it can 
 neither command respect nor conciliate regard. 
 
i8 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 A memorable instance of this affected equality, and real 
 inequality, arose during the Great Exhibition of 1851. A 
 visitor driving towards the Crystal Palace, in a manner con- 
 trary to the prescribed regulations, was stopped by a policeman, 
 who seized the horse's head for the purpose of turning the 
 carriage into the right path. The gentleman, irritated by this 
 act of the policeman, who was, however, fully justified in the 
 measure which he adopted, yielded to sudden passion, and struck 
 the officer more than once with his whip. He was apprehended 
 for the assault, and the magistrate, justly considering five pounds 
 (the highest fine which he could impose) a very inadequate 
 penalty for the offence, sentenced the accused to imprisonment 
 for a week in one of the metropolitan gaols. In so acting he 
 faithfully discharged the duties of his office, -and was not answer- 
 able for the consequences. But those consequences were, that 
 the gentleman, a military officer, was compelled to suffer the dis- 
 grace pertaining to the forced observances of the prison. An 
 opinion prevailed that such infliction would necessarily drive him 
 out of his profession; this result, I believe, and I am very 
 glad to believe, did not follow. He bore his punishment well, 
 neither defying it nor repining under his lot. At first the 
 popular feeling was strongly against him, and in favour of the 
 sentence. Probably his conduct under his calamity may have 
 turned the current, if not in the world at large, at all events in 
 military circles. I must own, I never could sympathize with the 
 feelings of exultation which were manifested at the disgrace of 
 this officer. To me it seemed that the Legislature was much 
 to blame in having left the law in a position which made 
 it impossible for the magistrate to do justice in a satisfactory 
 manner, whatever might be his decision. If 5/. were insufficient, 
 500^. or 5000^. would at all events have met the requirements of 
 the case, and what gentleman would have hesitated a single 
 moment between such a sacrifice and the alternative punish- 
 ment, if his means had enabled him to compass it. The Legis- 
 lature, by limiting the power of the magistrate as to fines, threw 
 upon him the duty of committal as the only course which was 
 open to him ; and it then, by its harsh and indiscriminating rules 
 of prison discipline, superinduced upon that committal conse- 
 quences which will probably fester in the sufferer's mind to the 
 day of his death. As it strikes me, nothing can be more absurd 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 19 
 
 than to place so strict a limitation on magistrates with regard 
 to fines, and yet to leave it in their power to administer a 
 punishment, compared with which, in cases like that under 
 consideration, scarcely any pecuniary loss would not have been 
 joyfully accepted as a lenient alternative. The obvious remedy 
 is to raise the limit of the fine, but the tenderness of our 
 law in matters of property, and its indifference in those which 
 regard the character, the health, and the good feelings of the 
 subject, are among its most notorious and inveterate defects. 
 
 Seventeen years have passed away since I commented on the 
 daily injustice committed by the State in withholding from 
 prisoners the pecuniary means for producing evidence in their 
 defence. This defect in our jurisprudence yet remains. Lord 
 Brougham, however, among the resolutions on criminal law 
 procedure which he put on the journals of the House of Lords 
 in March, 1855, nas one * * ms en?ec ^ ' That the costs of 
 every person tried and acquitted, or discharged for want of pro- 
 secution, should be paid out of the county rates, on certificate 
 of the court before whom he was tried, or brought for trial, or 
 of the magistrate by whom he was discharged/* May this 
 just provision soon find its way into the statute-book ! 
 
 I cite in my charge the instance of Belgium. 
 
 In a conversation with the Minister of Justice, in the year 
 1833, at Brussels, I found that the annual expense for such 
 witnesses, for the whole kingdom, having a population exceed- 
 ing four millions, only amounted to 2o,ooo/. a year. 
 
 The payment of his witnesses is one of the many safeguards 
 with which the law of Tuscany has provided the prisoner on his 
 trial. The ' Atto di accusa' [indictment] being lodged, and a 
 copy given to the prisoner, his counsel is permitted a free 
 inspection of the depositions against his client; when, if he 
 intend to call witnesses, he must give notice of their names, 
 and what they are expected to prove. This being done, the 
 president of the court permits such of the witnesses to be sum- 
 moned as appear to him, from the note of their expected 
 evidence, it would be useful to the ends of justice to call, and 
 
 * Resolution xii. Lord Brougham's Speech on Criminal Law Procedure. 
 Ridgway, 1855. Still, an advance of money before trial would in many cases be 
 essential to bring the witnesses from their homes. 
 
 C 2 
 
2O Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 they are brought at the public expense ; the prisoner always 
 having the right, as with us, to produce, at his own cost, any 
 evidence he may judge material to his interests.* 
 
 The State of Massachusetts, where the law of England is 
 still the basis of its jurisprudence, has not overlooked the claims 
 of justice in this particular. On the trial of Professor 
 "Webster, at Boston, in the year 1850, for the murder of Dr. 
 Parkman, the Attorney-General made the following statement 
 regarding the costs incurred by prisoners in bringing forward 
 their witnesses : c The law of this commonwealth places its 
 entire treasury at their command. Every dollar expended for 
 witnesses, or for - the officers who summon them, is paid by the 
 commonwealth, as well for the prisoner as for the Govern- 
 ment/f The Code Napoleon contains the following provision 
 on this subject : 
 
 f Apres 1' audition des temoiiis produits par le procureur 
 general et par la partie civile, V accuse fera entendre ceux dont 
 il aura notifie la liste, soit sur la faits mentionnes dans Pacte 
 d'accusation, soit pour attester qu'il est homme d'honneur, de 
 probite, et d'une conduite irreprochable. 
 
 1 Les citations faites a la requete des accuses seront a leurs 
 frais, ainsi' que les salaires des temoins cites s'ils en requierent ; 
 sauf au procureur general a faire citer a sa requete les temoins 
 qui lui seront indiques par l } accuse, dans le cas ou il jugerait 
 que leur declaration put etre utile pour la decouverte de la 
 verite/t 
 
 Upon the passage, ' Les temoins qui lui seront indiques par 
 Vaccuse,' M. Rogron has the following note : 
 
 ' Cette disposition vient au secours des accuses pauvres ; 
 mais elle n'eut jamais manque d'etre reclame par tous les 
 accuses si la loi n'eut pas laisse a la prudence du procureur 
 general de citer ou non les temoins selon qu'il jugera leur 
 declaration utile / 
 
 It would be an interesting, though a somewhat humiliating 
 task, to ascertain how many other nations are in advance of 
 ourselves in this particular. We take pride in our love of 
 
 * First Letter on Tuscan Jurisprudence, Law Review, Feb. 1853. 
 f Stone's Report, p. 262. J Code d' Instruction Criminelle, Art. 321. 
 
 Code d' Instruction Criminelle Explique par ces Motifs et par Exemples. Par 
 J. Rogron, Avocat au Conseils du Hoi et a la Cour de Cassation. 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 2,1 
 
 justice. It would not be easy to reconcile this boast with the 
 history of our treatment of prisoners under trial. 
 
 A striking exemplification of this painful truth is fur- 
 nished by the cases of Elizabeth Canning and Mary Squires, 
 as reported in Howell's State Trials, vol. xix. Of these cases, 
 Mr. Lawrence has given a careful abstract in his Life of Fielding. 
 
 'In the month of January, 1753, Elizabeth Canning dis- 
 appeared from her master's service for about eight-and-twenty 
 days ; and she accounted for her absence, on her return in a 
 piteous plight to her mother's house, by stating that, on the 
 night of the 1st of January, she had been seized by two men 
 in Moorfields, who robbed her, tied her hands behind her, 
 and struck her a blow on the head which rendered her 
 insensible. On regaining her senses, she found herself on 
 the high road, with the two men who had robbed her, and who 
 dragged her to a house kept by a woman named Wells, at 
 Enfield, about eleven or twelve miles from Moorfields. Here 
 she saw Mary Squires, the gipsy, who treated her after the 
 following extraordinary fashion. Finding that she would not 
 comply with her infamous solicitations, this woman cut off her 
 stays, and forced her into a room, or a kind of hay -loft, where 
 there was a fire-place, but no bed nor bedstead, nothing but hay 
 to lie on, a pitcher almost full of water, and about tiventy-four 
 pieces of bread, to the amount of a quartern loaf on the whole. 
 Here she remained, according to her statement, from the morn- 
 ing of the 2nd of January, till the afternoon of Monday, the 
 29th, seeing no human creature all the time except once, when 
 some one peeped at her through a crack in the door. On 
 Friday, the 26th, she had eaten all the bread, and on the 29th 
 she had drunk all the water ; after which she made her escape 
 by breaking down a board, which was nailed up at the inside 
 of the window, and so was enabled to open it and jump down 
 on the ground. She had previously never attempted to escape, 
 nor had it entered into her head to do so. 
 
 ' Such were the principal portions of the marvellous story 
 told by Elizabeth Canning to account for her mysterious dis- 
 appearance. But it is remarkable that on her first account of 
 her imprisonment, she said nothing about the twenty-four pieces 
 of bread. This embellishment of her story appeared in her 
 subsequent information, sworn before Fielding, to which we 
 
22 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 shall presently refer. Her first statement was, that there were 
 four or five pieces of bread, and some water, on which she 
 lived till she made her escape. As she professed to describe 
 the house in which she had been confined, and its situation, a 
 warrant was granted by one of the London aldermen, on the 
 3ist of January, for the apprehension of the person by whom 
 it was tenanted a woman named Wells. Armed with this 
 warrant, Canning, accompanied by her master and some friends, 
 proceeded to the place in question, where, with some hesitation, 
 she identified the room in which she had been confined, although 
 in many important particulars it differed from her previous 
 description ; and there was no lock on the door, or any appear- 
 ance of one having been there. She also pointed out Mary 
 Squires, who was a poor old gipsy woman, (and who, when the 
 party arrived at Wells's house, was unconcernedly smoking her 
 pipe at the fire,) as the person who had robbed her. The 
 miserable creature immediately started up, and, after a stupid 
 gaze of astonishment, exposed her hideous face, which till then 
 was almost covered with a cloth, and exclaimed, ' I rob you ! 
 take care what you say ; if you have once seen my face you 
 cannot mistake it, for God never made such another/ She 
 added, without the least hesitation, that at the time the alleged 
 robbery was committed, she was above one hundred miles off 
 in Dorsetshire. 
 
 ' After the apprehension of Wells and Squires, Elizabeth 
 Canning attended to swear her information before Fielding. 
 Her case had by this time excited great public interest, and the 
 justice had been privately consulted upon it. A Mr. Salt, who 
 had been engaged as a solicitor on Canning's behalf, had pre- 
 viously taken Fielding's opinion on the best mode of bringing 
 the offenders to justice, and of framing an indictment against 
 them ; and at that gentleman's request he reluctantly consented 
 to allow Canning to swear her information before him. Accord- 
 ingly, on the 7th of February, the information was sworn, as 
 proved on the trial of Canning; by Mr. Brogden, Fielding's 
 clerk. The justice had previously issued his warrant to appre- 
 hend all persons who should be found at Wells's house, as 
 disorderly persons; and, thereupon, two women, named Hall and 
 Natus, who had been lodging there for some time, were secured 
 and brought before him. ' Before he had seen Hall/ says a 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 23 
 
 writer in The Gentleman's Magazine, ' lie was informed she 
 would confess the whole.' He found her trembling and in tears ; 
 he endeavoured to soothe and comfort her, assuring her that if 
 she would tell the truth he would protect her. She desired 
 some time to recover from her fright, which was granted, and a 
 chair was ordered her; and, after some time, he began to 
 examine her, and continued to do it in the kindest manner, till 
 she had been guilty of so many contradictions and prevarications, 
 that he told her he would leave her to stand or fall by the 
 evidence against her, and advised Mr. Salt to prosecute her as 
 a felon ; upon which she begged to be heard once more, and 
 said she would tell the whole truth, accounting for her unwilling- 
 ness to do it from her fears of the gipsy and Wells. After 
 this singular scene, Hall corroborated Canning's story in every 
 important particular! Squires and Wells were soon afterwards 
 tried at the Old Bailey for felony, and, on the testimony of 
 Canning and Hall, were convicted, and received sentence of death. 
 
 ' Many grave reflections are caused by a perusal of these pro- 
 ceedings. The poor, ugly, old gipsy woman, Mary Squires 
 unpitied, unprotected, and the object of public indignation, 
 had no alternative but to surrender herself to her fate. The 
 evidence by which her innocence could have been made manifest 
 was in existence, but she had no means of producing it in a 
 satisfactory form, and the law afforded her no facility for doing 
 so. On the subsequent trial of her accuser, Canning, for wilful 
 and corrupt perjury, a perfect alibi, as it is technically called, 
 was established for her at the expense of the Crown ; on her own 
 trial she was helpless, and deprived of the opportunity of making 
 a proper defence. The injustice from which she suffered in this 
 respect must appear to every reflecting person a stain on the 
 administration of our criminal law, and it is a stain which has 
 not yet been removed. Whilst, on the part of the prosecution, 
 the attendance of necessary witnesses is secured by payment of 
 their reasonable expenses, not a farthing is allowed to the wit- 
 nesses who are produced to establish a prisoner's innocence. 
 This is surely not even-handed justice ; and it is incumbent on 
 law reformers and the Legislature to remedy this serious defect. 
 
 { Many innocent persons, like Mary Squires, have been made 
 the victims of invented stories, and such conspiracies are com- 
 monly defeated by evidence which the poor and helpless are 
 
24 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 unable to procure. Three witnesses, indeed, attended on the 
 part of Squires, who proved that she was at Abbotsbury, in 
 Dorsetshire, in the month of January, 1753 ; and one of these 
 swore that she had lodged in his house from the n st to the 9th ; 
 but their evidence was wholly discredited, and they were com- 
 mitted for perjury. Had the unfortunate creature possessed the 
 means, she could, however, have produced an overwhelming 
 amount of testimony to corroborate them ; and on the subsequent 
 trial of Canning, her accuser, above thirty witnesses were pro- 
 duced by the Crown to establish her complete innocence, and the 
 absolute impossibility of her having been at W ells' s house at the 
 time of the alleged robbery and outrage. Susannah Wells, the 
 other prisoner, and the tenant of the house, was defended by 
 counsel ; but the state of the law at that period did not permit 
 an advocate to address the jury on behalf of his client in a case 
 of felony ; all that he was allowed to do was to cross-examine 
 the witnesses, and he had no opportunity, therefore, of forcibly 
 exposing their contradictions or the improbability of their story. 
 Added to all this, public prejudice ran high against the unfor- 
 tunate accused. The minds of the jurymen had been prepossessed 
 against them by inflammatory statements in the public news- 
 papers, and an infuriated mob loaded them with execrations on 
 their way to Newgate, and clamoured for their conviction. But 
 the Lord Mayor, Sir Crisp Gascoigne, having learned that Hall 
 had afterwards retracted the evidence she gave on the trial, with 
 praiseworthy humanity forwarded a memorial to the king, solicit- 
 ing a respite, and thus their lives were saved. 
 
 f In the course of Canning's trial for wilful and corrupt per- 
 jury, which took place in the month of April, 1754, Fielding's 
 conduct in the examination of Hall did not escape observation. 
 From the account of that examination, as quoted from The 
 Gentleman's Magazine, it is questionable whether, in his anxiety 
 to secure the conviction of the presumed offenders, he did not 
 display more of the zeal of the partisan than the impartiality 
 of the magistrate. It may, indeed, be urged in his favour, that 
 he was deceived by the demeanour of Hall, and that he attri- 
 buted her hesitation and prevarication to her fear of the ven- 
 geance of Wells and Squires. 
 
 ' But it was complained of him, and with great justice, that, 
 instead of taking her confession viva voce, he allowed her to be 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 25 
 
 sent out of the room with Canning's solicitor, when her evidence 
 was reduced to writing, and was two hours in preparation. 
 f After this/ said Mr. Willes, the prosecuting counsel against 
 Canning, ' what mighty wonder is there that, when she came 
 into the justice's presence again, she should repeat her lesson 
 without the least hesitation?' 
 
 ' After a very lengthened trial, Elizabeth Canning was con- 
 victed, and sentenced to seven years' transportation the highest 
 punishment to which her offence was liable by law, and cer- 
 tainly not adequate to its enormity. Many of the aldermen, 
 however, although the falsity of her story was proved beyond 
 a doubt, strenuously advocated a milder punishment, eight of 
 them voting for six months' imprisonment. * * * * * * 
 
 ' As to Canning, she persisted to her death's day in main- 
 taining the truth of her story. Though great interest was 
 exerted to procure a reversal of her sentence, it was carried 
 into execution, and she was shipped to the plantations, never to 
 return. She died at Wethersfield, in Connecticut, on the 22nd 
 of July, 1773 ; and the record of her death in The Gentleman's 
 Magazine for that year is accompanied by the observation, 
 that notwithstanding the many strange circumstances of her 
 story, none is so strange as that it should not be discovered in so 
 many years where she had concealed herself during the time she 
 had invariably declared she was at the house of Mother Wells.' '* 
 
 In 1836, Lord Lyndhurst, in his speech in the House of 
 Lords on the Prisoner's Counsel Bill, said, while adverting to 
 the strange and capricious disabilities under which prisoners 
 laboured with regard to the aid of counsel 
 
 1 1 shall be enabled to show to your lordships that these are 
 remnants of a barbarous code of laws relating to felons, which 
 have been all got rid of with the single exception of the anomaly 
 which it is the object of this bill to remove. Formerly, in 
 cases of felony, the counsel were not allowed to cross-examine 
 the witnesses, or to suggest objections on points of law. The 
 unhappy and ignorant prisoner at the bar had the liberty of 
 suggesting a legal objection, it is true ; but he must do so of 
 himself, without any consultation with counsel : it was taken 
 into consideration by the judge, and if he thought fit, the 
 
 * Life, of Henry Fielding. By Frederic Lawrence. London, 1855, pp. 32O-7.6. 
 
26 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 question was argued by counsel appointed for the purpose. In 
 cases of felony, no witnesses were examined on the part of the 
 prisoner, until Queen Mary sent down directions to the Chief 
 Justice of the Court of Common Pleas to take evidence on the 
 part of the accused, as well as against him. Still the law re- 
 mained imperfect, because, though witnesses were examined, 
 they were not examined upon oath. Lawyers are sometimes 
 very astute at finding out reasons to support every existing in- 
 stitution, and they assigned a very singular reason for this prac- 
 tice. They said it originated in lenity towards the prisoner, 
 because the witness, not being bound by an oath, would speak 
 largely and beneficially for him. This was rather a singular 
 doctrine, the object of a court of justice being to elicit the truth ; 
 but let your lordships mark its practical effect, as exhibited in 
 numerous instances in the State Trials the witnesses against 
 the prisoner being examined on oath, and those in his favour 
 not being examined on oath. The moment the judge began to 
 sum up the evidence to the jury, and to contrast the evidence 
 for the prosecution with that given on the part of the prisoner, 
 he always took care to inform the jury that, in estimating the 
 degree of weight which was to be attached to the testimony on 
 each side, they must not lose sight of the important fact, that 
 the witnesses for the prosecution were examined on oath, whilst 
 those for the defence were free from that obligation/* 
 
 The practice of refusing to the prisoner the right of rebutting 
 the evidence for the Crown, given upon oath, by evidence offered 
 under the same sanction, is thus reprobated with just indigna- 
 tion by Mr. Phillimore : ' Among the many acts of flagrant 
 iniquity established by the judges, and revered by the English, 
 under the name of the common law, perhaps the most perfectly 
 tyrannical and oppressive was the regulation that witnesses in 
 behalf of the prisoner should not be sworn. For this abomi- 
 nable injustice, Lord Coke, who as advocate and as judge 
 invariably enforced, and as legislator never attempted to 
 amend it, declares there was not so much as a ' scintilla juris.' 
 It was a direct violation of natural right, committed by the 
 judges, and followed implicitly, because it was a precedent. 
 The House of Commons, indeed, when felonies committed by 
 
 * Mirror of Parliament, 1836. 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 27 
 
 Englishmen in Scotland were ordered to be tried in one of the 
 three northern counties, against the efforts of the Lords and 
 the Crown, carried a provision, that the witnesses for the pri- 
 soner should be examined upon oath. This was in the year 
 1607. Yet, with an infatuation which will surprise no one who 
 has studied the history of the reformation of admitted abuses 
 in this country, the old absurd law was allowed to prevail in 
 the case of all persons not tried for a felony committed in Scot- 
 land, or in one of the three northern counties, formerly stigma- 
 tized as it was by an act of the Legislature ; nor was it until 
 the first year of Queen Anne's reign that a practice so repug- 
 nant to the common instincts of social creatures was, notwith- 
 standing the judges, abolished, and it was provided that all 
 witnesses for a prisoner, as well as those against him, should 
 be examined upon oath/* 
 
 This passage is only one of many in Mr. Phillimore's book, 
 showing how appropriate is the motto which the author has 
 prefixed to his work : 
 
 ' And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth 
 afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot 
 enter/ Isaiah lix. 14. 
 
 On the origin of these barbarous prohibitions no light has 
 been thrown, save by conjecture. 
 
 ' The grand jury, or commission of twelve or more, to make 
 presentment of offences, is/ says Mr. Robert Hall, ' essentially 
 Saxon, only the proceeding was more like a trial by grand 
 jury, if there were reason to suppose that the accused was per- 
 mitted to take any part in it. Their duties were, in fact, more 
 like those of the coroner's jury of the present day. They were 
 called upon to inquire, not whether there was a sufficient primd 
 facie case against A. B., but whether a crime had been com- 
 mitted, and who was the criminal. They had, therefore, to give 
 a careful consideration to the whole case. ****** 
 
 ' I have sometimes thought that in this state of things I 
 could detect the reason for some anomalies which long dis- 
 figured our criminal procedure. Why was the prisoner not 
 allowed to call witnesses ? Because he was allowed to insist 
 on all being called who had gone before the grand jury/t 
 
 * Pliillimore's History and Principles of the Law of Evidence, p. 484. 
 f Hall's Inaugural Lecture on Common Law, p. 14. 
 
28 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 Mr. Hall offers, also, a conjecture as to the origin of the re- 
 markable distinction which prevailed for so many ages in our 
 law, by virtue of which the prisoner, while permitted the assis- 
 tance of counsel to argue points of law for him, was deprived of 
 all professional aid as to matters of fact ; but it would not be 
 easy to make the ground of his hypothesis intelligible to the 
 general reader. 
 
 Nor is it clear that in very early times full counsel was dis- 
 allowed to the prisoner. Several authors, among whom may 
 be mentioned Blackstone, believe this disability to be an innova- 
 tion on the more ancient common law.* 
 
 That twenty years have scarcely elapsed since the law of Eng- 
 land, so vaunted for its humanity, refused to prisoners on trial 
 for their lives the aid of counsel to address the jury on their 
 behalf, is a fact which will surprise many readers who cannot be 
 considered as ill-informed persons. This I know from actual 
 experience. 
 
 So completely has the propriety of the change which took 
 place in ] 836 approved itself to all the world, that controversy 
 on the subject has long ago ceased; consequently, those who 
 have grown up since the passing of the Prisoner's Counsel Bill 
 were not unlikely to be ignorant of the monstrous enormity 
 which had so long hampered the administration of justice, and 
 so often perverted its results. 
 
 That great bill gave to every person accused of any offence 
 the right to be heard by full counsel, as it is called ; that is to 
 say, his advocate may not only cross-examine the witnesses 
 against him, call and examine witnesses for him, and argue 
 points of law which arise on the trial, but he may now address 
 the tribunal which is to decide upon the facts, whether a jury, 
 as in the case of a commoner, or the House of Lords, as in 
 that of a peer of Parliament. It was attempted to give him 
 the last word before the surnming-up of the judge. I could 
 wish that this humane provision had formed part of the 
 Act. 
 
 At various times, and by various means, full counsel had 
 been gained in all cases except in felonies ; but as this 
 is a more numerous class of offences than all the others 
 
 * Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 355. 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 29 
 
 put together, the hardship undergone by prisoners was one 
 of daily and hourly occurrence. The flagrant injustice which 
 had been perpetrated under the Stuarts in trials for high 
 treason, for want of counsel and sworn witnesses for the 
 prisoner, had so forcibly impressed itself on the public mind, 
 that, within seven years after the revolution, it was provided 
 by statute that in all such cases both defects should be 
 remedied.* 
 
 No small part of this impression was doubtless caused by the 
 trial of the seven bishops, whose acquittal had such a powerful 
 effect in producing the overthrow of James II. 
 
 The charge against the bishops was that of publishing a 
 seditious libel, contained in a petition which they had presented 
 to the king, directed against the lawfulness of the dispensing 
 power assumed by the Crown. 
 
 The offence charged was inferior in degree to felony, and the 
 defendants were therefore entitled to full counsel. The advocates 
 for the prisoners, among whom Somers, then a young man, greatly 
 distinguished himself, attacked the dispensing power with courage, 
 learning, and eloquence ; and having succeeded in convincing the 
 jury, they must, by the verdict delivered on that memorable day, 
 be deemed to have given the death-blow to this odious doctrine. f 
 Hence, it would be deeply felt that the interests of the public, 
 as well as of the prisoner, called alike for the extension of 
 the same privilege to trials for high treason which had wrought 
 such excellent results in a trial for misdemeanour. Nothing, 
 however, can show in more striking colours our general apathy 
 to the wrongs of prisoners, and our slavery to habit, than that 
 the Legislature should have stopped short at high treason, and 
 should not have extended the remedy to cases of felony, 
 and thus made it as broad as the evil with which it was to 
 cope. 
 
 The inconsistent and unmeaning state of the law, when tried 
 by any principle, will be made obvious by a short extract from 
 my evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords, in 
 the year 1835 : 
 
 Q. ( In cases where popular feeling is a good deal excited, 
 where men are tried for riot or insurrection, do not you think 
 
 * 7 William III. c. 3. 
 t Macaulay's History of England, vol. ii., chaps. 8 and 9. 
 
30 Sequel to Charge of July, 1 839. 
 
 it [a speech to the jury] might operate too much in favour of 
 prisoners ? ' 
 
 A. ' Riots are in general misdemeanours, and insurrections 
 are high treason ; and, in misdemeanours and high treason, the 
 law, as it stands, allows full counsel to prisoners. The caprice 
 of the law, in this respect, is almost ludicrous. I am charged 
 with holding up my stick at another ; he prosecutes me for a 
 common assault ; my counsel may speak for me the whole day ; 
 but let that stick have a nail at the end of it, and let me be 
 accused of puncturing my opponent with it, and my alleged 
 offence becomes a felony ; then, my life being at stake, my 
 counsel cannot speak ; but let me be charged with doing it as 
 an overt act of treason, and with striking at some one in the 
 prosecution of a design (for instance to compass the king's 
 death), and then, when it becomes the highest crime known to 
 the law, I am allowed full counsel ! '* 
 
 Who can measure the injustice and cruelty which this delay 
 of a century and a half must have inflicted upon that most 
 unhappy class of men, the class judicially accused of crime ! 
 Nor can this long period of apathy be altogether attributed to 
 want of reflection. The minds of men had not been unconscious 
 of the injustice which they continued to practice. As early as 
 the year 1684 even Jeffreys condemned the prohibition. In his 
 summing-up on the trial of Thomas Rosewell, a Dissenting 
 minister, for high treason, he told the jury that ' he thought it 
 a hard case that a man should have counsel to defend himself 
 for a twopenny trespass, and his witnesses be examined upon 
 oath ; but if he stole, committed murder or felony, nay, high 
 treason, where life, estate, honour, and all were concerned, 
 that he should neither have counsel, nor have his witnesses 
 examined upon oath.'f 
 
 In the year 1749 appeared Fielding's greatest work, Tom 
 Jones, where Partridge is made to convey a lesson which must 
 have been read by thousands without producing any practical 
 result. He reports a trial, at which he represents himself to 
 have been present, before the notorious Mr. Justice Page :J 
 ' Well, at last, down came my Lord Justice Page to hold the 
 
 * House of Lords' Committee for Prisoner's Defence Bill, I7th July, 1835, P- 
 
 t Howell's State Trials, vol. x., p. 207. 
 "Hard words or hanging, if your judge be Page." POPE. 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 31 
 
 assizes, and so the fellow was had up, and Frank was had up 
 as a witness. To be sure I shall never forget the face of the 
 judge when he began to ask him what he had to say against the 
 prisoner. He made poor Frank tremble and shake in his shoes. 
 ' Well, you fellow/ says my lord, ' what have you to say ? 
 Don't stand humming and hawing, but speak out/ But, how- 
 ever, he soon turned altogether as civil to Frank, and began to 
 thunder at the fellow; and when he asked him if he had any- 
 thing to say for himself, the fellow said he ' had found the horse/ 
 ' Ay/ answered the judge, ' thou art a lucky fellow. I have 
 travelled the circuit these forty years, and never found a horse 
 in my life. But Fll tell thee what, friend, thou wast more 
 lucky than thou didst know of ; for thou didst not only find a 
 horse, but a halter too, I promise thee/ 
 
 f To be sure I shall never forget the words, upon which every- 
 body fell a laughing, as how could they help it? Nay, and 
 twenty other jests he made which I can't remember now. There 
 was something about his skill in horseflesh which made all the 
 folks laugh. To be certain, the judge must have been a very 
 brave man, as well as a man of much learning. It is, indeed, 
 charming sport to hear trials upon life and death. One thing, 
 I own, I thought it a little hard that the prisoner's counsel was 
 not suffered to speak for him, though he desired only to be heard 
 one very short word. But my lord would not hearken to him, 
 
 though he suffered Counsellor to talk against him for 
 
 above half an hour. I thought it hard, I own, that there should 
 be so many of them my lord, and the court, and the jury, and 
 the counsellors, and the witnesses all upon one poor man, and 
 he, too, in chains/* 
 
 Again, in 1765, Sir William Blackstone, speaking of the 
 prohibition of full counsel in felonies, says : ' This rule seems to 
 be not at all of a piece with the rest of the humane treatment 
 of prisoners by the English law ; for upon what face of reason 
 can that assistance be denied to save the life of a man which 
 is yet allowed him in prosecutions for every petty trespass ? 'f 
 
 The tone of Blackstone's work is that of praise where 
 eulogy is possible, and of apology where it is impossible. Now 
 
 * Tom Jones, vol. vi., pp. 463-4. London, 1784. 
 t Commentaries, vol. iv., p. 355. 
 
32 Sequel to Charge of July } 1839. 
 
 and then, however, he speaks out in bold condemnation. His 
 contemporaries accepted his eulogy of our law with applause ; 
 yet his censures produced but little effect, scattered as they 
 are over his pages at distant intervals. His seductive optimism 
 long survived. It became the creed of the student, and none 
 of the young men of my time escaped its influence. 
 
 A firm belief in the surpassing excellence of English law 
 connected itself with even a stronger faith in the perfection of 
 .its administration, especially in our criminal courts ; and if I 
 may judge of others by myself, as I believe I may, nothing so 
 jarred upon the ear of the young lawyer as a suggestion that 
 the life of an innocent prisoner was not perfectly safe under 
 the guardianship of our juries. I was in the first year of my 
 studentship when the memorable case of Eliza Eenning came 
 under public discussion ; and as it bears directly on the evil of 
 the disability of the prisoner's counsel to address the jury, and 
 is also a case of great interest in itself, I hope I shall be 
 pardoned for giving a succinct account of it to my readers. 
 
 Eliza Fenning was a young domestic servant in the family 
 of a Mr. Turner, law stationer, in Chancery-lane. In the year 
 1815, she was convicted and executed 011 a charge of having 
 attempted to poison four persons of her master's family by means 
 of arsenic introduced into yeast dumplings, of which the prisoner 
 herself ate. In each case, including that of the prisoner, severe 
 sickness was caused by the food ; but no death followed. 
 
 The proof given at the trial of the presence of arsenic was 
 of the most unsatisfactory kind. Indications were relied upon 
 which are well known to be utterly fallacious. The dumplings 
 were said not to rise when placed before the fire in the state of 
 dough. But it has been proved, by frequent experiment, that 
 no such effect can be produced by arsenic except when exist- 
 ing in such large proportion as would have inevitably caused 
 the death of each of the five persons who partook of the food. 
 But what is more to the purpose, as affecting the conduct of the 
 case, is that the medical witness who stated this fact to be an 
 indication of the presence of arsenic, was never asked if he had 
 tried the experiment. Again, the knives used at dinner were 
 found in a blackened state ; but, as before, the medical witness 
 w r ho spoke to that circumstance as being an indication that 
 they had come into contact with arsenic, appears never to have 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 33 
 
 verified his opinion by experiment ; and it is now well known 
 that arsenic would produce no discoloration.* 
 
 The only remaining fact as to arsenic, was that a white 
 powder had been obtained by washing the tin pan in which the 
 prisoner had made the dumplings. It does not appear that 
 any test was applied to ascertain what this powder really was, 
 beyond washing it again with water. 
 
 If to this testimony be added the general assertion of the 
 medical witness, that the symptoms attending the sickness con- 
 vinced him the patients were suffering from the effects of arsenic, 
 we have the whole evidence given to prove the corpus delicti, or 
 in other words, the whole evidence to show that a crime was 
 committed. 
 
 At the Old Bailey, the Corporation of London, much to their 
 credit, employ a short- hand writer to take down the evidence 
 verbatim, in the form of question and answer, so that we know 
 
 * BKISTOL LABORATORY, 
 July 27th, 1854. 
 
 SIR, In reply to the question you p\it to me a few days ago, I may observe 
 that, from the results of some experiments which your son, Mr. Berkeley Hill, has 
 made at my request in this laboratory, it appears that when arsenious acid (white 
 arsenic) is added in small quantity to the flour employed in the preparation of 
 yeast dumplings, the latter cannot be distinguished in appearance from those made 
 in the ordinary way with pure flour and yeast. 
 
 No difference, indeed, can be perceived even when a fourth part by weight of 
 arsenious acid is added to the flour. When, however, the latter is mixed with an 
 equal quantity of arsenic, the dumplings become what is commonly termed 'heavy,' 
 that is to say, though the dough rises well in the oven, on boiling, the vesicles 
 disappear, and the mass becomes, comparatively speaking, dense and tenacious. 
 
 In conclusion, I should state that arsenious acid does not seem to possess the 
 property of tarnishing steel. At all events, the knives that we employed in cutting 
 up the arsenicated dumplings before alluded to, were not more discoloured than 
 those used with the dumplings prepared in the ordinary manner, and without arsenic. 
 
 I remain, Sir, yours respectfully, 
 
 MR. COMMISSIONER HILL, &c. &c. THORNTON J. HERAPATH. 
 
 UNIVERSITY HALL, Gordon Square, 
 
 London, May 2nd, 1855. 
 
 DEAR FATHER, Mr. Thornton Herapath and I having last year read the medical 
 evidence given on the trial of Eliza Fenning, made the experiments which are 
 described in his letter to you. 
 
 To what he says, I may add that if we had found the effect upon the knife to be 
 that of blackening it, such a consequence would have afforded no proof that the 
 discoloration had been produced by arsenic, steel knives being blackened by 
 coming in contact with many substances which enter into human food, as vinegar, 
 mustard, &c. 
 
 Dear Father, yours affectionately, 
 
 M. D. HILL, Esq., Q.C., &c. BERKELEY HILL. 
 
 D 
 
34 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 exactly what was said by the witnesses ; and as the evidence of 
 Mr. Marshall, the medical witness, is very short, I will tran- 
 scribe it word for word. 
 
 ' Mr. John Marshall sworn : I am a surgeon. On the even- 
 ing of Tuesday, the sist of March, I was sent for to Mr. Turner's 
 family. I got there about a quarter before nine o'clock. All 
 the symptoms attending the family were produced by arsenic. 
 I have no doubt of it, by the symptoms. The prisoner was also 
 ill, by the same I have no doubt. 
 
 Q. 'Did Mr. Orlibar Turner show you a dish the next morning ? 
 
 A. ' He did. I examined it. I washed it with a tea-kettle of 
 warm water. I first stirred it, and let it subside. I decanted it 
 off. I found half a tea-spoonful of white powder. I washed it 
 the second time. I decidedly found it to be arsenic. 
 
 Q. ' Will arsenic, cut with a knife, produce the appearance of 
 blackness upon the knife ? 
 
 A. ' I have no doubt of it.' 
 
 Q. ' Did you examine the remains of the yeast ? 
 
 A. ( Yes, there was not a grain of arsenic there ; and I examined 
 the flour-tub, there was no arsenic there/* 
 
 Such was the proof on which a jury was all but directed to 
 find that the crime of poisoning had been committed. 
 
 With regard to the alleged motive, it was of the slightest kind. 
 
 Some weeks before the act the mistress had reprimanded the 
 prisoner for an impropriety, and had also given her warning to 
 quit the service, which warning, however, had been withdrawn 
 on the prisoner expressing contrition. 
 
 It was not surmised that either of the other sufferers had 
 given the prisoner any offence. 
 
 When against this hypothesis of permanent malice prompting 
 a crime of such enormity, is placed the fact that the prisoner was 
 herself one of the sufferers, it seems equally difficult to account 
 for guilt being fixed upon her, as it is to understand how the 
 conclusion was arrived at that a crime had been committed at all. 
 
 The reader will at once perceive that the right of counsel to 
 address the jury would in such a case have been invaluable, and 
 could hardly have failed to prevent, what I have now for forty 
 years believed to be, the sacrifice of an innocent life. 
 
 * Tlie Important Results of an Elaborate Investigation into the Mysterious Case 
 of Elizabeth Penning. Hone, Fleet- street. 1815. 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 35 
 
 A Report of the trial, with much additional matter, and 
 many shrewd observations on the case, was published by William 
 Hone, who afterwards became celebrated in various ways. 
 
 Shortly after the execution I saw the advertisement of his 
 work, the publication of which was postponed from time to time 
 while the author was collecting additional matter. I made 
 frequent inquiries for it at Mr. Hone's shop, attributing the 
 delay to the author's failure in establishing his imputations in 
 derogation of the verdict. At length it came forth, and never 
 shall I forget the shock I underwent in reading that book. 
 At this distance of time, it may be perused by the student 
 with less pain than I had to endure, and it will enable him (if 
 he should believe as I do, that it is absolutely impossible such 
 a case should occur at the present day) to measure our inter- 
 mediate progress in the administration of criminal justice.* 
 
 The public apathy to which I have adverted can hardly be 
 more forcibly illustrated than by the fact, that it was not until 
 the year 1824 that any attempt was made in Parliament to 
 remove the disability of prisoners to be defended by full counsel. 
 It ought, however, in candour to be stated, that several excellent 
 persons were adverse to the change, in the sincere belief that the 
 allowance of counsel to prisoners would not tend to elicit truth. 
 Of these some objected to counsel being heard to address the jury 
 on either side, timidly following in the steps of Bentham, who 
 
 * The following passage, although I must have read it, had passed from my 
 memory previous to writing the foregoing notice of Fenning's case. It is, say the 
 Editors of Sir Samuel Romilly's Memoirs, extracted from one of his MSS. : 
 
 ' The case of Eliza Penning is that of a servant girl who, in the month of April, 
 1815, was tried at the Old Bailey, before the Recorder of London, for the crime of 
 administering poison to her master and mistress, and her master's father, which, 
 by an Act of Parliament, commonly called Lord Ellenborough's Act, has been made 
 a capital felony. The only evidence to affect^ the prisoner was circumstantial. The 
 poison was contained in dumplings made by her ; but then she had eaten of them 
 herself ; had been as ill as any of the persons whom she was supposed to have 
 intended to poison ; and her eating of them could not be ascribed to art, or to an 
 attempt to conceal her crime, for she had made no effort whatever to remove the 
 strongest evidence of guilt if guilt there was. She had left the dish unwashed ; 
 and the proof that arsenic was mixed in it was furnished by its being found in the 
 kitchen on the following day, exactly in the state in which it had been brought 
 from table. No motive, besides, could be discovered for an act so atrocious. Her 
 mistress had, indeed, reproved her about three weeks before for some indiscretion 
 of conduct, and had given her warning, but had afterwards consented to continue 
 her in her service. This was the only provocation for murdering, not her mistress 
 
36 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 disapproved of advocacy in any form, in either civil or criminal 
 cases. 
 
 The general proposition is intelligible, though, as I think, 
 most erroneous. But how a distinction could be drawn between 
 civil and criminal cases, I was never able to apprehend ; and, 
 if there be degrees of impossibility, was I less able to apprehend 
 how the distinction should be made to restrict the privileges of 
 a person accused of crime : for, supposing distinction could be 
 established, one should naturally expect it to be favourable to 
 him whose life was at stake rather than to him whose property 
 alone was in question. 
 
 In the year 1824, Mr. George Lamb, the brother of the late 
 Lord Melbourne, brought the subject under the consideration 
 of the House of Commons. He was supported by Sir James 
 Mackintosh, Dr. Lushington, and Mr. Denman, and opposed by 
 Attorney- General Copley, afterwards Lord Lyndhurst, and 
 Solicitor- General Wetherall. 
 
 On the division, 50 voted for, and 80 against the motion.* 
 
 Ten years afterwards, conversing with Lord Lyndhurst, who 
 was still opposed to the measure, he told me that his speech had 
 converted Mr. Canning, who was previously favourable to the 
 change. 
 
 In the year 3826 the pen of Sydney Smith was employed 
 in the cause of the prisoner. He addressed the world through 
 that powerful organ, The Edinburgh Review, and I cannot resist 
 the temptation to insert a portion of his article : 
 
 only, but her master also, and the father of her master. A crime of such enormity, 
 produced by so very slight a cause, has probably never occurred in the history of 
 human depravity. 
 
 'The Recorder, however, appeared to have conceived a strong prejudice against 
 the prisoner. In summing up the evidence, he made some very unjust and 
 unfounded observations to her disadvantage, and she was convicted. The singu- 
 larity of the trial attracted the notice of many persons to her case. They interested 
 themselves in her favour. They applied to the Crown for mercy. The master of 
 the girl was requested to sign a petition in her behalf ; but, at the instance of the 
 Recorder, he refused to sign it. An offer was made to prove that there was in the 
 house, when the transaction took place, a person who had laboured a Short time 
 before under mental derangement, and in that state had declared his fears that he 
 should at some time destroy himself and his family ; but all this was unavailing : 
 the sentence was executed, and the girl died, apparently under a strong sense of the 
 truths of religion, but solemnly protesting to the last moment that she was inno- 
 cent.' Memoirs of Sir S. Romilly, 8vo., vol. 3, note p. 235 (edit. 1840). 
 * Hansard, New Series, vol. xi. 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 37 
 
 ' It is a most affecting moment in a court of justice, when 
 the evidence has all been heard, and the judge asks the prisoner 
 what he has to say in his defence. The prisoner, who has (by 
 great exertions, perhaps, of his friends) saved up money enough 
 to procure counsel, says to the judge, ' that he leaves his defence 
 to his counsel/ We have often blushed for English humanity 
 to hear the reply, ' Your counsel cannot speak for you, you must 
 speak for yourself/ And this is the reply given to a poor girl 
 of eighteen to a foreigner to a deaf man to a stammerer 
 to the sick to the feeble to the old to the most abject and 
 ignorant of human beings ! It is a reply, we must say, at which 
 common sense and common feeling revolt ; for it is full of brutal 
 cruelty, and of base inattention of those who make laws to the 
 happiness of those for whom laws were made. We wonder that 
 any jury man can convict under such a shocking violation of all 
 natural justice. The iron age of Clovis and Clotaire can produce 
 no more atrocious violation of every good feeling and every 
 good principle. Can a sick man find strength and nerves to 
 speak before a large assembly ? Can an ignorant man find 
 words ? Can a low man find confidence ? Is not he afraid of 
 becoming an object of ridicule ? Can he believe that his expres- 
 sions will be understood? How often have we seen a poor 
 wretch, struggling against the agonies of his spirit, and the 
 rudeness of his conceptions, and his awe of better dressed men 
 and better taught men, and the shame which the accusation has 
 brought upon his head, and the sight of his parents and children 
 gazing at him in the court, for the last time, perhaps, and after a 
 long absence. The mariner sinking in the wave does not want 
 a helping hand more than does this poor w r retch. But help is 
 denied to all ! Age cannot have it, nor ignorance, nor the 
 modesty of women ! One hard uncharitable rule silences the 
 defenders of the wretched in the worst of human evils ; and at 
 the bitterest of human moments mercy is blotted out from the 
 ways of men ! 3 * 
 
 In the same year Mr. George Lamb made a second attempt. 
 He was supported by Mr. Horace Twiss in an admirable speech ; 
 by Mr. John Williams, afterwards the judge ; by Mr. Brougham, 
 Mr. Denman, Mr. Scarlett, and Lord Althorpe; but was 
 
 * Edinburgh Review (1826), vol. xiv., p. 5. 
 
38 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 opposed by Attorney- General Copley; by Mr. Peel, afterwards 
 Sir Robert Peel ; Mr. Tyndal, Solicitor- General Wetherall, and 
 Mr. Canning. On that occasion the ayes were 36, while the 
 noes were 105,* so that instead of making progress, the question 
 would seem to have lost ground. Nothing further was done in 
 Parliament until 1834, when the Prisoner's Counsel Bill, intro- 
 duced by Mr. Ewart, passed the House of Commons, but did 
 not find its way through the House of Lords. The debate was 
 taken on the motion of Mr. Ewart for the second reading of 
 the bill, a motion which I had the honour to second. It was 
 supported by Mr. Pollock, now Chief Baron, Lord Althorpe, 
 and Mr. O'Connell ; and opposed by Serjeant Spankie ; but it 
 passed without a division.f 
 
 In 1835, Mr. Ewart was again at his post; but having been 
 intermediately deprived of my seat, I lost the privilege of 
 assisting him. On moving to commit the bill, he was supported 
 by Attorney- General Campbell, Mr. Blackburne, Mr. Charles 
 Buller, Mr. O'Connell, Dr. Lushington, and Mr. Serjeant 
 Talfourd; and was opposed by Mr. Poulter and Mr. Serjeant 
 Goulburn.J On the third reading there was a second debate. 
 Sir George Strickland and Mr. Charles Buller supporting the 
 motion, and Sir Eardley Wilmot and Mr. Poulter opposing it. 
 The ayes were 43, noes, 36. 
 
 In the year j 836 Mr. Ewart again persevered. The second 
 reading was supported by Mr. Ewart, Mr. O'Connell, Mr. Pollock, 
 Dr. Lushington, and Attorney -General Campbell, and was 
 opposed by Sir Eardley Wilmot, the Chairman of the Warwick- 
 shire Sessions, who stated that nine-tenths of the legal profession 
 and of the judges were adverse to the measure. It was also 
 opposed by Serjeant Goulburn, now one of the Commissioners 
 in Bankruptcy. 
 
 As I have mentioned the names of these two gentlemen, Sir 
 Eardley Wilmot and Serjeant Goulburn, let me pause a 
 moment that I may bear witness to their kindness of heart. 
 Sir Eardley Wilmot was one of the earliest advocates for the 
 reformatory treatment of juvenile offenders, as his published 
 works will prove. He was one of the founders of the Asylum 
 at Stretton-on-Dunsmoor, and a steady and active supporter of 
 
 * Hansard, New Series, vol. xv. f Ibid., Third Series, vol. xxiv. 
 
 J Hansard t Third Series, vol. xxviii. Ibid., vol. xxix. 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 39 
 
 
 
 the institution until his death. Serjeant Goulburn's friendship 
 I have enjoyed for more than thirty years; and I look back 
 with much pleasure on many acts of kindness to myself and 
 others, which testify most conclusively to his amiable disposition. 
 
 For the second reading the ayes were 179, the noes 35. 
 When the Bill went up to the House of Lords, it was twice 
 debated. On the first occasion Lord Lyndhurst gave a history 
 of the Bill, and of the change in his own opinion, which it will 
 be interesting to read. ' In the year 1 834,' he said, ' a Bill, 
 similar to this in principle, passed the House of Commons. It 
 came up to your lordships, it was read a first time, and no 
 further proceedings took place upon it. In the last year the 
 Bill was again renewed. It passed the other House of Parlia- 
 ment without a division, came up to your lordships, and was 
 referred to a select committee. But these proceedings took 
 place so late in the Session it was impossible that that 
 committee could make a satisfactory report. Nothing further, 
 therefore, could be done beyond printing the evidence. At the 
 commencement of this Session of Parliament, the present Bill, 
 founded on the principle of the former, was again introduced 
 into the other House of Parliament. It was in consequence, I 
 presume, of the proceedings which I have detailed, that it was 
 referred to a select committee, which reported in favour of it, 
 and it passed to your lordships' house by a great majority. 
 That Bill is now upon your table for consideration and dis- 
 cussion. His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home 
 Department directed the Commission, which had been appointed 
 to investigate the state of the criminal law of this country, to 
 turn their attention to this subject. That Commission have 
 accordingly done so ; they have investigated the subject fully, 
 and they have exarnir ed witnesses the most qualified to throw 
 light upon it. They have made a most elaborate and learned 
 report upon this subject; and they unanimously recommend 
 that the principle of this Bill should be adopted. It is under 
 these circumstances, and with this sanction, that the measure is 
 now submitted to your lordships' consideration. 
 
 ' But the case does not rest here the current of ancient 
 authority sets still more strongly in my favour. I have to cite 
 the opinions of Whitelock, who had been one of the Com- 
 missioners of the Great Seal, and of Judge Jeffreys, as being 
 
40 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 in favour of the principle of this Bill. I find that there stands 
 opposed to me the name of the respected and venerable Sir 
 Michael Foster; but he does not express himself very strongly 
 upon the subject. He says : ' I am far from disputing the 
 propriety of this rule (that of refusing counsel to address juries 
 for the prisoner in cases of felony) ; in all these cases we must 
 be guided by a balance of evils and inconveniences/ 
 
 ' My Lords, I admit the authority, and even the doubts of 
 that learned judge to be entitled to great attention; and it was 
 in consequence partly of these doubts that, after examining 
 what might, in my mind, be the evils likely to arise from a 
 change of system, I, on a former occasion, opposed a measure 
 of this description when introduced into the other House. But, 
 my Lords, I have since had reason to observe the progress of 
 public opinion on the subject : I made inquiries respecting it 
 while at the Bar. I have, when on the Bench, watched its 
 progress, and seen the working of the system ; and the result 
 has been, to produce a conviction in my mind that the evils 
 and inconveniences of allowing counsel to prisoners have been 
 greatly exaggerated, and ought not to be put for a moment in 
 competition with that which the obvious justice of the case so 
 clearly demands/* 
 
 The measure in the House of Lords was twice debated this 
 year, but on neither occasion did the house divide. It was 
 supported by Lord Wynford (formerly Chief Justice of the Com- 
 mon Pleas) , Lord Denman, Lord Abinger, and Lord Cotteiiham, 
 then Lord Chancellor, Lord Plunket, Lord Radnor, and the 
 Duke of Richmond ; and was opposed by the Lords Wharncliffe, 
 a Chairman of Sessions, and Lord Devon. 
 
 In that same year the Bill received the royal assent, since which 
 time I am not aware that a single voice has been raised against 
 it. We may smile now at the exaggerated apprehensions which 
 were entertained as to its practical consequences. It was 
 thought the eloquence of counsel on the one side or on the 
 other would so warp the verdicts of juries as to produce a 
 failure of justice. Great fears were also expressed as to the 
 effect of the measure in lengthening trials, and a total dis- 
 arrangement was anticipated in the administration of criminal 
 
 * Mirror of Parliament. Barrow, 1836. Vol. Hi., p. aoai. 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 41 
 
 law. Experience, however, has shown that cross-examinations 
 have been so much shortened by relieving the advocate from 
 the necessity to which he was before driven of addressing the 
 jury in a circuitous and indirect manner, through the medium 
 of argumentative questions to the witnesses, that it is very 
 doubtful if, on the whole, trials are longer than they were before 
 the change. 
 
 The anticipations of practical mischief from the working of 
 the measure entertained by men of large experience in criminal 
 courts, as contrasted with its utter harmlessness with regard to 
 inconvenience, and its great benefit in the aid which it affords 
 in eliciting the truth, furnish a warning against our permitting 
 our minds to be drawn away from the advancement of sound 
 principles by alarms as to difficulties of detail. 
 
 Mr. Charles Phillips, a witness of deserved weight and 
 authority, when examined before the Committee of the House 
 of Lords of 1835, used this remarkable expression : ' All theory 
 is in favour of the change ; all practice against it/ 
 
 My experience through life has been, that if a sound theory 
 be honestly reduced to practice, fewer difficulties will arise than 
 the fear of innovation would lead us to expect ; and that when 
 such difficulties do present themselves, surrounding circumstances 
 will suggest the means for overcoming or avoiding them. 
 
 Such is the history of the Prisoner's Counsel Bill. The 
 narrative by no means supports that belief in their superiority 
 which Englishmen are wont to entertain, especially when it is 
 remembered that long before 1836 every accused person tried 
 in any other part of the world except in England, Wales, or 
 Ireland, was placed under no restriction as to advocacy. Even 
 our own colonies, both .hose which remained to us and those 
 which had won their independence, had long remedied this 
 monstrous defect of English law. 
 
 Assuredly, neither as regards the rules of evidence, nor as 
 to aiding the prisoner in his defence, is there anything to show 
 that a spirit of mercy or of justice presided over our criminal 
 courts : yet, in the institution of juries, and in the usage of 
 open trial, it cannot be denied that we possessed advantages 
 overbalancing even the enormous evils which have been laid 
 before the reader. 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 Comparison of Number of Crimes committed with Convictions. 
 
 
 i 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 Years. 
 
 Number of 
 Forged Notes 
 presented at 
 the Bank of 
 England. 
 
 Number of 
 Persons 
 Convicted of 
 Forging and 
 uttering 
 Forged Notes. 
 
 Proportion of 
 Convictions to 
 Offences. 
 
 Number of 
 Persons 
 Executed for 
 Forgery 
 
 Proportion of 
 Executions to 
 Crimes com- 
 mitted. 
 
 1805 
 
 3,784 
 
 2 4 
 
 One in 158 
 
 13 
 
 One in 291 
 
 1806 
 
 4,160 
 
 9 
 
 462 
 
 II 
 
 378 
 
 1807 
 
 5,829 
 
 40 
 
 146 
 
 13 
 
 394 
 
 1808 
 
 4>938 
 
 3 2 
 
 154 
 
 5 
 
 987 
 
 1809 
 
 6,622 
 
 52 
 
 127 
 
 19 
 
 348 
 
 1810 
 
 5>449 
 
 26 
 
 210 
 
 18 
 
 303 
 
 1811 
 
 8,797 
 
 24 
 
 3 66 
 
 8 
 
 1,099 
 
 1812 
 
 17,885 
 
 52 
 
 344 
 
 23 
 
 777 
 
 1813 
 
 15,315 
 
 5 2 
 
 295 
 
 17 
 
 901 
 
 1814 
 
 14,722 
 
 44 
 
 334 
 
 6 
 
 2,453 
 
 1815 
 
 17,765 
 
 59 
 
 301 
 
 ii 
 
 1,615 
 
 1816 
 
 24,849 
 
 104 
 
 9 
 
 18 
 
 1,380 
 
 1817 
 
 31,180 
 
 128 
 
 243 
 
 18 
 
 i,732 
 
 1818 
 
 27,209 
 
 227 
 
 120 
 
 24 
 
 i,i33 
 
 1819 
 
 23,035 
 
 J93 
 
 119 
 
 14 
 
 i, 6 45 
 
 1820 
 
 29, 35 
 
 35 2 
 
 82 
 
 21 
 
 1,382 
 
 1821 
 
 18,126 
 
 J 34 
 
 T 35 
 
 16 
 
 i,*33 
 
 1822 
 
 3, 6 42 
 
 16 
 
 227 
 
 6 
 
 607 
 
 1823 
 
 1,648 
 
 6 
 
 275 
 
 2 
 
 824 
 
 Total . . 
 
 263,99of 
 
 i,574 
 
 One in 167 
 
 263 
 
 One in 1,003 
 
 1824 
 
 965 
 
 5 
 
 *93 
 
 I 
 
 965 
 
 1825 
 
 77 
 
 2 
 
 385 
 
 _ 
 
 Nil 
 
 1826 
 
 2,038 
 
 22 
 
 93 
 
 
 
 
 
 1827 
 1828 
 
 2,038 
 1,170 
 
 24 
 IO 
 
 87 
 117 
 
 2 
 2 
 
 1,019 
 
 585 
 
 1829 
 1830 
 
 1,117 
 613 
 
 14 
 I 
 
 80 
 613 
 
 I 
 
 1,117 
 
 Nil 
 
 1831 
 
 3 6 4 
 
 3 
 
 121 
 
 
 
 
 
 1832 
 
 424 
 
 4 
 
 106 
 
 
 
 
 
 1833 
 
 447 
 
 *3 
 
 52 
 
 
 
 Capital 
 
 1834 
 
 262 
 
 i 
 
 262 
 
 
 
 punishment 
 
 S 
 
 279 
 223 
 
 Nil 
 
 279 
 
 Nil 
 
 
 
 abolished. 
 
 1837 
 
 267 
 
 3 
 
 89 
 
 
 
 
 Average 
 
 10,977 
 
 103 
 
 One in 106 
 
 6 
 
 One in 1,583 
 
 Note. On the first division of the above table (18051823), the numbers executed are those for 
 forgeries of every description; the returns not distinguishing separately the executions for forging 
 and uttering forged bank-notes. In the latter division (18241837), the numbers executed are of 
 those who were convicted of the offences in the second column, while they continued capital. 
 
 * First Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire as to the lest means of 
 establishing an efficient Constabulary Force in the Counties of England and Wales, 1 839. 
 
 t It appears from a return laid before Parliament in May, 1818 (Paper No. 296), 
 and also from one moved for in June, 1821 (No. 673), that of 200,995 forged notes 
 presented for payment during the years 1812 to 1820 inclusive, J 73,241 were notes 
 for one pound, 19,367 for two pounds, 7,628 for five pounds, 544 for ten pounds, 
 2 for fifteen pounds, u6 for twenty pounds, and 35 for sums above twenty pounds. 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 43 
 
 By reference to the foregoing table it will be seen that there 
 have been no executions for forgery since the year 1829, 
 although capital punishment for that offence was not abolished 
 until the year 1833. At first, the proportion of convictions to 
 offences does not appear to have greatly changed ; but now that 
 the state of the law is well understood both by prosecutors and 
 witnesses, it would appear that such proportion has been 
 wonderfully raised. 
 
 The following table I owe to the kindness of Mr. Richard 
 Mullens, the solicitor to the Association of London Bankers. 
 
 Experience of the London Bankers 3 Association in Cases of 
 Forgery, and the Prosecutions and Convictions thereon, during 
 1 8 years (1836 1853). 
 
 Date. 
 
 Number of 
 Subscribers. 
 
 Cases of 
 Forgery 
 
 Paid. 
 
 Stopped. 
 
 Number of 
 Prosecutions. 
 
 Convic- 
 tions. 
 
 1836 
 
 2 9 
 
 12 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 5 
 
 37 
 
 29 
 
 14 
 
 13 
 
 i 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 38 
 
 23 
 
 16 
 
 10 
 
 6 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 39 
 
 2 4 
 
 12 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 1840 
 
 24 
 
 19 
 
 14 
 
 5 
 
 5 
 
 4 
 
 41 
 
 23 
 
 18 
 
 15 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 42 
 
 23 
 
 14 
 
 ii 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 43 
 
 2 9 
 
 21 
 
 18 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 44 
 45 
 
 26 
 26 
 
 15 
 30 
 
 12 
 20 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 46 
 
 26 
 
 23 
 
 20 
 
 3 
 
 5 
 
 5 
 
 47 
 
 25 
 
 25 
 
 14 
 
 ii 
 
 7 
 
 7 
 
 48 
 
 2 5 
 
 27 
 
 20 
 
 7 
 
 7 
 
 7 
 
 49 
 
 27 
 
 14 
 
 7 
 
 7 
 
 12 
 
 IT 
 
 1850 
 
 27 
 
 21 
 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 5 1 
 
 24 
 
 16 
 
 9 
 
 7 
 
 5 
 
 5 
 
 52 
 
 23 
 
 20 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 7 
 
 7 
 
 1853 
 
 24 
 
 21 
 
 9 
 
 12 
 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 
 Totals. . . 
 
 338 
 
 231 
 
 107 
 
 105 
 
 102 
 
 From this table it appears that the total number of forgeries 
 on the bankers who subscribed to this institution was 338, and 
 that the number of convictions was 102, so that nearly one- 
 third of the offenders were detected and prosecuted to convic- 
 tion. It also appears that the indisposition to convict, which 
 was so strong during the later years of capital punishment, is 
 at an end, as there were only three acquittals in 105 prosecu- 
 tions. The following questions to Mr. Mullens, with their 
 answers, will throw some additional light on the subject : 
 
44 
 
 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 i. The number of bankers 
 in the United Kingdom ? 
 
 2. Number of subscribers? 
 
 3. Do forgeries upon sub- 
 scribers comprise a very large 
 proportion of forgeries on all 
 the bankers in the Kingdom ? 
 
 4. What are the instruments 
 usually forged cheques, bills 
 of exchange, or bank notes ? 
 
 5. Does the circulation of 
 provincial notes increase the 
 number of forgeries in the 
 country ? 
 
 6. Has the disuse of i 
 notes anything to do with the 
 result, or is it attributable to 
 any other change in commer- 
 cial transactions ? 
 
 7. Is there increased vigi- 
 
 ANSWERS. 
 
 1. The number of bankers 
 in the United Kingdom is 630 
 (this includes London bankers, 
 viz., 76). 
 
 2. The subscribers do not 
 include all the London bankers. 
 The number varies annually 
 from 24 to 29. The Associa- 
 tion does not include any 
 country banks. 
 
 3. As the Association in- 
 cludes the principal city bank- 
 ers, there is no doubt that the 
 forgeries on the subscribers 
 comprise a very large propor- 
 tion of the forgeries committed 
 in the metropolis ; but it will 
 be difficult to estimate from 
 them the forgeries in the whole 
 kingdom. 
 
 No. of City bankers . . 54 
 No. of City subscribers . 26 
 
 4. Cheques and acceptances 
 to bills of exchange. 
 
 5. Hardly so. The forgery 
 of country bank-notes is very 
 rare ; a few cases have occa- 
 sionally occurred, but they are 
 very few. The 'Country Bank- 
 ers' Association for the Prose- 
 cution of Forgeries' is discon- 
 tinued. 
 
 6. The disuse of i notes 
 has doubtless tended to dimi- 
 nish the forgeries of notes ; but 
 that offence is of comparatively 
 rare occurrence now. 
 
 7. The increased vigilance of 
 
Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 45 
 
 lance in the police, so as to the police has assisted greatly in 
 make the offence more dan- the detection of actual forgers, 
 gerous by reason of the greater But I doubt whether the pro- 
 probability of detection ? bability of detection has any 
 
 influence whatever in the re- 
 pression of this offence. 
 
 8. Has the abolition of the 8. Certainly ; there is now 
 punishment of death produced scarcely any difficulty whatever 
 the expected effect of render- in obtaining the proper evi- 
 ing injured parties more willing dence. 
 to prosecute, witnesses to give 
 evidence, and juries to convict? 
 
 The preceding papers having been submitted to the Messrs. 
 Freshfield, solicitors to the Bank of England, they were so good 
 as to write me the following letter : 
 
 5, NEW BANK BUILDINGS, 
 London, 28th September, 1854. 
 
 DEAR SIR, We have no record of the convictions of persons pro- 
 secuted by the Bank for uttering forged bank-notes ; but there is no 
 doubt that the proportion of convictions is greater under the new than 
 the old law, and we should think that the convictions had of late years 
 amounted to 9 in 10 of the number of cases tried. 
 
 We attribute the increase in the rate of convictions, in a great degree, 
 to the causes mentioned by you,* to which you may add the stronger 
 disposition towards conviction evidenced by the judges, in the case of 
 offences in which the punishment does not affect life. 
 
 We are, dear Sir, your faithful servants, 
 M. D. HILL, Esq., &c. &c. J. C. & H. FRESHFIELD. 
 
 The information furnished by Mr. Mullens and the Messrs. 
 Freshfield shows, doubtless, a greater approach towards certainty 
 of punishment following npon crime than has been hitherto 
 found to exist. It must, however, be remembered that forgery, 
 or rather the utterance of forged instruments, is an offence 
 peculiarly hazardous to the criminal ; and it would be therefore 
 rash to argue from the improvement to which attention has 
 been drawn, that the proportions between other crimes and 
 their convictions have been changed in any degree approaching 
 to that which applies to forgeries. 
 
 It is probable, however, that some amendment has taken 
 place; yet my hopes are still very slight that, without many 
 
 * Absence of reluctance in prosecutors, witnesses, and juries. 
 
46 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839. 
 
 changes, to which. I cannot stop even to advert, we shall ever 
 see detection and punishment dogging the steps of crime with 
 the promptitude and certainty which alone can give to deterrent 
 punishment the efficiency which has been so long and so vainly 
 attributed to its influence ; and I have often had occasion to 
 remark how rare it is to find any person who has had expe- 
 rience of criminals attach weight to deterrents. 
 
 Mr. Mullens, it will be observed, thinks that the augmented 
 number of detections and convictions has but a limited effect 
 upon the forger. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS 
 Arising out of the Charge delivered in May, 1840. 
 
 THE UTTERING OF COUNTERFEIT COIN. 
 
 THE circumstances now incidental to the offence of putting 
 counterfeit money into circulation, are so different from 
 those of 1840, that it would only encumber this volume to 
 reprint a Charge of this remote date. 
 
 I have had occasion to observe for many years, and always 
 with great concern, how carefully the criminal watches the 
 inventor, and with what promptitude he avails himself of every 
 new facility for the exercise of his calling afforded by the progress 
 of science or of art. But the coiner stands at the head of his 
 nefarious class, in thus turning the best means to the worst 
 ends. To fabricate a coin bearing a sufficiently close resem- 
 blance to the genuine issue from the Mint, it was formerly 
 necessary for the coiner to have command of dies and machinery 
 for working them. The die is a mould wrought, or sunk as it is 
 termed, in a block of steel, a pair of dies being required for 
 each class of coins; crowns, half-crowns, shillings, &c. The 
 die-sinker, however, a skilled workman, was not readily per- 
 suaded to prostitute his talents to a purpose so vile, exposing 
 him, also, to consequences highly penal. Dies, which to the 
 honest manufacturer are very expensive implements, were costly 
 indeed to the coiner. Again, the machinery by which the dies 
 
Observations arising out of Charge of May, 1840. 47 
 
 were made to operate upon the metal required a fitting place for 
 its erection ; and much care was necessary to prevent discovery 
 through the noise or concussion which accompanied the employ- 
 ment of so much force as is requisite to raise, in due relief, 
 figures and inscriptions displayed on the faces of the coin. The 
 manufacture of base money was, therefore, an expensive and 
 hazardous trade. But now, since the invention of the beautiful 
 process called electro-type, both cost and danger are most 
 perniciously diminished. The coiner takes a genuine piece of 
 money, by the aid of which he constructs a pair of moulds in 
 plaster of Paris. He then makes a compound of certain white 
 metals, fusing at a low temperature, for which a common fire 
 suffices. These he may melt in a spoon, and so fill his moulds, 
 repeating the operation according to the number of coins which 
 he desires to produce. The compound is principally of tin, 
 together with a small portion of zinc. To these a little regulus 
 is added, composed of iron, tin, and antimony. The object of 
 this addition is to give hardness to the coin, whereby it emits, 
 when rung, the sharp sound of silver. 
 
 The coin is now to receive a thin coating of real silver, 
 which is deposited upon the surfaces of the base metal by the 
 aid of a rudely-constructed galvanic battery. The manufacture 
 is now completed. The whole apparatus the criminal may 
 carry from place to place in a handkerchief, or even in the 
 crown of his hat ; and, if he can obtain the command of a garret 
 for a few hours, he may provide himself, at scarcely any cost, 
 with the means of imposing his trash on the shopkeeper and the 
 publican as genuine coin of the realm. The victims of these 
 frauds are usually the humbler tradesmen. The utterer makes 
 a small purchase with the intention of obtaining as great an 
 amount of change as he can out of the false money which he 
 offers in payment ; and thus, even if he should throw away the 
 article bought, he is amply recompensed by the good money 
 which he receives in lieu of the valueless tokens given in 
 return. 
 
 In the cases brought before me, the utterer has generally 
 succeeded both in effecting a purchase and in leaving the place 
 without exciting suspicion. His detection is most frequently 
 the consequence of his venturing to resort a second time to the 
 same shop, before he has given himself any reasonable chance 
 
48 Observations arising out of Charge of May, 1 840. 
 
 of being forgotten, although the interval has been quite sufficient 
 to afford occasion for examining his base coin. 
 
 To persons unacquainted with the habits of criminals, this 
 recklessness will appear scarcely credible, the rather as a 
 disposition exists in the public mind to associate ideas of ability, 
 (or, at the least, of so much cleverness as may be implied in 
 the possession of great cunning,) with the criminal class. But 
 without intending to deny that it contains individuals of con- 
 siderable talents, who, in addition to their talents, must be 
 capable of exercising much prudence and caution, or they would 
 not enjoy the long impunity which some of them can boast, yet 
 criminals, taken as a body, are far below the average of every 
 honest class, both in natural and acquired endowments. Their 
 inferiority is so obvious on the mere view of any considerable 
 number of them collected together, as quickly to dispel all 
 prejudice in favour of their powers, mental or physical. 
 
 Phrenologists, as my readers are doubtless aware, have not 
 seldom affirmed the capacity of their science to direct the 
 special treatment suitable to the differing requirements of each 
 prisoner. But whether it be that no sufficient opportunity of 
 trying experiments on prisoners has been afforded to them, or 
 whether it be that their science in its present state can give us 
 no practical directions of much value, I am not aware that they 
 have established any principles, drawn strictly from their own 
 resources, upon which the officers entrusted with the control of 
 criminals would do right in acting, until they were fortified in 
 each case by indications on which reliance had been placed 
 before phrenology had ever been heard of. 
 
 That enough has been done by phrenologists to justify their 
 being allowed to make further experiments on the treatment of 
 criminals, I am not prepared either to affirm or deny ; but, 
 assuredly, nothing has yet been satisfactorily established and 
 added to the common store of working knowledge which entitles 
 physiologists to assume quite such high ground as they have 
 taken with regard to criminal legislation and prison discipline. 
 These remarks have been called forth by a certificate attached 
 to a work on this subject by Mr. George Combe;* a docu- 
 ment which informs us, that ' criminal legislation and prison 
 
 * The Principles of Criminal Legislation and the Practice of Prison Discipline 
 Investigated. By George Combe. London : 1854. 
 
Observations arising out of Charge of May, 1840. 49 
 
 discipline will never attain to a scientific, consistent, practical, 
 and efficient character, until they become based on physiology, 
 and especially on the physiology of the brain and nervous system/ 
 This position is laid down for our government by seven most 
 eminent physiologists, Sir Benjamin Brodie, Sir James Clark, 
 Sir Henry Holland, Professor Owen, Sir John Forbes, Dr. 
 Conolly, and Dr. William Carpenter names worthy of pro- 
 found respect, most deservedly enjoying the highest reputation, 
 and upon whose opinions on all matters within the ample 
 boundaries of their own wonderful science, I, for one, should 
 always repose unhesitating and implicit confidence. But, says 
 the Digest, ' Extra territorium jus dicenti impune non paretur/ 
 And truly, if we seek to turn the principle here enunciated with 
 oracular authority to profit, we meet with the disappointment 
 which has in all ages followed attempts to extract from the inspira- 
 tions of the Tripod a lesson for the guidance of human action. 
 It might be supposed, at first sight, that the certificate vouches 
 the soundness of Mr. Combe's theory, which is derived from 
 phrenology, as taught by the fathers of that fashionable study. 
 But when it is read with attention, we find that the certifiers 
 are not to be understood ' to become answerable for the accu- 
 racy of all the facts, or the soundness of all the reasonings / 
 which highly prudent saving clause, inasmuch as no distinction 
 is drawn between one fact and another, or one piece of reasoning 
 and another, relieves the subscribers from the danger of warrant- 
 ing any one fact or any one argument in the whole book. 
 Indeed, looking carefully to the frame of that very curious 
 instrument, it will be found to bind them to no other position 
 than this : That physiology ought to furnish the basis of laws 
 against crime, and of rules fo. 1 the discipline of criminals. Now, 
 the gentlemen who have thus given to Mr. Combe the benefit 
 of their names, are either acquainted with the secret of extract- 
 ing from physiology truths which will guide us through our 
 difficulties in legislating against crime, and in discovering right 
 methods for the treatment of the criminal, or they are not. If 
 they have made this invaluable discovery, why withhold it ? If 
 they have not made it, on what grounds do they base their 
 dogma, that physiology is able to redeem the pledge which they 
 have made in its behalf? Surely they were bound to sustain, by 
 some evidence, a thesis promulgated with such an overwhelming 
 
 E 
 
50 Observations arising out of Charge of May, 1 840. 
 
 force of assertion. For, even if the proposition of the learned 
 subscribers shall, in the fulness of time, be demonstrated, yet, 
 until the proof is given, and the practical deductions which are 
 to flow from it, are brought before our eyes, we can only regard 
 it as a barren dictum, and must think that it might as well 
 have remained in retentis until its authors had qualified them- 
 selves to lead us at once to definite results. To say to us, ' be 
 ye fed be ye clothed/ without offering either food or raiment, 
 is a proceeding condemned by the highest authority. 
 
 Turning to the book itself, we find it contains much useful 
 matter regarding the treatment of criminals, which may be read 
 with great advantage by students who are not acquainted with 
 the non-phrenological authors to whom Mr. Combe is indebted 
 for his information ; but I am not aware that he has him- 
 self added much if anything to our stock of available know- 
 ledge. The most that Mr. Combe can ask on behalf of his 
 own department, so far as he has enabled us to judge of its 
 pretensions, is, that phrenology harmonizes with the principles 
 which have been arrived at by moral reasoning and common 
 observation on the capabilities and defects of criminals, and on 
 the treatment arising out of these characteristics. To the 
 adepts in phrenology this must be a gratification, as confirming 
 their belief in the soundness of their favourite science. But 
 for the aid which phrenology thus receives, I am not aware that 
 as yet it has made any commensurate return. Of its future I 
 do not presume to form an opinion. Let it establish its pre- 
 tensions by ascertained facts and sound arguments, and I will 
 follow its leading in all humility ; until then I must remain a 
 disciple of those who have furnished us with such knowledge on 
 the subject as we possess, and I shall think it right to pursue 
 their track. 
 
 The relations between moral action and physiology are, for 
 the present, nearly as obscure as those between that science and 
 the vital forces, of which Mr. Joseph Hodgson, himself an 
 eminent physiologist, speaks thus : ' All speculations respecting 
 the intimate nature of the nervous force, though many of them 
 have proceeded from the greatest philosophers who have ever 
 lived, prove only that hitherto the endeavour to comprehend its 
 nature is vain and fruitless. Many anatomical truths have been 
 discovered, and some physiological facts have been observed, but 
 
Observations arising out of Charge of May, 1840. 51 
 
 no principle by which the nature of this power can be explained. 
 All the trains of research to which this inquiry has been subjected 
 have begun in exact examinations of organization and function, 
 and have ended in conjecture and hypothesis. As it has been 
 eloquently observed by a learned author, ' the stream of know- 
 ledge in all such cases is clear and lively at its outset; but, 
 instead of reaching the great ocean of the general truths of 
 science, it is gradually spread abroad among sands and deserts, 
 till its course can be traced no longer."* Hunterian Oration 
 for 1855, p. 12. 
 
 * Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. iii. p. 451. 
 
CHAKGE OP APBIL, 1841. 
 
 charge at these Sessions contained, among other matter, 
 J- a short account of the Recorder's visit to the Warwickshire 
 Asylum for Convicted Boys at Stretton-on-Dunsmoor. 
 
 * * * This county, I am happy to say, is honourably 
 distinguished distinguished, I believe, above all others in the 
 country by an establishment which has hardly yet gained its 
 fair share of attention. I mean the asylum for the reception 
 of boys convicted of felonies. 
 
 It was begun in the year 1818, by some of the benevolent 
 gentlemen of the county, engaged as magistrates in the admi- 
 nistration of justice, and though upon a small scale, so that the 
 good wrought by it is necessarily very limited, it has had con- 
 siderable success, and it has shown that much may be effected 
 by such means : and probably this result of the experiment is 
 even of more value than the actual benefit conferred on the 
 persons brought under its operation, notwithstanding the im- 
 portance of that benefit to the individuals who have been its 
 recipients. I have thought it my duty, as the Recorder of this 
 borough, myself to visit the institution, and to judge, as far as 
 I am able, from personal observation, of the success of the 
 experiment. Accordingly, I went last week to Stretton-on- 
 Dunsmoor, where it is situated. 
 
 It is, gentlemen, no fine edifice there is no grand portico 
 to astonish the traveller as he passes along it is simply a 
 farmhouse, and one of rather an humble description. In this 
 farmhouse, to which some buildings are attached, by way of 
 workshops, about twenty boys reside, under the care of a master, 
 Mr. Johnson, who, from his appearance, might be supposed to 
 be a farmer. He is a man of great intelligence, and admirably 
 fitted by nature and experience for the office he has undertaken. 
 I found that he and his wife treated the boys under their charge 
 almost as members of their own family. These poor lads, there- 
 fore, have the advantage enjoyed, perhaps, by them for the 
 first time in their lives of witnessing in the arrangements of 
 
Charge of April, 1 84 1 . 53 
 
 a domestic establishment the prevalence of order, the comforts 
 and the virtues of a home. 
 
 I saw some of the inmates engaged in learning the business 
 of a tailor ; some that of a shoemaker ; to one or other of which 
 trades all the boys apply themselves, besides cultivating the 
 large garden attached to the house. I examined their work, 
 and, judging from the small experience I have in such matters, 
 I thought it done well. Of course the articles in tailoring and 
 shoemaking were of the humblest kind, but all seemed to be 
 well executed. The countenances and general appearance of 
 the lads gave me much satisfaction. While they were respect- 
 ful in their behaviour, there was nothing of fear or servility 
 about them, and they looked healthy and cheerful. 
 
 I also examined their lodging and table, and here I found 
 everything wholesome, without anything like luxury, which 
 would be improper. The master showed me his little library, 
 to which the boys have constant access; where I was pleased to 
 find, not only works on religion and morality, which are indis- 
 pensable, but others of an entertaining description ; in fact, the 
 selection appeared to be well suited for engaging the attention of 
 those who, perhaps, up to this period, had had no opportunity or 
 motive for reading at all. Another part of the system that 
 pleased me very much was the absence of all attempt at 
 imprisonment, of all physical obstacle to the boys departing at 
 any moment ; and the infrequency of desertion is a proof not 
 only of the excellence of the principle adopted, but of the success 
 of its application. There are instances, it is true, in which 
 boys, on being first brought t<f the asylum, do run away ; but 
 in all cases in which they can be induced to stay a sufficient 
 length of time for the system to take its hold upon their minds, 
 desertions are unknown ; and I am happy to say that of the 
 boys who have been sent away from courts of justice in this 
 county, under the heavy calamity of loss of character, and the 
 consequent loss of the means of honest maintenance, many, 
 after a residence in this institution, have been restored to their 
 friends and society; and some have risen by praiseworthy exer- 
 tions to the position of master tradesmen a station in which 
 they are now exercising their abilities for the benefit, instead 
 of for the injury, of the community. Gentlemen, I have already 
 mentioned to you that this institution has hardly gained the 
 
54 Charge of April, 1841. 
 
 attention it deserves,, owing, perhaps, to one, and not the least, 
 of its excellences, namely, that it is unobtrusive in its character 
 and mode of operation, and that it makes no appeal by any 
 species of empiricism to public notice. 
 
 I found that the number of boys at Stretton-on-Dunsmoor 
 sent from Birmingham was greater than the number coming 
 from the whole body of the county besides. That is a circum- 
 stance reasonably to be expected ; but I also found that the 
 contributions to this establishment are in an inverse order, and 
 that of these the greater part come from the county, and not 
 from Birmingham. The master made my visit known to the 
 committee, and they directed their secretary to inform me of a 
 resolution which they had passed, and which was in these 
 words : ' It was shown that the income of the institution was 
 not sufficient to meet its expenses, and that it would be neces- 
 sary to make a reduction in the expenditure. It was further 
 shown that the number of boys sent from Birmingham, from 
 the establishment of the Asylum, had amounted to 248, while 
 the number sent from the rest of the county did not exceed 44 ; 
 and that, on the other hand, the amount of subscriptions per 
 annum from Birmingham was only 23/. 2s., while the rest of 
 the county contributed 217^. i6s.' In mentioning these facts, 
 Gentlemen, I venture to state and I speak from long experience 
 of the inhabitants of this town, and from an intimate knowledge 
 of their active benevolence that it is matter of accident that 
 the support we render to the institution is in an inverse ratio 
 to the charge we cast upon it, and that it is by no means to 
 be attributed to other causes. Gentlemen, when I became 
 acquainted with the fact, I formed the intention which I have 
 now carried into effect, of laying the circumstances before you, 
 in the hope that something may be done in which I need 
 hardly say I shall be happy to take my share to prevent, if 
 possible, a longer continuance of this state of things. I am 
 quite sure we all feel that, connected as the Asylum at Stretton 
 is with our town, in which, from the circumstance of the raw 
 material of our manufactures being metals (and not unfrequently 
 the precious metals), the temptations to young persons are often 
 overwhelming, it would be deeply to be deplored if an establish- 
 ment so valuable should fall to the ground for want of our 
 support. 
 
Charge of April, 1 84 j . $$ 
 
 A succinct history of this reformatory school, from its com- 
 mencement in 1818 until its close in 1854, will be found in 
 the following letter, which the author has kindly revised for 
 this work : 
 
 ' Sir J. E. EARDLEY WILMOT, Bart., to the Editor of the 
 Daily News. 
 
 ( Nemo repentk fuit turpissimus. 
 
 ' SIR, In my former letter on the subject of reformatory 
 institutions I pointed out to you that the principles now 
 becoming universally recognised as to the necessity religious, 
 social, and economical of endeavouring to reclaim youthful 
 delinquents were adopted and carried out by the magistrates 
 of Warwickshire, at their county asylum at Stretton, as far 
 back as the year 1818. Although a combination of unfortunate 
 circumstances caused the dissolution of that institution in 
 March, 1854, after a useful existence of thirty-six years, yet I 
 felt that amid the vivid descriptions of more modern, and 
 perhaps more flourishing, reformatories, sufficient credit had 
 not been given to the unostentatious work of charity which 
 conferred so much honour on the county that gave it birth. 
 But as facts -will weigh more with an enlightened public than 
 mere words, however eulogistic, I think it will be interesting 
 to your readers at the present moment, when this question is 
 fast ripening for legislative discussion, to lay before you some 
 of the statistics of the Stretton Asylum. It is only by expe- 
 rience of the past that future defects can be avoided, and that 
 we can hope gradually to mature and perfect any system, 
 although it may have had its foundation in the most benevolent 
 enthusiasm, and even in the best and highest sensibilities of 
 our nature. These statistics were carefully prepared by Mr. 
 Harvey, who for ten years most faithfully and successfully 
 discharged the duties of master, and also by the Rev. Townsend 
 Powell, vicar of Stretton-on-Dunsmoor, who for nearly thirty 
 years, and up to the time of his death in 1854, a little previous 
 to the dissolution of the asylum, was its chaplain and superin- 
 tendent, and, as M. Demetz is said to be of the Reformatory 
 at Mettray, 'its soul/ without the smallest fee or emolument 
 of any kind. Mr. Powell published in 1827 a memoir of the 
 asylum, and demonstrated how much the reformation of the 
 
$6 Charge of April, 1841. 
 
 youths had saved the county of Warwick in the nine years 
 which had elapsed since its first establishment. At that period 
 97 boys had been admitted to Stretton, of whom 81 had been 
 discharged ; of these, 39 were ascertained to be permanently 
 reformed, 21 were afterwards tried at Warwick, and the fate of 
 the remaining 21 was not known: 16 remained under instruc- 
 tion in the asylum. The 21 who were tried cost the county 
 38 1/. i6s. yd. ; but it was ascertained from the records of the 
 gaol that out of 81 boys not sent to any asylum, 38 on an 
 average returned to prison after subsequent conviction, costing 
 the county 7i6/. 2s. 6d. There was therefore an actual saving 
 of 334/. $s. <)d., independently of the general saving to the 
 country of the produce of the plunder obtained by the un- 
 reformed boys. This plunder was calculated to amount to ic/. 
 per annum obtained by each boy. The average period for 
 which a boy committed depredations from his first commitment 
 till his transportation was two years. Looking at the experi- 
 ment of reformation in another point of view, viz., in that of 
 risk, the following was the result of Mr. Powell's calculations : 
 Of 8 1 boys discharged from the asylum up to 1827, 39 were 
 clearly ascertained to be reformed characters ; 14 were after- 
 wards transported from Warwick. There was, therefore, no 
 risk upon these 53. The remainder on whom there was a risk, 
 but whose fate was unknown, amounted to 28. On the other 
 hand, of boys not sent to the asylum, but imprisoned after 
 conviction, and thus subjected to punishment, 22 were found to 
 be afterwards transported none of the rest were ascertained to 
 be reformed ; the remainder, therefore, on whom there was a 
 risk, were 59 in number. In the former case, the risk was less 
 by 31 that the same youths would again appear at the bar, and 
 be sent to prison or transported, thereby putting the county to 
 expense ; therefore, the asylum benefited the county by 3 1 
 times that risk, whatever its value might be. 
 
 ' At first the cost of reforming each boy, inclusive of failures, 
 was 40^. per head ; the cost of boarding and clothing each boy 
 averaged 55. id. per week. This expense was afterwards 
 reduced to 45. nd. At Mettray, at the present time, each 
 boy costs yd. per day, or 4.9. id. per week; but in France the 
 price of provisions is much lower than with us. In 1842, 
 twenty-four years after the foundation of Stretton, and when 
 
Charge of April, 1841. 57 
 
 the per centage of reformations had risen considerably, the 
 average cost of reformation for boys between fourteen and 
 sixteen years of age was 25^. ; for those below fourteen, 
 2$l. ijs. yd. The older boys, it was found, were more easily 
 reformed, and they became more readily skilled in labour. 
 The trades taught at Stretton were tailoring and shoemaking, 
 and there were also six acres of land which the boys culti- 
 vated by spade labour. The advantages of agricultural labour 
 over trades gradually showed themselves. Skill in the 
 former was more rapidly acquired than in the latter, and con- 
 sequently the former was by far the most lucrative. It was 
 found also that the eyesight of some boys was defective, and that 
 their physical organization ill-adapted them to sedentary employ- 
 ments. Mischief was more readily concocted when several boys 
 were congregated together in one room ; and in addition to this, 
 there was something in the healthful out-of-door exercise which 
 seemed to expand the faculties of the mind, and aided the moral 
 influence of the teacher. At Stretton, however, this advantage 
 was somewhat counteracted by the vicinity of a large wood to 
 the asylum, to which boys could resort, and where they could 
 ramble unnoticed. There was no actual physical constraint 
 put upon the boys the clef des champs spoken of at Mettray 
 was in every one's pocket, and he could run away whenever he 
 pleased. If, however, pursued and overtaken, he was considered 
 to have been guilty of one of the gravest offences, and severely 
 punished. Corporal punishment was, however, very rarely re- 
 sorted to, and with extreme moderation. The mode of dealing 
 with refractory youths was sep^ ; 'ate confinement, the deprivation 
 of any indulgences in diet, and the withdrawal of the share of 
 earnings which each well-conducted boy was entitled to for his 
 own use. These earnings amounted to a penny in every shilling, 
 but, with the exception of about a halfpenny in every shilling 
 thus earned, and handed over for immediate use, the earnings 
 formed a reserved fund accumulating for each boy, and to be 
 given him when he should leave the asylum with a certificate 
 of good conduct. We do not find that the system so successful 
 at Mettray, of placing older or better-behaved boys as guardians 
 of the discipline of the institution, was adopted at Stretton. 
 At Mettray these ( chiefs' are in every way analogous to monitors 
 in public schools, except that the power of inflicting punish- 
 
58 Charge of April, 1841. 
 
 ment is withheld from them. The elder brothers, as they are 
 called,, not only exercise a most beneficial moral influence over 
 the more youthful inmates of the asylum and more especially 
 so as they are elected by the votes of the boys themselves but 
 they are a most important element in the institution, inasmuch 
 as they supply those who may in their turn become masters of 
 similar establishments.* This forms one of the most powerful 
 inducements to good conduct at Mettray, and one of the highest 
 objects of ambition. At Stretton, however, the sense of honour 
 was encouraged, though in a less degree, by the boys being 
 occasionally placed in situations of trust, as, for example, when 
 they were directed to go on errands, or carry messages at a dis- 
 tance from the asylum. The records of Stretton only contain 
 the account of a single instance where a boy took the opportu- 
 nity of running away when so entrusted, On the other hand, 
 it cannot be expected that we should find the results of an appeal 
 to the sense of honour in any way analogous to those borne 
 out at Mettray. Sufficient trial of the experiment has not been 
 hitherto made in England, though successfully introduced by 
 Dr. Arnold, at Rugby, and by a near relative of my own, for 
 many years Captain of the Company of Cadets at Woolwich. 
 In both these cases the influence was brought to act on minds 
 which had received the highest educational impressions; but 
 to expect that the punishment considered as one of the most 
 severe at Mettray would have been dreaded in anything like 
 an equal degree at Stretton would be preposterous. The re- 
 moval of the Union Jack from the dining-hall at Stretton would 
 have produced little, if any, impression upon the inmates, while 
 the temporary withdrawal of the tricolor at Mettray was felt 
 by every individual as a personal disgrace. Such an esprit de 
 corps would be an invaluable fulcrum to raise the general cha- 
 racter of any institution, arid not least of one where it is of 
 the utmost importance that each inmate of the asylum should 
 feel that his own reformation contributes materially to the main- 
 tenance and support of that character. The period of residence 
 at Stretton ranged in the case of reformations from one year 
 to three years. The failures were generally to be found in 
 
 * The ' chiefs' are young men of unblemished reputation, who have been trained 
 to the office of teachers, and are never taken from among the wards, from which 
 latter body the ' elder brothers ' are chosen. M. D. II. 
 
Charge of April, 1841. 59 
 
 che case of those who after a few months' stay in the asylum 
 either absconded or were dismissed for bad conduct. If they 
 could be retained for a longer period than a year, there was 
 always great hope of their reformation. Of forty boys who had 
 been under the care of Mr. Harvey, the third and last master, 
 at the period of the report published in 1848, 26 were reformed. 
 Of these, the longest resident in the asylum stayed two years 
 three months and three weeks ; the shortest remained for the 
 period of one year, except one boy, who absconded in 1847, 
 after a stay of seven months, but who was heard of as a 
 soldier, and well reported of in 1848. On the other hand, 
 of the fourteen failures, six stayed less than six months. 
 Only two out of the fourteen remained two years, were 
 then placed out as reformed, but afterwards relapsed. With 
 regard to age, the statistics collected by the chaplain (Mr. 
 Powell) and Mr. Harvey, demonstrated that it was far more 
 difficult to reclaim the very young boys than those above the 
 age of fourteen. Of the 81 boys who had left the asylum up 
 to the year 1827, and who consisted of 39 reformations and 42 
 failures, 32 were more than fifteen years of age. Of these 32, 
 there were 20 reformations and 12 failures. Again, of these 
 32 above fifteen, 26 were above sixteen years of age. In these 
 last there was a larger proportion of reformations than among 
 the 32 above fifteen namely, 17 reformations and 9 failures. 
 Again, of the 26 above sixteen years of age, 8 were above 
 seventeen. Of these 8 above seventeen there was a larger pro- 
 portion of reformations than in the 26 above sixteen, viz., 6 
 reformations and only 2 failures. These calculations, however, 
 were not confirmed by the results of subsequent years, as it be- 
 came the practice to send to the asylum a greater proportion of 
 younger boys. But the above remark as to the period of each 
 boy's stay in the asylum held good subsequently to 1827, when 
 a new master was appointed at the death of Mr. Cox, Out of 
 30 boys under fourteen years of age, reformed under the second 
 master, Mr. Johnson, only 1 1 remained in the asylum above 
 two years; this was also the case with only 16 out of 52 above 
 fourteen years of age, who were also reformed at the time the 
 calculation was made. In 1853 it was ascertained that out of 
 80 boys who had been under the care of the third master, Mr. 
 Harvey, 51 had been reformed average 63 per cent. but that 
 
6~o Charge of April, 1841. 
 
 only 2 of these 51 were under fourteen years of age. The 
 remaining 29 were deemed failures; 18 of these were after- 
 wards either in gaol or transported; 4 were afterwards ascer- 
 tained to be doing well ; the rest were never more heard of. It 
 did not follow because so many boys were dismissed as failures 
 that the institution produced no beneficial effect upon them. 
 As in the case of the 4 boys above mentioned, who after dis- 
 missal were found to be doing well, so in many other instances 
 letters were received from youths who were earning an honest 
 livelihood, and who acknowledged with gratitude that some of 
 the good seed sown at Stretton had taken root in their hearts. 
 Some curious tables were drawn out by Mr. Harvey, to show 
 the proportion of boys who entered the asylum with one or 
 both parents, or as orphans, and also the degrees of instruction 
 received by each at the time of admission to the asylum. A 
 short analysis of these may not be uninteresting to your readers, 
 as forming data on which to ground arguments useful to the 
 supporters of new institutions. Of 81 boys who were under 
 the care of the first master, 1 8 had both father and mother, 3 1 
 had one parent only, and 32 no parents. Of the 18 who had 
 both father and mother, 6 were reformed and 12 failed 
 average, 33 per cent.; of the 31 who had only one parent, 
 17 were reformed and 14 failed average, 54 per cent. ; of the 
 32 who had no parents, 16 were reformed and 16 failed 
 average, 50 per cent. Of 142 boys who were at Stretton under 
 the care of the second master, 60 had both father and mother : 
 37 of these were reformed, while 23 failed average, 60 per 
 cent. ; 59 had one parent only : 35 of these were reformed and 
 24 failed average, 59 per cent. ; 23 had no parents : of these, 
 10 were reformed and 13 failed average, 43 per cent. Of 70 
 boys who had quitted the asylum, under the third master, at 
 the period when these calculations were made, 30 had both 
 father and mother : 15 of these were reformed, 15 failed ave- 
 rage, 50 per cent. ; 20 had only one parent : 1 7 of these were 
 reformed, while 3 failed average, 85 per cent. ; 20 had no 
 parents when admitted to the institution : 13 of these were 
 reformed and 7 failed average 65 per cent. It is observable, 
 that whereas during the earlier periods of the asylum the per- 
 centage of reformations was extremely variable and fluctuating, 
 latterly they showed a steady and considerable increase. Then 
 
Charge of April, 1841. 6l 
 
 as regards the degree of education which the youths had re- 
 ceived at the period of their admission into the asylum. Of 
 the 8 1 boys admitted under the first master, 9 only could read 
 and write ; 24 could only read ; the remaining 48 had received 
 no instruction. Of the 9 who could read and write, 7 were 
 reformed and two failed. Of the 24 who could only read, 13 
 were reformed and 1 1 failed ; whereas of the 48 who were 
 totally uneducated, 19 ojaly were reformed and 29 failed. The 
 balance here is immeasurably in favour of education. Again, 
 of 142 boys admitted under the care of the second master, 22 
 could read and write, 47 could only read, while 73 had received 
 no instruction. Of the 22, 14 were reformed and 8 failed ; of 
 the 47, 33 were reformed and 14 failed ; whereas, of the 73 
 who were uneducated, 34 only were reformed, while the failures 
 amounted to the great number of 39. Of 70 boys admitted to 
 Stretton under the third master, at the period of making the 
 calculations, 24 could read and write, 23 could only read, and 
 23 had received no instruction. Of the 24 who could both 
 read and write, 16 were reformed and 8 failed ; of the 23 who 
 could only read, 14 were reformed and 9 failed; while of the 
 23 who entered the asylum uneducated, 15 were reformed and 
 8 failed. 
 
 1 These figures plainly show two important facts. First, that 
 education, while it evidently had made great progress, did not 
 prevent youths from being criminal ; for, whereas during the 
 first and second masters' time the number of the uneducated 
 was double that of those who had received some instruction, 
 under the third master, those who( could read and write, or only 
 read, more than doubled in number the uninstructed. 
 
 ' Again, another fact is established by the above figures, viz., 
 that when the ignorant came to be a large minority in the 
 asylum, during the third master's residence, the preponderance 
 of reformations over failures became distinctly visible. In 
 former years the great majority of the uninstructed had remained 
 failures. This circumstance might be partly owing to the im- 
 proved mode of teaching, or better management, which long 
 experience had induced, arid partly to the influences and spirit of 
 emulation exercised by the educated majority over the com- 
 paratively ignorant minority. 
 
 I have trespassed on your columns, sir, I fear, at unrca- 
 
6 2 Charge of April, 1841. 
 
 sonable length, and will close my letter with a few general 
 details gathered from the published reports of Stretton. Most 
 of these are to be found in a circular addressed to the sub- 
 scribers after the close of the asylum last year by Mr. Brace- 
 bridge, so honoured by public estimation for his humane 
 exertions in the East, who for many years was one of the most 
 liberal supporters of the Warwickshire asylum, and, latterly, one 
 of the most active and unremitting inattendance at the board 
 of management. I am, by aid of these documents, enabled to 
 state that between 1818 and 1854 the number of boys received 
 into the institution amounted to 350. Many of these had been 
 capitally convicted. The average number at a time within the 
 walls was 15. The whole number of reformed boys was 227, 
 giving an average of 65 per cent. I find I was in error on a 
 former occasion when I stated that the per centage of refor- 
 mations exceeded that amount. The produce of the boys' work 
 in the period of ten years next preceding the close of the 
 asylum, amounted to 2109^. 19$. zd. This was, of course, inclu- 
 sive of the cost of materials. Of this sum, articles amounting to 
 768^. 2,s. 8d., were sold to gaols. The remainder, amounting 
 to r 34 1/. 165, 6d., were sold to the public. The general cost 
 of each boy during his stay (taking the average of 36 years) 
 was found to be 2i/. is. The cost of each reformation, 
 exclusive of failures, was 25^. 14$.; inclusive of failures, it 
 amounted to 29^. os. 4^. The average of yearly subscriptions, 
 taken on a period of 36 years, was 2$ol. The donations to 
 the asylum, funded as stock, but sold out at intervals to supply 
 the excess of expenditure over income, amounted to 4009^. 
 The average period for which the boys who were reformed 
 remained in the institution was fifteen months. The cost of a 
 boy in Warwick Gaol for one year, including the expenses of 
 prosecution and trial, was found to amount to 32/. The 
 expenses attendant upon transportation were of course con- 
 siderably greater. 
 
 ' As there has been a demand on the part of the public to 
 have the economical part of the question sifted as regards the 
 reformatory treatment of juvenile delinquents, I have confined 
 my remarks entirely in this letter to facts and figures. I 
 might have made the case much stronger had I dwelt on the 
 subject in its far more important light, namely, that affecting us 
 
Charge of April, 1841. 63 
 
 as an enlightened and Christian nation. The eloquent words 
 of Chief Justice Dallas, addressed to the grand jury of the 
 county of Warwick, on the I2th of August, 1816, when the 
 proposal for the asylum at Stretton-on-Dunsmoor had been 
 submitted to him, may here properly find a place. ' Who can 
 have beheld/ said he, ' but at the moment with a sinking heart, 
 a miserable boy dismissed from the bar of a court of justice, to 
 be released at the end of a short confinement, without protection, 
 without parents, or, what is worse, the authors of his being the 
 authors also of his profligracy, without means of employment or 
 prospect of subsistence, arid driven almost of necessity into the 
 downhill path of guilt, till, by an impulse which becomes at 
 last irresistible, he is hurried to the precipice on the brink of 
 which no stay is to be found ! To provide for the future 
 reception arid employment of these unhappy persons, and to 
 inspire them with the love and fear of God, and a due respect 
 for man, is the most prominent feature of your plan ; thereby 
 to complete the good which would otherwise be great, but of 
 which, with this last provision, the measure will be full. This 
 is the character of the plan you wish to be enabled to carry into 
 effect. It wants not to be recommended, it cannot be dignified 
 by me. It is a fabric which, should it rise, will require no 
 inscription/ The fabric rose, nourished, and has passed away. 
 All honour be to its memory. Its noblest and most enduring 
 monument will be found in the success of future institutions of 
 a similar character, and in the universal recognition and 
 adoption of those sound and just principles which, confined for 
 a long period within the walls of Stretton, are now carried 
 abroad with the winds of heaven, and are finding their way 
 into every heart throughout the length and breadth of our land. 
 
 'I am, &c v 
 
 'COUNTY COURT, Bristol, Nov. 3, 1855. J- E. EARDLEY WlLMOT.' 
 
 The statistical facts contained in the foregoing letter are 
 curious and interesting ; but the numbers are too small to serve 
 as a basis upon which any theory could safely stand. It is 
 difficult, if not impossible, to determine how much of the effects 
 produced under each of the masters is to be attributed to his 
 personal character, and how much to the varying circumstances 
 which it was the compiler's object to illustrate by his table. 
 
CHAEGE OF JANTIAKY, 1845. 
 
 GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND JURY, 
 
 THERE are two classes of cases to be found in the calendar of 
 the present Sessions on which I must detain you for a brief 
 space. Under one of the two heads, I am happy to say I only 
 find a single name. It is the first charge of the kind which 
 ever came before me,, and I sincerely wish it may be the last. 
 A bill will be presented to you, charging a prisoner with com- 
 mitting an assault in pursuance of a conspiracy to raise wages. 
 As this is a matter of great public concernment, I desire the 
 foundation of the charge to be clearly understood. 
 
 By the old law of England, combinations or agreements 
 among artisans or other working men to raise wages were 
 illegal. No doubt it was also illegal for masters to combine 
 to depress wages. But this impartiality was apparent, not 
 real. Masters being a small body, could meet privately, and 
 enter into an understanding with each other secure from 
 detection, whereas the operatives, as they are now called, 
 being a multitude, possessed no such facility. But even 
 if the impartiality had been real and practical, instead of 
 simulated, or, at best, existing only in theory, such a law 
 would have been open to censure. Whether in any particular 
 case it is wise or foolish to enter into these combinations is a 
 question which cannot be disposed of by law, and therefore it is 
 one which no legislature should presume to determine. At the 
 same time, it would argue a want of candour to conceal from 
 you my opinion that, as a general rule, it is better both for 
 employers and employed to enter into no such combinations, 
 but to let each master and each workman agree as best they 
 may. Why should not wages, like all other commodities, be 
 left to find their market price by individual transactions? 
 
 This, Gentlemen, is the way in which the question strikes me. 
 But, although the remarks which I have submitted to you may 
 point to the right general rule, there may be excepted cases ; 
 and even should experience prove that the rule has no excep- 
 
Charge of January, 1845. 65 
 
 tions, it is one of those truths much better left to the sanction 
 of public opinion than to enforcement by law. 
 
 A growing conviction that the law, as it formerly stood, was 
 in its operation one-sided, led to its repeal ; and masters and 
 servants now stand on the same footing, not only in theory 
 but in practice. I grieve, however, to say that many of the 
 working classes are not satisfied with this concession. Keenly 
 alive to the injustice of artificially lowering wages, they appear 
 to think that, almost any means of raising them are permissible. 
 That the operative class should strongly desire to augment the 
 remuneration of their labour is natural and blameless. That 
 they should regard those of their body who undersell them in 
 the labour market with dislike is also natural, though not 
 quite blameless. But that they should attempt either by 
 intimidation or violence to prevent others from selling their 
 time at the price for which those others choose to part with it, 
 is an oppression which no code of laws deserving respect can 
 ever permit. What indignation would our artisans very justly 
 manifest against a combination of bakers or butchers who 
 should by threats, and still more by blows^ prevent their brethren 
 of these trades from selling their commodities at a price lower 
 than the combination had determined ought to be exacted ! 
 
 Nor is the impolicy of such a course less capable of proof 
 than its injustice. Let us take the case of a strike, which is 
 a combination to raise wages, enforced by large numbers 
 refusing to work at all, unless at the price for each fixed by 
 the whole body. In the first place I will observe that, in 
 almost every instance in which the contest has become general, 
 that is to say. in which a large body of masters on the one 
 side, has been opposed to a large body of operatives on the 
 other, the working people have eventually succumbed. Yet, 
 that they should have been compelled to yield, however morti- 
 fying at the moment, was, probably, far better for their per- 
 manent interests, than that they should have been victo- 
 rious; as wages which are too high to afford the employer 
 the average profits of capital, must, sooner or later, drive the 
 trade from the district in which so onerous a tax is imposed. 
 On the other hand, the masters have strong motives not 
 to depress wages beyond the limits assigned to them by cir- 
 cumstances over which there is no control. One of two 
 
 F 
 
66 Charge of January, 1845. 
 
 effects would surely follow, perhaps both. They would either 
 force the working population to emigrate into districts where 
 masters acted with more liberality, or to turn to other employ- 
 ments which might afford better wages. This is one effect. 
 The other would be to invite into the trade, which was thus 
 augmenting its profits by reducing payments for labour, a host of 
 competing masters to share the advantage. 
 
 Gentlemen, I believe nothing is more true than that it is 
 to the interest of employers to remunerate the labour of their 
 workmen by the highest rate of wages which they can afford, 
 consistently with their retaining the average profits of capital ; 
 and I believe it to be equally true, that a sound knowledge of 
 his own interests would prompt every workman to be satisfied 
 with that rate. Upon these points, however, neither you nor I, 
 Gentlemen, nor even the Legislature, ought to dictate to either 
 side. All that the Legislature and courts of justice can do with 
 advantage is, to keep the peace between the contending parties ; 
 to say to them, You may do whatever you can by reasoning, 
 or by persuasion, to induce others to act as you think right, but 
 where reasoning and persuasion end, there also must you stop 
 yourselves. You must neither resort to force nor intimidation. 
 The working man's labour is always his most valuable property, 
 too often his only property ; and those in whom it lies either 
 to make, or to enforce the law, would most culpably fail in 
 their duty if they did not strain every nerve to prevent any inter- 
 ference with it either from those above him, or from his equals. 
 
 The second class in the calendar, of whom I am now to 
 speak, consists of the receivers of stolen goods. My foregoing 
 remarks have been directed to the vindication of a most impor- 
 tant branch of free trade; but, Gentlemen, freedom of trade, 
 although as I must think, a noble doctrine, has its necessary 
 limitations. Free- trade has the strongest tendency to increase 
 the number of all transactions to which its maxims are applied. 
 And precisely for that reason we must place cogent restraints 
 upon it when such freedom is applied, directly or indirectly, to 
 transactions, the number of which it is the interest of the com- 
 munity to diminish to the lowest attainable point. 
 
 It will be conceded that the most pernicious of all commer- 
 cial operations, are the purchase and sale of stolen goods. Of 
 the parties to this nefarious traffic, by far the most injurious to 
 
Charge of January, 1845. 67 
 
 society, is the purchaser, called by lawyers the receiver. He is 
 the capitalist, and here, as elsewhere, capital is the mainspring 
 of commerce. A thief who could only effect sales of his 
 plunder among the honest members of society would be so 
 impeded in his course by the suspicions of those to whom he 
 applied, as quickly to discover that he had embarked in an 
 unprofitable calling. He would resemble a merchant in the 
 desert, who could not exchange his goods for the necessaries of 
 life. Moreover, the receiver -capitalist, I believe, in many 
 instances, acts as a sort of banker to the thief, furnishing him 
 with advances on the credit of plunder not yet captured. 
 
 The truth, then, of the proverb, that ' were there no 
 receivers, there would be no thieves/ is made obvious. And the 
 Legislature has not been slow to do all it can to intimidate the 
 chief culprit, in making the offence of receiving the property, 
 knowing it to be stolen, a felony of a high class, and subjecting 
 it to severe punishment. But alas ! Gentlemen, numerous are 
 the difficulties which obstruct the police in bringing these great 
 offenders to justice. The parties to a purchase and sale of 
 stolen goods are usually confined to the receiver himself and 
 the thief. Now the unsupported evidence of a thief cannot be 
 acted upon with safety to the innocent, and corroborative proof 
 cannot be obtained in one case in a hundred. Hence, although 
 the persons and the dwellings of receivers are well known, con- 
 victions of these depraved and depraving wretches are of rare 
 occurrence. 
 
 The general rule of English law, Gentlemen, is to make men 
 answerable only for specific acts. There are exceptions, but I 
 will not trouble you with them on this occasion. Thus it 
 would be of no avail, if a hundred persons, each of un- 
 spotted character, were to testify to their belief that a given 
 individual carried on the trade of receiving stolen goods. No 
 more would it avail even should each of them put in evidence 
 facts and circumstances which would convince every hearer that 
 the belief of the witness was well grounded. The accused party 
 would still be secured from all responsibility until some specified 
 criminal act could be brought home to him. 
 
 But, Gentlemen, perhaps you will be of opinion that testi- 
 mony which would be insufficient to affect the prisoner with 
 the pains of law, might nevertheless make it incumbent on 
 
 F 2 
 
68 Charge of January, 1845. 
 
 every honest proprietor to eject such a tenant from his house. 
 I hope, Gentlemen, if you and I were the proprietors of tene- 
 ments notoriously harbouring receivers of stolen goods, and 
 enabling them to carry on their unlawful traffic, we should feel 
 that in accepting our rent, we to some extent became partners in 
 their iniquity that in a qualified sense we should stand towards 
 them in the relation in which they stand towards the thief we 
 should afford them facilities for committing their crimes. 
 Happy would it be for this country if such a sentiment could 
 find its way to the heart of every landlord. 
 
 The institution of property, Gentlemen, cannot be set at 
 nought, as wild enthusiasts have sometimes preached, without 
 aiming a fatal blow at the happiness of mankind. But if pro- 
 perty ought to be respected, it does not follow that it ought to 
 be worshipped. In my opinion, its rights, or alleged rights, 
 have been often treated with superstitious reverence, and have 
 been maintained to the sacrifice of higher considerations. And, 
 Gentlemen, I look forward with great confidence to the time 
 when an owner who, knowingly or by gross negligence, per- 
 mits his houses to be occupied for the purpose of carrying 
 on any traffic obnoxious to the laws of his country, will be held 
 himself responsible ; and by fines and other visitations, taught, 
 through his own selfish interests, a due regard to the interests 
 of the public. 
 
 Gentlemen, we are not slow to act on this principle when 
 it conduces to our private advantage. Suppose a servant lying 
 under grave suspicion of having been dishonest to his former 
 employers should offer himself for hire. Unless he can clear 
 himself from these aspersions, or convince us that he is a 
 reformed character, we should reject him at once, and we 
 should be little moved by his argument should he plead that he 
 had never been convicted, and that suspicion was not proof. 
 It is only when the disregard of the moral principle, to which 
 I have adverted, will put gain into our own pockets, and when 
 the injury will fall not upon ourselves, but on others, that we talk 
 of the injustice of acting on suspicions, and the necessity for 
 shutting our eyes to the strongest probabilities, and to the well- 
 founded belief of a whole neighbourhood. 
 
 I have dwelt, Gentlemen, at greater length on the offence of 
 the receiver than I otherwise should have done, because it is 
 
Charge of January, 1845. 69 
 
 one which prevails to a greater extent in this town than in 
 almost any other. Our staple manufactures are in metals, 
 often the precious metals, and these costly materials are neces- 
 sarily entrusted to the honesty of very large numbers, some of 
 them of tender age, and thereby lamentably open to the snares 
 of the seducer. Again, metallic wares are soon made by the 
 melting-pot to change their form, and thus to defy identifica- 
 tion; so that not only are facilities multiplied for obtaining 
 stolen goods, but the means of detection, ever scanty, are in 
 Birmingham seriously diminished. 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 The powers of a local Act in operation at Liverpool might 
 perhaps be usefully made general throughout the country. 
 
 LICENSING MARINE STORE DEALERS. 
 
 To the Editor of the Midland Counties Herald. 
 
 ( SIR, I have been favoured by an influential member of 
 the Liverpool Corporation with the following particulars as to 
 the regulations adopted by that body with reference to ' Marine 
 Store Dealers.' 
 
 ' In common with f Pawnbrokers or Dealers in second-hand 
 Goods or Articles/ all ' Marine Store Dealers' are compelled 
 to take out licences from the Corporation, which, upon the 
 recommendation of three respectable housekeepers, and after 
 due inquiry and report by a trustworthy member of police, are 
 granted upon payment of five shillings each. The licensee is 
 compelled to renew this annually, at the same charge. Any 
 change of residence must be registered, the charge for which is 
 one shilling. The licence is in force for one year, or until the 
 next licensing day, unless the party is convicted of some 
 offence which, in the opinion of the presiding justice of the 
 peace, shall render it expedient that the same be revoked. 
 
 ' On the purchase of any metal or other article, the dealer is 
 bound to enter a description and particulars of the same in his 
 books, together with the name and address of the party from 
 whom the purchase was made, and generally to give every 
 information to the police ; and so well is this carried out, that 
 
70 Charge of January, 1845. 
 
 it not unfrequently happens that goods can be identified at 
 once from such entries, even before they are seen. Notice of 
 any omission of such entries, or other bad or suspicious con- 
 duct, is entered in a book kept by the police for the purpose, 
 and alphabetically arranged, and upon the recurrence of 
 licensing day, it is only needful to turn thereto to see if any, 
 and what amount of objection exists to any particular licence 
 being re-granted. As an instance of the care with which the 
 above system is conducted, I may quote one of the memoran- 
 dums with respect to an application to remove a store for the 
 purchase of such articles, which is refused on the ground ' of 
 not being in a situation where it could be under the eye of the 
 police -y in fact, the system comprises every possible security for 
 the accomplishment of the object in view. 
 
 ' Let me recommend the consideration of this matter to the 
 Recorder and Corporation of this borough, where probably 
 more young thieves are trained in the commission of crime by 
 the temptations to which they are exposed in our metal shops, 
 than in any other town in the kingdom, and where the facilities 
 of sale are the greatest. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 1 PREVENTION. 
 
 'May, 1855-' 
 
 An ingenious project for making it the interest of house 
 owners to admit none but respectable tenants has been devised 
 by a friend. His explanation of his plan will be found in the 
 Sequel to the Charge of March, 1854. 
 
CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1845. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, 
 
 ON looking over the calendar which I hold in my hand, I 
 find a large proportion of the prisoners charged with the 
 offence of embezzlement an offence of a dangerous character 
 to the prosperity of your town, and one which, if it can be 
 effectually repressed by the power of the law, ought, unquestion- 
 ably, so to be dealt with. 
 
 Addressing the class of employers as I do at this moment, 
 no facts or arguments are required to convince you of what 
 you must have learnt by your own experience, namely, that 
 nothing is more clearly essential to advance the interests of 
 manufactures and of commerce than the cordial and well-founded 
 confidence of masters in the fidelity of their servants, especially 
 servants of the class who are placed in situations of trust. The 
 importance of such fidelity, not only to the comfort but even 
 to the commercial existence of masters, is obvious. Nor is it 
 less vital to the interests of the servants themselves. In this 
 town numerous instances have occurred of persons rising from 
 the lowest walks of life to positions of wealth and influence, 
 obtained by unexceptionable conduct and honest industry, and 
 I am sure you will unite with me in hoping that such instances 
 may be multiplied from year to year. , But this advancement 
 has proceeded by stages ; the candidate' for wealth and honour, 
 who starts from the ground, does not attain the heights of his 
 ambition at a leap, but mounts to it step by step ; and one of 
 his most important stages of advancement was attained when 
 he became a servant who was thought worthy to be entrusted 
 with the receipt of money on behalf of his master. 
 
 From that place to partnership, or to the position of an in- 
 dependent employer, the transitions are comparatively easy, 
 provided always that the confidence which had brought the 
 servant into the trust remain unbroken and undiminished. 
 Considering, then, how much society in both its great divisions 
 of employers and employed have need of this moral security, 
 
72 Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 I never read a charge of embezzlement in the calendar but 
 with feelings of anxiety ; and I shall always exercise the powers 
 entrusted to me for the repression of crime with a peculiar 
 sense of responsibility as regards this offence. 
 
 But, Gentlemen, the longer I sit on this bench, the humbler 
 grows my opinion of the efficiency of criminal jurisprudence, 
 especially as regards its deterrent operation, either on the 
 offender himself who is visited with the penalties of the law, 
 or on those exposed to temptation, but who have not yet found 
 their way into the dock. 
 
 Thus impressed, Gentlemen, it will not surprise you that I 
 am always looking round with a careful eye to find other means 
 of diminishing the quantity of crime which prevails among us, 
 which means may come in aid of our criminal judicature, and 
 do something, I hope much, to advance the great end 
 for which laws and courts are constituted the protection 
 of the honest and the peaceable against those of an oppo- 
 site character. These means range themselves under two 
 heads the prevention of crime, and the reformation of the 
 criminal. 
 
 It is not my intention to enter at all on the latter division, 
 and only partially on the former. 
 
 Gentlemen, it will be found that every species of crime 
 requires its own set or class of preventives, in addition, how- 
 ever, let me say, to education and good training, which are 
 common to all. Against some offences, a numerous, well- 
 ordered, and vigilant police, is an obvious and excellent preventive. 
 As, for instance, that of burglary, when the eye of the party 
 to be injured is closed in sleep ; but even here the individual 
 may do much for himself by locks and bars and other similar 
 expedients for keeping the robber at bay. 
 
 In the particular crime, however, which prompted this Charge, 
 neither the policeman nor the locksmith can guard your property 
 from the spoiler. By giving him your confidence you sho\v 
 conclusively that he is not one of that class on whom it has a 
 wholesome effect to turn the eyes of the police. Suspicion, 
 until some act of the servant had raised it against him, would 
 be impolitic as well as cruel, and might produce a state of mind 
 leading by slow but sure steps to the consequences which had 
 been feared. 
 
Charge of October, 1845. 73 
 
 Then, with regard to security from locks, you yourselves put 
 the key into your servant's hand, and you must do so if your 
 confidence is real and not feigned. Tn short, you must do so 
 if you are to have the assistance which you propose to your- 
 selves in creating the trust. But to indulge in gratuitous mis- 
 givings would be to withhold the confidence which you profess to 
 repose in him, and thus to invite reprisals. Nevertheless, there 
 are many expedients which may be used with honour and 
 advantage, because their operation will be to prevent or weaken 
 the temptation to crime, instead of being directed towards its 
 discovery when committed. Where the servant is employed to 
 receive moneys for his master, let the periods of reckoning be 
 at first very short, and what is even more important, let them be 
 observed by the master or the agent with whom the receiver is 
 to account with unfailing punctuality; and, as far as it is 
 possible, let the identical notes and coins which the servant 
 has received be those which he pays over in discharge of his 
 accountability. I have here, Gentlemen, to remark that my 
 experience in this court has led me to believe that much blame 
 rests on employers for their supineness with regard to the ob- 
 servance of their own rules, and that, in permitting money to 
 remain in the hands of their servant, in breach of such rules, 
 they have themselves created the temptation under which he 
 has succumbed ; and that being so, it has, I am sorry to say, 
 not unfrequently happened that a rule which the master had 
 suffered to fall into desuetude has been raised up against the 
 servant upon his trial for embezzlement, so that I can never 
 be satisfied with being told what are the rules of any house ; I 
 am obliged very minutely to ascertain whether these regulations 
 are living or dead whether they are safeguards to both parties, 
 or a snare to the unhappy prisoner. 
 
 When the servant has, by a sufficient length of probation, 
 established his right to an extended confidence, let it be given ; 
 but let the concession not be tacitly assumed by the servant ; 
 it should be a distinct act of promotion by the employer. For 
 instance, the servant of proved trustworthiness may now be 
 permitted, out of the sums which he receives for his master, to 
 make payments, and to draw his own salary, accounting only 
 for the balance. But this ought to be felt as a great extension 
 of the trust, and as necessarily exposing the servant to consi- 
 
74 Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 derable temptation. That second stage, therefore, should not 
 be arrived at until his character is of known stability. 
 
 By the observance. Gentlemen, of these and similar precau- 
 tions, many a youth might have been saved from the abyss 
 into which he has plunged many a youth of hope and promise 
 for ever blighted. 
 
 It is distressing to inflict pains and penalties even upon 
 the rude and the brutal, upon those who are inured to hard- 
 ships, and for whom public shame has no terrors ; but it is a 
 bitter task indeed to administer the law against those whose 
 habits, manners, and training make its visitations absolutely 
 appalling, and whose sufferings are generally multiplied in the 
 persons of relatives and friends, even more keenly sensitive than 
 the prisoners themselves. I am sure you will agree with me, 
 Gentlemen, that an employer who is led by the course of 
 evidence, or by his reflections, to be conscious that his own 
 negligence may have had much to do with his servant's fall, 
 must be thrown into a state of feeling very little to be envied. 
 
 With your permission I will pursue the subject of preventive 
 checks a little further. 
 
 Mr. Stephens, the Superintendent of Police, keeps a register 
 of all complaints which are brought to his knowledge of the loss 
 of money or goods by robbery or theft. I have inspected this 
 document, and have been grieved to observe what a large 
 amount of depredation is committed by prostitutes. With 
 regard to offences of this description, no doubt the vigilance of 
 the police is a preventive check, the absence of which would 
 soon be felt in the multiplication of such robberies. But still 
 we cannot but perceive that, for the due repression of these 
 evils, we must have resort to very different expedients to those 
 of police a higher education for all classes is called for reli- 
 gious and moral training must take a more prominent place 
 among us than has been yet accorded to it, until the appetites 
 are brought under subjection to the conscience. 
 
 Nor can we safely neglect minor expedients. We suffer in 
 England for the want of harmless and elevating recreations. 
 Whatever augments health of mind and of body enables us to 
 make a stouter defence against the tempter. And, Gentlemen, 
 amusements, properly conducted, might materially subserve even 
 the purposes of sound education. 
 
Charge of October, 1845. 75 
 
 From the register to which I have adverted, it would appear 
 that in this town more property is stolen by persons who enter 
 houses with false keys than by any other mode of theft. This 
 being an ascertained fact, I have made inquiry as to the state 
 of the locks on the house-doors of the working classes, who are 
 the greatest sufferers by this kind of depredation, and T am 
 told that they are of the rudest description, insomuch that a 
 few skeleton keys are all that is required to command admission 
 to these dwellings, exposed, as they too frequently are, by the 
 absence of their occupants, who have no servants to leave in 
 charge of their property. Here, then, a small expenditure on 
 the part of the landlord would work as a most efficient preven- 
 tive check, which, I think you will agree with me, ought not to 
 be overlooked. 
 
 I have often in this court urged upon both juries and prose- 
 cutors the mischiefs which flow from the pernicious habit 
 indulged in by the shopkeepers of this town, in common with 
 those of other places, who persist in exposing their wares at 
 their shop-doors. Many a child has been led into overpowering 
 temptation by this practice. But when I have remonstrated 
 with the shopkeeper, he has stated in justification or excuse, 
 that, while his brethren in the trade adopt the same expedient 
 for attracting customers, he is compelled to follow their example ; 
 and, Gentlemen, whether compelled or not, I fear he will follow 
 it until the Legislature prohibit this blameworthy exposure of 
 property, which, I think, might very appropriately be punished 
 by confiscation of the articles thus exhibited, or, at all events, 
 by a pecuniary fine, rapidly increasing on every repetition of the 
 offence. 
 
 Such, Gentlemen, are the means of prevention which it occurs 
 to me to lay before you at the present moment. That I have not 
 exhausted the subject will be obvious on the slightest reflection. 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 A VOLUME might be written, and usefully written, on the pre- 
 ventive checks to crime which individuals and private asso- 
 ciations might exercise without the aid of law, by acquiring a 
 salutary influence over the minds of the classes standing below 
 them in the scale of rank. 
 
76" Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 It is impossible to overrate the efficacy of individual action, 
 if society were sufficiently imbued with the sense of what each 
 of its members is capable of doing, and ought to do. There 
 is not one among us, however humble in degree, who has not 
 some power of this kind. Indeed, in many respects, the nearer 
 in social position are those who influence to those who are to be 
 influenced, the greater and more persistent that influence will be. 
 Benevolent attentions on the part of the rich lead to the hope of 
 benefactions. Indeed, it would be difficult to persuade the poor 
 that sympathies which stop short of gifts are genuine ; and it is 
 perhaps more difficult for him who is moved by real sympathy 
 to withhold his bounty, or even to restrain it within its due limits. 
 And yet, how manifold the evils which accrue from charity, 
 unless its administration be governed by sound judgment, and 
 by a reserve which wears the appearance of grudging parsimony ! 
 Thus danger lies on either side the path. The open hand en- 
 courages the pauper spirit reliance on the aid of others; it 
 weakens every motive to industry and thrift, eventually fastens 
 upon the object of its benevolence a curse more terrible than 
 the direst poverty, and, what is more to our immediate pur- 
 pose, it is fatal to the existence of all wholesome ascendancy 
 over his mind. On the other hand, an equal soundness of 
 judgment, great command of temper, and unvarying gentle- 
 ness of manner, are required to prevent him whose wants are 
 very sparingly supplied out of stores which he knows are 
 ample, from indulging in feelings which make the intercourse 
 between the parties anything but conducive to a frame of mind 
 likely to elevate his aspirations, and give firmness of tone to his 
 resolves. 
 
 To the rich, therefore, charity is both a difficult science and 
 a somewhat dangerous art; and hence the consequences of 
 .yielding to benevolent impulses uninformed by knowledge, and 
 unregulated by the power of self-control, are so frequently seen 
 to be not merely nugatory, but in the highest degree injurious. 
 
 Now the poor in their charities are not exposed to these 
 dangers. A kind word from him who has nothing more costly 
 to bestow is not suspected of insincerity; and, when something 
 is spared by poverty to destitution, the recipient is aware that 
 the bounty must have narrow limits ; and, furnished as it is 
 only by personal sacrifice, that it would be heartless and cruel to 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 77 
 
 press upon generosity entailing privations the extent of which 
 he so well knows how to estimate ; and thus he is preserved from 
 the temptation unduly to depend upon it as a substitute for his 
 own exertions ; moreover, his benefactor is also his observant 
 neighbour, and he therefore will not attempt to exaggerate his 
 sufferings for the purpose of augmenting the supplies with which 
 he is furnished. 
 
 It is difficult to over-estimate the amount of good which 
 one poor family may effect in its own immediate district by its 
 example of honest industry, of the practice of the family virtues 
 at home, and by its courtesy, ready sympathy, and helpful 
 disposition towards its neighbours ; and all this may be done 
 with very little acquaintance with what I have called the science 
 of charity, and with no great call for judgment in practising the 
 kindred art. Nevertheless, the main labours and anxieties of 
 charity in its largest sense must fall upon the rich. That 
 these duties are arduous furnishes no excuse for neglecting 
 them, and the affluent must cast about for the means of so ful- 
 filling them as to attain the maximum of good with the minimum 
 of evil. 
 
 It has long appeared to me that no power which arises out 
 of the social position pertaining to high and middle life in this 
 country is capable of being turned to better account than that 
 which we possess over those below us as their employers. We 
 know its extent in two ways. We see it exercised both for the 
 advantage and for the oppression of the employed. In either 
 direction its potency is immense. 
 
 To that class of employers who can deliberately abuse their 
 authority, to the injury of those unhappily subjected to it, I have 
 nothing to say ; they must be deaf to remc astrance. There is, 
 too, another class, of which I have not much better hope. I 
 refer to the opinion held by persons who consider that no relation 
 exists between employers and employed except that of buying 
 and selling, the wages being the purchase-money, and the labour 
 the commodity sold. Many such masters there have been, and 
 not a few remain : low-minded and selfish men, who see in the 
 ignorance around them only a safeguard against encroachments 
 on their own superiority. 
 
 They who have the good of the people at heart have wit- 
 nessed with painful emotion how little has hitherto been done 
 
78 Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 by employers to raise the morals, the manners, and the intel- 
 lectual condition of those over whom the accidents of life have 
 given them such powerful influence. 
 
 All honour to the few who have acknowledged and fulfilled 
 the duties towards their servants which remain to be dis- 
 charged after all pecuniary claims have been satisfied. This is 
 a topic on which I can only dwell for a moment, and therefore 
 I must pass over in silence establishments, in and near my 
 native town, to which it would give me great pleasure to direct 
 the attention of the reader, pausing only to speak of one 
 which stands confessedly at the head of all where the duties 
 which I have indicated have been observed. I refer to Price's 
 Candle Company, a joint-stock association for the manufacture 
 of candles of a superior kind. This company has five large 
 establishments, one in Lambeth, another at Birkenhead, and 
 three elsewhere. They employ about 2300 persons, of whom 
 300 are females, chiefly girls ; a considerable proportion of the 
 remainder being boys. The company was founded by Mr. 
 William Wilson and his sons, James Pillans Wilson and George 
 Ferguson Wilson. The sons are now the managing directors 
 of the company. These gentlemen, with the consent and hearty 
 approbation of the shareholders, have attached to their manu- 
 factories schools for the children, mechanics' institutions for 
 adults, playgrounds for all ages, and refreshment rooms. 
 Chapels have also been provided, with chaplains who devote their 
 whole time to the pastoral care of the workpeople. The com- 
 forts of the sick are not forgotten, and they are sent to the 
 sea-side when occasion requires. 
 
 Above all, these gentlemen personally associate with the 
 objects of their care and affection on terms of genuine cor- 
 diality. In short, the Candle Works form a great plebeian uni- 
 versity, in some respects better deserving the name than more 
 exalted institutions, where the culture of the heart and the 
 moral principles are not included in the curriculum of the 
 studies, and where the connexion between the alma mater and 
 the alumni begins at a later period of life, and for educational 
 purposes quickly arrives at its termination. That the work- 
 people cannot enjoy these advantages without large pecuniary 
 contributions on the part of the company is self-evident. Of 
 their amount I am not competent to speak, but I know 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 79 
 
 that tlic contributors regard them not in the light of sacri- 
 fices, but as the purchase-money of benefits to themselves; 
 candidly avowing that, even in a pecuniary sense, they are 
 repaid by the high moral tone which has been created, and the 
 devoted attachment of the employed to their employers, which 
 is resulting from the expenditure thus made for their welfare. 
 
 No doubt every relation of life which brings different classes 
 into intercommunication ought to be used by the higher and 
 better educated for the purpose of raising, as far as possible, 
 their inferiors in the moral and intellectual scale. But, in our 
 age and country, by far the most important in this point of 
 view is that of employer and employed ; and it is of growing 
 importance. Assemblies of working people are becoming larger 
 and larger, and these incorporations of augmented numbers, 
 while they afford additional facilities for the work of benevo- 
 lence, call for more copious emanations of its spirit. For these 
 large aggregations, while they admit of more being done for the 
 people by their employers, and by the people for themselves, are 
 liable to suffer with greater severity from moral neglect, and to run 
 into wilder disorders than can ever happen where the community 
 is composed only of a few individuals. It is here, as elsewhere, in 
 the progress of civilization. The farther we advance the more 
 potent become the influences of society both for good and for evil, 
 There are t\vo advantages flowing from this union of educa- 
 tion with profitable employment which cannot fail to strike the 
 reflecting reader as of the highest moment. The first is, that 
 this intermingling of instruction and training with the affairs of 
 a concern carried on for profit, especially where, as in the 
 instance of the Candle Company, the pecuniary consequences of 
 such an alliance are satisfactory to the em oloyer, subtracts, pro 
 tanto, the education of the lower classes from the sum of chari- 
 table undertakings, and thereby not only relieves our charitable 
 funds of a heavy burden, but places education itself on a sounder 
 basis, unendangered by those fluctuations which belong to volun- 
 tary institutions, founded simply on the principle of benevolence. 
 The second is, that it disposes, so far as it comes into opera- 
 tion, of the two great difficulties which impede our educational 
 progress; that which arises out of diversities in religious 
 opinion, and that which arises from the desire of parents pre- 
 maturely to put their children into a position of aiding in the 
 
8o Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 support of the family to which they belong. There would be 
 no law, no committee, no body of subscribers to interfere with 
 the employer on the subject of religion, while on the other 
 hand he would have the strongest motive not to offend his 
 workpeople by setting at nought their feelings on the subject. 
 Then, as regards the wages of the child, they would begin 
 early, and advance, pari passu, with his education; and even if 
 they were not quite equal to what he would gain at first, 
 supposing education to be altogether abandoned, yet the pros- 
 pect of an ultimate addition to his power of earning would 
 reconcile many a parent to the immediate sacrifice. Not that 
 I feel at all certain that any sacrifice would be necessary, 
 the value of every person, young or old, as an instrument 
 of profit to his employer, being at once augmented by a well- 
 conducted system of moral and mental training. Moreover, a 
 usage is now in commencement, which will probably more and 
 more prevail every year that of masters applying an educa- 
 tional test to candidates for employment. In the Candle Com- 
 pany there is a preparatory school for such candidates, the 
 reward of proficiency being admission into the works. 
 
 It is not, however, given to us all to sway the destinies of 
 large bodies of our fellow-creatures ; yet every reader of this 
 book probably is or will become the master or mistress of 
 domestic servants. Let him give due thought to the respon- 
 sibility which attaches to the headship of a family. The 
 members of a household are united in a relation which may be 
 turned to much good or to much evil, and in which direction 
 that relation shall operate mainly depends upon those who fill 
 the highest positions, and form the governing powers of this 
 little commonwealth. Taking the word ' home 3 in its genuine 
 sense, as comprehending all who live under the same rooftree, 
 it may be safely conceded that charity ought to begin there ; 
 and the philanthropist who dispenses his bounty, whether of 
 money or labour, abroad, while the education of his servants is 
 neglected, their health and comfort uncared for, their hearts 
 chilled by haughtiness, excessive or untimely displays of anger, 
 or contempt of the courtesies which every human being owes to 
 every other, is, to say the least of him, a very inconsistent 
 character, and one whose conduct casts a doubt on the purity of 
 his motives. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 81 
 
 The need for recreations is at last beginning to be felt 
 among us. Provide harmless amusements, wholesome for the 
 body, the intellect, and the affections, and the young, at all 
 events, may be reasonably expected to choose them in preference 
 to debasing pleasures. Relaxation from toil, whether of body 
 or of mind, is a necessity of our nature. It will be snatched where 
 it is not conceded, and where time for enjoyment is stinted, a 
 strong temptation is offered to make up by intensity what is lost 
 in duration. Hence the resort to stimulants. ' Pleasures of 
 some sort are necessary/ (says Johnson) c to the intellectual as to 
 the corporeal health ; and those who resist gaiety will be likely 
 for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite ; for the solici- 
 tations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and 
 solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief.* I believe 
 we ought to place recreation upon the same footing as 
 food, clothing, rest, and instruction, and not permit any cur- 
 tailment of the leisure appropriated to amusement, under the 
 notion that we are calling for only a slight and unimportant 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Much valuable training, which is but too frequently neglected, 
 may be carried forward on the playground. The conduct of 
 lads among themselves is often grossly unjust on the one side, 
 and is met on the other with unbridled anger, not infrequently 
 settling down into hatred, and prompting acts of revenge. A 
 steady, good-tempered, well-mannered, and judicious superinten- 
 dent of a public playground, when such a privilege shall be 
 granted to that important body, the boys in the street, would 
 do much for the moral training of youths. While checking 
 a querulous tone in the weak, he would restrain the more 
 powerful from oppression. Where statements were conflicting, 
 he might select a jury of youngsters, and, presiding as judge, act 
 upon their verdict. It would be his duty to preserve order and 
 decorum both in language and action, and to cultivate that 
 attention to the courtesies of life wherein we islanders, espe- 
 cially the younger sort, are so deficient. 
 
 I have often thought that a digest of the rules which govern 
 the various games in which boys engage might have a salutary 
 effect on their temper and even on their morals. 
 
 * Piozzi's Anecdotes, p. 81. 
 G 
 
83 Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 At present these rules or laws are imperfectly known, ill- de- 
 fined, and some of them constructed in a spirit of chicanery. 
 Thus I remember when a schoolboy myself there were rules at 
 the game of marbles which gave advantage, not to the best 
 player, but to the one who could first utter certain formulae. 
 The consequence was that an employment sought for the sake 
 of pleasure became a source of irritation to those engaged in it, 
 annoyance to bystanders, and concern to the reflective teacher 
 who saw that the play-hour was wasted, indeed worse than 
 wasted, in a training to ill temper, bad language, and litigious 
 habits. A little code of laws, not departing without clear 
 necessity from those handed down by tradition, but framed 
 with a view to promote skill and prevent disputes, would be 
 appreciated by young people as a valuable gift. 
 
 All who have made themselves acquainted with the tastes 
 and habits of our lowest class, and especially those of its 
 younger members, know how passionate is their love of dra- 
 matic entertainments. The penny theatre is the most seduc- 
 tive temptation by which they are beset. They steal to obtain 
 the means of entering these pestiferous dens, and what they 
 hear and see there contaminates even the minds of thieves. But 
 every passion is a power, and may be turned to good purpose. 
 I doubt whether a philanthropist could be better employed than 
 by furnishing dramatic entertainments of a suitable kind to a 
 juvenile audience of the lower classes. 
 
 It would require some prudence on his part to prevent abuse, 
 but the attraction would be so great, that the candidates for 
 admittance would submit to almost any conditions rather than 
 be excluded; such as cleanliness of person, and neatness of 
 dress, perfect order while present, and soforth. Tickets might 
 be given to the conductors of Eagged Schools ; subscribers to the 
 expense of the undertaking might also distribute tickets to 
 those on whom they thought such encouragement would be well 
 bestowed. Ever since the days of the Puritans a body of men 
 for whom I have great respect, but who have done a vast 
 amount of mischief as well as of good we have been trying 
 the ' putting down' principle of action. The few dictating the 
 relaxations of the many. It has failed, and ever will fail. 
 Instead, then, of confiscating the pleasures of the poor and 
 ignorant, let us try the effect of a well-devised system of barter. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October 3 1845. 83 
 
 Let us induce them to exchange recreations unprofitable or per- 
 nicious for those of a better kind; keeping in the selection 
 which we offer for their choice as near to what they desire 
 as a due regard for their spiritual and bodily health will 
 permit. We want the poor man's ' Book of Sports/ Who will 
 write it ? 
 
 Years probably will elapse before these suggestions are held 
 to be anything better than dreams. Be it so. But throwing 
 them out is a step, though a short one, towards their realiza- 
 tion. 
 
 Meantime something may be done which does not wear the 
 same appearance of innovation, and which requires neither num- 
 bers, nor wealth, nor social position for its accomplishment. 
 An entertaining -book read by instalments on a certain evening 
 in every week to such an audience as I have described, who 
 may assemble in a school-room, or in an apartment in a private 
 house, might be made a very attractive pastime, and something 
 more. Take Robinson Crusoe, for instance. Read him for 
 half an hour, and at the end of that time illustrate the lecture 
 by tracing his progress so far as you have accompanied him, 
 and no further, on a map. Say a little of York, from whence 
 he starts, and of Hull, whence he embarks for London. Explain 
 any hard words that have occurred, availing yourself of prints 
 when the} 7 " can be procured. These little expedients, and others 
 which will occur to the reader, will engage attention, and the 
 same audience will come again arid again. But the instructor 
 must not be too didactic. He must not break the thread of 
 the narrative by interpolating explanations while the reading is 
 going forward. He may do well now and then to substitute 
 an easy periphrasis for a difficult word, which word, however, 
 he should replace at the end of his reading, making his audience 
 understand that it is equivalent to the phrase which he had 
 used in its stead. 
 
 Readings like these, given in a frank and cordial spirit, would 
 produce beneficial effects in more ways than I can stay to 
 enumerate. 
 
 Cheap concerts are a charming recreation for the labouring 
 classes. I have seen the enormous area of our Town Hall at 
 Birmingham, with its vast galleries, filled to repletion by an 
 audience which had paid for admission ; the aristocratic portion 
 
84 Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 sixpence, their humbler neighbours threepence. To be sure, 
 from their clothes and their demeanour, even the latter might 
 have been considered by a stranger as belonging to the higher 
 classes of the town, had not their immense numbers shown 
 that only plebs could furnish so great an array. 
 
 Pictorial exhibitions by the aid of the magic lanthorn, and 
 dissolving views, may be turned to good account at no great 
 cost either of time or of money. 
 
 These suggestions might be multiplied ad infinilum, if space 
 and the reader's patience were not limited quantities. 
 
 The necessity for the improvement and extension of amuse- 
 ments for the lower classes of the people is illustrated by the 
 following extracts : 
 
 A collection of papers on the recreations of Liverpool, inte- 
 resting, although that interest is of a painful kind, has been 
 reprinted from the Liverpool Mercury. I give some passages 
 from it. One is from the description of a place of amuse- 
 ment, called by its proprietor, 'the most elegant lounge in 
 Europe/ 
 
 ' A great portion of the promenade being open to front the 
 stage, many are induced to stand here smoking whilst the per- 
 formance is going on/ It ' consisted of nigger singing, dancing 
 and gymnastic feats/ . . . During a subsequent visit in the body 
 of the lounge we noticed a mechanic, in company with his wife 
 and his little boy, a child about five years of age. The parents 
 had ale before them, and every now and then they handed their 
 glasses to the boy that he might drink. Both father and mother 
 looked stupidly sottish; the child, sickly and restless, urged the 
 mother, to 'come home/ 'Come home, mammy/ 'mammy, 
 come home/ frequently lisped the childish tongue. At length 
 the mother, staggering from her seat with her boy, made her 
 way towards the door. ' Oh, hold my head, mammy, every- 
 thing is turning round/ cried the little fellow. The mother 
 held his head, but she was unsteady, and a younger woman 
 kindly took the child under her charge/ p. 24.* 
 
 Here follows a description of one of the Liverpool theatres: 
 ' At the entrance to the theatre, standing by the check-taker, is 
 
 * Liverpool Life : its Pleasures, Practices, and Pastimes. Liverpool: Egerton, 
 Smith, and Co., Mercury Office, Lord-street. 1856. Price One Shilling. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 85 
 
 a representative of magisterial authority, in the person of a police - 
 man, bearing on his arms two stripes, and on his breast a good- 
 conduct medal. The audience in the pit numbered about one 
 hundred and fifty, and at least fifty of these, by their dress and 
 demeanour, declared themselves to be prostitutes. They crowded 
 round the entrance doors, and conducted themselves in an un- 
 seemly way. Attracted, after the first act of the play, by the 
 sound of voices in earnest conversation, the rustling of dresses, 
 and the noise of feet, we move from our seat, and look around 
 us. The proprietor, with a view to the comfort of the audience, 
 has run a partition round the outside of the pit. The space 
 between the partition and the wall of the building forms a sort 
 of promenade, where gaudily -at tired girls use their best 
 endeavours to entrap the unwary, or to make assignations with 
 the fully initiated. Between the acts this promenade was 
 thronged with persons of both sexes. The females were from 
 fifteen to twenty-five years of age, the males from fourteen to 
 sixty. Three young lads were there, who had the air, dress, 
 and polish of well-educated boys. They wore caps, were juvenile 
 in their appearance, and the oldest could not have been more 
 than seventeen years of age. They were doubtless the hopes of 
 kind fathers, the darlings of fond, affectionate, devoted mothers. 
 Here they were walking beside, whispering and talking to, 
 leering at, and in their way joking with, coarsely-behaved, 
 vulgarly-bedecked, painted beauties girls who have nothing to 
 recommend them but rich attire, the unnatural colour of their 
 faces, the unchaste desire, and the utter absence of every feeling 
 of shame and decency; abandoned ones, in whose breast the 
 flame of pure affection must have been extinguished long ago ; 
 the peculiar glare of whose eyes suggested an early and 
 agonizing death in a lazar-house, and a dishonoured and 
 disowned grave. Not only were young men here, but men of 
 middle age men who in their daily occupations pass for respec- 
 table, and fill responsible situations. The hollow laughter of 
 the lewd ones, their coarse conversation, the various arts used 
 to entrap the crowd of youths and men that moved around 
 them, the nod of recognition given to some ' fast young man/ 
 the make-believe earnestness in the shake of the hand given to 
 hoary -headed ' men about town/ were pitiful to see and hear. 
 Vulgarity and vice were ostentatiously displayed and recklessly 
 
86 Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 indulged in, at this place of public entertainment, licensed by 
 the magistrates. The scenes in detail are 
 
 ' Not to be named, my lord, not to be spoken of : 
 There is no chastity in language, 
 Without offence, to utter them.' 
 
 pp. 39, 40. There are, however, two sides to the picture of 
 Liverpool recreations. 
 
 ' We have seen what the authorities permit individuals to 
 provide for the recreation of the masses ; we will now see what 
 the authorities themselves provide for this purpose. First, and 
 above all, we class the Public Baths and Washhouses established 
 by the Town Council. These institutions, extensively as they 
 are known, and largely as they are taken advantage of by those 
 for whom they were intended, are, notwithstanding, by many 
 thousands totally uncared for and neglected. It may perhaps 
 excite surprise that some members of our local legislature know 
 nothing more of these life-invigorating and body-cleansing esta- 
 blishments than they may be supposed to learn from hearing the 
 proceedings of the baths committee read from time to time in 
 the council-chamber. Yet the public baths reflect honour on 
 the town, bestow abundant credit on the council, are model 
 sanitary purifiers, and are hourly bestowing blessings cheap, 
 pure, and healthful on the toiling masses of this great com- 
 munity. A few statistics will bear out this statement. The 
 weekly bath returns are made up each Wednesday. During 
 last week, (July, 1856,) nearly 25,000 persons bathed at the 
 public baths, at a cost to themselves of more than 500^. At 
 Cornwallis-street baths the daily receipts range from 45. 6d. 
 to 53/. 6s. $d. Last week, at that establishment alone, 10,516 
 persons bathed, the receipts being upwards of i79/. In the 
 corresponding week of last year, the receipts were 53 1., and the 
 number of bathers, 3678. On Saturday, throughout the year, 
 the number of bathers is generally double that on any other 
 day of the week. 
 
 ' The Corporation Baths, as is well known, are situated in 
 Cornwallis-street, Paul-street, and George's Pierhead. Paul- 
 street baths have attached to them washhouses ; and for the 
 south end of the town there are washhouses in Upper Frederick- 
 street. The latter were originally the public baths the first of 
 the kind established in this town or country and were opened 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 87 
 
 fourteen years ago, principally through the instrumentality of 
 that friend of the poor, William Rathbone. It is to the baths 
 in Cormvallis-street that we now wish to draw particular atten- 
 tion. They are the largest, most modern, best frequented, and 
 contain the most recent improvements. The foundation-stone 
 was laid in 1849, by ^ r - ^. ^- Tiune, the then chairman of the 
 health committee. The edifice was designed by, and erected 
 under the superintendence of the borough engineer, Mr. James 
 Newlands; and well do the baths deserve the high encomiums 
 which have been passed upon them by celebrated and profes- 
 sional men who have visited them. The building contains three 
 large plunge baths first, second, and third class ; sixty private 
 warm baths, of similar classes; together with shower, vapour, 
 and sitz baths ; the whole being under the management of Mr. 
 Andrew Clarke, the superintendent. 
 
 ' The first thing that strikes the visitor to these baths is the 
 scrupulous cleanliness everywhere observable, the order and regu- 
 larity with which business is transacted, and the highly trained 
 and systematic mariner in which all the servants appear to dis- 
 charge their duties no unnecessary noise, no bustle, even 
 when business is brisk and bathers are waiting for bath rooms. 
 4 The system ' here seen in operation is not only commendable, 
 but worthy of imitation. This opinion is formed after having 
 frequently visited all the public baths in Liverpool during the 
 whole time they have been in operation. That all the arrange- 
 ments are brought into such a state of efficiency is to be attri- 
 buted in a great measure to the long experience, and firm, yet 
 respectful demeanour of the superintendent, who is zealously 
 supported in all his plans and arrangements by the present 
 chairman and vice-chairman, Messrs. Wagstaff and Fernihough, 
 and some of the other members of the batLs committee. If it 
 be a good quality in a servant to take a deep interest in his work, 
 and display zeal and assiduity in the discharge of his duties, the 
 Town Council are fortunate in securing the services of Mr. 
 Clarke. He thoroughly identifies himself with the place by all 
 he does and says ; and as we walk through the various depart- 
 ments accompanied by him, and listen to the continuous flow 
 of common-sense observations, given, as they are, with a rich 
 smack of the true Milesian brogue, the fact is still further im- 
 pressed upon us. He is a tall, powerful, well-built man. In 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 
 
 early life he was engaged in constructing the wooden walls of 
 old England, and in middle age he assisted to man them. He 
 has been in all quarters of the globe, and picked up a variety 
 of information, and thus profited by his travels. He is not 
 possessed of showy or shining qualities, but, like a good old- 
 fashioned craft, carries a good cargo without making much 
 display. Age is fast telling on him, and he has undergone 
 much change since he ' mixed a nice comfortable bath ' for us, 
 fourteen years ago, in Frederick-street. He is yet hale, hearty, 
 and obliging, and we hope he may long remain so, and that 
 speedily the great wish of his heart may be granted him ' a 
 regular supply of water from Rivington,* when I can keep my 
 fountain in play, and my place in the order it should be/ 
 
 ' In the old-fashioned way, and in order to convey an idea of 
 the baths to our readers, we will begin at the bottom, and look 
 at the third-class plunge bath, or, as it is commonly called, the 
 ( twopenny/ We are now at the entrance, talking with the 
 superintendent. It is Saturday evening, about eight o'clock ; 
 half-a-dozen dirty-looking little fellows, shoeblacks and others, 
 are coming up the steps. Cash in hand, they walk up to the 
 money-taker, and demand ' a twopenny 'un/ They receive for 
 the twopence a ticket and a clean coarse towel. There is no 
 doubt of their having been here before, for as soon as they 
 obtain the ticket and towel, they run down the flight of steps 
 leading to the baths, screaming with delight in anticipation of 
 their enjoyment. We follow them, the superintendent observing 
 as we descend, ' These pay me the best ; they are my best cus- 
 tomers/ The noise of boys out of the water, the splashing 
 and shouting of those in, prepare us to some extent for the 
 scene that awaits us. On entering the bath we find upwards 
 of a hundred boys, most of them in a state of nudity, ducking, 
 diving, floundering, plunging, dousing, sousing, rolling, sprawl- 
 ing, tossing, and tumbling in the water. The turmoil in the 
 water, the tumult of voices out, are for the first few moments 
 positively stupifying. Mr. Clarke notices our consternation, and 
 quietly chuckles at the sight. The bath is forty-one feet long, 
 by twenty-seven wide ; the water is five feet deep at one end, 
 and two and a half at the other ; the floor is of asphalte, the 
 
 * Now accomplished, January, 1857. Heretofore the supply of water to 
 Liverpool was but scanty. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 89 
 
 sides of stone : there is a ' spring-board' placed at the deep end 
 to assist the lads in diving. There are twenty-four rooms, or 
 receiving boxes, around the bath, all being destitute of doors. 
 In these the bathers place their clothes, and as many as ten or 
 twelve boys at one time deposit their habiliments in one of 
 these boxes. As our conductor feelingly remarks, ' Poor little 
 fellows ! their clothes in most cases occupy little room, and 
 what I give them is the only clean covering they ever get/ 
 
 ' In the good old days of good old Egerton Smith, who, as it 
 is well known, took an active part in promoting a knowledge 
 of the useful art of swimming, it was our practice and pri- 
 vilege to visit the Floating Bath.* On one occasion a young 
 man unacquainted with the bath jumped into the ' deep 
 end/ and, as he could not swim, was in some danger. We 
 assisted him into shallow water, and afterwards in the bath 
 became very friendly; both being destitute of clothes, an 
 equality was constituted. We returned to our respective 
 dressing-rooms, and again met on the deck whilst ' waiting for 
 the boat/ Much to our surprise, the young man did not speak. 
 lie was dressed in the height of fashion, considered himself no 
 doubt a gentleman, and could not condescend to notice or look 
 upon plebeians. ' Old Egerton/ as he was familiarly and affec- 
 tionately called, saw this, very likely knew what we felt, and 
 quietly walking up, he took hold of our jacket, and rubbing 
 the cloth, he said, ' Never mind him : this is the dif- 
 ference between you; and though you will now have to be two 
 people, the same boat will carry you both ashore/ This was 
 our first lesson in ' the philosophy of clothes/ It made a deep 
 impression, and we felt it in full force whilst looking at the 
 crowd of boys and young men disporting themselves so boiste- 
 rously, yet innocently, in the twopenny plinge bath. As old 
 Sandy Mackay remarks, ( There, ye're a' brithers noo, on the 
 one broad, gran/ fundamental principle o' want o' breeks !' 
 
 ' Many gentlemen visiting this bath are impressed with the 
 good appearance of the boys when destitute of clothes. Lord 
 Alfred Paget, who visited it a short time since, in company with 
 the Earl of Derby, expressed his great surprise and astonish- 
 ment when looking at the clear skins, well-knitted frames, and, 
 in some instances, wonderfully developed muscles of the boys. 
 
 * In the Mersey. 
 
90 Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 f They might/ said he, ' be all noblemen's sons/ What an 
 admission ! He coidd have gone further than this, and yet 
 have spoken the truth. 
 
 ' Many of the boys not having any regular employment stay 
 a long time in the water. The keeper tells us that he notices 
 boys who bring a little bread with them ; they will stay in the 
 water two or three hours, going out occasionally into the box 
 to eat a little food, and then dash into the water again. Many 
 of them are very expert swimmers, and they all appear to be 
 excellent divers. A deal of amusement, of a very profitable 
 character to the boys, is frequently witnessed by visitors throwing 
 money into the water, in order that the boys may dive for it. 
 The vice-chairman of the committee (Mr. J. C. Fernihough) is 
 well known by the boys for his enjoyment of this sport, and his 
 presence with a few friends is generally the signal for a display 
 of diving diversion. The gentlemen cast their coin upon the 
 waters, and it is found, after the lapse of a few moments, in 
 the possession of some of the boys, who swim about in great 
 glee, holding the much-prized coin between their teeth. Their 
 dexterity in diving and bringing up the smallest coin is re- 
 markable; and although in many cases they not ^infrequently 
 jump on each other, we witness no display of ill-temper. On 
 remarking this to our guide, he says : ' I had many a hard turn 
 with them before I got them to this order; but now most of 
 them know that so long as they behave decently they will be 
 permitted to remain, and no longer ; and as soon as I see or 
 hear of any act of violence, they have me down on them/ Mr. 
 Clarke seems to take an interest in the lads learning to swim, 
 and says : ' the next generation will be a generation of swimmers, 
 and in a great sea-port like this it ought to be so ; the great 
 majority will be indebted to my baths for that/ 
 
 ' There are some strange scenes to be met with at ' the two- 
 penny/ On one occasion a swimming-match had been deter- 
 mined on between two boys, one of whom had lost an arm, 
 the other was destitute of a leg. With that love of fair play 
 which is, and we hope ever will be, the distinguishing charac- 
 teristic of true Britons, the whole of the boys, to the number of 
 eighty or ninety, left the bath, and stood, naked, shouting, huz- 
 zaing, and rollicking, on the brink. By this means they 
 secured for the contending swimmers a ' clear course and no 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 91 
 
 favour/ The distance was once round, starting from the 
 shallow end. The excitement of the spectators was very great, 
 and the cries most comical. ' Now, legs / ' Bravo, arms / 
 ' Go it, pegleg / ' Pitch into it, stumpy/ resounded on all 
 sides. More fun of an innocent character amongst boys of 
 such a class we never saw. Many of the lads laughed until 
 they fell into the water; others fell over them for fun ; even the 
 grave face of the bath-keeper relaxed into a genial smile, and 
 all were uproariously mirthful. It soon became evident that 
 legs had the advantage. He with the two propellers gained 
 speedily on his opponent, and came in an easy victor. He was 
 speedily surrounded by his companions, one of whom, clapping 
 him on the back, observed, ' I knew very well you could soon 
 take slates out of stumpy/ In a few moments they were all in 
 the bath again, kicking, splashing, and tossing about, and en- 
 joying themselves in the water as only boys can. 
 
 ' We leave the ' twopenny/ and pass on to the fourpenny 
 plunge bath. This is similar in appearance to that noticed, but, 
 not being so much used, the place has not such a dingy appear- 
 ance. The rooms here have a looking-glass and door attached 
 to each. They are twenty-six in number. This bath is fre- 
 quented more by middle-aged and young men, who find it hard 
 to stand the rollicking fun of the boys, and therefore pay an 
 additional twopence for the additional comfort. Seeing the 
 crowded state of the twopenny bath, we learn with great satis- 
 faction that the committee have resolved to reduce the price of 
 the fourpenny to twopence. This will likely have the effect of 
 inducing more to go into the first-class bath, whilst it will be 
 conferring a great boon on those of the humbler class, to whom 
 twopence is a great consideration, and a good bath a positive 
 necessity. It is very pleasing to observe here the young and 
 middle-aged mechanic laying out a few pence so judiciously on 
 a Saturday evening. Contrast what may be obtained here for 
 fourpence or for twopence with what may be obtained for a like 
 amount at the gorgeous and glaring palaces that are fast 
 adorning every corner of our streets; and reflect also which 
 mode of expenditure constitutes the best preparation for the 
 Sabbath. It is said that cleanliness is next to godliness, that 
 health of mind is in a great measure dependent upon that of 
 the body, and that cleanliness of the one will induce to purity 
 
92 Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 of the other. These things, it may be supposed, savour too 
 much of the earth for our ministers to notice in the present 
 day, or we might hear more of washings and purifications, and 
 less of religious rancour, than we now do. That filthiness of 
 person and viciousness of disposition are closely allied all must 
 admit ; and all must admire, even in its present limited extent, 
 the means which our local governors take to purify the bodies 
 of the people. Every ward in the town ought to have its public 
 bath. Baths would be much cheaper than gaols the more 
 cleansing the less crime ; and if the price of the plunge baths 
 could be reduced to a penny for the poorest class, the change 
 would be glorious. 
 
 ( We pass on now to the first-class plunge bath, which is a very 
 beautiful building. The style and decoration are purely 
 Egyptian ; the colouring is in exquisite harmony, displays good 
 taste and sound judgment, and is altogether the best display of 
 ornamentation we have seen in Liverpool. The bath is fifty- 
 seven feet long by forty-one wide ; the sides are of tiles, the 
 floor of Yorkshire flagstone ; the bath is emptied and the floor 
 thoroughly scoured with sandstone twice a week. The water 
 is three feet deep at one end, and seven at the other. By 
 reason of the floor being lighter in colour than the other baths, 
 the water here has a beautifully clean appearance. There are 
 thirty-three dressing-rooms round the bath, each of which con- 
 tains a looking-glass and boot-jack. This bath is not frequented 
 so much as we might expect. There are now twenty persons in 
 it, chiefly young* or middle-aged men. We notice one youth 
 who is an excellent swimmer, and the bath-keeper informs us 
 that this youth on one occasion swam round the bath forty- 
 five times, thus performing a distance of upwards of two miles 
 in one hour and three-quarters. In the centre of the bath 
 stands a fountain, in the form of a vase, from the edge of which 
 the jets send forth the water. When this is in play, with two- 
 thirds of the pressure on, the form is very beautiful. It is a 
 source of regret to the superintendent that he cannot keep the 
 fountain continually in play, by reason of the scarcity of water ; 
 ' but/ says he, ' when Rivirigton is all right, and I get my 
 proper supply, I will keep it going ; for besides moderating the 
 temperature of the bath, it is beautiful and refreshing to the eye.' 
 ' We now visit the department of the building devoted to 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 93 
 
 private warm baths. The charges for these are First class, 
 one shilling; second class, sixpence; third class, twopence. It 
 is very interesting to observe the distinction which is made 
 between the classes. In the first we find a carpet, two chairs, 
 a bootjack, boothooks, shoehorn, fleshbrush, hairbrush, and 
 comb, a large looking-glass, hand-ewer and soap, and three 
 towels. We notice further the fleshbrush has a long handle. 
 There is also a tap by which the bather can regulate the tem- 
 perature of the bath. In the second class we find a carpet, a 
 chair, a small looking-glass, a fleshbrush without any handle, a 
 tap for regulating the temperature, and two towels. In the 
 third class we see no carpet, no fleshbrush, no tap, one towel, 
 and no looking-glass. Thus it would appear, as was suggested 
 by a gruff-looking mechanic probably a Chartist ' That a poor 
 fellow who can only pay twopence is not worth looking at, and 
 it would do him no good to be allowed to see himself! and as 
 to a fleshbrush, it's the swells as needs all that sort of thing/ 
 In one respect the baths are all alike they are exquisitely 
 clean. The warm baths are frequented chiefly by mechanics 
 and persons engaged in sedentary occupations. All that we had 
 an opportunity of conversing with expressed themselves in the 
 strongest manner, and in grateful terms, as to the good which 
 the establishment had conferred on them physically and socially. 
 Our conversation with the superintendent showed this in a much 
 stronger and clearer light. 
 
 ( ' I have men coming to me now/ said he, ( who used to 
 come to my place in Frederick-street fourteen years ago. I 
 noticed them week after week, and now look for them as 
 regularly as I do for my meals. At first they were content 
 with merely bathing ; after a few weeks I noticed them bringing 
 small bundles under their arms, which I soon discovered to 
 contain a change of linen, or probably, in addition, a clean 
 singlet and stockings. They then brought a piece of soap with 
 them, and gave themselves a thorough cleaning and brushing. 
 And many a Saturday night, after I have closed my place, and 
 gone to take a walk through the market, I have met some of 
 those customers of mine, nicely cleaned up, their wives with 
 them, sober and respectable, making their little purchases for 
 the week. Such sights, I assure you, do my heart good to see ; 
 and what I often say, the Corporation never have done, nor 
 
94 Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 will they ever lay money out to a better advantage than in 
 building baths for the people/ 
 
 ( In addition to the first, second, and third class private warm 
 and plunge baths, the charges for which range from a shilling 
 to twopence, private cold shower baths may be had in the third 
 class for a penny. We are glad to learn that many a working 
 man, on his way to his daily toil, steps into the baths at Corn- 
 wallis-street, pays his penny, gets a clean towel, and, entering 
 into the third class bath room, refreshes himself by a cold 
 ablution in the morning. 
 
 ' The warm baths are more in requisition on Saturday even- 
 ings and Sunday mornings, and for this purpose the committee 
 wisely keep them open until ten o' clock on Saturday, and from 
 six to nine on Sunday morning. We confess that the visit to 
 these baths on a Sunday morning has given us more unfeigned 
 pleasure, and awakened within us more cheering hopes for the 
 elevation of the people, than anything we have ever seen. The 
 attendance here, and the characters of those who attend, are a 
 further proof that if pure and wholesome recreations be pro- 
 vided for the people, at a cost within their reach, they will be 
 so well appreciated as to become remunerative to the promoters 
 a fact that Mr. Clarke again and again insisted on when 
 pointing to the crowds of youths and men pouring in on the 
 Sabbath morning. Persons who thus commence the day by 
 purifying their bodies will not be found at the ' cat hunt ' or 
 ( dog race ' as the day advances. Their enjoyments will be of 
 a purer, loftier, and more pleasing character ; and, from all we 
 have seen and all we have heard, we know of no institution, 
 here or elsewhere, that is in a quiet, unobtrusive way bestrew- 
 ing the pathway of the labourer with such rich, lasting, inex- 
 pensive, and abundant blessings as the Corporation baths." 
 pages 5259. 
 
 Then succeeds a very different scene. It is vividly drawn : 
 ' The public-houses known as ' milling cribs' are kept by men 
 who either are, or have been, members of the P. R. (prize ring), 
 men who, having fought and nobly (?) conquered in some brutal 
 personal struggle, are now resting from their labours ' under their 
 own vine and fig tree/ and (judging from the gross impropriety 
 with which they conduct their business) ' none daring to make 
 them afraid.' One of these taverns was visited shortly after 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 95 
 
 ( the great fight for the championship/ in expectation of hear- 
 ing something of interest respecting ' gallant Tom/ and his 
 ' recent engagement/ or of ' scientific Harry/ and his last 
 1 terrible tourney/ The house is small, and in a very dirty 
 street and neighbourhood. Scarcely a week elapses that this 
 street does not furnish one or more cases for the police court, 
 some of them revealing a state of things frightful to contem- 
 plate, all of them displaying depravity and degradation disgrace- 
 ful to the town, and to the authorities who allow vice thus to 
 propagate itself. Passing a man selling trunks, bandboxes, 
 and mousetraps, a woman selling yellow-looking cabbages and 
 faded 'potherbs/ having been pushed aside by a drunken sweep, 
 and hustled and cursed at by a crowd of youths who were 
 playing at ' pitch and toss' by the light of the gas- lamp, we 
 reach a small door on a level with the footpath. On pushing this 
 door open, we find ourselves at once in the celebrated ' Vaults/ 
 ' The parlour in which we found ourselves was the only room 
 in the house solely devoted to drinking. It was very dirty ; 
 the floor had not been swept or scraped for a long time, and 
 with the dirt from men's shoes, sawdust, expectoration, and ale, 
 which was continually being slopped, we were standing in a 
 puddle, foul and filthy. There were three small tables with 
 forms at the sides, and two forms attached to the wall : these, 
 together with the recess formed by the window, were the only 
 seat-room provided. The room was about four yards square; 
 the walls were ornamented with portraits of ' Pets of the Fancy/ 
 To speak in the slang of 'the Fancy/ we noticed two 'plucky- 
 looking bull terriers/ with 'goggle eyes/ and a little 'under- 
 shot/ ' a broken-haired whelp of a likely-looking sort/ with a 
 dead rat lying beside it, two game-cocks, cut and trimmed 
 ready for fighting, but wretchedly painted, and a lithographic 
 portrait of ' Jem Corbett/ a celebrated ' bruiser/ Jem's nose 
 appeared to be 'slightly out of the perpendicular/ his 'gob' 
 ' any shape but the right one / his ' peepers' seemed recently 
 to have been f in mourning/ and his face was ' all cocked hats/ 
 There were seven men in when we entered. One of them was 
 engaged in reading Bell's Life, and, on asking him if he could 
 allow us to look at the paper for a few moments, he requested 
 us to shut our sanguinary 'trap/ and 'wait a bit/ Coarse and 
 disgusting as the form of expression was, it was not uttered 
 
96 Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 offensively, but as the man's manner was: he evidently wished 
 and intended to be civil. We acted on the significant advice 
 given, and sat down with our 'trap' closed. 
 
 ' On looking round, we observed that four of the men were 
 well-formed, muscular fellows, with an expression of great de- 
 termination on their countenances, and on several of their 
 features impressions of ' ugly hits/ One was dressed like a 
 ' navvie/ with a clean smock. His rosy face was indicative of 
 outdoor exercise and indoor beer drinking. There were two 
 youths, one of whom was engaged with the paper, the other 
 spent his time in slipping off the form on to the filthy floor, 
 and gathering himself up again as he best could. He was said 
 to be ' a little shaky on his pins/ The room behind that in 
 which we sat was called the kitchen. It was small and smutty- 
 looking, but in good keeping with all around. On the table 
 there was a large loaf, some cinders, a couple of knives, the 
 dust, or rather ashes, of tobacco, and an infant, which a woman, 
 coarse-looking and vulgarly attired, was supposed to be attend- 
 ing. The man who brought in the drink was quite the reverse 
 of wobody. He was all body arid head, his arms and legs 
 being quite insignificant appendages. He wore a dirty blouse, 
 and prefaced almost every sentence he nttered with a frightful 
 expression, calling upon the Almighty to strike him dead. He 
 was not alone in this form of speech : every man present used 
 either a blasphemous expression, or a disgusting oath, consider- 
 ing, no doubt, that this rendered his language more emphatic 
 or effective. The conversation consisted chiefly of remarks and 
 opinions on recent fights ; the character of the combatants ; 
 whether they had displayed sufficient courage, or science con- 
 sistent with their position ; whether such a man really meant to 
 fight, or such another ever ought to have entered the ring. The 
 men were frequently on the point of quarrelling with each 
 other, as we thought, but it turned out they were only convers- 
 ing in their ordinary manner. Anything more demoniacal to 
 look upon than the visage of these men, when excited on some 
 ' professional' point, could not easily be conceived. From their 
 oaths and imprecations it appeared as if they considered that 
 gladiatorial and fistic powers were the leading attributes of the 
 god of their worship the sublimest aspirations to which their 
 wicked souls could rise. Discourse more abominably profane 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 97 
 
 and unmanly could not have been uttered by men who, let it 
 be remembered, pride themselves so much oil their manly con- 
 duct and noble bearing. 
 
 f The night was close, and the window being open to admit 
 the air, the noise and disturbance which never ceased in the 
 street, caused the conversation to be a good deal interrupted. 
 At this some of the men were frequently excited, and swore 
 horribly what they would do, and where they, would speedily 
 hurl the bodies and souls of the wretched creatures outside, 
 whose quarrels about their ill-gotten and sinful gains created 
 the disturbance. Several times stones were hurled against the 
 house, and we feared the windows would be broken. In this 
 apprehension the waiter appeared to share, for he rushed out- 
 side, gnashing his teeth, -clenching his fist, and threatening, in 
 language that cannot be uttered, to wreak his vengeance on 
 abandoned but unfortunate disturbers of his peace. We were 
 listening to a man entering into minute details of a dog-fight, 
 which he had witnessed but a few days before, and the atten- 
 tion of the whole company was completely absorbed in this 
 degrading recital, when the door of the room was suddenly 
 thrust open, and the proprietor of the establishment staggered 
 in, accompanied by two men. They were all cursing, and 
 threatening some person for having done some things which 
 were neither named nor hinted at. Their talk consisted chiefly 
 of obscene and filthy allusions, senseless sayings, atrocious 
 threats referring to the souls and bodies of any who differed 
 from them, fiendlike descriptions of tortures which any of the 
 company would speedily undergo if they would ' stand up ' for 
 a few moments. Nothing appeared to be wanting to fill up 
 the cup of these men's iniquity. They appeared to be shame- 
 less, incorrigible, irreclaimable blackguards. 
 
 ' The proprietor of the ( Vaults ' was a powerfully-built man, 
 and, had he been trained in the paths of virtue instead of those of 
 vice, he would have been a noble- looking fellow. His large 
 Roman features and well-developed form were now associated 
 with everything disgraceful and degrading to humanity. He 
 might have been a useful member of society, earning his bread 
 by his own industry. He chose rather to lead an idle life, and 
 is now a dog-fighter and a pugilist, a wife beater, and a disso- 
 lute, demoralized, and depraved man. He might, from his 
 
 H 
 
98 Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 size, nerves, and form, have made himself famous in the annals 
 of this brutal pastime, sadly miscalled ' sport/ but, as the cele- 
 brated historian of the P. B. says, ( He had a soft place under 
 his left ribs/ and did not ' take his lickings with a relish ; ' 
 therefore it is he has not fought much lately, but gratifies his 
 vicious propensities by seeing others fight, or fighting his own 
 dogs. This is a manly Briton and what a comment on fight- 
 ing of all sorts ! ' Mine host' has increased in bulk very much 
 during the last few years, and was now slovenly attired, his 
 shirt breast open, and from his waistcoat pocket dangled a mas- 
 sive gold chain. He rolled about, and eventually righted 
 himself, and slouched down on the form. His companions 
 were two worthless, knavish-looking fellows one gruff-looking, 
 snarlish, but tolerably sober; the other hirsute, rakishly dressed, 
 but sottishly drunk. The latter introduced himself to the com- 
 pany by stating his name, and expressing his readiness ' any 
 minute ' to ( jump ' the immortal part out of any of the 
 ' cooneys/ a race of beings he detested, and which he said it 
 was his determination to drive into the burning lake.* Having 
 given this information as to his person and propensities, he 
 looks wildly round, declaring he will go, does not appear satis- 
 fied with the characters of his companions, and expresses him- 
 self in vile terms as to what he thinks of them. His friend 
 and the landlord both exerted themselves to induce the fellow 
 to stay; the latter, after calling him many opprobrious names, 
 and using a variety of adjectives to show what colour and 
 character of ' a fool 3 he was for entertaining the slightest 
 uneasiness as to his safety or comfort, concluded his diabolical 
 address by a very significant hint ' You had/ said he, ' six 
 pounds ; you have only spent four : you have two to spend yet, 
 and we might as well skin you as any one else/ This appeared 
 to set the fellow at rest for the time. He immediately after- 
 wards paid for a gallon of ale, which was brought in, and 
 handed round amongst the company without any distinction. 
 Whilst this was being done, he w r as very anxious the company 
 should examine his head, in order that we might see a terrible 
 scalp wound which he had received, according to his statement, 
 
 * ' Cooneya, ' the name borne, in the slang of the lowest class in Liverpool, by 
 the Irishmen who are to be seen about the docks. M. D. H. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 99 
 
 in the Kaffir war. We thought it might have been received 
 some Sunday morning nearer to the Aintree race-course [five 
 miles from Liverpool] than the Cape of Good Hope. It was 
 evidently the toemark of a native of this isle, and this drunken 
 wretch seemed proud of the scar. ' The professionals/ who 
 examined it minutely, seemed to entertain a very contemp- 
 tuous opinion of so small 'a dinge/ as they called it, and 
 any of them were ready to show impressions ' a good deal 
 better/ 
 
 ( We noticed that no one here called for a glass of ale. The 
 ale was ordered in quarts or gallons, was brought in large jugs, 
 and handed round in small glasses. Some of the company 
 appeared ' loafers/ who never paid for ale, but relied for their 
 drink on the ability, folly, terror, drunkenness, or stupidity of 
 persons who turned in to this filthy resort. It was a matter 
 of surprise where the stunted and dirty waiter obtained the ale. 
 There did not appear to be any beer engine, no tap ; and from 
 the appearance of the jug, it might have been plunged into the 
 liquid and filled in such manner. The speed with which it 
 was brought rendered this probable. Smoking short pipes now 
 became general, and as the ale began to take effect, the noise 
 became greater, the swearing and blasphemy more scandalous 
 than ever. Hellish schemes were openly spoken of, and heinous 
 crimes were more than hinted at. One graceless scoundrel 
 entered eating bread and cheese, and requested ale to it, for 
 which he said he would not pay, but which, nevertheless, was 
 soon handed to him. The conversation was just then turning 
 on w r ork, contrasted with fighting. ' The navvie ' said he made 
 his living by hard work, and did not rely on fighting or any- 
 thing else. This sentiment, which was sneered and scoffed at 
 by many, was taken up in a very earnest manner by the villain 
 that was eating bread and cheese. He frowned contemptuously 
 on the man who had uttered so execrable a sentiment, and went 
 on to say that any man that lived by working hard was a 
 highly-coloured fool; that he ought, moreover, to be sent to the 
 infernal regions, if, indeed, that place was not too good for such 
 a fellow. ' I used to work/ said he, ' but what better was I 
 off? I have a lad at home that I am training, and when I get 
 him out on the streets he will keep me and himself all right, 
 until he is sent abroad ; then I must get another* The heart- 
 
 H 2 
 
JOG Sequel to Charge of October, 1845. 
 
 less miscreant chuckled with the cheese in his throat, and the 
 company laughed at this infernal scheme. 
 
 ' The hero of the Kaffir war again became uneasy, got up, and 
 after refusing to drink a glass of ale, said something about 
 ' drugging/ The landlord immediately took this up. ' Are 
 you not Tommy's friend ? ' said he, ' and Tommy is my friend ; 
 you need therefore not fear drugging or slugging whilst with 
 us ; no one shall hurt a hair of your head whilst you are here ; 
 I'll see to that ; ' and again he called upon the holy name of 
 Him, who, when on this earth, ' went about doing good/ and 
 requested, with awful solemnity of purpose, that if what he had 
 then stated was not strictly true, he might become a stiffened 
 corpse ! Tommy expressed himself if possible in still stronger 
 and more horrifying terms. More ale was brought in, the 
 revel became more fiendish. Brutal it was not brutes could 
 not act thus. It is only demons in human shape that could 
 conceive or utter the hideous expressions heard on every side. 
 The landlord staggered into the kitchen, and staggered back 
 again, bearing in his arms an infant, and holding it up to the 
 gaze of the revellers, he cried out, ' There's breed for you ! 
 Look at it 1 ' Tommy reached forth his arms to take the child. 
 ' Let go/ said he to the father, ' do you think I don't know 
 how to handle a kid ?' The child was pretty, though dirty, 
 and almost naked, having only a small shirt or some simple 
 garment to cover it. To see it smiling in the face of the 
 drunken, depraved father, looking around on the countenances 
 of the detestable creatures as they drawled out portions of a 
 lewd song, or laughed at the filthy joke, was a picture of inno- 
 cency surrounded by a deep framework of infernal depravity. 
 At such a spectacle angels might have wept. For a moment, 
 during the presence of the child, we thought the countenances 
 of some of the men assumed a more pleasing expression ; the 
 rays of purity and spotless innocence reflected by the babe 
 had touched the faces of these villains, but could not penetrate 
 their obdurate hearts. The infant gone the light with- 
 drawn they were themselves again, foul, fiendish, disgusting 
 wretches. 
 
 ' One young man had now become very drunk, and the 
 waiter suggested that it would be necessary to ' double him 
 up.' This was speedily accomplished, and when he was f regu- 
 
Laying of the First Stone of Birmingham Gaol. 101 
 
 larly doubled up' lie lay on the form asleep, his hat having 
 been pressed tightly over his face. He would, no doubt, soon 
 roll from this on to the filthy floor, and would then be spit 
 upon. This young, drunken, crushed creature was said to be 
 ' a nice, quiet lad, with good stuff in him, but he could not 
 feed/ We were about to ask if the trial to feed him had ever 
 been made ; but recollecting the company around, and the allu- 
 sion to our f trap ' being closed, we said nothing, and deemed 
 this the better part of valour, for it became evident that a 
 storm which we had noticed gathering would speedily burst 
 forth. The imprecations against ' the cooneys ' became louder 
 and more terrible. Money was thrown down, and fighting 
 was talked of and sought for, and amidst the devilish denun- 
 ciations and awful requests impiously made to the Almighty, 
 we made our escape/ Pages 59 65. 
 
 THE LAYING OF THE FIRST STONE OF 
 
 THE BIRMINGHAM GAOL, 
 
 OCTOBER 29111, 1845. 
 
 FROM the year 1839, the date of the Charter of Incorpora- 
 tion granted to Birmingham, until 1849, ^ e prisoners tried at 
 the Borough Sessions were committed to the County Gaol at 
 Warwick, were brought again to Birmingham to be tried, and, 
 if convicted, were recommitted to Warwick in execution of 
 their sentences. This arrangement was a source of trouble and 
 expense both to the county and the borough; nor was the 
 County Prison adapted to carry into effect the improvements in 
 discipline resulting from a nearer approach to true principles. 
 On the 29th of October, 1845, tne erection of the new 
 prison at Birmingham Heath was commenced, the first stone 
 being laid by the Mayor, Mr. Samuel Thornton, who, at the 
 conclusion of the proceedings usual upon such occasions, re- 
 quested the Recorder to address the spectators on the object 
 which the Corporation had had in view in undertaking this 
 work. The Recorder spoke to the following effect : 
 
102 Speech at the Laying of 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, 
 
 It can have happened very rarely that an assembly 
 of the kind which I see before me has ever been collected to 
 witness the deposit of the foundation-stone of a prison. The 
 first impulse of the mind would be to revolt against a proposal 
 to distinguish by a festive ceremony an event arising out of 
 a cause so mournful and so humiliating to human nature, as 
 that prevalence of crime which demands the erection of a vast 
 edifice in every county, and in every large town, for the recep- 
 tion of malefactors a home of guilt and of pain. It has, there- 
 fore, been thought fitting by my excellent friend, your Mayor, 
 that I should briefly explain why it is that it has been deemed 
 not improper to celebrate this occasion, by assembling so large 
 a number of the respectable inhabitants of Birmingham to wit- 
 ness the proceedings of the day. 
 
 The characteristic of this prison has been clearly brought 
 before you by the reverend clergyman whose prayer you have 
 just heard. The truth which will be steadily kept in view in 
 its conduct is, that pain though necessarily incident to the 
 course of life of those who will be sent here, ought not to be 
 inflicted in a vindictive spirit as retribution for the past, but 
 administered strictly with the intention of producing the 
 reformation of the offender; and so far as the law allows 
 freedom of action to the local authorities, it will never be per- 
 mitted to exceed the limits which experience may show will 
 suffice to secure that great end. Punishments which originate 
 in wrath, and seek only to. vindicate the offended majesty. of 
 the law against a weak and erring fellow-creature, by plunging 
 his mind into grief and subjecting his body to pain, is after all 
 but a poor and unsatisfactory expedient for securing society 
 against the repetition and the multiplication of crimes. Ex- 
 perience, that slow and costly, but sure teacher, has at length 
 convinced us that even to attain our temporal object the safety 
 and comfort of society we must, as a rule of practical wisdom, 
 act on the great maxim of religion, that justice should be 
 administered in mercy. Not that false and self-seeking mercy 
 which prompts us not infrequently to spare ourselves the con- 
 templation of suffering, and thus to work permanent injury on 
 him towards whom, as we flatter ourselves, we are acting with 
 benevolence ; but with the mercy which raises in our hearts a 
 
the First Stone of Birmingham Gaol. 1 03 
 
 feeling of salutary kindness even towards the guilty, and 
 engages us to that course of treatment which will be for the 
 ultimate welfare of the sufferer himself; in well-placed confi- 
 dence that the true interests both of society and the individual 
 are not repugnant to each other, but can be attuned to perfect 
 harmony. 
 
 The building^ then, which will soon rise to cover the whole 
 area pressed by our feet, may be appropriately called a moral 
 hospital ; and those who will have the conduct of it will. I trust, 
 labour faithfully and zealously for the cure of the unhappy 
 persons who will be consigned to their care ; administering to the 
 best of their ability the remedies which have proved most 
 suitable to that great end. To accomplish this purpose, it has 
 been found necessary very materially to change the construc- 
 tion and the arrangements of the older prisons as they exist 
 throughout Europe. Man is a social being ; but when indivi- 
 duals are collected into a community by reason of their offences, 
 the social principle, which, under other circumstances, is the 
 origin and promoter of our progress towards that which is good, 
 becomes perverted works in the opposite direction, and each 
 prisoner is made worse by contact with his neighbour. In be- 
 ginning the work of reformation, then, it is necessary to separate 
 those who are brought to one spot by reason of crime ; in order 
 to counteract the unwholesome influences which result from the 
 intercourse of the guilty with their fellows. This prison will 
 therefore be conducted on what has been called the separate 
 system, which must riot, however, be confounded with solitary 
 confinement. That the evil-disposed should be, for a time, 
 divided from each other is conformable to reason, but that they 
 should be secluded from all human society is not only unneces- 
 sary, but pernicious and even cruel. Isolation is a state of such 
 dreadful misery when continued for any long period of time, 
 that perhaps no form of torture which debased ingenuity has 
 invented ever succeeded in producing an equal amount of suffer- 
 ing suffering I mean as measured from month to month or 
 from year to year, because, doubtless, it does not equal from 
 minute to minute the intense agony of the rack or the stake. 
 
 The prisoner will be visited by ministers of religion and by 
 the officers of the establishment, who will be chosen for their 
 moral qualities. Thus intercourse with those who will raise 
 
104 Speech at the Laying of 
 
 and improve him will be provided,, while, on the other hand, 
 association with such as would retain him in his degraded con- 
 dition will be cut off. 
 
 Another great principle in the treatment of offenders will 
 also be kept in view, namely, that there can be no healthy 
 state of either mind or body without employment. Separation 
 from his fellows, which implies that the prisoner must spend 
 much of his time alone, soon makes him glad to receive the 
 means of employment. The vacuity to which he is reduced 
 teaches him that labour is a blessing, idleness a curse. 
 
 True it is that prisoners do not often bring into gaol habits 
 of industry; but whatever power of that kind they may have 
 possessed was, under our old system in which they were called 
 upon for no exertion pretty sure to be lost. Earnest endea- 
 vours will be made in this prison to form the habit of labour 
 where it does not exist, and to strengthen it where it does. I 
 mean the habit of cheerful and willing application ; for the 
 odious toil of the treadmill, so far from inducing a disposition 
 to labour, is far more likely, by the revolting associations with 
 which it is accompanied, to make industry, when the prisoner 
 is discharged, more irksome to him than it was when he entered 
 the gaol. You will, I am sure, agree with me that if the dis- 
 cipline to which he will be here subjected should have the result 
 of reconciling him to his lot that of obtaining his livelihood 
 by the sweat of his brow a boon will have been conferred upon 
 him of inestimable value. 
 
 It is impossible to overrate the importance of an en- 
 lightened system of Prison Discipline. I have already pointed 
 out the benefits to be derived by the prisoner; but in how 
 many ways would society itself be a gainer ! Let the re- 
 formation of the offender be made the object to be attained, 
 and there will be an end of all cruel punishments, since 
 cruelty alienates the desires of the prisoner, and prevents him 
 from co-operating in the work of his reformation ; and I 
 hardly need to tell you that, unless we can take him with us 
 heart and soul, no system, however perfect, will produce its 
 intended effect. Then, again, there will be no false humanity 
 interfering to cut short the probation of the criminal, because 
 the greater the kindness felt towards him, the stronger will the 
 motive become to leave him under the operation of good train- 
 
the First Stone of Birmingham Gaol. 105 
 
 ing, until that training has wrought its full effect on his cha- 
 racter. It will be felt that to withdraw him before his cure is 
 effected will be to ensure a relapse, and to subject him to a 
 repetition of his punishment. 
 
 I believe, however, we are yet at a distance from the time at 
 which we can adopt all the principles which must be brought 
 into united action before the treatment of criminals can produce 
 results wholly satisfactory ; and we must be patient. We must 
 not attempt to advance at a more rapid rate than the public 
 will advance with us. J[f the administration of justice in any 
 of its departments be so conducted as not to be in consonance 
 with the feelings of the people, an injurious effect would be 
 produced, even although the innovations were improvements, j 
 
 Hastily and imperfectly as I have sketched the plan on 
 which this prison is to be regulated, I trust I have said enough 
 to show that the Corporation, in their invitation to you to meet 
 them here, have done nothing which can militate against your 
 sense of propriety. 
 
 Underneath the gaol at Warwick may still be seen the 
 hideous vaults into which the illustrious Howard found his 
 fellow-creatures thrust every evening at the hour of rest if 
 rest it was for them. Their feet were attached to a long chain, 
 stretching from one end of their dungeon to the other, and in 
 this damp and fetid cell they were detained through the night. 
 
 Had it been intended, Ladies and Gentlemen, to repeat in the 
 edifice, the commencement of which you have just witnessed, 
 these cruelties now, thank God ! by the labours of the 
 great man whose name I have mentioned, obsolete and almost 
 forgotten then, indeed, it would have been an outrage upon 
 you, as Christians, to bring you here ; but when we reflect on 
 the consequences of crime to the criminal, even where he 
 escapes the visitations of human law, I am satisfied you will 
 look upon this rising structure as upon a place of refuge about 
 to confer on its inmates, although at the cost to them of some 
 pain, the highest benefits in lieu of the deadliest injuries ; and 
 I am unaware of any reason why it should not be contemplated 
 with the sentiments with which you regard the two noble 
 infirmaries that do honour to your town. 
 
 But, in the discovery and application of sound principles to 
 the treatment of malefactors, we are only at the outset of our 
 
] 06 Laying of the First Stone of Birmingham Gaol. 
 
 enterprise, and we call upon you and the public at large for 
 aid to perfect the great work. Perhaps this day's event may 
 leave a lasting impression on minds which have not hitherto 
 been directed to the topics of my brief address. Further, it 
 may stimulate inquiry as to the legitimate objects to be aimed 
 at in punishment, and the best means for their attainment. 
 If so, I am sure you will not think your attendance thrown 
 away. 
 
 Alas, for human anticipations ! 
 
 The reader will hereafter be made acquainted with the facts 
 which have called forth this exclamation. 
 
CHARGE OF MAECH, 1847. 
 
 THE following is an abstract of the Recorder's Charge to the 
 Grand Jury : 
 
 Their duties, he said, would be heavy. Although seven 
 weeks and four days only had elapsed since the last sessions, 
 the calendar presented a list of 113 prisoners, which it was 
 probable might be still further lengthened. 
 
 He had made inquiries with a view of discovering the cause 
 for this sudden increase in crime, but he had been unable to 
 refer it to any of the circumstances to which an augmentation 
 when it occurred was usually attributed. The town, he was 
 informed, had been very fortunate in preserving its trade 
 much more fortunate, indeed, than other manufacturing 
 towns, as 110 difficulty was experienced by the working classes 
 in obtaining employment. There were, however, permanent 
 causes in operation which might throw some light on the in- 
 crease of crime, although they would not account for any 
 sudden movement in that direction. Among others, he would 
 mention the power of Justices of the Peace summarily to 
 convict persons charged with light offences a power, of late 
 years, considerably extended, with the view of preventing the 
 necessity of subjecting the accused to the long detention 
 which precedes a trial at the assizes or the sessions a de- 
 tention often greater than the imprisonment considered by 
 the Court to be the true measure of the offence. But unex- 
 pected results followed, productive of greater evils than those 
 which had induced the change in the law. When the prose- 
 cutor knew that his complaint would not draw down upon the 
 head of the prisoner any very weighty irfliction, his reluctance 
 to prosecute was lessened, and thus this class of offenders 
 brought to answer for their misconduct was gradually swollen ; 
 a remark, he said, which applied in an especial manner to 
 juvenile offenders, who now came under the animadversion of 
 the law both in a larger proportion and at a more tender age 
 than heretofore. 
 
 The short imprisonment which each underwent was just 
 
io8 Charge of March, 1847. 
 
 enough to dispel his terror of a gaol, and to give him a lesson 
 in the art of enduring a confinement, not continued to a suffi- 
 cient length to make it very irksome. Consequently, it often 
 happened that no sooner had he gone through his punishment 
 for one offence than he came back charged with another. Two 
 cases in the calendar, said the Recorder, would evidence and 
 illustrate the truth of his observations. The first was that 
 of a boy, who, in 1845, was twelve years of age; since that 
 period a year and three quarters he had been summarily 
 convicted seven times, his imprisonment varying from four- 
 teen days to a month. Now, to say nothing of the expense 
 of these seven convictions a consideration which, though of 
 secondary importance, was not to be slighted they w^ould see, 
 upon a moment's reflection, that the outlay to which he had 
 adverted had been incurred, not to diminish crime, but to defray 
 the cost of training this youth to the profession of a criminal. 
 
 Looking at what had happened from this point of view, 
 could they wonder that a lad who had been thus made familiar 
 with prison-life and all its degrading incidents, on charges of 
 breaking windows, vagrancy, and so forth, should now be suffi- 
 ciently advanced in his education to be arraigned at the bar for 
 felony ? Again, he found in the calendar the name of a boy, 
 who, in 1839, was nine years of age, and who since had been 
 summarily convicted six times for attempts to commit felony. 
 Who can wonder that the lad's persevering efforts are at length 
 crowned with success ? He would have ill-employed his oppor- 
 tunities and the instruction which he doubtless received from 
 his associates, in arid out of prison, if he had not raised himself 
 to the dignity for so the Recorder believed it was estimated by 
 these poor creatures the dignity of a felon ! 
 
 These unforeseen consequences of a change in the law, made 
 with the best intentions, had attracted the notice of Govern- 
 ment ; and he was led to believe that a remedy was in contem- 
 plation for this evil. 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1847. 109 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 THE causes which affect the quantum of crime are so numerous, 
 some acting to increase and some to diminish it, that although 
 it may be possible to refer its amount throughout the whole 
 country, at any particular period, to some general cause, like 
 the high price of the necessaries of life, or want of employ- 
 ment, yet even so large a population as that of Birmingham, 
 which approaches a quarter of a million, does not furnish a base 
 sufficiently extensive for such observations. 
 
 I have compared the prices of corn from year to year with 
 the criminal statistics published by the Corporation without 
 being able to establish any connexion of cause and effect 
 between dearth and high numbers; and I have been equally unsuc- 
 cessful when attempting to trace an increase in the calendar to 
 deficiency of employment when such deficiency existed. 
 
 In the manufacturing districts a flush of prosperity, which 
 suddenly enhances the rate of wages, overwhelms the .working 
 classes with temptations to indulge in liquor a cause of crime 
 which is more potent for its increase than the diffusion of 
 plenty is for its diminution. Indeed, it may be questioned 
 whether the family of the working man who is in any degree 
 given to drink, does not suffer more from want when he is 
 thrown off his guard by having what he considers a surplus 
 beyond the requirements of his wife and children, than when 
 employment and its remuneration are both scanty. In the 
 former case he very seldom limits himself to the surplus, but, 
 losing self-command, he continues his wasteful indulgence until 
 he has spent the po.rtion of his wages which was to have been 
 applied to the support of his family, while his habits of industry 
 are relaxed and his health undermined ; and thus, after no very 
 long period, he finds himself so inferior to what he was, as to 
 more than counterbalance any advantage to him of good times 
 over bad. 
 
 Thus it is by no means paradoxical, that the temptations to 
 crime which are incident to destitution, may prevail during a 
 season of great prosperity, and with a certain class may be 
 increased in pretty exact proportion to the magnitude of 
 the cause to which we are in the habit of looking for their 
 diminution. 
 
1 10 Sequel to Charge of March, 1847. 
 
 These remarks, it is plain, have no application to the large 
 portion of the working classes who make a better use of their 
 advantages. But the prevalence of widespread suffering, at 
 every fluctuation of commerce which lessens for the time our 
 prosperity as a nation, shows that the power of equalizing their 
 command over the comforts of life, acquired by laying some- 
 thing aside for a ' rainy day/ to use their own expression, 
 is far from being so widely diffused among labouring men as 
 could be wished. Perhaps, if the example of prudent self-denial 
 set them by their superiors made a nearer approach to being 
 universal than it now does, the humbler classes would give their 
 friends less cause to mourn over their improvidence. 
 
 At the close of my first circuit, in the spring of 1820, Mr. 
 Reader, one of our seniors, kindly took me back to London in 
 his carriage. During the journey I had much profitable con- 
 versation with him on subjects connected with our profes- 
 sion. He was a man of close observation and great sagacity, 
 and his remarks made no slight impression on my mind. 
 Speaking of the immense numbers of prisoners charged with 
 trifling offences, whom he had seen in the dock at Warwick, 
 during his long career at the bar ' Society/ he remarked, ' is 
 injured by taking legal notice of any offence which is not visited 
 with transportation; the effect of a short imprisonment is, so far 
 as concerns the deterring of the offender and his associates, as 
 transitory as the punishment. Thus, the good which you produce 
 is soon at an end, but the evil is permanent ; the prisoner is a 
 degraded man, a member of the criminal class, who alone will 
 countenance him, and with whom he must stay, will-he nill-he/ 
 He then went on to describe the treatment which in his younger 
 days was applied by John Bull, in proprid persona, to the less 
 heinous class of offences, such as petty larcenies, robbing of 
 orchards and gardens, what we now call malicious trespasses and 
 the like. These consisted of applications of Lynch Law in its 
 milder forms, which, nevertheless, were sharp enough ; including 
 the stocks, a sound horsewhipping, or, in extreme cases, a series 
 of immersions in a horsepond, assuredly not selected for the purity 
 of its waters. On the whole, he preferred this state of things, 
 however irregular, to the modern course, because it did not 
 sever the connexion between the wrongdoer and the honest 
 part of society; and consequently did riot, as at present, 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1847. in 
 
 deliver him bound hand and foot into the power of hardened 
 criminals. 
 
 To enumerate and to weigh the contending advantages and 
 disadvantages which might have flowed from reducing my 
 friend's theory to practice, would require, if not a treatise, at 
 the least a chapter. I have often reflected upon it, and I have 
 arrived at the conclusion, that if the alternative lay between 
 short imprisonments and impunity until the point of transpor- 
 tation was reached, I should be inclined to vote on the side 
 of impunity. But the principle involved in the opinion pro- 
 nounced by Mr. Reader, legitimately extends thus far only 
 that it is not for the public benefit to drag an individual out 
 of his position as a member of the well-conducted portion of 
 society and thrust him into a degraded class, unless you assume 
 a permanent control over his conduct. In Mr. Reader's day that 
 was done very effectually, so far as the home country was con- 
 cerned, by transportation to the colonies ; from whence, as a rule, 
 the convict did not return. This remedy we have now lost, 
 and if, when we set the law in motion, we are to seek per- 
 manent relief, we must discover other expedients. For myself, 
 I perceive none but in sending the young to reformatory 
 schools, there keeping them until they are well trained in 
 habits of industry and general good conduct, and then procuring 
 them employment under watchful supervision ; and as regards 
 adult offenders, in sending them to prison, and there giving them 
 a similar training, mutatis mutandis, to that afforded to their 
 younger brethren. But as old ways of thinking and old habits 
 are harder to change than those which are' not inveterate, I 
 would place them under the alternative of either remaining 
 prisoners in perpetuity, or working themselves out of gaol by 
 their merits. Thus we should bring to bear upon them the two 
 motives of hope and fear, each urging them onwards in the 
 course towards reformation ; each motive existing in a state of 
 great intensity. Those who have never been deprived of per- 
 sonal freedom can but feebly realize the pangs of incarceration ; 
 but these, when continued beyond a short period, are to men of 
 ordinary disposition hardly to be endured. Some criminals, how- 
 ever, are so constituted as to resist the operation of both these 
 motives. Probably, in their cases the suffering caused by impri- 
 sonment is far less intense than with the majority of mankind. 
 
112 
 
 CHAEGE OF APEIL, 1848. 
 
 Charge was delivered on the Friday following Monday, 
 JL the loth of April, 1848, a day which will be ever memorable 
 in the history of this country, for the demonstration made by the 
 metropolis in support of the laws and of order, called forth by 
 an assemblage of Chartists on Kennington Common, intended 
 by those who convoked it to lead to great, if not to violent, 
 changes in the Constitution. 
 
 After remarking on the heavy calendar before him, the state 
 of which some might refer to that pressure on the means of sub- 
 sistence which all had witnessed, and too many had felt, the 
 Recorder proceeded as follows : 
 
 It is, however, reasonable to hope, with a feeling of confi- 
 dence almost amounting to certainty, that the pecuniary dis- 
 tress under which all classes are suffering will gradually pass 
 away. We have often had to bear up against similar trials, 
 and we know by experience that they are not uncommonly 
 succeeded by periods of high prosperity ; and when I reflect on 
 the patience with which every class has borne its burdens, and 
 especially when I reflect, as I do with admiration, on the forti- 
 tude displayed by that on whom national vicissitudes press 
 with the greatest severity, I mean the labouring class, 
 I cannot but feel that such patience will be followed by its 
 appropriate reward, and that industry will, before long, cease to 
 lack the means for its exercise. 
 
 Gentlemen, we may gather confidence from the noble bearing 
 of the people under another trial which has come upon us in 
 the midst of our pecuniary difficulties a trial which has put 
 to proof the soundness of our political principles which has 
 dispelled, I trust, for ever, all doubt of our devoted attachment 
 to social order which has displayed to the world the vanity of 
 their expectations, who beguiled themselves into the belief that 
 Englishmen would exchange that rich inheritance of political 
 Institutions, handed down to us by our forefathers, for specious 
 novelties, foreign to our manners, to our habits, to our ways 
 of thinking, and unassayed by the touchstone of experience. 
 
Charge of. April, 1848. 113 
 
 Gentlemen, we know the danger of losing substantial benefits 
 while grasping at shadows. The great body of our countrymen 
 are conservative in the best sense of the word. They do not 
 believe institutions to be good because they are old, but they do 
 believe that many institutions are old because they are good ; 
 or, in other words, that their preservation for ages raises a fair 
 presumption that they have been found adapted to the wants 
 and wishes of the nation by which they have been thus respected. 
 Presumptions, however, are not conclusive. ' Stand/ says Lord 
 Bacon, ' on the old way, and then look about for the true and 
 right way/ Our desire to keep what we have, must not be the 
 offspring of cowardice, nor must it blind us to the necessity for 
 improvement. Nations cannot be stationary, they must either 
 advance or fall back ; but let them beware of moving onward 
 at a pace too rapid for safety. If we hold fast by the principle 
 of conservation, combined with that of improvement, we have, 
 I devoutly believe, everything to hope, and little to fear. The 
 tide of English progress is like that which flows ( from the 
 Pontic to the Propontic Sea;' it ' knows no ebb/ We often 
 creep along with wearisome tardiness, but what we gain we 
 keep. Permanent conquest, and not transient victory, is the 
 characteristic of our political advancement. 
 
 Let us love, and admire, and ardently cultivate ' Liberty, 
 Equality, and Fraternity / they are great names for great things. 
 But they must be clearly understood. By liberty I understand 
 full protection to every man who is doing right protection in 
 his person, in his property, and in his reputation. But I do 
 not understand, and I am sure you do not understand, by 
 liberty, freedom to do wrong. Never, let us hope, will English- 
 men permit the power of doing wrong without punishment, to 
 enter into their notions of liberty. Every man * sitting under 
 his own vine and under his own fig-tree, with none to make 
 him afraid/ presents a delightful picture of civil liberty. But 
 every man plucking his neighbour's grapes, and hewing down 
 his neighbour's fig-tree, is a type of anarchy ; and anarchy is the 
 father of despotism. 
 
 Equality is a great good ; but what ought to be signified 
 by this watchword equality of stature, of strength a simi- 
 larity in the physical condition of one with another ? 
 Against that equality ( the Eternal hath set His canon/. We 
 
 i 
 
H4 Charge of April, 1848. 
 
 have only to open our eyes to be convinced that the veiy 
 dream of such an equality is absurd. Can we, then, find equality 
 in the inner man ? Assuredly not, for we have only to open the 
 eyes of our understanding to be convinced that differences in 
 the outer man, great as they are, count as nothing in comparison 
 with the vast inequalities resulting from diversities in the struc- 
 ture and cultivation of the mind, giving to one human being 
 superiority over another to an extent absolutely immeasurable. 
 
 Now, when we know that it is to the powers of body and 
 mind that property owes its existence, and when we see in 
 what very different proportions it has pleased God to dispense 
 these faculties among us, His creatures, is it reasonable to believe 
 that, while one individual differs so much from another in his 
 capacity for creating property, it can fall within the true scope 
 of legislation to take away from the large earnings of the 
 xilful, the industrious, and the provident, to make up the deficit 
 of the inexpert, the slothful, and the prodigal ? Law, Gen- 
 tlemen, can do much ; but fortunately for the existence of 
 society it has always been found impotent when seeking to do 
 this impotent, I mean, to establish a permanent condition of 
 affairs in which such a principle should bear sway. Temporary 
 mischief to an awful amount has been wrought by efforts to 
 reduce such doctrines to practice ; and may be wrought again to 
 the distress and misery of unhappy nations made the subject of 
 such monstrous experiments. 
 
 But there is an equality which has been better understood and 
 more thoroughly attained in our own favoured country than in 
 any other portion of the globe one which I trust succeeding 
 generations will vie with each other in holding sacred. I 
 speak of that equality before the law which recognises no dis- 
 tinction of ranks that by which the poor man's right to his 
 cottage stands as secure from invasion as the rich man's right 
 to his mansion. This equality is real ; every other is but ' a 
 mockery, a delusion, and a snare/ Here, then, is a privilege 
 to be most earnestly coveted. Let us each, in our respective 
 stations, do our best to make it as perfect in its practice as it 
 is noble in its theory. 
 
 With regard to the equality dreamt of by the Socialist, I 
 will not assert that ages of improvement may not so raise and 
 purify human nature as to bring us at last to such a consum- 
 
Charge of April, 18 48. 115 
 
 mation ; Imt if we are at present on the road towards this 
 Utopia, all I can say is, that the distance over which we have 
 yet passed is so minute as hardly to be capable of appreciation ; 
 and that our progress (if progress we make), is so very slow, 
 that it requires more science than I possess to ascertain whether 
 we are in motion or at rest. 
 
 Gentlemen, I honour the principle of fraternity, but before 
 I surrender my sympathies to the cry, I could wish for per- 
 mission to verify the genuineness of the article offered for 
 acceptance. That fraternity which teaches us to look favourably 
 on our brother's claim to some share of our abundance is 
 excellent; but that which fixes our attention on what we 
 may demand from him to add to our own store is worthless ; 
 unfortunately, however, poor human nature is sorely tempted to 
 think much of rights and but little of obligations. In a 
 healthy state of morals, the minds of men will be more frequently 
 impressed with what they owe to others than with what others 
 owe to them. 
 
 I trust, Gentlemen, you will excuse my dwelling on these 
 three watchwords. To me it seems important neither to receive 
 them in a spirit of fanaticism, nor, on the other hand, to give 
 them a scoffing rejection, but to extract for our use whatever 
 of good they contain, taking at the same time especial care to 
 avoid all that is deleterious. 
 
 Gentlemen, let us this day, in the performance of our 
 official duties, give proof that we know how to apply the 
 principles couched in the three words, Liberty, Equality, and 
 Fraternity. By the favour of Providence we are placed in the 
 middle ranks of society. We do not abound in wealth, we are 
 not decorated with titles, nor are we dignified with high offices; 
 but thus we escape many temptations to which others are ex- 
 posed, who stand upon our right and upon our left, above us 
 and below. More than all, let us not forget that having ' neither 
 poverty nor riches, but fed as we are with food convenient for 
 us/ we have been preserved harmless from the temptations 
 to which our less favoured neighbours have yielded, not 
 perhaps from our greater virtue, but from our happier 
 position. 
 
 We will then respect the liberty of those whose fate is in 
 our hands by ensuring them the benefit of all the safeguards 
 
 I 2 
 
ii 6* Charge of April, 1848. 
 
 with which the law of England has mercifully surrounded the 
 accused. We will remember, that poor as they may be in pro- 
 perty or even in character, they are our equals in rights. And, 
 Gentlemen, bearing in mind that we stand not by our own 
 strength, let us prove our fraternity with the fallen, by exer- 
 cising our painful functions with all the mildness which our 
 sense of duty will permit. 
 
 For myself, Gentlemen, I can say with truth that, not often 
 indulging in the strain of observation which I have now 
 addressed to you, I could not, on this day, withhold the ex- 
 pression of my feelings. ( Out of the fulness of the heart the 
 mouth speaketh.' 
 
ii; 
 
 CHABGKE OP OCTOBEE, 1848. 
 
 THE Recorder began his Charge to the Grand Jury by stating 
 that he would avail himself of the opportunity afforded by 
 there being less than the usual amount of ordinary business, to 
 lay before them the results of such steps as he had taken, for the 
 purpose of carrying into effect, so far as the law would allow him, 
 and the means at his disposal would permit, the great principle of 
 reformatory treatment. He addressed himself with confidence 
 to the gentlemen whom he saw before him, as representing the 
 inhabitants of this large and important town, because Birming- 
 ham had given a memorable sanction to the reformatory prin- 
 ciple, by causing a vast prison to be erected at great, but not 
 unnecessary expense, in which he was gratified to observe that 
 no arrangements appeared to be wanting for facilitating the 
 adoption of reformatory discipline in its most improved methods. 
 He had had the pleasure of carefully inspecting this building, 
 now nearly completed, and he could not forbear to express his 
 admiration of the sacrifices which had been made by the rate- 
 payers, arid made cheerfully, he was informed, for so excellent 
 a purpose. He trusted that in the end this would be found 
 to be a wise outlay; that this liberality would prove true 
 economy even in a pecuniary point of view, without reference 
 to the higher interests involved in the reformation of offenders. 
 It was probably known to most of them, that for a period of 
 seven years, beginning early in the year 1841, he had thus 
 acted with regard to juvenile offenders : that when there was 
 ground for believing that the individual was not wholly corrupt 
 when there was reasonable hope of reformation and when 
 there could be found persons to act as guardians kind enough 
 to take charge of the young convict (which at first sight would 
 appear to present "a great difficulty, but which in practice fur- 
 nished little impediment to the plan), he had felt himself justi- 
 fied in at once handing over the young offender to their care, in 
 the belief that there would be better hope of amendment 
 under such guardians than in the gaol of the county. And 
 
1 1 8 Charge of October, 1 848. 
 
 lie was happy to say that the intelligent officer at the head of 
 the police, informed him that a much greater number so dis- 
 posed of were withdrawn from evil courses than of those who, 
 having no such advantages, had been consigned to prison. 
 
 ' We take (said the Recorder) as much care as we can not 
 to be imposed upon, either by too sanguine a hope of amend- 
 ment, or from imperfect information as to the results actually 
 obtained. At unexpected periods a confidential officer visits 
 the guardian, makes inquiries, and registers the facts of which 
 he is thus informed, in an account which has been regularly 
 kept from the beginning/ The results he would now submit to 
 them. The number of young offenders so disposed of was 166; 
 of these the conduct of 71 was good. Of the greater number 
 of that 71 the good conduct had been of such long standing 
 that he was warranted in assuming their reformation to be 
 complete and assured. The conduct of 40 was doubtful. 
 That was said partly because it had not been quite consistent, 
 and partly because some of the lads had passed out of sight, 
 and therefore could not be spoken of with certainty. Of 53 
 the conduct had been bad, and two were dead. He might 
 observe that he had felt it his bounden duty to take care, when 
 a youth so privileged had returned to his evil ways, and 
 was again convicted before him, that his punishment should be 
 such as to show that it was from no weakness, from no mis- 
 taken indulgence, from no want of resolution on the part 
 of the Court to perform its duty, that a course of mildness 
 had been pursued, but that such a chance had been offered 
 because it had been found by experience not only merciful 
 towards the individual, but profitable to the community. In 
 those instances, therefore, in which the plan had failed, the 
 safety of the public demanded a severe penalty. Nor was it 
 less demanded for the permanent interests of the prisoner 
 himself, because assuredly there was no indulgence more 
 fatal to him who received it than a series of light punishments, 
 which familiarized his mind to degradation, and left him in a 
 path which would lead him, step by step, to the gravest 
 crimes, and consequently to the heaviest inflictions known to 
 the law. 
 
 The kindness of the Directors of one of the most valuable 
 institutions in the county of Warwick he meant the asylum 
 
Charge of October, 1848. 119 
 
 at Stretton-upon-Dunsmoor had enabled him to send there 
 certain of the boys whose cases were more peculiarly deserving 
 of benevolent care. Of this permission he had gladly and 
 gratefully availed himself; but it was limited, he was grieved to 
 say, by paucity of funds. These funds were raised by private 
 subscription, and it was mortifying to be forced to state, that, 
 although the asylum had been established nearly thirty years, 
 and its success had been undeniable, it had still to struggle on 
 with a very narrow income. From the report presented to the 
 County Magistrates in Quarter Sessions during the current 
 year, and which gave the results of the last year, he found that 
 there had been considerable improvements made on those 
 obtained during the earlier years of the institution ; doubtless 
 caused by the greater knowledge and experience of the con- 
 ductors of the establishment, and by that improved standard 
 of moral feeling in the asylum, the slow but sure reward 
 of the faithful and earnest labours of benevolence, of which 
 it had now been for more than thirty years the scene. The 
 gentlemen of the jury were aware that the asylum is not 
 a prison, and that there are no physical means whereby the 
 boys might be restrained from leaving it. As a matter of course, 
 therefore, it followed that the means employed could only 
 operate upon the mind and the heart, a circumstance which, 
 although at first it might create its difficulties, was probably 
 no slight cause of ultimate success. 
 
 From the year of foundation, up to 1827, ^ ue proportion of 
 reformed was only 48 per cent.; that is to say, when 100 boys 
 were received, 48 were reformed, and 52 were cases of failure. 
 But in 1843 the improvement was such that the reformed 
 amounted to 56 per cent. In 1844 they reached 58; in 1846, 
 60 per cent.; and in 1847 the reformed had reached the pro- 
 portion of 65 per cent. He was sure the Grand Jury would 
 agree with him that this was a very encouraging state of affairs. 
 It is one of the happiest incidents of good things, that they 
 yield readily to further improvement : and every reason for 
 hoping that the ultimatum had not yet been reached, was 
 strengthened by the results of another institution, to which he 
 would now call their attention. 
 
 During the last month he had visited the reformatory insti- 
 ition at Mettray, near Tours, in France, which had attracted 
 
120 Charge of October, 1848. 
 
 the attention of philanthropists by the magnitude and success 
 of its operations. At Mettray, which was called by the Founders 
 an Agricultural Colony (although not exactly in the English 
 sense of the term), there were 500 young offenders. It had 
 been in action for nearly eight years, beginning with a small 
 number, gradually increased. It had already sent out 400 
 youths, of whom the reformed bore a very large proportion 
 to the unreformed. Like Stretton-upon-Dunsmoor, it was 
 an improving institution, and, from the best judgment he 
 could form, the present rate of reformation amounted to 85 
 per cent. It was difficult to speak with accuracy, but he be- 
 lieved that he had estimated the number rather under than 
 over the just amount. This institution had its origin in 1839, 
 and was due to the exertions of two French gentlemen eminent 
 by rank, but far more eminent by their talents, their unwearied 
 zeal, their large benevolence, and by the great sacrifices which 
 they had made under the circumstances which he was about to 
 relate. 
 
 One of these gentlemen (M. Demetz), he was proud to 
 say, was a member of that profession to which he himself 
 belonged, and twenty years of honourable exertion had placed 
 him on the Bench. By travel in England and America he had 
 acquired a knowledge of all that had been done for the refor- 
 mation of criminals in those countries. To this knowledge he 
 united a kind heart. He could not dismiss young offenders 
 from the bar and straightway forget their existence ; his mind 
 followed them to the gloomy abode where they were to remain 
 for years; some for very many years, the terms of imprison- 
 ment in France being not uncommonly of great length. 
 These thoughts so wrought upon his feelings that they forced 
 him to resign his office of judge, and to devote himself to the 
 formation of the admirable institution of which he is at the head. 
 In this great undertaking he was joined by the Vicomte do 
 Bretigneres de Courteilles, who, being the proprietor of land 
 near Tours, permitted the gratuitous use of it for the purposes of 
 the institution. 
 
 These two friends formed a plan, and laid it before their 
 countrymen. It was eagerly adopted, and they raised large 
 subscriptions (one gentleman contributing at various times sums 
 amounting in the whole to I2,ooo/.)j they also obtained aid 
 
Charge of October, 1848. 121 
 
 from the general revenues of the State, and from those of many 
 of the Departments. 
 
 Being thus supplied with funds, their next step was to pro- 
 cure trustworthy assistants. 
 
 To that end they established a school of well-disposed youths, 
 from respectable families, who showed capacity, and a desire for 
 the vocation of teacher. ' And excellent indeed/ continued 
 the Recorder, ' has been the selection and the training of these 
 young persons. The Founders have breathed their own earnest 
 benevolence into the hearts of their coadjutors/ 
 
 ' Seldom have I felt so deeply interested as in the hours I 
 spent with these amiable and most intelligent young men. 
 Their devotion to their employment, their perfect knowledge 
 of all the principles on which the institution is founded, and of 
 the best means for carrying these principles into effect ; their 
 enthusiastic attachment to the generous men to whom France 
 and the world owe this noble establishment; the kindness which 
 they evinced in their demeanour towards their wards, and the 
 grateful spirit in which their notice of these poor lads was 
 received, left me no room to doubt that I was among realities, 
 not surrounded by mere shows and forms ; and that the 
 execution was worthy of the plan, and of the Christian spirit 
 which had given it birth. On the other hand, I could riot but 
 feel how much of the success attained depends on that rare com- 
 bination of large views, skill in administration, and pure philan- 
 thropy, which give life and soul to the enterprise P 
 
 One principle of the establishment was, that the wards 
 committed to its care should be distributed in families, as 
 they were called. The founders erected several houses, one 
 for each family simple structures without ornament in the 
 building of which a strict economy was observed. The ground 
 floor was used as a workshop. The head of the family 
 (which consisted of forty wards), was a steady, intelligent 
 man, carefully chosen, who was called the Father, and who 
 was usually conversant with some one of the trades or occu- 
 pations in which the wards are employed. Each family was 
 divided into two sections, and each section chose one from 
 its own body to preside over it, called an elder brother, who 
 became entitled to certain privileges and advantages, which 
 made the office an object of emulation. He (the Recorder) 
 
122 Charge of October, 1848. 
 
 was informed by the Superintendent that he was often sur- 
 prised at the sound judgment displayed by the lads in their 
 choice. 
 
 Having then made ready for the reception of the wards, the 
 Founders resolved to begin carefully not by adopting a great 
 number at once, but selecting from the various prisons of the 
 country (which they had the permission of Government to do) 
 the most towardly among the young prisoners ; in order that the 
 first experiment might be made under the most favourable cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 They went to various prisons, and some affecting incidents 
 occurred which he must riot pause to relate. 
 
 The feeling excited in the minds of the youths by the sub- 
 stitution of kindness for severity produced very hopeful effects. 
 They were taken to Met tray, and there subjected to a discipline 
 which, while it had the warmest benevolence for its origin, was 
 directed by the soundest judgment. The object had been to 
 make them honest men, capable of self-control and self- support, 
 and not merely to mitigate their present lot. Still less was it 
 any part of the system to elevate, because they had been 
 offenders, these unhappy beings to a higher rank than that to 
 which they were born. By kindness the desire for improvement 
 was implanted in the mind, and by a well-devised system of 
 government and occupation, the ward became a most important 
 agent in his own amendment. Such was the influence produced, 
 that a very large amount of labour had been performed with cheer- 
 fulness, and habits of almost unremitting industry had been thus 
 created and confirmed. Mettray is no scene of weak indulgence. 
 Its only luxury is kindness ! that true kindness, that only 
 true kindness which aims at the permanent advantage of its 
 object. In accordance with these principles, the food, though 
 ample, is of the plainest description, and of a character similar 
 to that of the peasantry of Tourame, in which province Mettray 
 is situated. 
 
 Full provision is made for the care of the sick, the more so 
 that, in the choice of the wards, a preference is given to those 
 whose health has suffered from confinement. And it had in 
 some cases occurred that youths were brought at once to the 
 Infirmary, and had only left it to be laid in their graves. 
 Funerals were simple, as it was right they should be ; but these 
 
Charge of October, 1848. 123 
 
 last offices, in which the whole body assisted, were so conducted 
 as to make the survivors feel that they were not outcasts, but in 
 death as in life the objects of affectionate care. The contrast 
 between the treatment which the remains of their deceased com- 
 panions received at Mettray and in prison had been found to 
 teach a salutary lesson of self-respect. 
 
 In France, as probably the jury was aware, there was a 
 religious order called ' the Sisters of Charity :' excellent women, 
 who devoted themselves to the care and comfort of the dis- 
 tressed. The Founders of Mettray availed themselves of the 
 services of nine of the Sisters, who had made the Infirmary 
 their sitting-room ; it was a spacious and airy apartment over- 
 looking the garden, everything being in the most perfect order ; 
 some of the convalescent were walking about or making lint for 
 the surgeon, others were variously employed, and two patients, 
 who were evidently suffering, lay in their beds ; they were per- 
 fectly calm, tranquillized, no doubt, by the cheerful, yet quiet 
 scene in which they bore part. The kitchen, too, was under 
 the care of a certain number of the Sisters, and the food, although 
 that of the neighbouring poor, yet possessed an advantage in 
 the skill employed in its cookery, and the cleanliness which per- 
 vaded all the culinary operations. 
 
 By far the greater number of the wards were engaged in 
 agriculture ; and, in fact, the whole of the hard labour of the 
 institution was performed by boys, who must be under the 
 age of sixteen when admitted many of them riot being, in 
 truth, more than seven or eight. Others were occupied in 
 handicraft works, such as in making clothes, in fashioning 
 wooden shoes, or in making leather shoes for Sundays, in con- 
 structing agricultural implements, and in cabinet-making and 
 carpentry. It might be supposed that as there was so much 
 labour there would be little opportunity for attending the school. 
 That was certainly true, as the time allotted to instruction in 
 school, much of which was devoted to religious teaching, was 
 only some ten hours in the week. But a desire to learn had 
 been created, and consequently the time was made the most of, 
 and the amount of elementary knowledge acquired was by no 
 means slight. Nor was their education pursued in school alone ; 
 it went on from morning to night. Their labours in the field or 
 workshop were made instructive, partly by the perfect manner 
 
124 Charge of October, 1848. 
 
 in which the youths were induced to perform their tasks, and 
 partly because their employments furnished occasions eagerly 
 seized by the teachers for affording information to the young 
 labourers. Thus they acquired a knowledge of higher value to 
 them than any amount of literature and abstract science 
 knowledge by the aid of which they might honestly maintain 
 themselves in after life. 
 
 All would prize, as he, the K/ecorder, prized, the admirable 
 training which these poor youths received. ' We are told/ 
 said he, f not simply to teach a child the way he should go, 
 but to train him up in it, and his remaining in the true path is 
 not promised merely to his knowledge, but to his habits, his 
 principles, and his aspirations/ The religious instruction is 
 confided to a Roman Catholic clergyman. Protestant wards, he 
 believed, there were none. In that part of France Protestants 
 were few, and filled a social position different from that in 
 which criminals are usually found ; but if any should enter the 
 institution, he felt sure that the principles of toleration would 
 be most liberally applied to their case. The rewards were well 
 chosen and judiciously distributed; the punishments were not 
 degrading; principally they consisted in short periods of con- 
 finement. 
 
 But even the admirable discipline and anxious watchfulness 
 of Mettray sometimes failed of success. There are natures 
 which pertinaciously resist all good impressions ; others in which 
 good impressions fail to produce the only valuable fruit, good 
 conduct. In both cases it had been thought necessary, for the 
 protection of the well-disposed, to send the incorrigible ward 
 back to prison. 
 
 ' His expulsion/ said the Recorder, ' is an affecting solemnity. 
 The Gens-d'armes, who are the officers of justice, arrive the 
 whole community is assembled. The Principal recounts the 
 exertions which have been made for the amendment of the cul- 
 prit, his repeated offences, the gradual extinguishment of all 
 hopes of his reformation, and the dire necessity for abandoning 
 him to his fate. He is then reclothed in the prison dress, his 
 hands are pinioned, and he is led away from Mettray, never to 
 return/ 
 
 But this, which is the capital punishment of the institu- 
 tion, is becoming rare. Improvements in the method of train- 
 
Charge of October, 1848. 125 
 
 ing, greater aptitude in the teachers, and, above all, a high 
 moral tone pervading the community (the slow creation of 
 years), have greatly lessened the number of expulsions, and 
 will, I have no doubt, still further diminish it. The year 1847 
 produced only two. 
 
 But, although Mettray had been unable to reform these 
 boys, they were generally found to behave better on their return 
 to prison than those who had not enjoyed their advantages, 
 and a few among them were known to have conducted themselves 
 well, long after the term of their imprisonment had expired. ' One 
 most unhappy case/ continued the Recorder, 'presents so 
 striking an instance of that inability to make our conduct 
 answerable to our convictions (of which we all must be con- 
 scious in a greater or less degree), that I cannot forbear from 
 narrating it. Perhaps it may serve to show that even the most 
 incorrigible have claims on our sympathy. A youth of a poor 
 but ancient and noble house in Brittany came to Mettray. His 
 father had through life sustained all the essential dignity of his 
 rank by honest industry ; cultivating with his own hands the 
 last of his paternal acres. But the disgrace w 7 hich the son had 
 brought on his name had crushed his spirit. Even at Mettray 
 the lad could not refrain from repeated acts of theft, and, when 
 confined in a cell, he still found opportunities of stealing. He 
 was expelled. After his removal to prison, a letter of reproach 
 was written to him by one of his family. 
 
 1 ' Do you know/ said the writer, ' that your aged father sits 
 with his head sunk on his breast, and that he has never raised 
 it since the day of our dishonour ? ' The boy read the letter 
 he felt the blow he pined away, and died heart-broken V 
 
 The Recorder then adverted to the successful cases. ' Suc- 
 cess/ he said, ' was not lightly predicated. Each youth sent 
 out was not only consigned to a master, by whom he was 
 employed, but placed under the kindly supervision of some 
 gentleman in the neighbourhood, as his patron. From these 
 two sources information was from time to time obtained, by 
 means of returns to searching inquiries. Nor was the connec- 
 tion between the youth and his Alma Mater (as Mettray might 
 justly be called) extinct. On the contrary, Mettray still re- 
 mained his place of refuge, and whenever the accidents of life 
 deprived him of employment, he could return and be received/ 
 
1 2<5 Charge of October, 1848. 
 
 Four hundred had been sent ont after an average resides s 
 of three years. Of many the time of probation had not been 
 sufficient to enable the Directors to speak with confidence. On 
 the other hand, the institution was in course of improvement. 
 Forming the best judgment he could on the subject, aided as 
 he had been by the most unreserved communication on the part 
 of the Directors and teachers, he estimated the proportions, as 
 he had before stated, at eighty-five per cent, of reformed against 
 fifteen of unreformed ; including in the latter class as well those 
 returned to prison as those who failed after being placed out in 
 employment. If the members of the Grand Jury should study 
 the subject, it was probable that they would find claims made 
 (no doubt in all sincerity) to even greater success as regarded 
 the results of other systems. But he doubted the accuracy of 
 the estimates. The means of arriving at a just result depended 
 on a full knowledge of what was the conduct maintained after 
 the reformatory discipline had been withdrawn, and he knew 
 that the want of complete and trustworthy information had been 
 a most prolific source of error. 
 
 It remained to show at what cost the good at Mettray is 
 accomplished. The expense was at present enhanced by the large 
 proportion which the officers (including under that description 
 all but the 500 wards) bear to the whole community, they 
 being 120 in number. As the institution extends the number 
 of its wards, this proportion will be lessened, although, to insure 
 a continuance of the triumphant success which has been 
 achieved, it must still be large. By a severe, although en- 
 lightened economy, the cost of food and clothing had also been 
 reduced, and might be found susceptible of still further reduction. 
 Dividing the cost of the whole establishment among the wards, 
 and also throwing into the account the incidental expense just 
 adverted to, of the visits of wards who, having left Mettray 
 with credit, may return for a time from want of employment, 
 the gross cost per head is 2O/. per annum ; but this sum is 
 materially diminished by the produce of labour, which averages 
 a value of 8/. for each, so that the net cost per annum is only 
 J2l. ; and taking a ward as remaining three years, the cost 
 for the whole term is $61. To this must be now added the cost 
 of failures, which will be found by calculation to amount to 
 
Charge of October, 1848. 127 
 
 about 61. per head, when divided among the eighty-five per cent, 
 who are reformed. Thus it will be seen that the cost of re- 
 formation at Mettray is about 42^. ; considerably exceeding the 
 cost at Stretton-on-Dunsmoor, which appears by the last Report 
 not to be more than $il. 
 
 Probably, however, the enlightened magistrates at the head 
 of this latter institution would, if their means permitted them, 
 gladly see that cost raised to the standard of Mettray, if at the 
 same time they could raise the proportion of reformations in 
 the same ratio ; that is, from sixty-five to eighty-five per cent. ; 
 knowing, as they well know, that the twenty per cent, of dif- 
 ference must be furnished by wards whose cases are of the most 
 difficult treatment cases which would probably only yield to 
 the greater power set in motion at Mettray by its more liberal 
 staff of officers. 
 
 Bat whatever might be the comparison between Mettray 
 and Dunsmoor, he wished the Grand Jury not to forget that the 
 borough was paying zol. per annum for every one of its 
 prisoners at Warwick ; and that, notwithstanding the union of 
 skill and kind feeling of which the Warwick gaol had the 
 benefit in its management, it did so happen, from causes 
 beyond present control, that its inmates were more likely to 
 advance further into crime than to be reformed. And if it 
 should be said that even i2/. per annum is much to pay for 
 the benefit of those who are in hostility to the laws of God and 
 man, the answer, as far as pounds, shillings, and pence are con- 
 cerned, is that offenders must be maintained either in prison or 
 at large ; and that, even if the expense of reformatory training 
 were greater than that of training to deeper corruption, it would 
 be true economy to prefer the former to the latter. But was it 
 more expensive ? In addition to what he had stated as to 
 Warwick, he would refer to the experience of Liverpool. 
 
 A petition was presented to Parliament by the magistrates 
 of Liverpool in the session of 1846, which among other im- 
 portant matter set forth the cases of 14 young offenders, fairly 
 chosen, by which it appeared that these 14 persons had been 
 frequently committed to prison, none less than eight, one 23 
 times. 
 
 The cost of each of these 14 youths, arising from trials, &c., 
 
128 Charge of October, 1848, 
 
 was 63 1. 8s. Not one of them was reformed. Ten of tliem 
 were transported, the cost of which, and their support in 
 penal colonies, must be added to the other sums. The cost of 
 transportation in each case would be about 28^.; that of punish- 
 ment and residence abroad at least 54/ v making an additional 
 sum of 820/. which these youths cost the country. The grand 
 total being ijojL, or, on the average, izil. for each individual. 
 So much for the old system in prison. Now, supposing these 
 14 persons had not been apprehended, but had been suffered to 
 run an uninterrupted course of crime, it would be found, when 
 facts came to be investigated, that if an offender had been costly 
 under the hand of the law, he was far more costly when thrust- 
 ing his own hands at will into the pockets of her Majesty's 
 subjects. It was hardly possible to conceive of a treatment so 
 extravagant as to equal in its expense the spoliation committed 
 by thieves at large. 
 
 But it was painful to look at a subject of such grave impor- 
 tance merely in reference to the question of pecuniary amount. 
 The Jury would not hesitate to agree with him, that to save 
 one human being from a life of guilt was an achievement that 
 could not be estimated in silver or gold. 
 
 There was only one other point to which he would ask 
 their attention. From a communication with which he had 
 been favoured by M. Demetz, he had found that since the late 
 Revolution, there had been a change in the institution at Met- 
 tray. The Republican authorities had certainly not withdrawn 
 the contributions of the Government, but its funds were aided 
 before that event, not only by the manufacture of articles for 
 their own consumption, but for sale elsewhere ; and, except for 
 the Revolution, he was informed that there would have been for 
 the current year a net income from that source alone of loool. 
 But the new Government had been of opinion that such a sale 
 was an undue interference with the honest labourer an opinion 
 also held by many eminent persons among ourselves, to whose 
 authority he should be disposed to attach as much weight as 
 ought to be given to any authority on a question of principle. 
 
 It was difficult, however, to understand how the public at 
 large would be benefited by maintaining persons in idleness, the 
 produce of whose labour might either suffice for their sustenta- 
 tion, or at all events diminish its burden. On whom does the* 
 
Charge of October, 1848. 129 
 
 support of prisoners fall but on the contributors to the taxes ? 
 Can it be advantageous to them to defray an expense of which 
 the whole or a part can be saved ? Again, if it be advan- 
 tageous to the community to maintain any class at the public 
 expense, what is to limit that class to prisoners? What is 
 there in the fact of a consumer being a criminal and in confine- 
 ment, which makes it desirable that he should cease to produce ? 
 If it be desirable for the public good to withdraw some por- 
 tion of the community from competition with the rest, in the 
 struggle for the means of subsistence, why not select this 
 favoured body according to merit ? Such relief from the duty 
 of self-maintenance savours rather of reward than of punishment. 
 
 Probably the error may arise from the inaccurate use of 
 language. The labour of prisoners, it is said, interferes with 
 honest industry as if it were labour itself, and not the gains 
 of labour, which is the object of desire. Now, to keep any in 
 idleness, is to make it necessary that all who work should 
 submit to some subtraction from their gains, in the shape of 
 taxation, for the purpose of feeding the idlers. But is the 
 honest labourer benefited by performing his task unaided, and 
 then dividing his earnings with another ? 
 
 The Recorder concluded his address as follows :' I have 
 thought myself justified in occupying your time with the fore- 
 going remarks, because I am persuaded that a deep conviction 
 of the justice and efficacy of reformatory punishment must be 
 widely diffused before the legislature would be warranted in 
 making extensive changes in that direction. 
 
 ' The proceedings of criminal courts would lose much, if not 
 all, their value nay, they might have an effect absolutely mis- 
 chievous, if they did not satisfy the public sense of justice. 
 
 ' Too many are still of opinion that kindness to offenders is 
 cruelty to the innocent, by depriving punishment of its terrors. 
 Doubtless it may be so abused; indulgence to the vices cf 
 criminals would be cruelty to both parties. But that wise bene- 
 volence which guides all sound reformatory discipline is the 
 kindness of the surgeon, who shrinks not from inflicting any 
 amount of pain essential to the cure, but who does not willingly 
 go beyond that necessity. 
 
 ' Providence has ordained that the change from evil to good 
 is not to be wrought but at the price of suffering often, re- 
 
130 Sequel to Charge of October } 1848. 
 
 peated and long endured. And if the selection were left to the 
 criminals themselves, experience justifies the assertion, that, 
 whatever might be the choice of the young offender, few punish- 
 ments, indeed, would not be preferred by the veteran in crime to 
 that of passing through a full course of reformatory discipline/ 
 
 When the Grand Jury were dismissed, they handed to the 
 Clerk of the Peace a paper, in which, after expressing their 
 great interest in the subject of the Charge, they added ' their 
 hope and confidence that the Recorder would continue to direct 
 his attention to a subject so deeply affecting the moral interests 
 and well-being of society/ 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 The Colonie at Mettray has so frequently been brought before 
 the world of late years, in the narratives published by many of 
 its innumerable visitors, that a few words to bring down its 
 history to the present day, will suffice here. 
 
 The institution has increased in extent and importance in 
 proportion as the system it embodies has gradually been deve- 
 loped. The principles upon which it was founded, and whose 
 operation I had the opportunity of observing in 1848, and again 
 in 1 855, have now been tested, and their soundness irrefragably 
 proved by the experience of more than seventeen years. 
 
 The following letter from my esteemed friend, M. Blanchard, 
 Inspecteur de la Colonie, and next in command to M. Demetz, 
 written in reply to questions transmitted by my daughter, con- 
 tains very important statistical details, and conveys the latest 
 information I possess respecting the institution: 
 
 Mettray, le 8 Fdvrier, 1857. 
 
 MADEMOISELLE, Monsieur Demetz a re9u votre lettre, au 
 moment de monter en voiture, pour se rendre a Rennes, a une 
 invitation du Premier President de la Cour, afin d' organiser 
 les collectes de Jury avec Messieurs les Coriseillers, Presidents 
 d'assises de cette Cour Imperiale. Vous voyez que notre cher 
 Directeur ne laisse echapper aucune occasion de rechaufier le 
 zele en faveur de Mettray. * * * * 
 
 J'ai done Thonneur de repondre a vos questions, et dans 
 Tordre ou vous avez bien voulu me les poser. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1848. 131 
 
 1. Le nombre des jeunes detenus re9us dans notre etablisse- 
 ment depuis sa fondation jusqu' aujourd'hui est de 2150. 
 
 2. Le nombre des enfants decedes depuis Forigine s'eleve 
 a 139, ce qui nous donne pour la mortal! te une moyenne 
 generate de 15 pour mille, malgre F epidemic de fievre typho'ide 
 qui a sevi Fanuee derniere a Mettray, et qui nous a eiileve 16 
 enfants. Cette moyenne de 15 pour mille est au-dessous de 
 eelle de Fannee, dans Finterieur de la France bien entendu. La 
 statistique de Fannee accuse 20 pour mille dans les hopitaux 
 de Fempire, et tout le monde sait que nos regiments sont com- 
 poses d'hommes clioisis par les conseils de revision. 
 
 Nous etablissons ainsi la moyenne de la mortalite pour arriver 
 a la plus grande exactitude. Nous divisons toutes nosjournees 
 de presence de chaque annee par 36 5 pour obtenir la population 
 moyenne de Fannee, et c'est ce dernier chiffre que nous mettons 
 en proportion avec le nombre des deces. 
 
 3. Le nombre des enfants presents est aujourd'hui de 700, 
 c'est le chiffre maximum. 
 
 4. Le nombre des agents est de 60, sans y comprendre les 
 eleves de FEcole Preparatoire, au nombre de 18 aujourd'hui. 
 
 5. Nos recidives depuis la fondation de la Colonie, c'est- 
 a-dire dans une periode de 17 armees_, sont d'une petite fraction 
 au-dessous de lopour cent. ; et nous esperons dans un avenir peu 
 eloigrie les voir descendre k 9 pour cent, seulement. Ce resultat 
 sera du a ce que la moyenne du sejour des enfants a Mettray 
 est plus elevee que dans les commencements. Ainsi, au lieu de 
 rcnouveler notre population par tiers comrne autrefois tous les 
 ans, le nombre des jeunes detenus juges jusqu'a 20 ans devenant 
 chaque jour plus considerable, nous arrivons a nous recruter par 
 i et bientot par |, ce qui nous permet d'agir plus longtemps 
 sur le co3ur de nos enfants, de leur apprendre completement 
 une profession qui les met a Fabri de la misere, et surtout qui 
 leur evite de recommencer un nouvel apprentissage. 
 
 Vous verrez par le tableau ci-joint, qui vous offrira sans doute 
 quelque interet, Tage des recidivistes, la duree moyenne de leur 
 sejour dans la colonie, et le nombre de ceux qui ont etc repris 
 pour vagabondage seulement. 
 
 Yeuillez, Mademoiselle, &c., &c., 
 
 BLANCHARD. 
 
 K2 
 
133 
 
 Sequel to Charge of October, 1848. 
 
 Sur 109 colons recidivistes. 
 
 Etaient 
 
 s de 12 ans. 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 Ont passe" moins d'uri an a la Colonie 2 
 
 T 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ont passe" . . i an . . . . 5 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 . . . 2 ans . . .31 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 . 3 , ... ^9 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 . . . 4 , ... 26 
 
 
 
 
 
 / 
 
 , . . 5 , . . . 10 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 . . . 6 , . . . s 
 
 19 
 
 
 
 
 22 
 
 . 7 , 
 
 i 
 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 21 
 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 109 
 
 22 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 Ont re"cidive" dans le i er trimestre 
 
 23 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 apres leur sorfte de la Colonie 
 
 10 
 
 24 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 Ont re*cidive" dans la i er anne"e 
 
 28 
 
 25 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 ,, 2 e 
 
 39 
 
 
 
 3 e 
 
 17 
 
 109 
 
 4 e 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 5? 
 
 3 
 
 
 6 e 
 
 4 
 
 
 7 e 
 
 i 
 
 
 8 e 
 
 1 
 
 
 21 Colons ont re"cidive pour vaga- 
 
 
 bondage seulement . . .109 
 
 It will be observed that the proportion of officers to colons 
 has lessened since my visit in 1848, but the diminution has 
 been effected by degrees, and has not, I believe, been followed 
 by any unfavourable consequence. This may be accounted for 
 by the fact that public opinion in the community, which has 
 always been enlisted on the side of right, has, by the great 
 increase in numbers, acquired such potency as to exercise a 
 strong influence over even the worst-disposed boys, and thus 
 enable a few officers, compared with those required in the early 
 years of the colony, to preserve discipline, and convey instruc- 
 tion. It must, however, always be borne in mind, that the 
 efficiency of the masters is still secured by judicious selection 
 and careful training in the school established at Mettray for 
 that purpose. Indeed, such training is found to be so essential 
 to the successful treatment of the colons that, serious evils 
 having occasionally arisen from the employment as tradesmasters 
 of individuals who had not been brought up in the Ecole Pre- 
 paratoire, a department has been recently added to it, entitled 
 ' Arts et Metiers/ which provides the requisite means of in- 
 struction for industrial teachers ; and it is intended henceforth 
 to admit no officer who has not been educated in the training 
 school. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1848. 133 
 
 The cost per head (of the wards) seems to have been slightly 
 lessened also since my visit in 1848 ; a curious fact considering 
 the dearth of provisions which has prevailed in France now for 
 several years. In some degree I believe this result to have been 
 the consequence of gradual improvements in minute adminis- 
 tration ; by which the economy at all times anxiously strict, has 
 been made even more perfect. Mainly, however, the effect 
 must be due to the diminished proportional number of teachers 
 to pupils, which it has been found possible to establish without 
 injury to progress or discipline. 
 
 ' We were very recently informed by M. Demetz, that, 
 including his quota of expense for officers, rent, instruction, 
 food, clothing, and patronage after leaving the Colony, in short, 
 dividing the expenditure of the whole Institution among the 
 colons, three-quarters of a franc per day, or a trifle less than 
 1 1 /. per year, is the cost of each, after deducting the average 
 value of his labour/* 
 
 In 1853, the Colonie sustained a severe loss in the death of 
 M. de Courteilles ; but though he, who had been regarded as 
 one of its chief supports, was thus withdrawn, the efficiency of 
 Mettray remained unimpaired. A more convincing proof than 
 this could not be afforded of the sure basis upon which MM. 
 Demetz and de Courteilles founded their noble institution. 
 
 The example of Mettray has called numerous reformatory 
 schools into existence, and many owe their success to the excel- 
 lence of masters trained in her Ecole Preparatoire. One of 
 these colonies Orfrasiere distant about twelve miles from 
 Mettray, is indeed an offshoot from her, and was established by 
 M. Demetz, in 1855. 
 
 During the flood of the Loire in June, 1856, the Mettray 
 lads nobly distinguished themselves, as they had done on a like 
 occasion before, by the important aid they gave in preserving 
 the city of Tours from destruction ; and by their generosity 
 towards the sufferers. Their gallant conduct, and the moral 
 effect produced by the discipline, zeal, and self-devotion they dis- 
 played, have been described by M. Mame, mayor of Tours, from 
 whose Report on the flood, published in the Journal d'Indre 
 
 * Mettray; its Rise and Progress. Irish Quarterly Review, December, 1856. 
 
134 Sequel to Charge of October, 1848. 
 
 et Loire, for November soth, 1856, I quote the following 
 extract : 
 
 ' C'est ici, Messieurs, le moment de vous parler du concours 
 qui nous a ete si genereusement donne par la Colonie de 
 Mettray. 
 
 ' Le s me Juin, dans la matinee, M. Blanchard, Inspecteur de la 
 Colonie, vint, en 1' absence de M. de Metz, nous offrir le concours 
 de ses jeunes colons, concours que nous acceptames avec recon- 
 naissance. Quelques heures apres, au moment ou la place de 
 PHotel de Ville etait encombree de curieux oisifs d'habitants 
 qui hesitaient encore a aller travailler aux levees, on vit deboucher 
 par le pont, musique en tete, armes de pelles et pioches, et mar- 
 chant avec la precision d'une troupe militaire, 300 jeunes colons 
 de Mettray, sous la direction de ^honorable M. Blanchard. 
 
 ' Us etaient accourus a la nouvelle du danger qui nous mena- 
 9ait, et apres s'etre reposes un instant, et avoir pris nos instruc- 
 tions, ils se rendirent sur la levee du canal, ou ils etablirent un 
 chantier qui a pu servir de modele pendant le reste de la 
 journee du Lundi, pendant toute la nuit suivante, et pendant la 
 journee entiere du Mardi, 3 Juin. 
 
 f Honneur a eux, honneur a cette belle institution de Mettray, 
 qui regenere de jeanes gens egares au point d ; en faire des 
 hommes d' elite ! 
 
 e L^arrivee de ce renfort n'avait pas ete, pour nous, une 
 bonne fortune au point de vue seulement du surcroit de bras 
 qu'il nous apportait; elle avait encore exerce sur la population 
 une heureuse pression morale, et beaucoup de gens se decidaient 
 enfin a aller au travail/ 
 
 The Municipal Council of Tours, in gratitude for the services 
 rendered by the Colonie, caused a medal to be struck comme- 
 morating the event. 
 
'35 
 
 CHAEGE OF APKIL, 1850. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, 
 
 NOT twelve months ago I felt called upon to address your 
 predecessors on a subject which has given me great 
 anxiety. I refer to the petitions and memorials which are from 
 time to time sent up to the Secretary of State for the Home 
 Department on behalf of prisoners convicted at our Sessions. 
 
 I am deeply penetrated with the consciousness that nothing 
 but unremitting vigilance, both on the part of juries and of 
 those who fill the judicial office, can guard us against the cala- 
 mity of convicting the innocent ; and I am further bound to 
 admit that, in spite of the most jealous watchfulness, error 
 can never be wholly excluded such are the inherent defects of 
 all human tribunals. 
 
 From this admission it follows that whoever is engaged in 
 the administration of justice must feel himself indebted to every 
 person, high or low, who furnishes him with the means of cor- 
 recting the miscarriage of any case in which he has taken part. 
 For myself, I may say that I should regard such an informant 
 as my benefactor. Again, it sometimes happens that when the 
 guilt of the prisoner is undoubted, mitigating circumstances, 
 which, from accidental causes, had not been brought under the 
 consideration of the Court, afterwards come to light, and create a 
 just claim for a more lenient sentence than that which had been 
 passed at the trial. In either of these cases, application to the 
 Secretary of State is right and proper ; indeed, I may say that 
 it behoves every person cognizant of the facts to exert himself 
 to bring the matter under the consideration of this Minister ; 
 whose duty it becomes, when statements are laid before him, 
 impugning, on grounds which appear to him reasonable, either 
 the verdict of the jury or the sentence of the Court, to com- 
 municate the representations which he has received to the judge 
 before whom the prisoner was tried ; and to use all such other 
 means as the powers of his high office enable him to employ, 
 for a searching investigation into the alleged errors. Gentlemen, 
 
13*5 Charge of April, 1850. 
 
 I willingly bear my testimony to the readiness with which the 
 Home Office entertains questions of this nature ; and I may also 
 assure you that the Minister is cheerfully assisted by every func- 
 tionary who has the means of throwing light upon the matter. 
 
 But, Gentlemen, there is nothing in this world, however good 
 in itself, which does not become in some degree the source of 
 evil^ and this benevolent readiness to entertain objections against 
 verdicts and sentences has, I fear, encouraged the growth of a 
 most scandalous usage, which I will now explain and illustrate. 
 
 Artful and unscrupulous persons connected with the prisoner 
 concoct a memorial, containing as many plausible falsehoods as 
 the exigencies of his case require ; but being generally very 
 deficient in character, they find it necessary to support their 
 allegations by signatures which are likely to have more weight 
 than their own. And, Gentlemen, if your avocations had cast 
 upon you as many inquiries into statements on behalf of prisoners 
 as the duties of my office have forced upon me, you would be 
 astonished to find how frequently persons, themselves enjoying 
 and deserving the character of respectable men, are prevailed 
 upon to lend, by attaching their names to documents of this 
 kind, the appearance of authenticity to supposed facts, of the 
 truth or falsehood of which they are in utter ignorance ; an 
 ignorance which, strange to say, they freely own the moment 
 they are questioned upon it, without taking the least shame to 
 themselves for the part they have acted. Nothing, Gentle- 
 men, is more common, as you well know, than complaints of 
 the increase of crime, of losses of property by theft, of injuries 
 to the person, and of the pecuniary burdens which are cast upon 
 us by the misdeeds of the criminal class. And when by these 
 topics the imagination is excited and the temper warmed, bitter 
 censures follow, directed against the over-lenient administration 
 of the law. And yet, if I may trust my own experience, no 
 task is so easy as to obtain a body of signatures in behalf of 
 any criminal, however worthless, upon any representation of 
 facts, however devoid of truth. 
 
 Gentlemen, after the full exposure of this vile practice made 
 so recently, I certainly did not expect again to be called upon 
 to protest against this abuse. But when I have submitted to 
 you the details of a case very lately referred to me by the Secre- 
 tary of State, I think you will be of opinion that I should have 
 
Charge of April, 1850. 137 
 
 failed in my duty had I omitted to bring tlie subject once more 
 under public animadversion. 
 
 At the last October Sessions, a female prisoner was convicted 
 of a felony, and sentenced to transportation for ten years. 
 
 After a delay of several months, a petition from her husband, 
 praying for a mitigation of her sentence, was presented at the 
 Home Office. The allegations of this petition were, that she 
 was tried for stealing a breast-pin valued at js. 6d., that the 
 breast-pin had never been found, nor had it been traced into 
 her possession 'that she had never before been charged with 
 the slightest offence, and that the petitioner firmly believed the 
 breast-pin in question had been accidentally lost by its owner. 
 The petitioner went on to say that the prosecutor himself had 
 expressed a wish to sign a memorial for a mitigation of the 
 prisoner's sentence -that the master for whom she worked had 
 always found her honest and industrious, and would be willing 
 to employ her again if she were at liberty that her behaviour 
 while in the borough gaol had given the greatest satisfaction to 
 the officers placed over her, and that the undersigned inhabitants 
 of the town of Birmingham, who had known her for a number 
 of years, had always found her strictly honest and well-con- 
 ducted [I beg you, Gentlemen, to mark the allegation which 
 I have just read], and joined the petitioner in asking the 
 Home Secretary for a merciful consideration of the case, with 
 a view to a remission of punishment. Now, Gentlemen, 
 the petition bore the genuine signatures of several inhabitants 
 of this borough standing high in character. It was placed in 
 the hands of a gentleman whom I well know and deeply respect 
 a gentleman eminent among you in rank, of acknowledged 
 sagacity, but whose urbane disposition may have pointed him 
 out as likely to take a favourable view of the application. He 
 transmitted it to the Secretary of State, accompanied by a 
 note, in which he says, ' the parties signing the petition, several 
 of whom I know to be persons of credit, seem to entertain 
 strong doubts of the woman's guilt j doubts in some measure 
 confirmed by the fact, which is also stated, of this being the 
 first offence ever laid to her charge ; and on these grounds you 
 may, I hope, deem it desirable to investigate the case, with a 
 view to see how far a favourable interference may be justified.' 
 No blame, Gentlemen, can attach to the writer of this letter. 
 
138 Charge of April, 1850. 
 
 It asks for investigation, which, however, was the last thing 
 desired by the petitioner ; who must have nattered himself that 
 the Crown would act on the statements of a document bearing 
 such respectable names. The Secretary of State, pursuing the 
 usual course, referred the petition to me. 
 
 Gentlemen, I well remembered the trial. The facts stood 
 thus : 
 
 The prisoner was a prostitute, and had been such for years. 
 
 She accosted a man in the street, and, on being repulsed 
 by him, snatched a gold pin from his cravat. He immediately 
 laid hold of her, but himself was forthwith seized by two men 
 who came up to her aid. 
 
 The prosecutor called out for assistance. Fortunately a 
 policeman was not far off, and, hearing the cry, hastened to the 
 spot. Upon his arrival, the two accomplices of the prisoner 
 made off. She, however, was secured; but the breast-pin was 
 not found upon her, and no one conversant with robberies of 
 this kind would expect her to have retained it after she was 
 joined by the two men who came to her support. Yet, with 
 that reckless disregard of self-inculpation, of which every Session 
 furnishes many instances, when denying the possession of the 
 pin, she told the policeman that she knew who had it. Upon 
 this evidence, Gentlemen, the jury found her guilty, and I 
 scarcely need remind you that her crime was one of a very 
 grave character ; and one which I grieve to say has prevailed in 
 Birmingham to a very alarming extent. Consider also, Gen- 
 tlemen, the depravity which is implied in these plots between 
 abandoned women and their male accomplices, and the personal 
 injuries not uncommonly resulting from such attacks as that 
 which I have described to you, and I am sure you will feel that 
 offences like this must be repressed with a strong hand. 
 
 Having now put you into possession of the real facts of the 
 case, let me inform you what was the result of the investigation 
 which I made through Mr. Stephens, the Superintendent of 
 Police, as regards the petitioner and the other individuals 
 who figure in his romance. The husband, who had so firm a 
 belief in his wife's innocence, and who assured the Minister 
 that the prisoner had never been charged with the slightest 
 offence, had himself been twice convicted of felony; while the 
 prisoner had been in the year 1846 convicted of an assault as/ 
 
Charge of April, 1850. 139 
 
 a disorderly prostitute, and had suffered imprisonment for a 
 month, during which time she so misconducted herself that the 
 Governor of the Gaol was obliged to place her in solitary con- 
 finement. With regard to the statement that her employer 
 spoke well of her arid was willing to take her again, I found 
 that her immediate employer was a journeyman, who would 
 not be permitted to receive the prisoner, as the master of this 
 journeyman would not allow the woman to enter his manufac- 
 tory. It moreover appeared that the journeyman did not 
 enjoy the best of characters himself. The alleged desire of 
 the prosecutor to sign a memorial in the prisoner's behalf was 
 thus explained. He signed, he says, because her mother im- 
 portuned him with tears almost every day, till at length he 
 yielded in order to get rid of her. 
 
 Gentlemen, you will not forget the allegation in the petition, 
 that those who subscribed their names to it had known the 
 prisoner for a number of years, and had always found her 
 strictly honest and w r ell-conducted. I come first to the signa- 
 ture of a clergyman, but whether of the Church of England or 
 of Rome, or of one of the Protestant Dissenting Churches, I 
 do not inform you. This reverend person states that he had 
 visited the prisoner in the new gaol at Birmingham, and recom- 
 mends her case as deserving of mercy. 
 
 Now, Gentlemen, great confidence is placed at the Home 
 Office in representations made by ministers of religion, whether 
 of our Established Church or of other denominations ; and I am 
 happy to say that this is the only instance in which I ever 
 knew such confidence to be misplaced. When this clergyman 
 was waited upon, it was found that he actually did not know 
 the convict until he saw her in prison, and that he was 
 induced to sign the petition from the distress exhibited by the 
 mother. 
 
 I cannot, Gentlemen, doubt for one moment the regret 
 with which a minister of religion would reflect that, by 
 culpable inadvertence, he had pledged himself, with all the 
 authority pertaining to his sacred profession, to his personal 
 knowledge of the good conduct for a number of years of an 
 individual who had been an utter stranger to him until he 
 found her in gaol ! 
 
 But let us pass on. Next come the names of two reputable 
 
Charge of April, 1850. 
 
 tradesmen. They say they signed the petition on the solicita- 
 tion of the convict's mother, whom they had known as a customer 
 for the last two years ; of the convict herself, it appears they had 
 no knowledge whatever. 
 
 Then I find the names of a highly respectable mercantile 
 firm, who, when asked why they signed the document, replied, 
 that they had done so in the hurry of business; but that 
 afterwards, finding they ought not to have signed it, they took 
 some trouble to discover the husband, for the purpose of obtain- 
 ing the erasure of their names, but that they had not succeeded 
 in their search after him. 
 
 I believe I have now given you an account of every name 
 attached to this petition except that of one subscriber, who 
 placed it there because he was acquainted with the minister 
 of religion of whom I have spoken, and with another of the 
 gentlemen whose signatures preceded his. Thus, you see 
 that, with regard to this last unscrupulous person, his written 
 statement that he had known the prisoner for a number of 
 years, when it comes to be sifted, dwindles into the irre- 
 levant fact that he was acquainted with two of his fellow- 
 subscribers. 
 
 Gentlemen, I will not dwell on the evil consequences of such 
 petitions as that before us. 
 
 Certainly it was not so likely to mislead the authorities 
 as it would have been if the skill and caution of its framer had 
 been more equal to his undertaking; but we cannot without 
 pain reflect on the facilities which good nature, unregulated by 
 a sense of moral duty, gives to criminals to support a tissue of 
 falsehoods by the names of those who pass in the world for 
 persons of respectability; and who, it is to be hoped, have just 
 claims to the character, notwithstanding the lamentable dis- 
 regard of what they owed to themselves and to the Government 
 of the country in the particular transaction on which it has 
 been my duty to animadvert with severity. 
 
 On one effect of these frequent attempts to impose on the 
 mercy of the Crown I must remark. They create a ten- 
 dency in the minds of those who are called upon to consider 
 applications in favour of prisoners, to entertain them all with 
 feelings of suspicion, unfavourable to a candid appreciation of 
 such claims. 
 
Sequel to Charge of April, 1850. 141 
 
 It is our duty, no doubt, to guard our minds, so far as we 
 are able, against commencing our inquiries under these impres- 
 sions ; but it is to be feared that none are under such perfect 
 self-discipline as to be proof against the operation of such dis- 
 turbing influences. And if so, the innocent may suffer from the 
 prejudice created by the fraudulent means resorted to in favour 
 of the guilty. 
 
 Nor can I pass over without notice the effect of such 
 proceedings on the minds of convicts and their friends, as well 
 as of the class from which they are mainly drawn. The prisoner, 
 instead of resigning himself to his punishment, as what must be 
 endured, and opening his mind to the reformatory influences 
 provided for him ; instead of feeling penitence for his crime, and 
 a desire to earn forgiveness, so that he may leave the prison a 
 better man than he entered it, is led to hope for relief through 
 the instrumentality of shameful frauds, and, so far as he is able, 
 to take part in them. And when he finds how easily, and by 
 what culpable negligence on their parts, even ministers of reli- 
 gion may be brought to render assistance in such attempts, it 
 3 obvious that, instead of being reformed, his depravity will 
 become more and more hopeless. Let me, Gentlemen, impress 
 upon those who hear or may read the foregoing observations, 
 the solemn duty incumbent on all who interpose in favour of 
 convicted prisoners, to confine themselves within the strict 
 bounds of truth, and to vouch for no representations which 
 they are not prepared to establish. 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 As I have said, this was not the first time, nor the second, I 
 might have added, that I had called attention to the abuses 
 which prevailed in making unfounded statements to the Home 
 Office on behalf of convicted prisoners. 
 
 In June of the previous year I laid before the Grand Jury 
 the following case : A woman had been convicted of 
 feloniously receiving stolen goods, and had been sentenced to 
 transportation for the term of fourteen years. The evidence 
 
143 Sequel to Charge of April, 1850. 
 
 against her was, that she had decoyed a child from its mother, 
 which she harboured for the purpose of inciting it to thefts, 
 she herself receiving the stolen articles, and converting them to 
 her own use. 
 
 The crime of the prisoner, which was clearly proved, was so 
 revolting, that I did not suppose it possible any interposition 
 could be made in her behalf. Nevertheless, I received from the 
 Secretary of State a petition which had been presented to him 
 praying for a mitigation of her punishment, which petition was 
 signed by persons filling a reputable social position in Birming- 
 ham, and, as I am led to believe, deserving of respect for their 
 general conduct. 
 
 I transmitted that petition to a magistrate of the borough 
 for investigation, who associated with himself one of his 
 colleagues, and together they instituted a searching inquiry into 
 the whole affair. They found that no one of the allegations 
 contained in the petition had any foundation in truth ; and 
 that many of the reputable persons who had signed the document 
 had done so in the most absolute ignorance of all the circum- 
 stances of the case, and without any knowledge even of the 
 parties concerned ; giving their signatures, as they admitted, 
 simply because they had been asked for them. The petitioner 
 was a person calling himself a f merchant ' in one place, and an 
 ' esquire' in another. He alleged that the prisoner had been in his 
 service, and had held a position of trust, to which he was ready 
 again to admit her. Now, it was discovered that this esquire- 
 merchant was living in lodgings in an obscure part of the town, 
 which I never heard was inhabited either by merchants or 
 esquires. The petitioner, it appeared, had been in trade in a 
 small way, and the prisoner had been his shopwoman ; he had 
 afterwards given up his shop, when she rose or sank to the 
 position of his washerwoman : that being the place of trust to 
 which, as he assured the Crown, he was prepared to restore her. 
 The petitioner then went on to aver that the woman had been con- 
 victed on the ' evidence of most abandoned characters, a cir- 
 cumstance which was carefully kept from the learned Recorder/ 
 Now, the prisoner had been defended by counsel, who had cross- 
 examined the witnesses with great care, so that if their character 
 was what the petitioner represented it to be, it is marvellous that 
 
Sequel to Charge of April, 1850. 143 
 
 the secret was so well preserved. The trustworthiness, how- 
 ever, of the witnesses was thoroughly investigated by the 
 inquiring magistrates, and there was not the slightest pretence 
 for impugning the reputation of the poor mother who had been 
 so cruelly injured by the seduction of the child, and at whom 
 the slander was chiefly aimed. The petition then alleged that 
 the prisoner had been convicted in the absence of witnesses 
 who could have spoken to her character ; the fact being that two 
 witnesses to her character were examined one the petitioner him- 
 jelf, and the other one of the persons who had signed the petition ! 
 Again, this precious document was actually signed by two of 
 the jurors who had found the prisoner guilty. Now, certainly, 
 it is not only the right, but the bounden duty, of a juryman who 
 discovers that he has been misled, to do all that in him lies to 
 repair his error. But after a juryman has had evidence before 
 him subjected to all the sifting incident to open trial, after he 
 has duly considered such evidence, and delivered his solemn 
 verdict, it is no light matter for him to hold out to the world 
 that the verdicts of juries are not to be trusted. Before he 
 resolves on such a step he ought to make the most search- 
 ing inquiries, and to obtain information on which he can rely 
 with unhesitating confidence. It is difficult to comprehend the 
 levity which could induce these two jurymen to vouch a state- 
 ment, which, unless their memories were very deceitful, they 
 must, supposing they read the petition before they signed it, 
 have known to be a falsehood namely, that no witnesses were 
 called to the prisoner's character. 
 
 Another subscriber also denominated himself a juryman, 
 allowing it to be inferred, from his so describing himself, that 
 he was one of the jury who tried the prisoner. But that was 
 not so, and his title to the designation only arose from his having 
 been a juror on some prior occasion. 
 
 Notwithstanding these exposures, I grieve to say that scarcely 
 a petition comes before me which does not contain deliberate 
 perversions of the truth, even where the interests of the prisoner 
 would be better served by veracity and candour. 
 
 I subjoin the report, from the Birmingham Journal of 
 October I3th, 1855, of a case which occurred at the Michael- 
 mas Sessions in that year : 
 
144 Sequel to Charge of April, 1850. 
 
 ' In tlie case of J. D., tried at the late sessions on a charge 
 of felony, after a former conviction for felony, a witness 
 appeared to give the prisoner a good character, stating that he 
 had never heard anything against him prior to the charge on 
 which he was being tried. On cross-examination it turned out 
 that the witness was the master of the prisoner, and that at 
 the former trial he had attended for the same purpose of giving 
 the prisoner a good character, and that in consequence of that 
 character, and of the witness being the prisoner's master, he 
 was permitted to take the prisoner home with him. In sum- 
 ming up, the Recorder said he had lately met with a similar 
 instance of unscrupulous conduct in a much higher walk of 
 life on behalf of a prisoner, who, after a conviction for 
 obtaining goods under false pretences, was convicted on two 
 indictments for the same offence. A memorial was presented to 
 the Home Department, signed by seventeen persons, containing 
 a statement to the effect that the subscribers knew the prisoner, 
 from having had many transactions in business with him, and 
 that up to the time of his trial meaning his last trial, for the 
 memorial was silent as to any former conviction -they had every 
 reason to believe him honest. Two of these subscribers knew 
 of the former conviction, one of them being the master to 
 whom he had been given up, and who described himself as an 
 ex-magistrate of a town of which the Recorder would say 
 nothing more than that it was not Birmingham. Of the 
 remaining fifteen no less than eight admitted, on inquiry being 
 made of them as to the grounds on which they had signed the 
 memorial, that they did not know the prisoner. Of these eight, 
 two were magistrates, one was a clergyman, and one a dissent- 
 ing minister. Some said they had never read the memorial, 
 and signed it because they saw the name of the master attached 
 to it, others stated they had signed it out of commiseration 
 for the prisoner's relatives. The Recorder pointed out the 
 ill-effects of such applications whether successful or not. If 
 successful, they weakened the administration of justice, and 
 might to some extent account for the prevalence of crime. If 
 unsuccessful, their tendency was to disgust official men with 
 such attempts, and might eventually render it very difficult for 
 a just claim to receive due attention/ 
 
Sequel to Charge of April, 1850. 145 
 
 Applications in favour of convicted prisoners, even when there 
 is but little ground for impeaching the good faith of those who 
 are parties to them, often betray the grossest ignorance of the 
 true grounds for belief or disbelief, as pervading the minds of 
 persons who have enjoyed the advantages of education and of 
 long intercourse with the world. 
 
 I remember a case in which a soldier was tried before me on 
 a charge of forcing a young woman into a barrack, with the 
 aid or connivance of comrades, and then of grossly maltreating 
 her. The chastity of the prosecutrix did not stand quite un- 
 blemished, and this fact, together with other circumstances, 
 rendered the trial one of great responsibility on the part of the 
 Court and the jury. No time or labour was spared in the 
 investigation. Two of the officers, having command in the 
 corps to which the soldier belonged at the time of the alleged 
 offence, were present watching the proceedings with the anxiety 
 which, according to my experience, military men, to their 
 honour be it spoken, uniformly evince to secure justice for the 
 inferior members of their profession, and more especially for 
 such as are under their immediate protection. These gentle- 
 men made no attempt to disturb the verdict, nor did they in 
 any way interfere in the prisoner's favour, but, after the lapse of 
 many months, a letter in his behalf was referred to me from 
 the Home Office, written by a member of Parliament not pre- 
 sent at the trial, nor in any way connected with Birmingham, 
 but residing in a distant county. In this letter the writer 
 expressed in the strongest language his belief that no ground 
 existed for convicting the prisoner, and, indeed, went on to 
 state that it was impossible he should be guilty. For these 
 round assertions the applicant's only authority was an oral report 
 of the proceedings at the. trial made to him by the prisoner's 
 father ! 
 
i 4 6 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1850. 
 
 following extracts will form a suitable introduction to tlie 
 JL next Charge : 
 
 From the 'Birmingham Journal' of October 12, 1850. 
 
 ( MURDEROUS OUTRAGE BY BURGLARS IN GREAT HAMPTON-STREET. 
 
 ' Frequent and serious as are outrages on persons and pro- 
 perty in this town, we do not remember a single instance in 
 which the indignation of the public has been so generally ex- 
 cited and loudly expressed as in regard to an occurrence which 
 has taken place this week manifested, too, not so much against 
 the perpetrators of the act of violence to which we refer, 
 although a respected inhabitant is the sufferer, as in regard to 
 the conduct of certain officers of the night-duty police. The 
 particulars of the affair to which we advert are known, more or 
 less, to most of our Birmingham readers. About four o'clock 
 on Monday morning last, Mr. Thomas Marston, gold and silver 
 beater, of Great Hampton-street, was roused from sleep by a 
 noise in the house, and on getting out of bed he found that 
 his room-door, which, according to his usual practice, he left 
 ajar on retiring to rest, had been in the mean time closed. 
 This raised a suspicion in his mind that the noise was not 
 made by the servant, as he at first supposed, and he imme- 
 diately proceeded down-stairs. Glancing into the sitting-room, 
 Mr. Marston saw three men in the act of emptying his side- 
 board of the plate and other valuables which it contained, and 
 a large heap of the spoil was lying on the ground. He in- 
 stantly attempted to run back to his bedroom, with the inten- 
 tion of getting his fire-arms, but the burglars had become 
 aware of his presence, and attacked him with their bludgeons 
 before he was up many steps of the staircase. Mr. Marston 
 was obliged to turn upon them in self-defence, and being pos- 
 sessed of considerable strength, although somewhat advanced in 
 years, he tore a wooden rail out of the banister, and main- 
 tained his vantage position on the stairs for several minutes. 
 
Introduction to Char ye of October, 1850. 147 
 
 At length, however, one of the villains brought a poker from 
 the sitting-room, and with this he struck Mr. Marston nume- 
 rous blows across the head and legs. Unable to hold out any 
 longer, he dropped at their feet, but even then they kicked and 
 struck him so as to prevent the possibility of his pursuing 
 them, and as at this juncture a fainting-fit deprived him of his 
 senses, they no doubt thought they had killed him. At last 
 they quitted the house, making their exit from the premises by 
 the same way as they had entered, namely, through the ceiling 
 of Mr. Marston' s warehouse, from which a door communicated 
 with the house. But more of the modus operandi hereafter. 
 The question must by this time have naturally suggested itself 
 to the reader the rencontre appears to have lasted a consider- 
 able time ; was no alarm made ? where were the police ? The 
 affray did last a quarter of an hour ; cries such as would be 
 uttered by a man engaged in a death-struggle were raised; his 
 daughter and servant were at one of the windows crying out 
 urgently and loudly for assistance ; and two or three policemen 
 were actually standing in front of the door, gazing at what was 
 going on the fact of there being a gas-light on the stairs and 
 a ' fan-light' over the front door enabling them to have an 
 almost distinct view of the whole scene ! For ten minutes 
 (according to the statement of one of them, on his afterwards 
 entering the house) had these guardians of the night stood 
 before the house, witnessing what they thought was a simple 
 act of chastisement on the part of a man towards his wife (or 
 son, as another said), at such an hour in the morning, and at 
 one of the most respectable houses in Great Hampton-street. 
 While the conflict was going on, too, Miss Marston implored 
 them for Heaven's sake to come to the assistance of her father, 
 and told them that if they simply broke one of the panes of 
 the front window they would obtain access, as the shutters 
 were not fastened. Although both might be presumed to be 
 experienced officers, from the circumstance of one being a sub- 
 inspector and the other a sergeant, yet they do not appear to 
 have had the least tact or presence of mind, even when a glim- 
 mering of the real state of things came across them, and no 
 proper precautions were taken to prevent the escape of the 
 burglars, which they consequently effected at their leisure. 
 Ultimately the door was opened from the inside, and the officers 
 
 L 2, 
 
148 Introduction to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 found Mr. Marston in an insensible state, covered from head 
 to foot with blood, which flowed chiefly from wounds about 
 his head. He was conveyed up to bed, and medical aid being 
 sought, Dr. Bell Fletcher and others were soon in attendance. 
 It was found that the wounds he had received were of a very 
 serious character, and such as might render his recovery a 
 matter of the greatest uncertainty. Inspector Glossop examined 
 the premises in the course of the morning, and found that the 
 burglars had obtained entrance to the back premises by scaling 
 a high wall; they afterwards broke through the ceiling of an 
 outer warehouse, but finding that a thick wall intervened 
 between them and the apartment in which Mr. Marston's 
 valuable stock of gold and silver was kept, another part of the 
 ceiling had to be penetrated, and this they accomplished, 
 making a hole large enough to admit one man at a time. 
 Finding that the stock was deposited in strong iron chests, not 
 easily broken open, they appear to have chosen the alternative 
 of ransacking the house, to which a door opened from the 
 warehouse, as we have already mentioned. No property of 
 any description was missed from the premises. Mr. Glossop 
 took possession of a hat which had been dropped by one of the 
 burglars, as well as the poker, which was covered with blood, 
 and much bent. Having a suspicion of the right parties, he 
 stationed Sub-Inspector Tandy arid three or four of the detec- 
 tive force, during the day, in a lodging-house in Carey's Court, 
 Moor-street, and before night they had in custody five young 
 fellows, most of whom belong to a gang of London thieves 
 who have recently taken up their abode in Birmingham. Their 
 names are Christopher Heeley, William Wallace, George Green, 
 Henry Jones, and Henry Ihomson, and the hat found by Mr. 
 Glossop will, we believe, be identified by Mr. Glossop as the 
 property of one of them. They were brought before the 
 magistrates on Tuesday, and remanded until to-day, in order 
 that it might be seen whether Mr. Marston could recognise 
 any of them if he was by that time able to attend. Conceiv- 
 ing that the officers mentioned above had been guilty of a gross 
 neglect of duty, Chief- Superintendent Stephens very properly 
 summoned them before the sub-committee of the Watch Com- 
 mittee on Tuesday last, when Miss Marston attended, and 
 stated the facts of the case. A long and somewhat angry dis- 
 
Introduction to Charge of October, 1850. 149 
 
 cussion took place, but the result was that the men were simply 
 reprimanded by the Mayor. On inquiring at Mr. Marston's 
 house last night, we found he was somewhat better, although 
 there is no probability of his being able to leave his bed for 
 several days. The suspected parties will, therefore, be simply 
 brought up to-day for remand/ 
 
 The only one of the burglars convicted was Christopher 
 Heeley, who turned out to be the nephew of Mr. Marston, the 
 prosecutor. Sentence of death was recorded against him, and 
 he was sent to the hulks at Woolwich. About three years 
 ago he escaped, leaping from the deck of the vessel into the 
 river and swimming away. He was a jeweller by trade, and it 
 was remarked, that although there had been eight robberies of 
 jewellers' shops in Birmingham within a few months preceding 
 his apprehension, there were none for a long time afterwards. 
 He is believed by the police to be now engaged (January, 1857,) 
 in a course of profitable depredation, sometimes at Manchester 
 and sometimes at Liverpool. He is small in stature, but 
 nimble and daring in no ordinary degree. At the date of this 
 murderous attack on his uncle he was but nineteen years of age. 
 
 From the 'Annual Register for 1850'. Chronicle, pp. 126-7. 
 
 BURGLARIES. 
 
 ' It is remarkable that crimes seem to follow some serial law, 
 and to prevail, epidemically as it were, at certain seasons and 
 places. The excitement occasioned by the Frimley murder was 
 at its height, when the public were terrified by a succession of 
 burglaries, attended with more or less violence to persons, 
 which gave rise to a general panic. The most daring only of 
 them can be recorded in these pages ; but the curious inquirer 
 will find in the journals of the day astonishing proofs of the 
 prevalence of this crime in England at this time. That robbery, 
 attended with violence to the person, should be the prevailing 
 crime in a civilized country, with its police, telegraph, and 
 detective machinery, is a singular fact in the philosophy of 
 civilization. 
 
 ' Three men broke into the house of the Rev. O. E. Yidal, at 
 Arlington, in Sussex, on the night of the soth of Ssptember. 
 
150 Introduction to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 After stealing two watches from the servant's room, two of the 
 robbers, both masked, successively entered Mr. Vidal's room. 
 They compelled the gentleman to rise from his bed, show them 
 where he kept his money, and procure the key for them. Mr. 
 Vidal remonstrated with them, and warned them of the great 
 sin they were committing; upon which one of them placed a 
 sword across Mr. Vidal's throat, and threatened to use it if he 
 made a noise. After taking nearly 40^. in money, the robbers 
 locked the gentleman in his bedroom, and made tea for them- 
 selves before leaving the premises. These fellows are believed to 
 be the same who committed the burglary and murder at Frimley. 
 
 ' On the Sunday following the day of the murder at Frimley, 
 a burglary was committed at AYokingham, about midway be- 
 tween Reading and Frimley. The shop of Mr. Porter, a watch- 
 maker in the Market-place, was entered during the evening, 
 and property worth from aoo/. to 300^. carried off. 
 
 ' At Manningtree, a burglary was attended by an unusual 
 atrocity. Some experienced robbers entered the house of Mr. 
 Vail, a hairdresser, by cutting holes in a back door ; they rifled 
 the place of a good deal of property, set fire to the lower 
 rooms, and decamped. The family were awakened by the 
 smoke, and managed to escape from the house. The exertions 
 of the neighbours prevented the place from being entirely de- 
 stroyed, but little of the building or its contents was saved. 
 
 ' At Manchester, the house of Miss Codling was broken into 
 and plundered, and that lady treated with brutal violence. A 
 jeweller's house at Manchester was broken into, and the pro- 
 prietor, who maintained a desperate conflict with the burglars, was 
 very much injured. On the 3oth November, a house at Frencham 
 Common was forced; the owner knocked clown with a life- 
 preserver, and seriously injured ; his sister was thrown on the 
 ground and kept quiet by pistols, while the villains ransacked 
 the house. On the 28th October, the Dublin Castle, Camden 
 Town, was plundered, and the contents of the till, about 25/., 
 carried off. A policeman met the robber and challenged him. 
 The robber suddenly turned on his captor, and stabbed him in 
 the face with a knife. A terrible contest ensued. The robber 
 stabbed and cut the policeman's face in all directions, and also 
 cut him on the ear and hand. The policeman, on his side, did 
 not spare his truncheon, and ultimately captured his assailant.' 
 
CHAEGE OF OCTOBEE, 1850. 
 
 GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND JURY, 
 
 THE steady diminution in the number of offenders appre- 
 hended and brought to trial, not only in this town in particular, 
 but throughout the country at large, had led me to hope that I 
 should have had to congratulate you on the diminution of 
 crime an inference to which this great fact so obviously carries 
 the mind. But I must confess that late events have startled 
 me from such a conclusion ; for, in considering whether crime 
 is, or is not on the wane, we must have regard not merely to 
 the number of offenders, but to the intensity of their guilt. 
 Our pockets may be picked of our handkerchiefs day ' after 
 day; the reckless tradesman who hangs his goods on the out- 
 side of his shop may lose them as frequently as he deserves ; 
 and yet this multitude of offences may give a less amount of 
 criminality than one such outrage as that which took place last 
 week at the house of an inhabitant of this borough. 
 
 Connected as I have been all my life with Birmingham, my 
 memory furnishes me with no parallel instance of a crime so 
 audacious, or one which must inevitably have diffused such dis- 
 may (not to say terror) throughout your vast population. That 
 one of your townsmen, roused from his sleep by the invasion 
 of his peaceful dwelling in the dead of the night, should, when 
 he meets with the burglars, inspire them with no fear that he 
 should be the pursued instead of the pursuer, and should have 
 to defend his life against their murderous violencethat all this 
 should have occurred in the neighbourhood, if not in the pre- 
 sence of the police, is a most disastrous and humiliating event 
 an event which imperatively calls on every man among us, 
 who, by the duties of his office or the influence of his position, 
 can aid in such a consummation, to spare no effort which may 
 tend to restore to the inhabitants that feeling of personal secu- 
 rity formerly enjoyed by them in its fullest extent, but now so 
 rudely shaken. I am certain that no effort will be spared. 
 The Corporation, my brother magistrates, and the police, will 
 all, in their different capacities, be deeply sensible that the gocd 
 
J 52 Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 government of the town requires to be vindicated ; and its cha- 
 racter placed on a very different footing from that on which it 
 is likely to stand after the lamentable transaction on which I 
 have commented. 
 
 We shall be reluctant to excuse ourselves on the plea, unfor- 
 tunately but too well founded in fact, that at the present 
 moment all England is rife with crimes, evincing a degree of 
 atrocity and a defiance of the law, which we had fondly hoped 
 were not characteristics of our age or country. In Surrey, 
 the home of a clergyman has been violated and himself mur- 
 dered, and in the adjoining county of Kent, the houses of ten 
 clergymen have been robbed. The importance of these offences 
 will expand to our view, when we reflect that they have been 
 committed upon a class both deserving and enjoying the respect 
 and affection of the community a class, too, never obnoxious 
 to those prejudices which not infrequently place one order of 
 men in hostility with another. We may therefore be assured, 
 that these offences must be the exponents of a much greater 
 number than have ever been brought under our notice. 
 
 What has produced this sudden development of wickedness 
 is not, I believe, understood. It is plain, however, that far 
 more must be done for the repression of crime than we have 
 hitherto accomplished, before we can reflect with any satisfac- 
 tion on the result of our labours. I have so often insisted on 
 the necessity for improvements in the moral and industrial 
 training of the humbler classes, that I will pass by this topic 
 on the present occasion, and invite you to consider a remedy 
 which, though not going to the root of the disease as a rightly- 
 conducted education might do, may, nevertheless, be more apt 
 and efficient for immediate purposes. 
 
 It is notorious to all the world, that a numerous class exists 
 amongst us, known individually to the officers of justice as 
 persons who follow crime as a calling, and who have no other 
 means of subsistence than the remuneration which belongs to 
 their nefarious course of life. For a time, not seldom 
 extending over several years, they follow this calling in safety, 
 because no opportunity has been found to bring home to them 
 any particular act of crime. That they must commit offences 
 daily, is just as well known to the police as it is known to us 
 that the passengers whom we meet in the streets must daily eat 
 
Charge, of October, 1850. 153 
 
 and drink ; although we do not follow them to their homes, and 
 are not able to aver that they have taken food of any particular 
 kind, or at any particular moment. 
 
 The question for consideration is, whether the period has not 
 arrived when the knowledge thus possessed by the officers of 
 justice may be made available to the breaking-up of those 
 gangs which hold us in a state of constant alarm ; and which, 
 by the example of their impunity, obtain recruits, and spread 
 abroad a moral pestilence. 
 
 Deeply venerating as I do the principles of English juris- 
 prudence, and imbued with all those feelings of attachment to 
 them which may be expected to spring from the devotion of 
 many years of life to the practice of our law, I contemplate the 
 necessity of every departure from them with regret and anxiety. 
 Now, as a general principle, the law of England will not em- 
 barrass a party accused, by calling upon him to answer a charge 
 relating to more than one transaction. If it become necessary 
 to determine the character of that transaction by inquiring into 
 the prisoner's conduct in reference to other similar acts as, for 
 instance, in trials for embezzlement, or for passing false coin, 
 knowing it to be false, cases where the repetition of the act 
 throws light on the question as to whether it was the offspring 
 of error or design, even in these cases the range of such 
 inquiry is jealously restrained within the narrowest bounds. In 
 trials for treason, sedition, or conspiracy, the range is of neces- 
 sity wider ; but this laxity is practically controlled by the indis- 
 position of courts and juries to convict a prisoner who is exposed 
 to the hardship of having to defend himself, on one and the 
 same trial, against a multiplicity of attacks. 
 
 To the observance of these principles many an innocent man 
 has probably owed his acquittal, in times when a disposition 
 existed to pervert the powers of the law into the means of oppres- 
 sion; and until it can be justly assumed that such a disposition 
 exists no longer, or is subject to some new control, it would be 
 better to endure all the evils arising out of the state of things 
 incident to that long impunity of offenders to which I have 
 referred, than to draw from the scabbard a weapon which, under 
 pretence of warring upon the guilty, might be used for the 
 destruction of the innocent. 
 
 But I hope I claim for those who are entrusted with the 
 
3,54 Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 administration of the law no more than you, in common with 
 all candid and observant men,, will readily concede to them, 
 when I state that their intention is to do justice ; and that their 
 failures, when failures occur, are the consequence of infirmity 
 and not of design. It will also be admitted, that from the 
 highest amongst them to the lowest, they exercise their func- 
 tions in the full blaze of publicity watched by the thousand 
 eyes of a jealous and vigilant press. Probably, therefore, you 
 will be of opinion that no prisoner has much cause to be afraid 
 that he will at this day be exposed to wilful oppression in our 
 courts. If, then, he can be secured from embarrassment in his 
 defence, no ground will remain why we should forbear from 
 calling on a party to defend himself against a charge arising 
 out of a course of conduct, any more than from a charge arising 
 out of a particular act or acts. And this object, I think, may 
 be accomplished, as I will proceed to explain. 
 
 But I shall probably make myself better understood, if in 
 the first place I call your attention to an instance in our law in 
 which the principle in view has been acted upon, or, at all 
 events, very closely approached. There is a statute on the 
 books in virtue of which a reputed or suspected thief, by 
 frequenting streets and certain places therein described, sup- 
 posed to furnish greater opportunities for plunder than others, 
 may, if the magistrates before whom he is brought infer from 
 such frequenting that his intent was to commit a felony, 
 be adjudged a rogue, and may be punished with imprisonment. 
 Here then we see that, by the law of England, a person, under 
 given circumstances, may be treated as a criminal and deprived 
 of his liberty, in the absence of proof that he has committed 
 any act which of itself is of a criminal nature. This provision, 
 which is now nearly a century old, is, no doubt, a wide depar- 
 ture from the general principle of our jurisprudence to which I 
 have adverted. No complaints, however, have arisen out of 
 the exertion of this authority, open to abuse as it certainly 
 would appear to be ; although it cannot be denied that the pri- 
 soner may, by its exercise, be placed under great difficulties in 
 defending himself against a charge of frequenting a particular 
 place, a charge implying a repetition of visits, and neces- 
 sarily extending over a larger portion of time than belongs to the 
 transactions which are the usual subjects of inquiry in the 
 criminal courts. Neither will it escape your observation how 
 
Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 difficult it is for a party accused, to defend himself against the 
 charge of evil intentions in any case in which they are not 
 alleged and proved to be accompanied by injurious acts, and 
 essentially connected with them. 
 
 These are the defects of this law as regards the protection of 
 the prisoner. On the side of the public, also, it is far from 
 perfect. A justly reputed thief may be seen in a street which 
 he may have entered for the first time in his life, and yet the 
 circumstances of the case may be such as to leave no doubt 011 
 the minds of those who are to decide, that he came there for 
 the purpose of theft. Nevertheless, he would be safe from 
 punishment, because there having been no repetition of his 
 visits, he could not be adjudged to have frequented the place in 
 question ; and this defect is probably the cause why a provision, 
 apparently so potent for the repression of crime, is less resorted 
 to than at first sight might be expected. 
 
 But imperfect as the provision is in its present state, it may 
 be capable of improvements by which the defects pointed out 
 might be removed. What I would propose is, that when, by 
 the evidence of two or more credible witnesses, a Jury has 
 been satisfied that there is good ground for believing, and that 
 the witnesses do actually believe, that the accused party is 
 addicted to robbery or theft, so as to deserve the appellation of 
 robber or thief, he shall be called upon in defence to prove 
 himself in possession of means of subsistence, lawfully obtained, 
 either from his property, his labour, the assistance of his friends, 
 or from some other honest source. On the failure of such 
 proof, let him be adjudged a reputed thief, and put under high 
 recognizances to be of good conduct for some limited period ; 
 or in default of responsible bail, let him suffer imprisonment for 
 the same term. And as in affairs of such moment it is always 
 advisable to proceed with great caution, I would, until the 
 experiment has been tried and found successful, confine the 
 operation of the law to persons who have already been con- 
 victed of a felony, or of such a misdemeanour as necessarily 
 implies dishonesty in the guilty party ; as, for instance, obtaining 
 money or goods under false pretences. 
 
 " As the testimony against the accused would only amount to a 
 presumption of guilt, so it should seem but reasonable that 
 such testimony might be met by a counter presumption, arising 
 out of the fact, that his wants did not place him under any 
 
156 Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 overwhelming temptation to commit the crimes in which he 
 was supposed to be engaged. By this course of proceeding he 
 would be relieved from the danger of undue embarrassment in 
 his defence. A party in the enjoyment of an honest means of 
 subsistence can have little difficulty in proving the fact. Doubt- 
 less a law so framed would leave some thieves still at large, 
 because it would be too much to assume that none are in the habit 
 of stealing who have other sources of maintenance ; yet it would 
 argue very little knowledge of the predatory class not to see 
 that such a provision would enable the ministers of justice to 
 withdraw from society nine-tenths of the malefactors who now 
 roam the country unmolested. 
 
 If, Gentlemen, these views had opened upon me in the ex- 
 citement created by the difficulties into which we are so unex- 
 pectedly plunged, I should have distrusted them too much to 
 offer them to your notice. I have no confidence in the wisdom 
 of laws which are prompted by exigencies. I have ever found 
 that the eyes of the legislator, and of those who call upon him 
 to act, are fixed at such junctures exclusively on the particular 
 mischief against which he is urged to provide ; and that he and 
 they are prone to neglect the danger of letting in un considered 
 evils, in their ardour to keep out the one which, by the force of 
 circumstances, has obtained a great, and perhaps undue, hold 
 over their minds. But the question is one which for years has 
 engaged no small portion of my thoughts. That bands of 
 enemies, to whom even the laws of war are unknown, or by 
 whom they are disregarded, should be permitted to march from 
 village to village, arid from town to town, making no secret of 
 their contempt for justice and its guardians, braving the oppro- 
 brium of their calling, and only refraining from the most 
 appalling violence when they can secure their plunder without 
 its aid ; and that all the while such bands are individually and 
 collectively as well known to the police as to each other, is a 
 state of things which would disgrace an age of barbarism, and 
 which nothing but long familiarity could enable us to contem- 
 plate without horror and astonishment. Too frequently has it 
 challenged my attention, in common with that of all others 
 engaged in the administration of criminal justice, to leave the 
 question of a remedy a new subject for consideration ; and long 
 before this present season of outrage, I had reduced to writing 
 the conclusions at which my mind had arrived. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 If you ask yourselves why it is that I trouble you, the 
 Grand Jury, who have no legislative duties to perform, with 
 the investigation into which I have entered, my answer is, that 
 no important change will ever be made, or, in my opinion, 
 ought ever to be made, in the criminal law, until the people at 
 large are convinced of the propriety of the change proposed. 
 Through you I address no small or unimportant section of the 
 people, and may, perhaps, hope to arrest their attention and 
 excite them to inquire how far the opinions which I have ven- 
 tured to express are founded in truth. 
 
 "Whether I am right or wrong, it is satisfactory to reflect 
 that no harm can accrue from what I have done beyond an un- 
 profitable consumption of your time and my own. There are 
 men whose words are deeds, and whose opinions at once fructify 
 into practical consequences, good or evil. Such are bound to a 
 degree of caution not so imperative on humbler individuals. All 
 I wish for is, that as my convictions can obtain no weight from 
 the celebrity of him who promulgates them, so neither may 
 they be prejudiced by his insignificance. On their own merits 
 r demerits let them stand or fall. 
 
 The Grand Jury closed their labours on Saturday, and de- 
 livered to the Recorder the following address, which was read 
 in Court: 
 
 ' The Grand Jury, before separating, desire to present their 
 cordial thanks to the Recorder for the very able Charge which 
 he delivered to them ; and, if in accordance with his views, 
 would respectfully suggest the importance of publishing the 
 same/ 
 
 The Recorder expressed his gratification in finding that his 
 views met with the concurrence of the Grand Jury. 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 Two years after this Charge was delivered, a valuable work 
 on Modern India was published by Mr. George Campbell, the 
 nephew of the Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench ; 
 from which it appears that a law, very similar to that proposed 
 
158 Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 by me, is in action in Bengal, but that its operation is im- 
 peded by the habits of thinking, brought by the Judges from 
 England. 
 
 ' The last offence which I have entered as against property is 
 that of a notorious bad character, and the presumed living by evil 
 practices, in the absence of ostensible means of honest liveli- 
 hood. From such persons the magistrate is authorized to 
 demand security for good behaviour, in default of which he 
 may detain them in prison for a limited period viz., one year ; 
 but if it be necessary to keep them beyond that time, he must 
 report the case for sanction of superior judicial authority, and 
 in every instance a fresh order must be passed by the sessions 
 judge every three years. In all such cases the accused party is 
 regularly tried ; proof is led that he has a notoriously bad reputa- 
 tion, or has been violently suspected of particular crimes, and 
 he is called on to rebut this evidence, and to show, if he can, 
 that he has honest means of livelihood. He has every facility 
 of appeal against the magistrate's order. 
 
 ' It may seem that this power is liable to abuse ; but is very 
 necessary, and, in fact, the magistrates cannot sufficiently 
 exercise it. There is no general law against vagrancy, of all 
 things the most fruitful source of crime. I believe that two- 
 thirds of the whole serious crime is committed by wandering 
 tribes, who have little honest livelihood. Yet, in practice, no 
 magistrate has any power of dealing with these people. He 
 may apprehend them, but they never can furnish security of 
 any kind, and no one knows anything of them. It is no use 
 keeping them a year and then letting them go again ; if they 
 were kept longer, the gaols would not contain them, and the 
 judges would not sanction their detention without specific proof 
 of crime. I have apprehended a gipsy gang (a part of which 
 had already been convicted of theft), wandering about in the dis- 
 guise of religious devotees, who admitted that they belonged to 
 one of the thieving castes, whose account of their residence 
 turned out to be altogether false, who had no ostensible means 
 of subsistence whatever ; yet, in the absence of a specific charge, 
 have been unable to obtain sanction to their prolonged deten- 
 tion, and obliged to release them, to disappear into other 
 districts, and there, of necessity, live upon the community. 
 There is no dealing with these people unless (what I think 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 would be the best plan) they were deported to some under-popu- 
 lated part of the world, where they would have more to gain by 
 honest labour, and less opportunity of living on the plunder of a 
 fully-peopled country. At present each magistrate merely 
 tries to send them out of his own district into the next/ 
 Modern India. By George Campbell. 1853. p. 470. 
 
 From the ' Times' October 22nd, 1850. 
 
 f At the opening of the Birmingham Sessions on Friday last, 
 Mr. M. D. Hill, the Recorder of the Borough, addressed the 
 Grand Jury in a manner which would seem entitled to especial 
 notice. If, as will presently appear, we are unfortunately 
 compelled to dissent in great measure from the conclusions of 
 the learned gentleman, at least we must grant that recent 
 events have given force to his case. Birmingham has lately 
 received an unhappy notoriety, as the scene of a sanguinary 
 outrage, which, if not unprecedented in the horror of its results, 
 can scarcely find its parallel for audacity in the annals of crime. 
 For the moment we will borrow Mr. Hill's own words, in 
 describing to the Grand Jury the nature of the offence which 
 drew forth his words of warning and animadversion : e It is 
 most disastrous/ said the learned Recorder, ' that one of your 
 townsmen, roused from his sleep by the invasion of his peaceful 
 dwelling in the dead of night, should, when he meets with the 
 burglars, inspire them with no alarm that he should be the 
 pursued instead of the pursuer, and should have to defend his 
 life against their murderous violence, and that all this should 
 have occurred in the neighbourhood, if not in the presence of 
 the police/ Who is in security if such offences can be perpe- 
 trated without impediment ? It may well be that the 
 machinery of the police force, the criminal court, and the scaf- 
 fold can be brought to bear with tolerable certainty on the 
 blood-stained culprit ; but of what avail are such precautions 
 when the temple of life has been once violated ? Nice distinc- 
 tions are made between the respective merits of a ' preventive' and 
 of a ( detective' police force ; but where human life is concerned, 
 the machinery of a police must of necessity be ' preventive/ or 
 it well nigh ceases to be a protection to the community at all. 
 But the outrage recently perpetrated in the borough of Bir- 
 
160 Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 mingham is not the only incentive to a more diligent study of 
 the habits of our criminal population, and of the stern neces- 
 sities of our own position. At no great distance from the 
 metropolis, a quiet country parsonage has been recently invaded, 
 and a clergyman (Mr. Holiest) murdered, almost in his sleep, 
 by a gang of ruffians, each of whom actually received just seven 
 and sixpence as his share, on the division of the paltry spoil. 
 Mr. Hill, moreover, recalled to the recollection of the Grand 
 Jury the fact, that in the county of Kent the dwellings of ten 
 clergymen have just been attacked, with more or less of vio- 
 lence, and property in every instance carried off. It would 
 appear as though crime were assuming a fresh appearance, as if 
 the ruffian who forces his way into a dwelling-house in the dead 
 hour of night, is ready to aggravate his crime by the assassination 
 of its peaceful owner, if by so doing he can hope to augment 
 his booty never so little, or to add another chance to the proba- 
 bilities of impunity. It is under these circumstances . that 
 Mr. Hill delivered his Charge to the Grand Jury at Birmingham 
 the other day, and certainly the importance of the subject, the 
 gravity and experience of the speaker, and the practical nature 
 of the remedies he suggests, combine to call attention to his 
 address. 
 
 ' Three systems are at work in this country for insuring the 
 security of the community against the attacks of that imperium 
 in imperio, the criminal population. It is of little avail to 
 blind our eyes to the real facts of the case ; there is a criminal 
 population dispersed throughout the length and breadth of the 
 land a caste apart which daily and hourly recruits its ranks 
 from all that is most idle, dissolute, and unprincipled among us. 
 The hands of this Bedouin horde are against every man, though 
 the hands of every man are not against them. Whether it be 
 negligence, whether that spurious and maudlin philanthropy 
 which is equally ready to breathe a gentle sigh of compassion 
 over the untimely fate of poor Mr. Holiest, or the punishment 
 of his murderers, society in this country carries on a feeble war 
 against the activity and determination of its assailants. The 
 same imbecility of purpose infects us all. We are all alike 
 guilty of treason to the best interests of humanity. The Judge 
 upon the bench, who hitches together an inconclusive charge to 
 a jury, when the guilt of the prisoner has been clearly proved 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 161 
 
 upon a trial ; the twelve jurymen who juggle with their own 
 consciences and with the immutable distinctions between guilt 
 and innocence; the perorating philanthropist who at public 
 meetings indulges in the luxury of tender periods at the expense 
 of the lives of his fellow-subjects ; and above all, we, the great 
 mass of the community, who are neither judges, jurymen, nor 
 professional philanthropists, and who yet stand by quietly while 
 all this goes on, are all deserving of the severest reprehension. 
 We have, as yet, discovered but three methods of warding off 
 the danger. One is vindictive, and the remaining two have in 
 a degree the character of anticipation and prevention. The first 
 consists in our system of criminal punishments, and this can 
 only be effective in proportion to the certainty of the arrest of 
 the offender, and the application of the penalty assigned to his 
 offence by the law. The second is to be found, indirectly, in 
 the spread of education, of religious culture in the repeal of 
 all restrictions upon industry ; and, directly, in the aggregate of 
 those measures of reformatory discipline which have within the 
 last few years been devised for the moral reclamation of the 
 criminal, whether in or out of the prison cell. According to 
 the mildness or severity of his temperament, according to his 
 more or less limited range of observation, a man will become a 
 partisan of either one or other of these systems. The third 
 remains; it is purely precautionary, and recent circumstances 
 have combined to show its insufficiency for the prevention of 
 violent outrage on the sanctuary of life. It consists in the 
 whole machinery of our police force a force, as at present con- 
 stituted and directed, well enough adapted for the detection of 
 crime and for bringing offenders to justice, but otherwise incom- 
 plete. Let us, however, be just. It is a mere absurdity to 
 suppose that the police system can ever receive such an exten- 
 sion as to be directly available for the absolute protection of 
 every parsonage, and homestead, and farmhouse scattered 
 throughout the country. There is no doubt, as we observed on 
 a recent occasion, that much yet remains to be done for the 
 rural police in the way of improvement, but, when all is done, 
 the protection to the public must be very incomplete, if the force 
 is called upon to act against a criminal population, increasing 
 in numbers and audacity. We know of no precautions against 
 crime which have been practically adopted to any extent in this 
 
 M 
 
162 Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 country, and which are not fairly referrible to one or other of 
 these systems. Mr. Hill attempted on Friday last to recom- 
 mend the adoption of a fourth method, which, although it may 
 appear at first sight excellently adapted for the prevention of 
 crime, would yet seem to involve considerable danger. Our 
 limits to-day preclude us from so ample a discussion of the 
 subject as its importance deserves ; we will, therefore, postpone 
 all comment upon it, and content ourselves with merely indi- 
 cating the general nature of the scheme propounded by the 
 Recorder of Birmingham. 
 
 ' Mr. Hill starts with the position that the directors of the 
 police force are, through the information they receive from 
 their subordinates, perfectly well acquainted with the persons, 
 and, generally speaking, with the whereabouts of the criminal 
 population. If an order were sent down from the Home Office 
 to Mr. Mayne to-morrow to collect on Hounslow Heath on a 
 day named all the thieves, pickpockets, sheep-stealers, cattle- 
 lifters, and burglars in the fifty -two counties of England and 
 Wales, that able and zealous officer could easily accomplish the 
 task. The members of the police force under his orders are 
 perfectly well acquainted with the persons of the offenders, as 
 they see them slink about the streets ; they know the public- 
 houses where they meet and divide their ill-gotten spoil ; they 
 could at a moment's notice open up the stores of the receivers 
 of the stolen goods; they not only know the thief, but his 
 associates, and probably the wretched prostitute who is the 
 companion of his orgies, and the sharer of his gains. The 
 pages of Fielding and the memoirs of Vidocq have been sur- 
 passed in our own times by the zeal and diligence of an un- 
 assuming and orderly body of men, to whose unceasing labours 
 and watchfulness we owe much of the security we enjoy. 
 The proof of the value of their services is to be found in the 
 almost certainty with which offenders are brought to justice 
 when the crime has been committed. Until then the action 
 of the police force is paralysed. Even so they may be perfectly 
 well aware that such a man has committed such a theft, but 
 his arrest would be useless the legal proof against him is in- 
 complete. Now, it is against this Bedouin force of criminals 
 that Mr. Hill would levy open war for the public security's 
 sake. When once a man is notoriously affiliated that is to 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 163 
 
 say, when it can be proved to the satisfaction of a jury that he 
 is affiliated to this horde of marauders, the Recorder of Bir- 
 mingham would have him at once disarmed. The pickpocket 
 of to-day is the burglar of to-morrow, and the possible mur- 
 derer of the next day. Mr. Hill would have him arrested 
 midway in his course of crime. Certainly such a system as 
 this would be of little avail against the audacity of a Rush, or the 
 cold atrocity of such a wretch as the murderess Manning ; but, 
 at least, had it been in operation, the assassination of the other 
 day would not have occurred at Birmingham, and poor Mr. 
 Holiest might have been still alive. Here we must pause ; 
 but the importance of the subject will well justify us for making 
 Mr. Hill's charge the subject of a second notice. We think 
 we have not failed in stating his case with sufficient clearness. 
 Let us next inquire if the remedy be not worse than the dis- 
 ease. Let us ascertain if it be really the fact that murders 
 are ordinarily committed by the f criminal population.' Surely, 
 in a case of this kind, we must not be over-hasty in sanctioning 
 a change which might readily make the law a terror rather 
 to the innocent than to the guilty/ 
 
 From the f Times' October 23 , 1850. 
 
 ' We proceed to-day with the consideration of Mr. Hill's very 
 interesting charge to the Grand Jury at the borough sessions of 
 Birmingham. As we explained yesterday, the novelty of his 
 plan consists in the fact that he would anticipate crime by the 
 incarceration of all persons 'provably addicted to robbery or 
 theft, so as to deserve the appellation of thief.'* It is very far 
 from our wish to take anything like a captious objection to the 
 system proposed by the Recorder of Birmingham, but it is im- 
 possible not to be struck with the looseness of the definition on 
 which it all rests. What is the meaning of a man ' probably 
 addicted to robbery or theft ?' Is it a man who has been once, 
 twice, thrice convicted of the crime named ? If this were so, 
 Mr. Hill would at least give us something intelligible to go 
 upon. It might, indeed, be hard that no locus panitentice 
 should be allowed to the poor wretch who might be struggling 
 
 * Here the writer, who manifestly quotes from memory, is inaccurate. My Charge 
 does not contain the phrase 'provably,' or 'probably addicted to theft.' M. D. H. 
 
 M 3 
 
164 Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 to unloose himself from the chains of vice. It seems a very 
 stern policy which should make three convictions the justifica- 
 tion of a fourth, even before the commission of any fresh 
 criminal act. Still the definition would be intelligible, and a 
 practical question might in each case be submitted for the de- 
 cision of the court. We have a very strong opinion that Mr. 
 Hill could not under any circumstances procure the assent of 
 Parliament to such a doctrine ; but, if once sanctioned, it 
 might, no doubt, be acted upon with sufficient certainty. As 
 it appears to us, all other presumptions, short of actual con- 
 viction, must necessarily break down. If a person has really 
 been guilty of a theft or robbery, the short plan is to put him 
 upon his trial for the offence of theft, not to produce him in a 
 criminal court as ' a justly- reputed thief/ The old law is 
 sufficient, and the old crime too ; why import into the statute- 
 book a new law and a new crime ? Let us, however, look a 
 little more closely into Mr. Hill's recommendation. What he 
 says is this : ' When by the evidence of two or more credible 
 witnesses a jury has been satisfied that there is good ground 
 for believing, and that the witnesses do actually believe, that 
 the accused party is addicted to robbery or theft, so as to de- 
 serve the appellation of f thief/ he shall be called upon in 
 defence to prove himself in possession of means of subsistence, 
 lawfully obtained, either from his property, or labour, or the 
 assistance of his friends/ The reputation of ' thief is to be 
 the substantive offence; the line of exculpation open to a 
 prisoner is to prove himself in possession of lawful means of 
 subsistence. What difficulty would any man, really affiliated 
 to the gangs of marauders who infest society, experience in 
 trumping up a story so plausible that a jury or court could not 
 but formally admit its truth ? Every man present might in 
 his heart be perfectly aware that the employer or friend pro- 
 duced was but the accomplice of the party accused, still what 
 could be done ? There stands a man in the witness-box ready 
 to swear that he gives the prisoner ten shillings or twelve 
 shillings a week ; and how is the evidence to be set aside ? 
 What difficulty would any member of the swell mob any pro- 
 fessional burglar or thief find in producing vouchers for his 
 means of lawful subsistence ? 
 
 ' Impracticable as Mr. Hill's plan would appear to be on a 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 165 
 
 question of definition, of statutory provision, or of administra- 
 tion, it is even yet more intolerable when we give a thought to 
 the machinery by which it must be worked out. Who are to 
 be substantially the judges ? The police. Who the accusers? 
 The police. Who the witnesses ? The police. No doubt 
 there is the formal intervention of a court and jury, but they 
 are mere puppets, and the strings which regulate their move- 
 ments would all ultimately terminate in Scotland-yard. Now 
 it requires but a moderate experience indeed of criminal courts 
 to be profoundly convinced of the fearful amount of injustice 
 that would ensue from the loose admission of the statements of 
 the constabulary force. We would be well content to rest the 
 fate of Mr. Hill's system upon the opinion of any gentleman of 
 experience at the Central Criminal Court. Can the statements 
 of policemen, to the prejudice of prisoners, be ever received 
 without the extremest vigilance? Whether it be over-zeal, 
 whether the bias to suspect guilt inseparable from his calling, 
 whether malevolence or stupidity, the police constable is not a 
 man whose word can be taken upon trust. Now, in the case 
 supposed by Mr. Hill, it is almost exclusively upon the evidence 
 of the constabulary force that convictions must depend. Police- 
 men alone are intimately acquainted with the habits of the cri- 
 minal population. It is only the policeman who tracks the thief 
 to his haunts, who knows his companions, who sees him loiter- 
 ing about the streets. It is the policeman, therefore, in whose 
 mind the suspicion is generated which is to ripen into the con- 
 viction of the prisoner. With every respect for the zeal, intel- 
 ligence, and respectability of the great mass of the metropolitan 
 constabulary force for with the proceedings of this body we are 
 more intimately acquainted we should be sorry indeed to see 
 the day when the liberty of the meanest of our fellow-country- 
 men was made to depend upon such testimony as this. 
 
 ' We think, then, that Mr. Hill's plan can never receive the 
 public assent first, from the nature of the offence he would 
 create, and, secondly, because of the machinery by which a 
 conviction must be worked out. At the same time, the sug- 
 gestions of the learned Recorder deserve to be treated with every 
 respect ; for it does appear an anomalous thing that we should 
 be perfectly aware morally speaking of the existence of a guilty 
 section of the population whose daily bread depends upon the 
 
1 66 Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 success of their aggressions upon property, and yet that we can- 
 not stretch out our hands and restrain them from overt acts of 
 crime. ' That they must of necessity commit offences daily is 
 just as well known to the police as it is known to us that the 
 passengers we meet in the streets must daily eat and drink, 
 although we do not follow them to their homes, and are not 
 able to aver that they have taken food of any particular kind or 
 at any particular moment/ A fact so notorious as this is every 
 now and then mentioned as matter for surprise across a dinner- 
 table, but the recollection of it soon disappears from the memory 
 of most of us. With the criminal judge it is otherwise. We 
 are not, therefore, astonished at finding that a man so zealous 
 and conscientious as Mr. Hill, should have .reflected long and 
 earnestly upon the subject, nor that at last he should have pro- 
 posed some practical plan for the abatement of the evil. We 
 are compelled, although with every respect for the Recorder of 
 Birmingham, to reject his proposition, as likely to produce 
 greater evils than those it professes to cure. At the beginning 
 of his Charge, Mr. Hill observed that at the sessions over which 
 he was then about to preside, there was actually a diminution 
 in the number of prisoners for trial. Is it not, then, the case, 
 that the ordinary means of repression, if they be firmly used, 
 will be found sufficient, without resorting to any extraordinary 
 and perilous novelty ? Judges and juries require to be reminded 
 of their duty. We have lately seen far too much maudlin sym- 
 pathy with the guilty, and indifference to the fate of the unof- 
 fending and respectable members of society. When the law, 
 such as it is, is fairly administered, and is found to be insuf- 
 ficient for the repression of crime, it will be time enough for 
 the creation of fresh offences, as yet happily unknown to the 
 statute-book. Finally, we would remark that we must not 
 generalize too hastily because of the two crimes which have 
 been recently committed in Surrey and at Birmingham. It 
 is not true, in ninety-'nine cases out of a hundred, that murders 
 are committed by the criminal population, properly so called. 
 The attack of the criminal population . is directed against pro- 
 perty, not life. We doubt if the criminal calendar of the last 
 twenty years would furnish half a dozen cases analogous to the 
 unhappy outrages that occurred the other day at Frimley or at 
 Birmingham. 7 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 167 
 
 To the Editor of the ' Times.' 
 
 ' SIR, Nothing but advantage to the public can arise from a 
 discussion of the points at issue between the Times and the 
 Recorder of Birmingham, on his suggestions for the restraint 
 of known offenders. Will you permit me to offer a few obser- 
 vations on the subject, avowing, as I am bound to do in limine, 
 that even after reading what has fallen from your pen on this 
 topic, my views are in concurrence with those of Mr. Hill ? 
 
 ' Before, however, I touch on points of difference, let me re- 
 mark that you have brought under the eye of the public, with 
 a force of language and a felicity of illustration with which 
 your readers must have been far more pleased than surprised, 
 the pregnant fact that the malefactors of the country are per- 
 fectly well known to the police. ' If/ you say, ' an order were 
 sent down from the Home Office to Mr. Mayne to-morrow to 
 collect on Hounslow Heath on a day named all the thieves, 
 pickpockets, sheepstealers, and cattle-lifters in the fifty-two 
 counties in England and Wales, that able and zealous officer could 
 easily accomplish the task. The members of the police force 
 under his orders are perfectly well acquainted with the persons of 
 the offenders, as they see them slink about the streets. They 
 know the public-houses where they meet and divide their ill- 
 gotten spoil,' &c. 
 
 ' It is, then, admitted on all hands, that knowledge actually 
 exists which enables the witness to say, ' that man is a thief; 
 that man is a burglar ; ' and such knowledge being genuine, he 
 must be able to offer reasons, and point to facts in proof of his 
 assertions. But ' knowledge is power/ and the particular 
 knowledge under consideration is, if it can be reduced to use, 
 and restrained from abuse, a power of the highest moment to 
 the public welfare. Shall we make no struggle to render it 
 available, but let it pass by unheeded, as the savage does the 
 streams of water which his civilized successor, by the appliances 
 of mechanics, turns to so many great purposes of life ? Your 
 articles will set many a mind to work on this power, and engage 
 them in devising modes of ' maximizing ' as Bentham would 
 have said, the advantages, and ' minimizing ' the evils of its 
 action. Like fire, it may be a good servant, though a bad master. 
 All depends on the means of control. 
 
1 68 Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 ' The Recorder, then, having a legitimate object in view, the 
 controversy will turn on the modus operandi. If his plan, or 
 any plan that can be suggested, can be reduced to wholesome 
 practice, all will agree that a real good has been obtained. 
 
 ' Mr. Hill suggests as a matter of opinion, that notorious 
 malefactors may be dealt with, in the absence of proof that 
 they have committed specific offences, by a process which he 
 enounces ; but his proposal is not to act upon that opinion, but 
 to confine the operation of a law framed on his principle to the 
 class composed of criminals who have been already convicted of 
 a felony, or of a misdemeanour implying dishonesty, in contra- 
 distinction to libels, assaults, and so forth. 
 
 ' It is true that he contemplates such a restricted application 
 of the law as only temporary, awaiting the success of the ex- 
 periment ; the law to be extended, if successful, to all known 
 offenders, though not previously convicted. 
 
 ' Now, whether such extension will ever be made or not is a 
 matter of speculation, the discussion of which may well stand 
 over until it receives support or condemnation from the result 
 of the prior experiment. So long as the law is confined to the 
 class of convicted malefactors, you are of opinion that ' a prac- 
 tical question might in each case be submitted for the decision 
 of the Court/ 
 
 ( From these remarks it will appear that the points of differ- 
 ence between yourself and the Recorder are reduced to a narrow 
 compass. His projected law may be thus briefly indicated : 
 First, it applies only to those who have been convicted of a 
 specific act of dishonesty. Secondly, it applies to such only of 
 the convicted class as are to the satisfaction of a jury proved 
 to be engaged in a course of depredation that proof to con- 
 sist of the belief of two or more credible witnesses, such belief 
 to be sifted by cross-examination as to the grounds upon which 
 it is formed, and the sincerity with which it is professed. I will 
 then suppose the case for the prosecution to be established 
 primd facie, and next consider what defences are open to the 
 accused. He may, if he can, displace the grounds on which the 
 evidence of the witnesses against him has proceeded. This, it 
 is admitted, or rather stated by the Recorder, may be a hard- 
 ship on the prisoner, as calling upon him to prove a negative. 
 The Recorder, therefore, proposes that as the proof against the 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 169 
 
 accused consists of presumptive evidence, he should be allowed 
 to set up a counter-presumption, and to relieve himself by 
 showing that he is in the enjoyment of the lawful means of 
 supplying his wants. 
 
 ' The objection which you make to this head of the proof is, 
 not that there will be any difficulty in its production by the 
 innocent, but that it will be readily fabricated by the guilty. 
 Let me admit, for the sake of argument, that your opinion 
 may be well founded, and if so, it would detract in some 
 degree, more or less, from the efficiency of the law ; but it 
 would in nowise assist the main purpose of your article, which 
 is to show that the course of proceeding proposed by the 
 Recorder is inadmissible, from the jeopardy in which it would 
 place the innocent. I will now suppose the proof of the enjoy- 
 ment of lawful means of subsistence on the part of the prisoner 
 to have failed, and a verdict to pass against him. What is the 
 consequence? Not of necessity imprisonment. In the first 
 instance he is called upon to give bail to be of good conduct 
 for a limited period of time ; and it is only in default of such 
 bail that he is liable to incarceration at all. May I not then 
 submit to your candour that safeguards, manifold and sufficient, 
 are interposed between the accused and either mistake or 
 oppression ? Suppose the accused should be unjustly driven 
 from post to post until he be reduced to his last defence ; yet, 
 if he is known to his neighbours and relatives to be an honest 
 man, what difficulty would they have in becoming responsible 
 for his not being convicted of crime within the period limited 
 by law ? 
 
 'That exceptional cases of unjust suffering may occur cannot 
 be denied. Mistakes are made under all systems of juris- 
 prudence, and made more frequently than persons who do not 
 spend their time in criminal courts are probably aware. As 
 Beccaria says, no proof rises higher than to a probability so 
 great as that we venture to act upon it; absolute certainty in 
 matters of jurisprudence is unattainable. Nature leaves us no 
 alternative between submitting now and then to the condemna- 
 tion of the innocent, or letting the guilty depart with im- 
 punity. If none are to be punished, until judges and juries are 
 infallible, the courts may be locked up for a very long time to 
 come. 
 
170 Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 f Mr. Hill's plan is framed on the admission that the evidence 
 of criminality which is to be adduced is not of the highest 
 class, and hence its appointed checks and safeguards. But its 
 infirmity may be exaggerated. In some respects it is less 
 open to error than our common form of proceeding, which 
 relies on the proof of a particular act. But, with regard to a 
 particular act, the witnesses sometimes fall into mistakes as to 
 the identity of the prisoner with the person really guilty. In 
 cases of circumstantial evidence the facts inculpating the accused 
 are sometimes fraudulently prepared, as where articles, which 
 are supposed to be stolen, are deposited for some sinister pur- 
 pose in a servant's box ; these and ten thousand sources of 
 error have beset the steps of all who are engaged in the admi- 
 nistration of justice in every age and country. The sources, 
 however, to which I have pointed your attention are evidently 
 less to be feared, when witnesses are speaking of a course of 
 life, than when they are confined to a particular transaction ; 
 so that, although on the whole, it may be easier to arrive at 
 the truth, in regard to a particular transaction, than with 
 regard to a person's course of life, yet the superiority may be 
 much less considerable than at first sight would be conjectured. 
 
 ' Probably the Recorder's plan would have had a better chance 
 of immediate acceptance by the public, if he had expressed no 
 opinions going beyond his projected law, which, as I have 
 before said, is to be confined to convicts. If I had been at his 
 elbow I should have reminded him of the saying of Fontenelle, 
 ' That, if he had his hand full of truths, he would only open 
 one finger at a time/ I am, Sir, &c., 
 
 f AM ic us. 
 
 'Oct. 24, 1850.' 
 
 From the ' Times,' October 24, 1850. 
 
 ' In another portion of our columns will be found a letter 
 upon the subject of Mr. M. D. Hill's recent charge to the 
 Grand Jury at Birmingham. We have so fully discussed the 
 subject, and so amply explained the motives of our opposition 
 to the proposed scheme, that it will not be necessary for us 
 here to re-open the matter at any length. From respect for 
 the character and reputation of the Recorder of Birmingham, 
 we will not, however, pass over without notice the arguments 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 18^0. 171 
 
 that may be adduced in favour of his proposition. The letter 
 of ' Amicus' supports the extraordinary scheme of levying open 
 war against all that numerous class of suspicious character 
 who, by the absence of any evident means of subsistence, by 
 the general idleness and supposed criminality of their conduct, 
 may be presumed to be engaged in such courses as will even- 
 tually lead them to some flagrant, perhaps to some sanguinary, 
 act of crime. 
 
 ' Now, we fully grant that the great mass of the criminal 
 population of this country is virtually under the surveillance of 
 the police force. It is well nigh impossible that a man should 
 be guilty of successive acts of criminality, or even that he 
 should be the habitual companion of vagabonds and thieves, 
 without coming under the notice of the police force. So far 
 we perfectly concur with Mr. Hill, or with the writer of the 
 letter which appears in our impression of this day. The ques- 
 tion is, how to bring the machinery of the criminal tribunals to 
 bear upon this vast floating mass of crime and debauchery in 
 any such manner that the consequent peril to society will not 
 greatly overbalance the correlative advantages. In a word, is 
 it possible to invent some system by which the ( paulo-post 
 future' criminals of this country can be arrested in their 
 career before the actual commission of crime, in any way which 
 will be really efficient against offenders, without at the same 
 time exposing innocent men innumerable to the terrors of an 
 inquiry before a court of justice, and most probably to the 
 positive evils of incarceration ? We need not again enter into 
 the details of Mr. Hill's proposition, after the recent discussion 
 upon the subject. It consists, in the rough, of a proposal for 
 the arrest of persons of suspicious character, who are to be 
 brought up before a jury. It is to be proved against them by 
 the evidence of credible witnesses that they are really persons 
 engaged in a career of guilt, although we believe we are 
 stating Mr. Hill's plan fairly when we add that it is quite 
 unnecessary that the witnesses should give evidence of any 
 specific guilty act. On the other hand, the prisoner may set 
 aside the presumption arising from this testimony by the evi- 
 dence of persons who will prove that he has in effect lawful 
 means of subsistence. Mr. Hill's proposal is a contest of two 
 presumptions, the first of which would be quite insufficient to 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 establish the guilt of the prisoner, or the second his inno- 
 cence. 
 
 ( Our objection to the proposition is twofold. It appears to 
 us that a more hideous oppression could not be devised, a 
 more terrible power could not be assigned to courts of justice, 
 than that they should be called upon to pronounce the guilt of 
 a prisoner upon a suspicion that, all things considered, he is in 
 a fair way to commit a criminal act. This suspicion is to be 
 sufficient, unless he can succeed in proving a point which, if 
 proved, would not disarm the suspicion of its sting. What, 
 after all, is the presumption of guilt to be made up of ? Why, 
 of the testimony of persons who cannot speak to the guilt of 
 the prisoner upon any specific point, but who suspect, and sur- 
 mise, and opine, and consider. Why, if any one of the wit- 
 nesses could prove against the prisoner the substantive act of 
 having picked a stray pocket, let the man by all means be sent 
 to the treadmill for that offence. But you cannot educe light 
 out of accumulated haze, let the accumulation be never so 
 great ; you cannot, out of any number of unfledged suspicions, 
 arrive at any such conviction as would justify the incarceration 
 of an Englishman. 
 
 'We object, then, to Mr. H ill's plan, not only because it 
 would, in our opinion, affect the innocent more than the guilty, 
 but because it would be to admit into our system of criminal 
 jurisprudence a theory of guilt, and a manner of proceeding, 
 which could at any time be used against the humbler classes of 
 our countrymen with fearful effect. The writer of the letter 
 which we print to-day appears to be of opinion that Mr. Hill 
 has gone too far, and would confine the operation of the pro- 
 posed system to persons already convicted at least once of any 
 felony, &c. Alas ! is one conviction to justify a second ? Is 
 a man to be twice punished, if not actually for the same offence, 
 at least on account of the same offence? The tyranny of police 
 surveillance on the continent of Europe would be nothing to 
 such a scheme as this. We confess, on further consideration 
 of Mr. HilFs proposition, we wonder rather that he should not 
 have seized a convicted prisoner in the dock, or certainly before 
 his liberation from his term of imprisonment, and compelled 
 him to give an account of his future prospects of subsistence. 
 Should he be unable to make these out to the satisfaction of 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 173 
 
 the Court, the Recorder of Birmingham might as well come 
 down upon him first as last. We are as far from saying that 
 any such proposal would find favour in our eyes as that the 
 country should directly be charged with the maintenance of the 
 criminal population, for this would be merely to put a premium 
 upon crime ; but, at least, this would be a piece of straightfor- 
 ward blundering. In dismissing this subject, we are, however, 
 most anxious to convey our sense of the zeal and intelligence 
 which have prompted Mr. Hill to take up this important sub- 
 ject. It is something to find a man going out of the usual 
 routine of his duties, and sincerely anxious to improve the ad- 
 ministration of the law. If we cannot agree with Mr. Hill's 
 present proposition, at least we are convinced that it has been 
 prompted by a very strong sense of public duty/ 
 
 From the 'Spectator,' October 26, i8w. 
 
 MR. M. D. BILLYS SUGGESTION. 
 
 ' More burglaries ! even in the very Strand, under the nose 
 of the metropolitan police ! The burglarious public seems to 
 be bent upon putting the burglariable public upon its mettle 
 defying prevention. It is a welcome sound, therefore, when 
 Mr. M. D. Hill announces the existence of a statute whose 
 fundamental enactment suggests the very means which we 
 seem to want, of preventing the crime by arresting the criminal 
 in intention before he becomes the criminal in fact. 
 
 " There is a statute on the books/ says Mr. Hill, f by 
 which a reputed or suspected thief, by frequenting streets 
 and certain places therein described, which are supposed to 
 furnish greater opportunities for plunder than others, may, if 
 the magistrates before whom he is brought infer, from such fre- 
 quenting, that his intent was to commit a felony, be adjudged 
 to be a rogue, and may be punished with imprisonment/ 
 
 f But there are defects in this provision, both as regards the 
 prisoner and as regards the public. It cannot be denied that 
 a prisoner might find it difficult to rebut a charge of frequent- 
 ing a particular place, which implies a repetition of visits that 
 may extend over a long portion of time; and, on the other 
 hand, a justly-reputed thief entering a street for the first time, 
 though so entering it for undoubted purposes of theft, would 
 
174 Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 escape because it was his first visit ; he had not repeated his 
 visit, and therefore had not frequented the place. Mr. Hill 
 thinks that this imperfect provision is capable of improvement 
 so as to answer our present purposes. 
 
 ' ' What I would propose is,, that when, by the evidence of 
 two or more credible witnesses, a jury has been satisfied that 
 there is good ground for believing, and that the witnesses do 
 actually believe, that the accused party is addicted to robbery 
 or theft, so as to deserve the appellation of ' thief/ he shall be 
 called upon in defence to prove himself in possession of means 
 of subsistence, lawfully obtained, either from his property, his 
 labour, or from the assistance of his friends. On the failure 
 of such proof, let him be adjudged a reputed thief, and put 
 under high recognizances to be of good conduct for some limited 
 period ; or in default of responsible bail, let him suffer impri- 
 sonment for the same term/ 
 
 ' At first, to proceed with caution, Mr. Hill ' would confine 
 the operation of the law to persons who have already been con- 
 victed of a felony, or of a misdemeanour such as necessarily im- 
 plies dishonesty in the guilty party as, for instance, obtaining 
 money or goods under false pretences/ 
 
 f This would, at least, seize upon the population disposed to 
 burglary, and would conduce to the security of life and pro- 
 perty ; for burglary may always result in murder. The sugges- 
 tion is too valuable to drop out of sight; and it is desirable, 
 therefore, that the opposing difficulties should be fairly grappled 
 with. It instantly occurs to ask, how you could provide prison 
 room for so considerable an addition to our incarcerated popula- 
 tion ? How reconcile the people to augmented taxes for the 
 expenditure ? It will need some painstaking to dispose of these 
 two interrogatory objections ; but surely the object is worth the 
 pains. 
 
 ( In the first place it is necessary to know of what the 
 criminally-disposed population consists, what proportion of it 
 consists of petty larceners, what of probable burglars ; for until 
 we do have a clear conception of such a classification, we do 
 not really know what we have to deal with. We are inclined 
 to suppose that the criminally-disposed population is in great part 
 identical with the vagrant population ; and, if so, we have an 
 additional reason for such amendment of the Poor Law as 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 175 
 
 would separate the vagrant class more completely from the class 
 of involuntary paupers. 
 
 ' It has been said that, with present opinions, Mr. Hill would 
 not readily find a jury to convict a man of being a felon or mis- 
 demeanant on proof of his being a reputed and probable thief; 
 but a conviction would be greatly facilitated if the case laid 
 before the jury were not a constructive one of felony or mis- 
 demeanour, but an actual charge of vagrancy : the definition of 
 vagrancy being the absence of any honest mode of subsistence. 
 To set down the terms for defining such a charge would be the 
 second task for those entrusted with the requisite reform. 
 
 f Another facility towards a conviction would lie in a definite 
 knowledge on the part of the jury as to the future treatment of 
 the vagrant in custody ; and in this respect the past career of 
 the prisoner might legitimately be taken into the account. It 
 might be used to determine the class of vagrants to which he 
 should belong ; and on determining his class, he should be ad- 
 judged liable to an appropriate custody. 
 
 ' The amount of prison accommodation might be the more 
 readily obtained if the public had a clear conception of two 
 facts, that the inchoate criminal would really be detained so 
 long as he was probably dangerous, and that his custody would 
 repay the State. An effectual detention would in itself repay 
 the body politic ; but how define it ? The most likely plan 
 would be, to place him under the operation of reformatory 
 labour, such as that suggested by Captain Maconochie, under 
 which the prisoner would have to earn his own release. Now, 
 a man who has earned his release is primd facie a safer man 
 than one not disposed to labour ; and, in point of fact, we 
 believe that the total want of industrial education in our state 
 of society explains the criminality of many. But the labour 
 provided for the moral discipline of the prisoners might well be 
 such as to give some advantage to the State, though it should 
 not interfere with the common labour market. There are many 
 works of the nature of sanitary improvements, reclamation of 
 land, improvement of roads and bye-paths, that would benefit 
 the State, and be really advantageous to the body politic in the 
 long run, although they would not ' pay ' for the employment 
 of ordinary labour. 
 
 ' Provisions of this kind would need some consideration ; but 
 
ij6 Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 if they were undertaken with anything like the proper diligence, 
 they need not consume a very great deal of time. Because 
 they stand forward as preliminaries to an effectual improvement 
 of the law, they need not prevent the passing of a bill. The 
 exceedingly defective security of the public ought to act as a 
 stimulant to diligence. So long as laziness or indecision suffers 
 it to continue, our leading legislators will be responsible for the 
 calamities that may happen. 
 
 1 Mr. Hill's suggestion has attracted very general attention, 
 and has drawn earnest criticisms from the daily press for the 
 most part in a favourable spirit. The Times has characteristi- 
 cally made itself the organ of John Bull's creditable, but over- 
 strained and justice-clogging dread of oppressing the prisoner 
 while pursuing the criminal; but its ingenious and rhetorical 
 argumentation has gone on a misapprehension and misrepresenta- 
 tion of the exact proposals made, and has to a considerable 
 extent been refuted by one of its own correspondents The 
 objectors and the defenders between them may assist Mr. Hill to 
 reproduce his scheme with exact explanations and developments 
 qualifying it for practical embodiment in our laws/ 
 
 From the c Spectator' November 2, 1 850. 
 
 PREVENTIVE JUSTICE. 
 
 ( ' The question for consideration is, whether the period has 
 not arrived when the knowledge possessed by the officers of 
 justice may be made available to the breaking up of those gangs 
 which hold us in a state of miserable fear, and which, by the 
 example of their impunity, obtain recruits, and spread abroad a 
 moral pestilence/ ' The Recorder of Birmingham's Charge to 
 the Grand Jury, ittth October, 1850. 
 
 ' As might have been expected, the principle involved in Mr. 
 Hill's proposal has received much less attention than the plan on 
 which he suggests it should be carried into effect. The objectors, 
 indeed, almost entirely confine themselves to criticisms on the 
 machinery, forgetting that even if the particular form of pro- 
 ceeding pointed out were open to objection, the question would 
 remain, whether some other process, more happily embodying 
 the principle itself, might not be devised ? On the other hand, 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1 850. 1 7 7 
 
 if the principle afforded no sound basis for legislation in any 
 form, it were a waste 'of time to examine particular plans. 
 
 f Two cardinal facts are admitted by all who have entered 
 into the controversy. First, that there is a criminal population 
 in existence among us by which we mean a class drawing its 
 livelihood from the produce of crime. That such a class does 
 not include all offenders is obvious. The Rushes and the Dr. 
 Websters did not belong to this class; and they can perhaps 
 only be dealt with by the law as it now stands. The second 
 cardinal fact is, that the members of this class are individually 
 known to the police, and probably to many others. These facts 
 being established by universal consent, the inquiry forces itself 
 upon every reflective mind, Cannot the facts be turned to 
 account ? is the science and practice of jurisprudence in such a 
 state of barbarism as not to be able to touch them with safety to 
 the community ? The answer may be ay or no, according to 
 the present state of our legal institutions, and of the honesty 
 and intelligence of those who work them. Little more than a 
 century ago the power of steam was only known as an enemy. 
 Explosions occurred now and then, and mischief was done ; 
 but no service was rendered, because appliances had not been 
 discovered for controlling and directing its operation. Now it 
 would take a volume to describe all the uses to which steam is 
 applied, and another to indicate the further tasks that are in 
 store for it. 
 
 1 The policeman knows that A. B. is a thief. That is admitted. 
 He knows it by a number of observations, each in itself trifling, 
 , but altogether producing, and justly producing, clear conviction 
 upon his mind. Thus we have witnesses; cannot we have a 
 trustworthy judge and jury ? The case would present no par- 
 ticular difficulty to an honest judge ; and nobody pretends that 
 dishonesty that is, the desire and intention to commit in- 
 justice is to be feared. Then with regard to the jury : it 
 must be recollected that the topics which have been urged as to 
 the danger of mistake will be open to be urged to each jury in 
 each case. The testimony of policemen, no doubt, ought to be 
 acted upon with caution. So say, and very justly say, the ob- 
 jectors. But what is to prevent the necessity for that caution 
 being urged by the counsel for the prisoner, and corroborated 
 in his charge by the judge ? If experience proved that the 
 
178 Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 
 
 strictures on the evidence of the police were so well founded 
 that it would be dangerous to act on such evidence when 
 standing alone, judges and juries would quickly find out 
 the secret; and no verdict would pass against the prisoner 
 unless the evidence of the police received independent support. 
 Nay, if it were thought wise to prescribe evidence by law, such 
 corroboration might be made imperative by statutory provision ; 
 just as in cases of filiation under our present law of bastardy, 
 the testimony of a mother, although full credit may be given 
 to her evidence by the court, is insufficient of itself to justify 
 an order against the putative father additional proof must be 
 found, or the claim abandoned. Nor would this restriction 
 present any insuperable difficulty to the prosecutor. Parish 
 officers, neighbours, and many persons unconnected with the 
 police, will be able to give evidence on the subject, the neces- 
 sity for which would operate as a check on that of the police. 
 
 ' So, on behalf of the prisoner, it would be as competent to 
 him to produce witnesses to his character as it is at present 
 when on trial for a specified offence. If there were a conflict of 
 evidence, the jury would in that case, as in a thousand other 
 cases, have to decide to which class of witnesses credit should 
 be given ; and they would never fail to be reminded, that if 
 they entertained a reasonable doubt, it would be their duty to 
 give their verdict in favour of the accused. We have, then, 
 advanced thus far, that the ascertainment of the grounds on 
 which a particular individual is reputed a thief may reasonably 
 be left to the decision of our tribunals. Everything else re- 
 solves itself into a question of what checks against error it 
 would be desirable to introduce into the proceeding. This topic 
 involves details into which we do not feel it necessary to enter. 
 The point to which we have desired to direct the attention 
 of the reader is this A. B. and C. being known to be ( reputed 
 thieves/ can such knowledge be safely acted upon by our courts ? 
 and if so, will it not be an advantage to the community that it 
 should be used in putting them under restraint, and thus de- 
 priving them of the power of using their freedom, as we know 
 they use it, to the constant and systematic injury of society ? 
 
 ' But we must caution the readers of Mr. HilFs Charge against 
 a misconception which has been the cause of much eloquence 
 run to waste. It has been supposed that when a convicted 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1850. 179 
 
 offender is charged with being a reputed thief, his career before 
 his conviction is to be put in evidence. This is not so. The 
 question is not what he has been at a former period, but what 
 he is at the time of his apprehension. Is or is not his present life 
 a course of theft? If, by turning him out of prison without 
 means and without character, the law forces him to recur to his 
 former calling, the blot lies there. Let every prisoner be per- 
 mitted to remain in confinement for the purpose of earning a 
 small sum sufficient to live upon with frugality, until he has had 
 time to seek employment. This provision would incidentally 
 enable him to establish a character his greatest want inas- 
 much as his patient submission to the privations of a gaol, from 
 which he could emerge at any moment, would evince both a 
 desire to abandon his evil courses, and sufficient power of self- 
 control to act upon his aspirations after better things, in the 
 face of strong temptation. In very bad times, his capital and 
 character united might, in exceptional instances, be found una- 
 vailing to secure the means of livelihood by the produce of his 
 labour. If so, his duty and that of society point directly to the 
 poor-house. As every man who continues to live must be a 
 consumer, what can be the hardship of calling upon him, when 
 placed in circumstances of just suspicion, to show the sources 
 from which his consumption is drawn. 
 
 1 The object to be obtained is too important to justify its being 
 abandoned on light grounds. The criminal population is partly 
 hereditary and partly recruited by immigrants. The vices and 
 sufferings incident to the course of life pursued by thieves have 
 a strong tendency to diminish their number ; and if there were 
 no additions from without, the class would dwindle away, and 
 in time perhaps become extinct. But the example of impunity, 
 though but for a few years, puts enormous power of corruption 
 into the hands of the veteran offender, and enables him to 
 replenish his band whenever death or the policeman creates a 
 vacancy. If this band were harassed and broken up from day 
 to day, by the operation of the law directed against reputed 
 thieves, theft must cease to be a calling all continuity of action 
 would be at an end. The professional life of a thief would be 
 too short to give him the opportunity of becoming an adept 
 in his art, and his visitations of our houses and pockets would 
 be rare/ 
 
i8o 
 
 CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1851, 
 
 GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND JURY, 
 
 A T the Michaelmas Sessions of last year I addressed your pre- 
 J-JL decessors on the repression of crime; confining, however, my 
 remarks to one branch of that great subject, namely, the pro- 
 priety of holding in restraint known malefactors, who could be 
 shown on sufficient evidence to pursue crime as a calling ; 
 although, by their dexterity and good fortune, they had been 
 able to elude the proof of any specific offence. 
 
 This Charge engaged public attention to an extent for which 
 I was not prepared. By those best acquainted with the class 
 to be held in check, and with its manifold inflictions on society, 
 I believe I may venture to state that it met with acceptance ; 
 but when it was handled by men of acute minds, unguarded 
 from error by practical experience, I ought not to wonder that 
 a new question, or at all events a question new to these critics, 
 should call forth dissent as well as agreement, dissent ex- 
 hibiting itself in a multitude of ingenious objections. If I had 
 foreseen that any observations falling from me could have been 
 deemed worthy of so much notice, I might have thought it 
 prudent to offer my views to the public under circumstances 
 which would have enabled me, by treating the subject in greater 
 fulness than can well be done in a Charge, to answer by antici- 
 pation the objections which have been urged against me. 
 
 My reply I intend to give on the present occasion, and, as I 
 hope, without drawing too much on your patience. No doubt I 
 might have taken an earlier opportunity of performing this task ; 
 but I thought it due to the diversity of opinion to which I have 
 adverted to take ample time for a reconsideration of what I had 
 submitted to your predecessors, in order that, by a careful and 
 (so far as any efforts of mine could assure it) a candid review 
 of all that has been urged on the one side and on the other, I 
 might either maintain my position, or retract my errors, and 
 give at the same time publicity to the reasons which had led 
 to my change of opinion. And, Gentlemen, if I know myself, 
 
Charge of October, 1851. 1 8 1 
 
 I should not have felt humiliated by such a retractation. On 
 the contrary, it would have been satisfactory to me to reflect 
 that the discussion which I had originated had proved the fallacy 
 of a remedy which, having been plausible enough to mislead 
 one searcher after truth, might decoy others of more power and 
 influence, and thus lead to its being carried into action. 
 
 This review I have at length made, and have weighed the 
 arguments on both sides. I have also taken into account some 
 general facts, which have either come into existence in the in- 
 terval, or have been made more prominent than before ; and I 
 am bound to avow myself confirmed in my original views. 
 
 Gentlemen, I submitted to your predecessors a speculative 
 opinion and a practical proposal. My speculative opinion was, 
 that all persons living without visible means of support, and 
 who in the belief of witnesses acquainted with their way of 
 life, are maintained by crime, ought to be called upon to prove 
 themselves in the enjoyment of some honest means of subsist- 
 ence ; and I further submitted that, in the absence of such 
 proof, they should be bound to give sureties for good conduct ; 
 and again, that failing to give satisfactory security, they should 
 be committed to prison for a limited period. This was my 
 theory. And it was founded on the well-known fact (which I 
 pause for a moment to state has never yet been controverted), 
 that each individual of the class of professional marauders is 
 well known, both personally and by character, to the police and 
 to his neighbours, and could be pointed out with perfect ease. 
 From this fact I drew the consequence that society (having 
 such means of knowledge within its reach) was not only justified, 
 but bound to use it for the general protection; 
 
 In my practical proposal, however, I stopped short ; and 
 limited the application of my theory to the cases of offenders 
 who had already been convicted. I adopted this limitation for 
 several reasons ; one, that it is always well to proceed step by 
 step in an untried course, or in a course comparatively untried ; 
 another, because convicted criminals form a large and by far 
 the most dangerous portion of the predatory class ; and third, 
 because by conviction they have necessarily forfeited the confi- 
 dence of society. That they have been guilty men is an estab- 
 lished fact, while in the majority of instances there is neither 
 evidence nor probability of their having abandoned their evil 
 
1 82 Charge of October, 185.1. 
 
 courses. Indeed how should there be ? The administration 
 of the law proceeds on the principle of retribution. The cri- 
 minal is convicted of a given offence, and has measured out to 
 him a given length of punishment. It is true that during his 
 term of confinement we take some steps to reform him which 
 are more or less adapted to that end. But his detention is 
 neither in the first; instance regulated by an estimate of the time 
 required for that purpose, nor is there any power to continue it 
 until his reformation is effected. The prisoner is afflicted with 
 a moral disease, but the prison cannot be considered in the 
 light of an hospital for its treatment, without exposing the 
 administration of criminal justice to ridicule. For what should 
 we think of an hospital for the cure of a malignant and infectious 
 disease (and surely no disease can be more malignant and in- 
 fectious than crime), if the rule of its governors were to keep 
 the patient, not until cured, but a week, a month, or a year, 
 according to a principle of regulation quite irrespective of his 
 condition at the time of his dismissal, making it altogether a 
 matter of accident whether he is relieved of his distemper, or 
 whether he is sent forth to spread infection through the land ? 
 
 As long, then, as punishment is measured out 011 the retri- 
 butive principle, so long an individual once convicted must 
 remain an object of just and unavoidable suspicion ; and the 
 class to wliich he belongs may reasonably be selected for any 
 experiment which the welfare of the community requires to be 
 instituted. 
 
 To those who have made it a topic of observation and inquiry, 
 it is well known that criminals not infrequently pursue a sys- 
 tem of depredation with impunity for long periods. With 
 regard to one man very lately sentenced to transportation, it 
 has occurred to me to know that his career of crime extended 
 over more than thirty years without a single conviction ; and 
 I have strong reasons for believing that his is by no means a 
 solitary case. Almost every newspaper contains some paragraph 
 narrating a criminal exploit in which there is a combination of 
 skill and boldness marking out the perpetrator as experienced 
 in the violation of the law. We often read of attacks in streets 
 and other frequented thoroughfares by ruffians who seem to 
 have taken as their model the Indian Thug; and their feats 
 prove them as dexterous as their master, while in audacity they 
 
Charge of October, 1851. 183 
 
 leave him far behind. Such outrages as these, Gentlemen, 
 are not the acts of tyros in villany. They imply the skill, the 
 contempt of danger, and the indifference to the sufferings of 
 their victims which training, and training alone, can give. 
 And here we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that our present 
 system of punishments offers great facilities, not to say induce- 
 ments, to a training to crime. 
 
 In order to place this unhappy tendency in a clear light, let 
 me suppose for a moment that our object were to defeat the 
 intention of our own laws, and to strengthen the propensity to 
 crime, in every individual in whom such propensity had ever 
 been disclosed, by the commission of an offence. Let us com- 
 pare our present mode of proceeding as to criminals with that 
 which we pursue when our wish is not to deter but to stimulate 
 and encourage; and I think you will observe a wonderful 
 similarity. What is our treatment of our children in their 
 education ? Do we not give them short and easy lessons at 
 first, lest they should be disgusted with learning at the outset, 
 and so close their minds against the lessons of their teachers ? 
 And do we not augment their tasks with the growth of their 
 strength, and in proportion as practice adds to their ability for 
 mental application ? Do we not, in short, graduate the rate of 
 their progress according to their powers of action and endurance ? 
 Well, then, let us now consider our treatment of criminals. 
 
 When the juvenile offender first presents himself at the bar 
 Ave give him a slight imprisonment, just enough to accustom 
 him to short separations from his companions, and to dispel the 
 wholesome illusion which had made the gaol a place of fear, 
 because it was a place of mystery. On the next occasion he 
 remains longer, but he has become practised in prison life, and 
 bears confinement far better than he would have done but for 
 his former lesson. This process is repeated from time to time, 
 while the moral which the wretched creature draws from his 
 alternations of confinement and freedom is not to refrain from 
 offending, but to commit offences in such a manner as shall least 
 expose him to the risk of detection ; and moreover he resolves 
 that when at length detected, he will bear his privations with as 
 much contempt and defiance as he can command : consoled by 
 the prospect of restored freedom, and the hope of better fortune 
 in future. 
 
184 Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 Is not tliis, Gentlemen, a fair parallel ? And does it not 
 show that our treatment of malefactors is better calculated to 
 confirm them in evil doing, than to withdraw them from crime ? 
 
 It will be observed that I speak of the general working of 
 our system. That there are many exceptions to the rule I am 
 glad to believe. No man can appreciate more highly than I 
 do the labours of many governors and many chaplains, aided 
 as they often are by volunteers of both sexes, who look on the 
 criminal, not as an outcast, to be flung aside in contempt and 
 hatred, but as an erring brother to be reclaimed from guilt, if 
 by the most strenuous and persevering efforts of well-directed 
 kindness that great end can be reached. 
 
 If, then, Gentlemen, the foregoing remarks are well-founded, 
 the number of convicted malefactors roaming at large must 
 excite much less of surprise than alarm ; but I greatly fear that 
 we are yet to expect considerable additions to this body. It is 
 well known to you, as to all persons of education, that during 
 the last forty years (dating from the time of that great and 
 good man, Sir Samuel Romilly) there has been a steady progress 
 made by the Legislature in mitigating the severity of our 
 criminal code ; which, when he began his labours, was the most 
 sanguinary to be found in the civilized world. Neither can it 
 have escaped your observation, that the sentiment which has 
 actuated the Legislature has also prevailed in the administration 
 of criminal justice. Indeed, society, through all its gradations, 
 is imbued with a far milder spirit than in bygone times. 
 
 The combined operation of these causes has been not only to 
 shorten terms of imprisonment, but to make the severer penalty 
 of transportation of less frequent occurrence in proportion to 
 the number of convicts than heretofore ; a circumstance which 
 would have attracted more attention if the difficulty of ascer- 
 taining the numbers actually sent out of the country at different 
 periods were less than it is and always has been. 
 
 And now an additional obstacle in the way of transportation 
 has arisen, which threatens very seriously to lessen, if not ' alto- 
 gether to extinguish this kind of punishment. 
 
 Penal colonies planted by the mother country at a vast ex- 
 pense for the disposal of her convict population, and which 
 formerly were the willing recipients of these degraded persons 
 (gladly availing themselves of the ample supply of labour thus 
 
Charge of October, 1851. 185 
 
 afforded for bringing their tracts of new land into cultivation), 
 have at length discovered that the moral evils incident on the 
 importation of malefactors far outweigh the material benefits 
 to which they (the colonists) had hitherto limited their cal- 
 culations. 
 
 It would be unbecoming in me while sitting here to enter 
 into the controversies and heartburnings which have arisen out 
 of this change in colonial policy. All that I desire at the 
 present moment is to call your attention to the portentous con- 
 sequence which may, and as I think must result from the 
 impediments thus thrown in the way of transportation, when 
 taken in connexion with the causes to which I have adverted, as 
 lessening the number on whom that punishment would be 
 inflicted, even if the facilities for carrying it into effect were as 
 great as they continued to be up to a recent period. 
 
 This consequence is the permanent augmentation around us 
 in the numbers of liberated convicts. What that augmentation 
 will amount to it is of course impossible to predict, but that it 
 must be very large is pretty certain, from the experience of 
 countries having no colonial outlets ; and because, although 
 sentences for transportation were at all times more frequently- 
 for terms of years than for life, so few returned that the country 
 might almost be said to be freed for ever from the presence of 
 a convict when once he had left our shores. 
 
 Do not, Gentlemen, mistake me by imagining that I am pro- 
 nouncing a eulogy on transportation. Believe me, I bear too 
 clearly in my mind the powerful and conclusive arguments by 
 which it has been assailed. All I desire to impress upon you 
 is, that the stoppage of that great sewer which for so many 
 years carried away the dregs of our population, will produce a 
 most unwholesome effect, other things remaining as they are. 
 And that while the country adheres to the principle of retribu- 
 tive punishment (as it probably will do long after the voice to 
 which you so kindly listen is hushed in the grave), so long that 
 pernicious effect will imperatively call for some special remedy 
 which remark brings me back to the consideration of the one 
 laid before your predecessors, and of which I have already 
 given you a sketch. This I will now more fully describe. 
 
 I propose that every person who has been convicted of a felony 
 or of a misdemeanour implying fraud (as obtaining goods under 
 
i86 Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 false pretences, knowingly passing base coin, and the like), sliall 
 be liable to be dealt with as follows : If after the expiration of 
 his imprisonment under his conviction, he shall be brought 
 before a magistrate charged with still persevering in crime, it 
 shall be the duty of the magistrate, if the witnesses by evidence 
 of general conduct satisfy his mind that the charge is esta- 
 blished, to call on the prisoner to show that he enjoys the 
 means of honest subsistence either from his property, his labour, 
 the kindness of his friends, the bounty of the charitable, or from 
 his parish. Should he succeed in adducing this proof, he is to 
 be discharged. Should no such proof be forthcoming, he is 
 next called upon to give bail for his good behaviour. Supposing 
 him to answer this demand, he is to be still entitled to his dis- 
 charge. But in the event of his failure, he is then to be held to 
 bail on his own recognizances, and his case to be sent to a jury 
 at the Assizes or Sessions, when, if a verdict pass against him, 
 he is to be imprisoned for a term to be fixed by the law, but 
 capable of diminution by the judge before whom he is tried. 
 
 This, Gentlemen, is my proposal in detail, and perhaps it will 
 appear to you, as it did to your predecessors (who honoured it 
 with their approval when I submitted it to them in outline), 
 that it sufficiently guards the accused against the danger of being 
 deprived of his liberty on fallacious grounds. In the first place, 
 no proceedings under the proposed law would put the convict 
 into custody even for a day, except by the verdict of a jury, 
 unless, indeed, he should forfeit his recognizances by not 
 appearing to take his trial, when he would subject himself to 
 the well-known consequences of such a contempt. 
 
 Suppose him then on his trial, and observe how he is fenced 
 round with protections, ' covered/ as Erskine expresses it, ' from 
 head to foot with the panoply of law/ In the first place, his 
 accusers must satisfy the jury that he was at the time of his 
 apprehension in the course of life which they charge upon him, 
 not merely that he was so before his conviction. This evidence 
 he will rebut, if he can, either by impeaching the character of 
 the witnesses, showing that their statements are false or incon- 
 clusive, or by explaining away the facts established against him. 
 And in this part of his case, as in all other parts, he may 
 adduce witnesses of his own. But suppose him to fail in 
 meeting the charge. He then falls back on his second defence, 
 
Charge of October, 1851. 187 
 
 and shows the manner in which he subsists. Now, if he have 
 in truth an honest income, it is not very easy even to imagine 
 a set of circumstances which will disable him from proving a 
 fact so emphatically within his own knowledge. But we will 
 go on to suppose him defeated in this second defence. Even 
 then, unless he is altogether bereft of honest friends, having con- 
 fidence that he will not commit crime, he finds bail and remains 
 at liberty. Now, Gentlemen, the species of objection to which 
 I thought my proposal most obnoxious, is, that it offers too 
 many chances of escape to be practically efficient for the restraint 
 of criminals. On this head, however, none who are conversant 
 with the life and habits of the class in question have the least 
 misgiving, nor has that objection been much pressed in any 
 quarter. On the contrary, the numerous attacks which the plan 
 has undergone have been always directed against the danger of 
 committing injustice towards the convict. That such a mis- 
 carriage is within the limits of possibility I must admit, but 
 that such trials as I propose are more open to this reproach 
 than trials of specific offences, or so open, I do take upon my- 
 self, speaking from a very long experience in criminal courts, 
 confidently to deny. 
 
 No tribunal is infallible. No discovery has yet been made 
 which supplies a sure touchstone to human testimony. And if 
 the lamentable fact that innocent men are sometimes convicted 
 were sufficient for the condemnation of criminal jurisprudence, 
 no mode of trial that the wit of man has ever invented could 
 stand. Yet from the strain in which some writers have indulged 
 it might be supposed, if experience had not recorded a very dif- 
 ferent result, that trials for specific offences never failed of 
 bringing out the truth ; always acquitting the innocent, and 
 ascertaining with exactitude the criminality of the guilty. One 
 short statement will dispose of this fond belief, if any person is 
 so misled as to entertain it. The brother of the Lord Chan- 
 cellor, Mr. Edward Wilde, was the benevolent instrument, during 
 his year of office as Sheriff of London, of saving six persons 
 from death : showing on one occasion that the prisoner was 
 clearly innocent; on others that conclusions had been hastily 
 drawn from facts which did not justify them, and thus nullifying 
 the proofs of guilt ; and with regard to the remainder adducing 
 evidence which went so far to mitigate their conduct as to 
 
i88 Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 prove that to put them to death would be a most unjustifiable 
 measure of severity. Whoever to whom these events are 
 known, as they were to me from time to time as they occurred 
 whoever reflects that they happened in one court, and in one 
 year (nay, in less than one year, for Mr. Wilde held office only 
 for ten months), must see that confining the charge to one 
 specific transaction by no means ensures success in the attain- 
 ment of the truth. 
 
 An especial source of miscarriage is indeed peculiar to such 
 trials, and that happens to be the most frequent by which the 
 administration of justice is beset. I allude to mistakes as to the 
 identity of the prisoner with the party really guilty. But mis- 
 conceptions of this kind belong only to moments of time (or, at 
 all events, to very short periods), and cannot occur when the 
 question relates to the general tenor of a man's life. Moreover, 
 when a specific offence is charged, it is no conclusive answer 
 (nor can it be) that the prisoner had means of livelihood, and 
 therefore is not to be supposed guilty ; such testimony, 
 amounting only to a bare presumption of innocence, which is of 
 necessity overborne by proof of the facts alleged against him. 
 But this presumption of innocence in the proceedings suggested 
 by me, being only opposed by a presumption of guilt, is always 
 to prevail. 
 
 And now let me, Gentlemen, ask a plain question. Is a man 
 who has already been convicted, whose conduct is such that a 
 jury is satisfied that he persists in his evil courses, who being 
 then called on to explain how he obtains his livelihood has no 
 answer to give, who is so distrusted by all the world that he 
 cannot find bail for his good conduct ; is that man that pest of 
 society to remain at large ? Ought we, on the mere surmise 
 that errors may creep into the trial of such persons, in spite of 
 all our care, to hold back from the exercise of a jurisdiction of 
 admitted potency for the attainment of its object, when that 
 object is clearly of such vital importance ? 
 
 Gentlemen, the crying necessity for this jurisdiction so presses 
 itself on my mind, that I cannot refrain from adverting to it 
 once more. But few days have elapsed since the part of .Eng- 
 land in which I reside (the county of Somerset) was the scene 
 of an appalling outrage, filling the district with indignation and 
 horror. A girl, fifteen years old, was left by her parents alone 
 
Charge of October, 1851. 189 
 
 at their dwelling, while they went to the neighbouring market 
 at Frome. On their return home they found her dead body 
 stretched on the floor, and dabbled in blood ! In the open 
 day in a house not distant from others of the hamlet, and near 
 to a main road had this unhappy girl lost her life in the 
 defence and, alas ! in the unsuccessful defence, of her purity. 
 The pangs of death were sharpened by the cruel ignominy of 
 violation. How much less hideous had been her fate how 
 much less bitter the grief of her bereaved parents, had she been 
 devoured by a beast of prey. Her image would then have 
 dwelt in their memory unsullied by those revolting associations 
 of pollution with which it will now for ever be mingled. 
 
 Is the convict then, I ask, to exhaust all our sympathies ? 
 Are we to have no thought for the myriads of honest and faithful 
 subjects exposed to the same frightful perils, deeply feeling the 
 want of protection, the comfort of whose lives is sometimes de- 
 stroyed by the perpetual fear which harasses their minds ? But, 
 Gentlemen, we almost always find that an overwrought strict- 
 ness in one direction is balanced by some glaring laxity in 
 another. Writers who evince the greatest trepidation at the 
 proposal to which your attention has been drawn, themselves 
 urge the adoption of an alternative infinitely more perilous to 
 innocence than the most distorted imagination can figure to 
 itself out of mine. Deliberate advice has been given that each 
 man should defend his house with fire-arms. Let us pause for 
 a moment to examine what this advice implies. It implies that 
 a person suddenly aroused from sleep, in the dead of night, and 
 in all the disturbance of mind which an impending conflict must 
 produce, is, while pointing his blunderbuss and drawing the 
 trigger, to accuse, try, and condemn a suspected burglar, dis- 
 cerned for an instant in the dark, and to execute upon him the 
 irrevocable doom of capital punishment ! Surely, for such very 
 fastidious legislators, this is a recommendation somewhat startling. 
 
 But what has resulted from the promulgation of this advice ? 
 Gentlemen, within a very short interval of time two innocent 
 persons, one of them an officer of police a protector instead of 
 an assailant have met their death falling, mark you, by the 
 hands of clergymen, who (as we should all agree), if the power 
 could be safely exercised by any class of the community, are 
 best entitled to the trust, by the self-restraint and the merciful 
 
190 Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 spirit which pertain to their sacred calling, and by the reluct- 
 ance which, above all others, they must feel at sending a 
 fellow-creature to his account with all his sins upon his head ! 
 Nevertheless, Gentlemen, if the law will permit known ruffians 
 to remain at large, these barbarous remedies perhaps cannot, and 
 most certainly will not, be dispensed with ; yet, who does not 
 see that any method of trial, however rude and defective, even 
 Lynch Law itself, is infinitely to be preferred ? 
 
 I have now, Gentlemen, I trust, shown that my plan is not 
 open to the objections which have been raised against it ; but I 
 cannot conclude without (paradoxical as it may appear) avowing 
 that I am far more gratified than disconcerted at these objec- 
 tions. They prove how deeply Englishmen are imbued with 
 instinctive reverence for the liberty of the subject. This, like 
 every other sentiment, may be carried to an unwarranted 
 length. On the question before you I think it has been so 
 treated ; but I, for one, will ever bear in mind that personal 
 freedom is the surest foundation of our other liberties, and that 
 hostility to any interference with it challenges my respect even 
 when it exceeds the limits of a reasonable jealousy. 
 
 If, then, on calm consideration, my proposal shall be found, 
 by the verdict of reflective men, unwisely to infringe on that 
 noble privilege, none will rejoice more sincerely than myself, 
 that I have not been taken at my word. Grateful shall I be 
 to those who will have saved me from the life-long sorrow of 
 having inflicted injury where I had humbly hoped to suggest 
 an important benefit. Thanks, Gentlemen, for your patience ; 
 your task is finished. 
 
 The Grand Jury were dismissed on Saturday afternoon, and 
 on coming into Court with their last bills, presented the follow- 
 ing address to the Recorder : ' The Grand Jury feel that they 
 cannot retire from their duties without expressing their cordial 
 thanks for the very elaborate and important address with which 
 you honoured them at the opening of these Sessions. The 
 Grand Jury feel it to be their peculiar privilege, on the present 
 occasion, to assure you that they are deeply interested in any 
 judicious system that has for its object the prevention of, rather 
 than the punishment for, crime ; and they cannot but view with 
 intense satisfaction the earnest solicitude you have displayed in 
 
Sequel to Charge of October 3 1 85 r . 191 
 
 your address in promulgating a plan by which crime would 
 appear to be so manifestly repressed. The Grand Jury feel it 
 to be their duty again to thank you for your earnest and able 
 advocacy of a Reformatory System in Prison Discipline, believing 
 that philanthropic measures, rather than corporal and retributive 
 punishments, are far more likely to reclaim from vice, and 
 therefore most beneficial to society at large/ 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 From the ' 'Examiner / Oct. 19, 1850. 
 'ATTEMPTED BURGLARY IN THE REGENT'S PARK ONE OF THE 
 
 ROBBERS SHOT. 
 
 ' On Monday the Marylebone police-court was crowded to 
 excess, owing to a generally circulated report that a desperate 
 burglar had been shot, and killed, and that one of the party 
 with whom he was connected was to be brought up for exami- 
 nation before Mr. Broughton. At two o'clock the prisoner, 
 who gave his name William Dyson, was placed at the bar; he 
 was pale and very weak, and during the inquiry occasionally sat 
 down, holding one hand to his head. 
 
 ( The first witness called was James Paul, who said I am 
 butler to Mr. Holford, who is now in America. Between ten 
 and eleven last night I saw everything safe, and at twenty 
 minutes to two this morning I was awoke from my sleep by a 
 noise proceeding from the banqueting-room. I sprang out of bed 
 and looked out of window, and saw the shadow of a man on the 
 lawn. I saw the shadow move. I felt satisfied that there was 
 something wrong, and I woke two of my fellow- servants, both 
 of whom I armed. I descended to the banqueting-room floor, 
 and saw a glaring light, and I went to the stable and aroused 
 the coachmen, to one of whom I gave a loaded gun, and the 
 other took up a pitchfork. I sent them to the south side of 
 the house, taking with me in another direction a double-bar- 
 relled pistol loaded, with a bayonet attached. The groom and 
 footman had also been called out, and one of them was armed 
 with a drawn sword. They and I took up our station at the 
 
192 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 north front of the mansion. Presently I heard the report of 
 a gun, and on hastening to the spot I saw a man running from 
 the window of the banqueting-room. I followed him and 
 snapped one of the locks of my pistol, but it missed fire. I 
 directly afterwards fired the second barrel at him, at which 
 period he had hid himself behind a bush, having previously 
 ejaculated ' For God's sake don't shoot me ! ' I left the spot 
 to assist my fellow-servants, who were crying out lustily, and 
 I heard that other men who had been in the banqueting-room 
 had made their escape, and I found that the prisoner was 
 secured by one of the coachmen, who was holding him securely 
 down. I cried ' Police/ when in addition to the other servants 
 the gardener came, but we could not find either of the other 
 parties by whom the mansion had been entered. In answer 
 to Mr. Broughton as to what had become of the man who was 
 shot at in the bush, witness expressed an opinion that he 
 thought he must be dead from the charge of shot which he had 
 received.* 
 
 George Bennet (the head coachman) : On being called up, I 
 armed myself with a pitchfork, and went to the park side of the 
 house with one of my fellow- servants. I saw three men 
 coming out of the banqueting-room facing the park. I heard 
 the firing of a gun, and seeing a man running I followed, and, 
 on overtaking him, I knocked him down with a blow with my 
 pitchfork ; the prisoner is the man. One of my fellow-servants 
 came up when he was lying upon the ground from the effects of 
 the blow which I had given him, and I told him to mind him 
 while I went to look for some others. I heard the report of a 
 pistol again, and there were then loud cries of ' police/ 
 
 J. Hall (the under-coachman) : Mr. Paul, the butler, gave 
 me a loaded gun, telling me that there were thieves in the 
 house. I saw three men come out of the dining-room window, 
 and I fired. I heard one cry out ' Oh God !' I saw the coach- 
 man knock down the prisoner, who said he was killed, and 
 prayed, for mercy. He was bleeding from the head, and for 
 several minutes I held him. 
 
 Policeman Collins hearing the report of fire-arms and the 
 
 * It afterwards appeared that the two wounded men who escaped were not 
 filled. They were shortly after arrested and committed for trial. M. D. H. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 193 
 
 cry of ' Police/ went to the premises of Mr. Holford, and saw tie 
 prisoner lying down, two persons having hold of him ; he was 
 bleeding profusely. After examining the premises, but finding 
 no one, he sprang his rattle, and, on other officers coming up, the 
 prisoner was taken to the station-house. He seemed much 
 injured, and was very faint. I asked him where he belonged 
 to, and he said to Paddington. He told me that there were 
 four of them concerned in it, and that they had made an 
 arrangement at a public-house at Battle-bridge to meet at the 
 house of Mr. Holford at a certain time, and that each was to 
 take a separate road. All that was found on the prisoner was 
 three-halfpence and a key. Search was made among the bushes 
 and in the canal for the man shot at by the butler, and blood 
 was traced over some fences, over which he must either have 
 climbed, or been carried by some of his companions. The traces 
 of blood were about 150 yards from the outer gate of the park. 
 Some pieces of candle and a crowbar, which had been picked 
 up close to where the prisoner was found, were produced, as 
 was also part of an ormolu ornament of considerable value ; it 
 had been broken off a figure under a plateau in the banquet- 
 ing apartment. Another policeman produced a hat in which 
 were several holes through which shot had evidently passed ; 
 there were not fewer than seven or eight perforations. He 
 found this hat in a ditch in the park, very near to the bush at 
 which the butler fired. There was blood inside the hat. 
 
 ' Policeman Young said : I saw the prisoner lying down on 
 the ground, and he said, ' It is of no use searching the place 
 any further; there were only four of us two inside and two 
 out/ Witness produced a sling, which he picked up at a short 
 distance from where the prisoner was taken ; it was formed by 
 a large stone being placed at the bottom of a handkerchief, the 
 ends of which being laid hold of by any person would enable 
 them to strike a terrific blow, which, inflicted upon the head, 
 would probably cause injury of a fatal nature. 
 
 ' Policeman Lockeby, who had examined the mansion, found 
 that one of the windows leading to the banqueting-room had 
 been forced open ; on the side of the window he found marks 
 made by a crowbar, such a one as he now brought forward. 
 He observed blood on the window. At the spot where the 
 butler shot at the man he saw marks of blood, and there was 
 
 o 
 
194 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 a quantity of blood leading to the railings. Went across the 
 park, and in a shed in the Zoological Gardens found, in the 
 crane paddock, upon some straw, marks of blood, as if a man 
 had lain down. 
 
 * The prisoner, being asked if he had anything to say, replied : 
 'No, only this I made no resistance; I was knocked down 
 with a pitchfork, and a man who came by with a gun struck 
 me with it more than once. I was almost senseless, and I 
 recollect that a man stood over me with a sword, and swore 
 that he would run it through me/ 
 
 'Mr. Broughton, after remarking on the many suburban 
 burglaries recently committed, remanded the prisoner till 
 Monday next. 
 
 ' Various rumours have prevailed during the week with regard 
 to the man who was shot, and has escaped. It was supposed 
 he had been traced to St. Thomas's Hospital, and a man who 
 had recently applied for admission, under circumstances that 
 appeared suspicious, was examined on Thursday; but the cir- 
 cumstances which he had stated having been proved to be 
 correct, he was discharged, and sent back to the hospital. No 
 clue to the wounded man's locality has yet been obtained/ 
 
 From the 'Examiner' October 26, 1850. 
 
 ( When we see the infallible safeguards provided against every 
 danger, it seems wonderful that any calamity is ever suffered to 
 happen. ' Drowning Superseded ' has long been announced to 
 the public in advertising columns ; fire also is ( annihilated,' and 
 now burglary and murder are cheaply prevented. 
 
 ' Safety from the burglar is to be had by the Electric Indicator, 
 giving instantaneous notice of the first entrance of the thief or 
 the commencement of a fire. 
 
 ( Burglary and murder are prevented by Hill's Bedroom Door- 
 Fasteners, on the easy terms of prices from two to three 
 shillings ; morocco cases, sixpence extra. 
 
 c The next security for life and property is rather more expen- 
 sive. We copy the advertisement. 
 
 ' ' Robbery and murder may in many cases be prevented by 
 having a Chinese Gong, a few beats of which would arouse the 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 country for miles round. Persons living in secluded houses 
 should immediately purchase one. Price of good gongs from 
 506'. to 5/. Very large, powerful-toned ditto from 61. to 8/. 
 each. These are the largest and finest-toned gongs ever im- 
 ported. They are also particularly adapted for dinner-bells/ 
 
 ' According to the value which a gentleman puts upon his life, 
 will be the price he pays for his gong. For SI. he can arouse 
 the country for miles round, and the gong is as well adapted to 
 announce dinner as murder. But here a question arises. How 
 is the country for miles round to distinguish between the gong- 
 ing for dinner and murder ? The neighbours far and near come 
 rushing in with their succour, and they are told it is nothing 
 but the signal for dressing, or that the squire's table is served. 
 How is a late dinner to be distinguished from an early bur- 
 glary ? When folks hear the gong, they will have to ask them- 
 selves the question, Is it killing or eating that is going on, 
 throat-cutting or carving, a cry for help, or joyful summons to 
 the roast beef of Old England ? 
 
 ' A similar objection attaches to the Electric Indicator, giving 
 instantaneous notice of the first entrance of the thief. An ex- 
 director of a railway dines with you, and the moment the guest 
 enters the house, the electric indicator, with its infallible instinct 
 and activity, sounds the alarm ! This would be very awkward. 
 
 ' Hill's Door-Fastener for the prevention of murder and bur- 
 glary is not to be confounded with the expedient of the Recorder 
 of Birmingham for the same end. The one Hill for safety 
 fastens the bedroom doors of honest folks ; the other Mr. Hill 
 would fasten up all the rogues. The worthy Birmingham Re- 
 corder would hang every dog with a bad name. His proposal 
 is to incarcerate men for bad characters, provided they have 
 been once convicted of a felony or a dishonest misdemeanour, 
 and are unable to show that they have the means of living 
 without theft. A conviction for a particular offence would thus 
 involve conviction for indefinite offence, and a man once tried 
 and found guilty would in effect be ever afterwards liable to 
 condemnation upon suspicion. Such a law might have its 
 merits if witnesses were always thoroughly trustworthy, and 
 juries invariably wary and intelligent; but with our present 
 machinery of justice, it is better to trust to Hill's Door-Fastener, 
 the Electric Indicator, or the Gong. 
 
 o 2 
 
196 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 ' The most effective protection is had, however, from such an 
 example as that of Mr. Holford's butler. With the murder of 
 Mr. Holiest doubtless fresh in his mind, that vigilant and 
 courageous servant was not satisfied with mere defensive opera- 
 tions against burglars, but pursued, smote hip and thigh, and 
 "unsparingly used his arms against a man crying for quarter. 
 The act (supposed to have been followed by death) was not 
 merciful certainly, but it will serve to strike a terror into 
 robbers, and will show them that such a crime as that com- 
 mitted at Frimley puts honest men upon their defence in a 
 pitiless mood. An execution has not the hundredth part of the 
 .warning example of the butler's summary vengeance on the 
 burglar. We have seen an account, too, of the high courage 
 with which a young gentleman, Mr. Davis of Northampton, 
 resisted and captured a burglar who had roused him from his 
 sleep to threaten his life. Every instance of this kind con- 
 tributes incalculably to the discouragement of crime and the 
 protection of society. At a meeting of the Peace Association, 
 Mr. Fry saw in the sad fate of Mr. Holiest an example of the 
 folly of resistance ; but that brave resistance was not fruitless ; 
 and Mr. Hollest's life was not thrown away, but as much 
 devoted to the public good as that of a soldier killed in defence 
 of his country, for it defeated the main intention of the 
 robbers, and its consequences have brought them into the 
 hands of justice. No burglar, we may be sure, has heard 
 either of the Frimley tragedy, or the defence of Mr. HolforcVs 
 house, without a sinking of the heart, and a sickening of his 
 vocation. 
 
 'The rapidity with which one signal atrocity has followed 
 another within a few days, has struck the public with panic ; 
 but certain we are that the rapidity and certainty with which 
 justice has tracked the criminals, or summary vengeance has 
 overtaken them, have filled with much more panic the haunts 
 of guilt. The time for alarm has really passed. There had 
 been a period longer than usual without any heinous offence, 
 and in a false security on the one side, and perhaps as false a 
 presumption upon it on the other, several crimes occurred 
 in quick succession ; but all accompanied with the lesson con- 
 ducive to the future security of the public, that there is no 
 impunity, no escape from justice, nor always from the summary 
 vengeance of honesty acting vigorously in self-defence. 
 
Sequel to Chary e of October, 1851. 197 
 
 ' As we have adverted to various expedients for the protection 
 of the public in its present state of alarm, we cannot conclude 
 without expressing our surprise and disappointment that the 
 Peace Association has not come forward with a plan, or with 
 gome counsel for the avoidance of violence. Surely the same 
 principles that are applicable to nations must be available 
 between man and man. How should a person act who finds 
 a robber at his bedside in the middle of the night ? Mr. Fry 
 has told us that he should not be so unreasonable as to think 
 of resistance* But what should he do ? Should he propose an 
 arbitration? Should he meet the mouth of the pistol with 
 moral expostulation^ demonstrate that honesty is the best 
 policy, peace the dearest interest of all mankind, and that he 
 that trusteth to the sword shall perish by the sword ? If we 
 could hear of one burglar who flagrante delicto engaged in the 
 act had been preached or reasoned out of his felonious designs, 
 we should become converts to the Peace Association ; for we 
 shall be content with one swallow in evidence of the summer ; 
 and, from the well-authenticated case of a robber stopped and 
 diverted in mid career of rapine by the arms of argument, the 
 belief may be entertained that potentates may not be less 
 amenable. 
 
 ' The members of the Peace Association ought to volunteer 
 this trial of the virtue of their principle. It would be begin- 
 ning at the beginning. Let them commence with the triumph 
 over thieves, and mount up to the aggregates in the shape of 
 autocrats, kings, and republics. Let them put up announce- 
 ments that they keep no arms in their houses, and use no bolts 
 or bars to their doors. Instead of notice of steel traps and 
 spring guns, let them threaten didactics ; instead of ' Beware of 
 the dog/ ' Accept of the arbitrator ; ' and let them proclaim the 
 abjuration of all defences but expostulation. Let this system be 
 fairly pitted against the pistol of Mr. Holford's butler, and we 
 shall see which proceeds on the true view of human nature 
 us human nature is, not as it might, could, of should be. 
 
 ' It is remarkable that Swift, who liked best to look at the 
 worst side of human nature whether because he understood it 
 best or not we will not presume to say is on the side of the 
 Peace Association, and has indeed anticipated all its arguments 
 in one line, in which he deprecates resistance to one of the worst 
 
198 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 crimes that can be attempted ; arguing that the guilt comes of 
 the refusal to yield, and sums up : 
 
 ' Why are they so wilful to struggle with men ?' 
 
 which is precisely the question which the Peace Association puts 
 to the whole world in its attitude of defence against aggression/ 
 
 The lively scribe who seems to be compelled now and then to 
 furnish his readers with their weekly laugh out of materials not 
 usually contributing to merriment, has praised the conduct of 
 Mr. Holford's butler in firing upon a man who had submitted, 
 and was imploring mercy. The praise, let us in charity assume, 
 was ironical. The irony, however, is so carefully veiled, that 
 the satire is by no means apparent. Probably the writer would 
 have sought for the facetious elsewhere, had he known enough 
 of law to perceive that his hero had committed a capital 
 offence, and that the eulogist himself might be indicted for incit- 
 ing her Majesty's lieges to commit murder ; when, unless tried 
 by a jury with keen eyes for detecting jests nnder very grave 
 disguises, he might shortly find himself in a place by no means 
 favourable to hilarity. 
 
 It may therefore be well for the Examiner, when sporting 
 with matters of life and death, to make its intent a little 
 more obvious than it has hitherto done. Who can say 
 that such ponderous levities may not have been mistaken for 
 serious advice by the clergymen who shot the two unoffending 
 individuals referred to in my Charge ? 
 
 The Examiner, employing, as he does, his extensive ac- 
 quaintance with nursery literature, always to the amusement, 
 and not seldom to the instruction of his readers, will forgive 
 me for conveying a suggestion to him, drawn from the hymn- 
 book of Dr. Watts, which he may find useful. The Doctor 
 avers that 
 
 ' None but a madman will fling about fire, 
 And tell you 'tis all but in sport. ' 
 
 ' Justifiable homicide/ says Mr. Serjeant Stephen,* ' may 
 be committed for the advancement of public justice, as in the 
 following instances : 
 
 * Commentaries on- the Law of England, vol. iv. page 122. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 199 
 
 f 4. Where an officer or his assistant, in the due execution of 
 his office, arrests or attempts to arrest a party for felony or a 
 dangerous wound given, and the party having notice thereof 
 flies, and is killed by such officer or assistant in the pursuit. 
 
 { 5. When upon such offence as last described, a private person, 
 in whose sight it has been committed, arrests or endeavours to 
 arrest the offender, and kills him in resistance or flight under the 
 same circumstances as above mentioned with regard to an officer; 
 but in all these cases there must be an apparent necessity, that is, 
 
 it must be shown that the party could not be otherwise secured. 
 ****** 
 
 ' Otherwise, without such absolute necessity, it is not justifi- 
 able/ 
 
 It is clear that if death had fifllowed, the killing would not 
 have been justified under the circumstances of the case reported 
 in the Examiner. The felon begs for mercy. He ought to have been 
 called upon to surrender, and it was not until he either by words 
 or acts had refused to deliver himself up, that the butler could be 
 justified in shooting him. Neither was this a case of excusable 
 homicide, which is when the killing is by misadventure or in 
 self-defence.* Being, therefore, neither justified nor excused by 
 law, if death had followed the butler must have been held guilty 
 of murder. ( For/ says the learned Serjeant on the authority of 
 Blackstone, ' we may take it for a general rule, that all homi- 
 cide is malicious, arid of course amounts to murder, unless 
 where justified by the command or permission of the law, 
 excused on account of accident or self-preservation in sudden 
 quarrel, or alleviated into manslaughter by being either the 
 involuntary consequence of some act not strictly lawful, or, if 
 voluntary, occasioned by some sudden and sufficiently violent 
 provocation : and all these circumstances of justification, excuse, 
 or alleviation, it is incumbent upon the prisoner to make out 
 to the satisfaction of the Court and Jury, the latter of whom 
 are to decide whether the circumstances alleged are proved to 
 have actually existed the former, how far they extend to miti- 
 gate or take away the guilt ; jur all homicide is supposed to be 
 malicious until the contrary appcareth upon evidence/ f 
 
 And even though death do not follow the wounding, the 
 offence is nevertheless capital by the i Yict., c. 85, s. 2.J 
 
 * Stcjthcn, vol. iv. page. 125. f Page 145-6. J Tage 149. 
 
aco Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 From the ' Times/ October 22, 1851. 
 
 t The theory of human nature, upon which our penal law 
 seems to be framed, assumes that crime is an occasional and 
 exceptional aberration, rather than the normal and habitual 
 vocation of the culprit. The balance of the faculties is some- 
 times disturbed. Reason, the queen de jure, ceases to be so 
 de facto, and desire or anger, obtaining for a while the mastery, 
 would urge us to the commission of theft or murder, did not 
 law step in to the aid of reason, and enforce her mandates by 
 its threats and penalties. This seems to be the legal theory 
 of human nature, and, to meet the state of things whose exist- 
 ence it assumes, it has allotted to every crime its specific degree 
 of punishment, and seems to believe in doing this it is doing 
 all that is possible towards the prevention of guilt. Plausible 
 as this theory is, and little as mankind has felt inclined to dis- 
 pute its correctness in the abstract, experience has conclusively 
 shown its falsehood. There is now no doubt that crime is, 
 like any other trade, regularly taught and learnt, and systema- 
 tically practised as a means of livelihood ; and that not only 
 does such a profession exist, but that by far the greater number 
 of serious offences are perpetrated by its members as a matter 
 of ordinary business, without excitement, without hesitation, 
 and without remorse. The swindler goes forth to swindle, and 
 the pickpocket to thieve, with the same method and regularity 
 with which the carpenter goes to his bench, or the blacksmith 
 to his anvil. It is their trade, and they know and wish for 
 no other. The penalties of the law are regarded as blanks in 
 the professional lottery things not agreeable, but to be en- 
 countered in the way of business, just as sailors brave ship- 
 wrecks, or soldiers death and mutilation. There has never been 
 any difficulty in finding soldiers to fight for a paltry pittance in 
 any quarrel, or sailors to venture on any voyage. The risk 
 incident to these occupations has never rendered them un- 
 popular, and has doubtless given them a peculiar charm to 
 many a daring spirit. So also with the professional criminal ; 
 the occasional penalties with which the law visits them when 
 detected serve only to give excitement and interest to their 
 business, and to throw a dash of the romantic into the dull 
 details of roguery. Viewed in this light, we cannot see that 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 201 
 
 punishment is more likely to put down crime tLan the casual- 
 ties of war the profession of a soldier. Every occupation must 
 have its drawbacks, and every thief, as well as every recruit, 
 hopes to escape them by his dexterity and good fortune. 
 
 ' If we add to these circumstances the fact that the criminal 
 classes are perfectly well known to the police, we have suffi- 
 ciently stated that anomalous and unsatisfactory state of things 
 which has been of late years periodically brought before the 
 public by the Charges of the philanthropic Recorder of Bir- 
 mingham, Mr. Matthew Davenport Hill. That we should 
 know perfectly well that there is a class in this country sub- 
 sisting entirely by the perpetration of crime, that we should 
 have in our service credible and intelligent officers who are able 
 at a moment's notice to enumerate the persons following this 
 avocation within their particular districts, and yet that we 
 should stand by and allow these offenders to run their course 
 without interruption, and, while we know them to be preying 
 ori the vitals of society, should fling around them the mantle of 
 her protection, does, indeed, seem to be a state of things so 
 fraught with contradictions, and so totally unfit for the preven- 
 tion or cure of crime, that we have reason to be grateful to any 
 one who exposes it, and still more if he seriously turn his mind 
 to the correction of so monstrous an evil. The main difficulty 
 which lies in the way of that correction we believe to be one of 
 evidence. No one can doubt that if a jury be satisfied by fair 
 and legal evidence that a person is ' persevering in crime/ it is 
 quite right that he should undergo severe punishment. The 
 only question is how we are to arrive at such a conclusion? 
 This we can imagine to be done in two ways. The first is 
 well known to the law, and consists in giving evidence to par- 
 ticular acts from which the wicked course of conduct may be 
 presumed, just as a common scold or a common barrator is 
 convicted by accumulative testimony of acts of scolding or 
 barratry. Such a method of proceeding would be strictly legal 
 and constitutional, and would justly subject the prisoner to 
 punishment, because the proof of his perseverance in crime 
 would involve the proof of the commission of several separate 
 crimes, for any of which punishment would be justly due. 
 This, however, cannot be Mr. Hill's meaning. The second way 
 of proving the offence of still persevering in crime would be to 
 
202 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 relax the rules of evidence, and to allow a man to be found 
 guilty on mere general surmise, without proving him to have 
 committed any crime at all. This we believe to have been Mr. 
 HilFs meaning; and if so, divested of all disguise, it really 
 amounts to this that because the law of England requires 
 crime to be proved before a person can be punished for it, 
 criminals repeatedly escape from justice, that rule shall henceforth 
 be altered in case of persons once convicted, and the courts 
 shall be authorised to act without proof of any crime at all. 
 Desirable as it would be to break up the profession of crime, 
 we cannot accept such a result at such a price. Our police 
 are undoubtedly excellent, but they are not fitted for an order 
 of judges. The power of oppression and extortion which such 
 a law would place in their hands would alone be an insuperable 
 objection. To be suspected of being suspected is no crime 
 known to our law ; its principle has hitherto been to protect 
 all the innocent rather than to punish all the guilty. Mr. Hill 
 would reverse the principle, and expose innocence to danger, in 
 order the more certainly to strike at guilt. We know not what 
 precise idea to attach to the terms ' evidence of general conduct ' 
 or of ' the course of life/ What is a man's general conduct or 
 course of life but the aggregate of his particular actions ? If 
 the police know those actions, let them state them, and the 
 jury will infer the course of life. If they do not know them, 
 why should they be permitted to draw inferences whose cor- 
 rectness cannot be ascertained from data, whose truth has not 
 been tested ? If a jury would not be justified in inferring 
 guilt from hearsay evidence or suspicious conduct, why should 
 a policeman ? Such a law would obviously tend to transfer the 
 duties of criminal justice from the juror to the policeman, and 
 to transform that body into odious and extortionate spies instead 
 of efficient and popular protectors. 
 
 ' We have not spoken of the different chances of escape which 
 Mr. Hill provides for the accused, because, in our view, they 
 are immaterial. If the surmises of the police be fair grounds 
 upon which juries may act, they may as easily justify a con- 
 viction at once as the putting the accused on the proof of his 
 innocence. But we cannot help remarking on the impolicy of 
 a law which places every person once convicted in a position 
 different from that of his fellow-subjects. At present, where a 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 203 
 
 former conviction is given in evidence against a prisoner, the 
 fact is not allowed to transpire until the second offence has 
 been proved ; but, according to Mr. Hill's plan, the prisoner 
 will be dragged into court, with a prejudice of a former convic- 
 tion, to corroborate the vague surmises as to the nature and 
 conduct of his course of life, which are to be sufficient to put 
 him on his defence. How could perjury be assigned on such 
 evidence? Where a witness alleges no facts, how can the 
 falsehood of his statement be proved ? and is it not monstrous 
 that any Englishman should be subject to punishment on 
 evidence for which, however unfounded, no one can suffer any 
 penalty ? We admit the evil which Mr. Hill points out does 
 exist, and loudly requires a remedy ; but we cannot consent to 
 apply that remedy by handing over to the police so terrible 
 and irresponsible a power. Crime is rife both in England and 
 California; but we as little approve of convicting people with- 
 out evidence in the one as of hanging them without trial in 
 the other. The question yet remains unsolved, and we fear 
 that we must submit to the existence of professional criminals 
 till some mode less objectionable can be devised for their 
 eradication/ 
 
 From the 'Manchester Guardian, October 22, 185]. 
 
 ' PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF CRIME. 
 
 c The celebrated dictum, ' Better for ten guilty men to escape 
 than for one innocent man to be punished/ has long appeared 
 to us much more sounding than sensible. Why is it better? 
 Punishment is the just award of the guilty by the same law 
 that impunity is the just award of the innocent. It makes no 
 matter whether we refer justice to considerations of abstract 
 right or of expediency, whether we define it to be the fulfil- 
 ment of a divine retribution, or adherence to the tacit compact 
 of human society. In any case, the reasons for exacting a 
 penalty from the guilty are precisely the same as those by 
 which the innocent is entitled to his acquittal, and necessarily 
 of equal force. The right which we profess to discern in the 
 matter is violated in every instance where guilt or innocence is 
 divorced from its appropriate consequence ; and the injury to 
 society being measured by the degree in which the law misses 
 
204 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 its mark, does not vary with the side to which it deviates. It 
 is just as bad for one guilty man to escape as for one innocent 
 man to be punished. The correctness of this opinion seems so 
 clear that we believe it could never have been questioned, had 
 not the severity of our criminal code, up to recent years, 
 inclined men to be merciful even at the expense of being 
 illogical. In those days when hanging filled the place of the 
 treadmill in the penal tariff, judges fell easily into the trap 
 which their hearts set for their judgments, and embraced a 
 smooth fallacy to justify themselves in the neglect of a hideous 
 duty. It was the law that was in fault, not they; and it sought 
 to right itself by the reaction which its sanguinary excess pro- 
 duced. Rudely, perhaps, it succeeded, and a sort of equilibrium 
 ' on the whole' was produced; but now that the law has been 
 humanized and purified, it is high time that it should be 
 relieved from the weights by which its brutal zeal was moderated. 
 Every man who would recoil from prosecuting an innocent 
 fellow-citizen to unjust conviction ought to know that he com- 
 mits an equal wrong in actively or passively allowing the guilty 
 to escape. His sympathies are at fault in either case ; the 
 only difference being that in the first he is the direct, in the 
 second the indirect means of injuring others. It is not asked 
 that he should stifle his emotions of mercy or pity, but that he 
 should direct them towards the victims, instead of to the per- 
 petrators of crime. 
 
 ' We should be cautious, therefore, how we object to a new 
 proposal in criminal jurisprudence, merely because it offers less 
 advantage to the criminal than is familiar to our past customs, 
 or in harmony with the maxims on which we pride ourselves. 
 At present there is very little danger of our erring in that 
 direction ; too much, perhaps, of our erring in the opposite one. 
 It must be acknowledged that we are wonderfully forbearing 
 towards our criminal population. It is a notorious fact that 
 a huge proportion of the crime of the community is committed by 
 professional marauders, whose persons and manner of life are cer- 
 tainly better known and more minutely recorded than those of the 
 followers of any honest trade. They have no possible pretence 
 of living but by preying on the rest of us ; yet we forbear to 
 strike them, and even use the knowledge which we possess very 
 inefficiently for our protection. To all intents and purposes, 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 205 
 
 they are a hostile army within our gates ; but so jealous is our 
 love of liberty, that we never attempt to disarm or restrain 
 them, except when some individual is detected in an overt act 
 of hostility. Separate crimes are punished, but criminality is 
 a tolerated walk of life. It must, at some time or other, 
 have occurred to every thinking man to doubt whether this 
 fastidious reserve is compatible with any right, human or 
 divine. Why should we not lock up, or otherwise get rid of, 
 persons who are doing unmixed harm to themselves and to 
 society? The only objection appears to be grounded on the 
 danger of confounding the innocent with the guilty; but 
 consideration does not show that the danger need be greater in 
 convictions of this kind than in others with which we are 
 already familiar. 
 
 ' The learned Recorder of Birmingham, Mr. Matthew 
 Davenport Hill, in an interesting Charge to the Grand Jury of 
 the Birmingham Quarter Sessions, has renewed the advocacy of 
 a scheme which he propounded on a similar occasion last year, 
 when it attracted a large share of public attention and criticism. 
 To use his own words, he has ' a speculative opinion and a practical 
 proposal/ His speculative opinion is, that all persons living 
 without visible means of support, and (in the belief of witnesses 
 acquainted with their way of life) maintaining themselves by 
 crime, ought to be called upon to prove themselves in the 
 enjoyment of some honest means of subsistence ; that in the 
 absence of such proof they should be bound to give sureties for 
 good conduct ; and that, failing to give satisfactory security, 
 they should be committed to prison for a limited period. In 
 fact, that, instead of people of this class being entitled to 
 freedom, unless some particular sentence is hanging over them, 
 their normal condition should be held to be restraint, unless 
 they can show some good reason to the contrary. In his 
 practical proposal, however, the learned gentleman stops short, 
 and limits the application of his theory to the cases of offenders 
 who have already been convicted. For this limitation he gives 
 very sound reasons; for it is obvious that the expedient is 
 strong enough in its limited form. There may be cases, and, as 
 Mr. Hill says so, no doubt there are, of men pursuing a career 
 of crime for thirty years without a single conviction; but 
 unless we are greatly misled as to the activity and vigilance of 
 
206 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 the law, such cases must be very rare. The great bulk of the 
 thieving and murderous classes have been convicted over and 
 over again ; they have regularly graduated in crime,, step by 
 step ; and it is this very circumstance which heightens the 
 audacity and offensiveness of their existence among us with 
 all the immunities of citizenship. We could afford to let them 
 have freedom of action until they got themselves convicted, if 
 we felt sure of a tight grasp upon them after conviction. 
 Mr. HilPs proposal will not be objected to on the score of 
 offering too many chances of escape to professors of the pre- 
 datory art; on the contrary, the objections to which it will be 
 exposed lie against the danger of confounding the innocent with 
 them in indiscriminate condemnation. 
 
 ' The validity of such objections can be decided only by prac- 
 tical experience ; and the most satisfactory tribunal to which 
 the question can be referred is the judgment of those best 
 acquainted with the habits of the class whom it is desired 
 to keep in check, and the administration of criminal justice. 
 About the principle involved in the matter, we can hardly 
 suppose there is any question that Mr. Hill is right. Society 
 has not only a right, but a duty, to lay a heavy hand upon the 
 persons to whom he calls its attention, and break them by the 
 sternest methods, if not into usefulness, into comparative inno- 
 cuousness. Every day the necessity of doing this becomes 
 more pressing ; for while our population rapidly increases, con- 
 current events, such as the mitigation of the penal code and 
 the difficulties thrown in the way of transportation, combine 
 with it to increase the number of convicted malefactors roaming 
 at large in our streets and continuing in their evil courses. 
 Against the growth of such a pest we need a new means of 
 protection; and if such a plan as Mr. HilFs approves itself 
 as adequate to minds accustomed to study the conditions of 
 crime, no morbid sympathy or prejudice should prevent its 
 adoption. It is much to be desired that the question should 
 be treated elsewhere, on similar occasions to that on which 
 Mr. Hill has raised it ; or if that be an unfit suggestion, that 
 the opinions of learned persons presiding over other courts 
 should be obtained at the direct invitation of the Legislature/ 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 207 
 
 From the f Morning Chronicle,' October, 23, 1851. 
 
 ' It is now rather more than a twelvemonth since the Re- 
 corder of Birmingham, Mr. M. D. Hill, Q.C., attracted much 
 public attention and gave rise to an interesting discussion by 
 some novel views which he put forth on the subject of the 
 repression of crime. After the interval of a year, Mr. Hill, 
 in a Charge which will be found in our impression of Monday 
 last, arid which, for the clearness and moderation of its language, 
 deserves much praise, declares his adherence to his former 
 opinions, and re-states in detail the propositions which he 
 brought forward last year. With all possible disposition to 
 defer to the judgment and experience of the learned Re- 
 corder, we are, however, bound to say that we are far 
 from satisfied with his answer to the objections which we 
 formerly felt ourselves obliged to urge against his original 
 scheme. 
 
 ( The fundamental fact on which Mr. Hill bases his proposal 
 is the existence of a large class of professional criminals, who 
 are perfectly well known to the police, but of whom the law 
 takes no cognizance, except where overt acts have been com- 
 mitted. These men, who have no source of subsistence but in 
 crime, are allowed to go at large and to choose their opportuni- 
 ties for the perpetration of offences in the manner which may 
 give them the best chance of impunity. Mr. Hill shows that 
 this dangerous class is considerably on the increase, and that 
 it is growing daily more menacing to society partly from the 
 criminal law being administered in a milder spirit than formerly, 
 which has had the effect of shortening the terms of imprison- 
 ment, and partly from the greater iiifrequency of the penalty of 
 transportation a cause which the hostility of the colonies to 
 an inundation of our criminal population is likely to increase 
 to an alarming extent. Now, we fully recognise the momentous 
 importance of this great and growing evil, and we are quite 
 ready to acknowledge the service which the Recorder has 
 rendered in impressing its features so vividly upon the public 
 attention. A sense of danger properly regulated is a very 
 wholesome feeling, but we must be cautious lest its very in- 
 tensity should impel us to adopt remedies which may produce 
 evils of a different, but not less serious character. 
 
2o8 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 ' Mr. Hill is dissatisfied with our existing penal system, which 
 he asserts to be mainly founded upon the principle of retribu- 
 tion. Now, without pausing to consider whether he be strictly 
 accurate in this view of the matter, we may content ourselves 
 with observing that in a free country the authority of the law 
 can only be maintained by the sympathy of public opinion with 
 its sentences, and that the judgment of the greater part of 
 mankind will approve only of that measure of punishment 
 which they consider proportionate to the offence. Mr. Hill 
 thinks that the present system of awarding a short term of 
 imprisonment for the first crime of a juvenile offender is 
 nothing less than an education in vice. He draws a parallel, 
 which is obviously founded in fallacy, between the method by 
 which we educate a child by progressive lessons at first short, 
 then gradually increased and the successive imprisonments, 
 lengthened in duration, awarded to criminals. Now the lesson, 
 it is true, grows easier to the child by this graduated system ; 
 but what is it that grows easier to the criminal by progressive 
 punishment ? Surely not crime : if anything, it must be im- 
 prisonment. ' The moral/ says Mr. Hill, ' which the wretched 
 creature draws from his alternations of confinement and liberty 
 is not to refrain from offending, but to commit offences in such 
 a manner as shall least expose him to the risk of detection, and, 
 when at last detected, that he ought to bear his privations with 
 as much of contempt and defiance as he can command consoled 
 by the prospect of restored freedom and the hope of better 
 fortune in future/ This may be a correct sketch of the ' Rake's 
 Progress / but, after all, the evil complained of is at least com- 
 mon to every system of punishment which admits the possi- 
 bility of a recurrence of temptations and of opportunities for 
 crime. The only mode by which ' the alternations of confine- 
 ment and liberty' and the consolation of 'the prospect of 
 restored freedom ; can be removed, is to sentence every criminal 
 to perpetual imprisonment on conviction for his first offence. 
 Is Mr. Hill prepared to go this length ? and if so, what wise 
 man is prepared to go along with him ? 
 
 ' But it is urged that the operation of our prisons ought to be 
 reformatory, not penal. We hope that some progress has been 
 made in combining the reformation of the man with the 
 punishment of the offender, but it is practically impossible that 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 209 
 
 our prisons should ever be what Mr. Hill would have them 
 moral hospitals, from which the patients are not to be discharged 
 till they are cured. First, how is the cure to be ascertained ? 
 Next, if it were possible to form a judgment on such a subject, 
 it would be impossible i.e., it would not receive the necessary 
 support of public opinion to apportion the term of punish- 
 ment to the character of the individual, and not to the nature 
 of his offence. In point of fact, Mr. Hill has made out no 
 further objections to the existing system of punishment than 
 are inherent in the nature of the subject. 
 
 ' We think it, however, only fair to him to state his new 
 scheme in his own words : 
 
 ' ' I propose that every person who has been convicted of a 
 felony or a misdemeanour, implying fraud, shall be liable to be 
 dealt with as follows. If, after the expiration of his imprison- 
 ment under his conviction, he shall be brought before a magis- 
 trate charged with still persevering in crime, it shall be the 
 duty of the magistrate, if the witnesses to general conduct 
 satisfy his mind that the charge is established, to call on the 
 prisoner to show that he enjoys the means of honest subsistence 
 either from his property, his labour, the kindness of his friends, 
 the bounty of the charitable, or from his parish. Should he 
 succeed in adducing this proof he is to be discharged. Should 
 no such proof be forthcoming, he is next to be called upon to 
 give bail for his good behaviour. Supposing him to answer 
 this demand, he is to be still entitled to his discharge. But, in 
 the event of his failure, he is then to be held to bail on his 
 own recognizances, and his case to be sent to a jury at the 
 assizes or sessions, when, if a verdict pass against him, he is to 
 be imprisoned for a term fixed by law, but capable of dimi- 
 nution by the judge before whom he is tried/ 
 
 ' Now to this plan we have to object, first, that it is directly 
 opposed to those fundamental principles of English justice 
 which wisely ordain that a man must be assumed innocent till 
 he is proved guilty, and that his guilt cannot be established by 
 mere hearsay evidence of general reputation, but only by posi- 
 tive proof of specific acts ; secondly, the function assigned to 
 the police of accusation on suspicion of criminality would un- 
 questionably soon render that body as extortionate, and corrupt, 
 and odious in England as they now are in many parts of the 
 
 p 
 
2io Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 continent ; thirdly, if a man is to be shut up on the suspicion 
 of his being, or on the probability of his becoming, a criminal, 
 we know not why, consistently with the reasons which led to 
 his incarceration, he should ever be liberated again. We are at 
 a loss to conceive on what ground Mr. Hill proposes that he 
 should be ' imprisoned for a term fixed by law/ for there will be 
 exactly the same reasons for confining him the day after his 
 term has expired that there were on that upon which it com- 
 menced he will certainly not 'enjoy the means of honest 
 subsistence/ nor is it likely that he will be in a position to 
 ' give bail for his good behaviour/ Moreover, we very much 
 doubt whether the proposed plan would really reach the prin- 
 cipal offenders, who, from their notorious system of mutual 
 co-operation, would easily defeat its provisions either by tender- 
 ing the required bail, or, more cheaply, by false testimony. 
 
 1 We offer these objections to Mr. HilFs views not from any 
 wish to cavil at them, still less from any desire to ignore the 
 greatness of the mischiefs to which he calls attention, but 
 because we are convinced that the remedy which he proposes 
 is alike insufficient, dangerous, and impracticable/ 
 
 From the ' Birmingham Mercury,' October 25, 1851. 
 ' THE RECORDER'S RENEWED PROPOSITION. 
 
 f Our philanthropic Recorder has again lifted up his voice on 
 the most effectual means of preventing crime, and seems likely 
 again to have the whole of thinking England for a listener. 
 He has substantially renewed the same proposal which pro- 
 voked so much discussion, and encountered no little opposition, 
 this very time last year. He has not, however, refused atten- 
 tion to the hostile criticism which his suggestion called forth. 
 He has taken pains to reconcile it, as much as possible, with 
 his own and the national respect for personal freedom. He 
 has endeavoured to throw manifold obstacles in the way of its 
 abuses he has sought to render its perversion no less difficult 
 than the members of the Constituent Assembly attempted to 
 render the violation of the French Constitution. Mr. Hill 
 proposes that if a person, once convicted of a felony or a mis- 
 demeanour implying fraud, is brought before a magistrate 
 on the charge of persevering in crime, and if the magistrate is 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 211 
 
 satisfied of the truth of the charge, he shall be entitled to call 
 upon the prisoner to show that he possesses the means of sub- 
 sistence from industry, property, public charity, or individual 
 benevolence. If such proof be forthcoming, the prisoner is to 
 be discharged ; if not, he may be called upon to give bail for 
 his good behaviour, and' be discharged upon its production ; if 
 no one will accommodate him in this matter, he is to be held 
 to bail on his own recognizances, and go before a j ury, where, 
 if convicted, he is to be imprisoned for a term fixed by law. 
 
 ' Last year, after much pondering, we expressed our dissent 
 from Mr. HilPs proposal. The renewal of his proposal com- 
 pels us to a renewed expression of disagreement. Our inability 
 to agree with his plan by no means arises from inability to 
 agree with the feelings and principles of his address. We 
 never partook of that exaggerated and extravagant sympathy 
 with offenders which we hold to be one of the least noble and 
 hope-inspiring characteristics of the present age. We are 
 utterly sick of the miserable sentimentality which infects the 
 moral judgment of society and influences the decisions of juries. 
 We vehemently repudiate that pernicious tenderness towards 
 criminals wherein the leading philanthropists of our day so 
 especially glory. Nothing seems to us so sure of degrading 
 the moral dignity of our times as the prevalence of this mis- 
 taken feeling. Intense sympathy with the criminal has im- 
 paired our horror of crime. Our tenderness has been unduly 
 engrossed by convicted offenders, to the neglect of painful 
 industry and uncomplaining poverty. For some years our 
 dungeons have been assuming the appearance of palaces, and 
 supplying the comforts of home, while we have only just begun a 
 serious attempt to convert the hideous dens and sties, tenanted 
 by the most indigent members of the community, into abodes 
 not altogether unfit for the habitation of human beings. 
 
 ' But this community of feeling with Mr. Hill does not 
 reconcile us to his proposition. The extraordinary power 
 with which he would invest the police is not, after all, so 
 certain of attaining its end. The evil which it would cause 
 strikes us as far more certain than the good that it would bring 
 about. No one can deny its tendency to infringe the sanctity 
 of personal freedom ; but we are inclined to question its power 
 of seriously arresting crime. We have ample confidence in the 
 
 p 2 
 
212 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 police as quellers of overt outrage and guardians of the public 
 peace, but we do not repose the same unbounded confidence in 
 them as judges of character and weighers of suspicion. We are 
 not so sure that this arbitrary power, entrusted to them over 
 suspicious characters, must inevitably issue in the diminution of 
 serious crimes. We disclaim all fanaticism in our devotion to 
 the principles of respect for personal freedom. We hold a 
 departure from some valuable principles to be justifiable, if such 
 departure will issue in the removal of some practical and terrible 
 evil. But we must have all possible certainty that the evil will 
 be removed by such a proceeding. We object to Mr. Hill's 
 remedy, both because it is dangerous to the general system and 
 because we can be by no means certain that it will expel the 
 particular disease against which it is directed. We must, 
 indeed, despair of discovering any other remedy ere it can be 
 allowable to arrest upon suspicion and sentence upon surmise. 
 Should formidable crimes go on increasing, should legal inge- 
 nuity and philanthropic effort fail in devising any other remedy, 
 then we reserve to ourselves the liberty of reconsidering Mr. 
 Hill's proposal then, and only then, could we advise the 
 country to listen to the enlightened philanthropist who offers 
 us a remedy, rather than make no effort against the terrible 
 state of things which our supposition implies/ 
 
 From the ' Morning Post' Saturday, October 25, 1851. 
 
 ' The Recorder of Birmingham still conceives, it appears, that 
 the plan which he propounded last year contains the only true 
 remedy against the spread or continued commission of crime ; 
 he still, after pondering over his idea for more than twelve 
 months, is of opinion that all persons who have been once con- 
 victed of any offence against the law should be treated precisely 
 as careful Mayors and Town Councils treat anxious-looking and 
 dry-lipped dogs in summer they should be muzzled or tied up. 
 Mr. Hill, indeed, we believe, suggests only tying up possibly 
 muzzling did not occur to him. We think we should prefer it. 
 A policeman, for instance, leading in a string a suspected pick- 
 pocket with his nimble fingers muffled securely in thick woollen 
 gloves, without divisions for the fingers, would present to the 
 public a picturesque and instructive spectacle; and he might, 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 213 
 
 in addition, have an inscription on his chest and back, 'Muffled 
 for want of good security from responsible pocket- wearers/ 
 Foolish, suspected thief! Why did he not subscribe to a gua- 
 rantee society ? 
 
 'Let Mr. Hill, however, propound his theory after his own 
 fashion, and in his own words. Mr. Hill's ( speculative opinion 
 is, that all persons living without visible means of support, and 
 who, in the belief of witnesses acquainted with their way of 
 life, are maintaining themselves by crime as their stated calling, 
 ought to be called upon to prove themselves in the enjoyment 
 of some honest means of subsistence ' and he further submits, 
 * that, in the absence of such proof, they shall be bound to give 
 sureties for good conduct ;' and, again, ' that failing to give satis- 
 factory security, they should be committed to prison for a 
 limited period/ That is Mr. HilPs theory. 
 
 ' Now, to this scheme we see in iimlne objections which ap- 
 pear to us insurmountable. We should protest against even 
 giving it a trial. It is repugnant to the very principles which 
 have hitherto guided both the framing and the administration 
 of English law; it is based upon a misconception, or rather 
 perhaps a defective knowledge of the real character of the pre- 
 datory class ; and last, though not least, we do not believe that 
 it would be possible to work it with any extensive bearing, or 
 to give to it any practical effect. 
 
 1 Mr. Hill desires that the law should assume that every man 
 who has been once convicted of a felony, or of any misdemea- 
 nour implying fraud, should forfeit for ever his rights as a 
 British citizen ; and further, that society that is, his fellow- 
 men should for ever withdraw their confidence from him. We 
 have no morbid sympathy for criminals, nor do we hold with 
 those mischievous philanthropy-mongers who talk about the 
 influences of an evil hour, as Mr. Hill may satisfy himself if 
 he will refer to the series of articles which we published in the 
 early part of this year on Crime and its Repression; but we are 
 not prepared to go this length. We are not prepared to make 
 a pariah of every man once convicted of infringement of the 
 law, nor to hunt him instantly and remorselessly like a wounded 
 deer, out of the herd of his fellow-men. Mr. Hill is perfectly 
 right thus far ; there is a large army, we might almost term it, 
 consisting of various and numerous tribes, with a remarkable 
 
214 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 organization, who live many of them in coarse and riotous 
 luxury by habitual crime ; but there are offenders who do not 
 belong to this peculiar population very many many of whom 
 may be, and some are, deterred by judicious measures from 
 becoming habitual and professional breakers of the law. Mr. 
 Hill would drive all these men indiscriminately into the ranks 
 of the great predatory army. They would feel that every man's 
 hand was for ever against them. The society of the profes- 
 sional arid declared criminal would be all that was left to them, 
 and participation in the organized means of defence against the 
 law possessed by the associated predatory tribes would offer the 
 only refuge to the man who ( by conviction of any offence im- 
 plying fraud had been deemed to have forfeited the confidence 
 of society.' 
 
 ' These are some of the objections which considerations of 
 policy merely suggest to Mr. Hill's theory ; but there is another 
 of more serious import and of higher character. According 
 to the spirit of the English law, no man can be put even upon 
 his defence without some positive and tangible evidence that he 
 has, in some defined and particular instance, infringed the law. 
 Mr. Hill proposes that common report, or common suspicion, 
 shall be sufficient warranty for requiring from any man tarred 
 with the stick of ' conviction/ either positive proof that he is 
 deriving his living from sources approved by his judge, or to 
 give satisfactory security for his continued observance of the 
 law. 
 
 c We have no wish to carp unnecessarily at expressions ;; but 
 Mr. Hill really seems throughout his development of his idea 
 to be under some little confusion. This new and peculiar 
 legislation is proposed to be applied exclusively to 'persons 
 living without any visible means of support/ arid yet, ( who, in 
 the belief of persons acquainted with their way of life, are 
 maintaining themselves by crime as their stated calling/ Now 
 the last part of this sentence practically contradicts the first. 
 If there are persons so well acquainted with the way of life of 
 these pariahs that they can give information sufficient to satisfy 
 the administrators of the law that they ought to be instantly 
 arrested, they must have a remarkably visible means of exis- 
 tence, so visible, at least, that even the most hazy and half- 
 trained rural policeman would have no difficulty in pouncing 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 215 
 
 upon them red-hand, in the very commission of an actual 
 offence, and there would then be no occasion for Mr. Hill's 
 special Inquisition. Mr. Hill, we think, has scarcely clearly 
 represented, even to himself, who will give ' witness of the way 
 of life/ It will not be the neighbours, except where some fellow 
 from a quarrel turns ' nose upon his pal/ because the neigh- 
 bours of the soldiers of the predatory army are not often honest 
 men, anxious for the purification of society, but just themselves 
 thieves or reputed thieves. The witness must, in fact, always 
 be the policeman, unless, indeed, the gossip of the washerwomen 
 over their tubs be admitted a witness ; and if he be such a 
 policeman, and a component part of such a police system as we 
 desire to see established throughout the country, we will answer 
 for it that he will either prevent the man disposed to persevere 
 in crime from committing it, without either being absolutely 
 his bear-leader, or putting the country to the expense of keeping 
 him luxuriously in Reading Gaol, under the gentle tuition of 
 Mr. Field, or he will make the commission of some particular 
 offence so distinctly visible, that his punishment will be secured 
 and justified by the law as it now stands. There are some 
 other important points which suggest themselves in connexion 
 with Mr. Hill's observations, to which we shall take another 
 opportunity of directing attention, and we think we can show 
 Mr. Hill that, even if all the objections to the principle of his 
 proposal could be got over, his scheme would only reach a very 
 small portion, and that not the most dangerous portion, of the 
 predatory classes/ 
 
 From the ' Spectator,' October 25, 1851. 
 
 ' MB. M. D. HILL ON DETENTIVE POLICE. 
 
 'The Recorder of Birmingham has just made his annual 
 memorandum on reform of the correctional law ; the subject this 
 time being that which he broached last year the detention of 
 notorious offenders, in order to prevent them from adding to 
 their criminal exploits. In the interval the idea has met with 
 much active criticism, and has been tested by many objections, 
 that it would violate the liberty of the subject ; that you 
 could not technically presume criminal intent on the part of a 
 man, however morally certain the fact ; that after arresting 
 
216 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 him and releasing him you would be bound to re-arrest him on 
 the old grounds, on the next release to re-arrest again, and so 
 on ad infinitum. Mr. Hill now replies to several of these 
 objections, showing that, if the criminal has not some honest 
 mode of livelihood, he must have a dishonest mode ; that the 
 process of clearing himself would be easy, and that the fastidious 
 punctilios which are perpetually defeating the course of justice 
 really endanger the liberty of the subject, even of the criminal 
 subject, more than the proposed plan could possibly do in 
 practice. For example, the failure of justice to arrest the homi- 
 cidal burglaries which have been so common during the past 
 year, has suggested the advice that every person should keep 
 lire-arms in his house for self-defence ; in other words, as society 
 is not protected by the law, each person is advised to take the 
 law into his own hands ; and in the dead of night, in the con- 
 fusion of abrupt waking, to execute capital punishment on the 
 presumed robber. We saw how that suggestion worked in the 
 case of the Reverend Mr. Smith, who shot Armstrong, of 
 Sorbietrees, in Northumberland. Mr. HilFs memorandum on 
 the subject is useful; it does indeed occasion a flood of 'criti- 
 cism/ especially at this quiet season of the year; and many of 
 the old objections are repeated just as if he had not answered 
 them ; but the effect of the answer is felt, and the public rnind 
 is prepared for that practical discussion of the subject which 
 will come at no distant date. 
 
 ' It is instructive to notice how much reforms of this parti- 
 cular kind are impeded by the prejudices of those who pretend 
 to be above all prejudice, and by the sheerly theoretical pre- 
 sumptions of those who profess to be supremely practical. 
 People lose themselves in speculative questions as to the nature 
 of crime, and while they are disputing whether it is ' sin' or 
 ' moral disease' sin original or sin the voluntary burden of 
 free will moral disease to be cured in person through a refor- 
 matory process, or by proxy through example moral disease to 
 be prevented by education, an idea tainted with socialism, or 
 only to be coerced as hopeless of cure, while we are lost in 
 disputation to which every practical man comes prepared with 
 presumptions cut and dry, and his texts from his Bible, or his 
 political economy, we suffer immense masses of the population 
 to grow up under circumstances, preventible circumstances, 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 217 
 
 which make criminals out of the innocent. Having made a 
 criminal, we allow him to go at large until we have suffered 
 liirn to do the very thing which we know he will do, and which 
 it is our object to prevent. Having caught him, we again fall 
 into the speculative disputations, whether we shall inflict 
 divine retribution for an ineradicable original sin, or whether we 
 shall reform the brute-idiot into a virtuous philosopher; whether 
 we shall give the poor devil a chance of getting on in the world 
 like a man not more dishonest than his fellows, or gratify the 
 vengeance of society. 
 
 ' Surely these speculative questions, since they have not been 
 settled yet, might be left to speculative men, and the practical 
 execution of the ultimate conclusion, be left to that future gene- 
 ration which will be living when philosophers shall have attained 
 their goal. Meanwhile, for all practical purposes, the matter 
 may be put in a very simple light. The offender is mischievous, 
 and it is desirable to seize hold of him as soon as possible in 
 order to stop the mischief. Having hold of him, it is desirable 
 to show others who are mischievously inclined that mischief is 
 inevitably stopped, and that he who would be mischievous is 
 deprived of his freedom, in order that he may be made harmless 
 if not useful. It is desirable to effect those objects with no 
 more hurt to the individuals than is necessary for the purpose. 
 It is also desirable, if it be possible, to give him a chance of 
 recovering himself. Few persons will dispute these propositions 
 when they are stated in their simplest form ; they point to 
 Mr. Hill's plan of seizing known offenders whose way of life 
 renders their freedom mischievous to society ; also to the same 
 consistent reformer's plan for giving juvenile offenders a chance 
 of amended conduct ; arid to Captain Maconochie's plan of 
 industrial discipline. 
 
 ' Mr. Hill has thrown out a hint that he may put his deten- 
 tive plan into a more complete and substantive form ; and it is 
 to be hoped that he will do so. He will perceive, we should 
 think, the close connexion between the subject of his considera- 
 tion and the social offence of obstinate vagrancy, an offence 
 most desirable to be separated from the administration of a law 
 devoted to the relief of the poor who are not vagrants. The 
 tangible procedure which he would take against the notorious 
 offender would inevitably shape itself into a charge of vagrancy, 
 
2i8 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 and it would be a great benefit to society if we possessed a 
 work thoroughly revising the whole subject of vagrancy and its 
 treatment/ 
 
 From the 'Morning Post' October 28, 1851. 
 
 ' Mr. Hill looks upon his scheme as the ' only remedy'* for 
 the diseased condition of parts of the social organization. We say 
 that it would no more be efficient to stay the spread of crime 
 and eradicate the plague-spot of our system than was the en- 
 forced residence of Napoleon on the rock of St. Helena to prevent 
 the recurrence of war, rapine, and revolution, or to allay the 
 hatred of races, and turn swords into ploughshares. Ay, even 
 now, when the echoes of Cobden and Burritt's prophecies have 
 scarce died away, the German states are again busied in arming 
 to the teeth. Every one straining his means to the utmost to 
 gather together more of the engines of war than his neighbour. 
 God grant they may not be called into action. 
 
 ' To return, however, to the repression of individual depre- 
 dators who prey on their fellow-men. Supposing that all the 
 objections in principle to Mr. Hill's scheme were got over 
 supposing that legislative assent had been obtained to a law 
 enacting that every man who had been punished for an actual 
 offence proved to have been committed, should be liable at the 
 discretion of local committees of vigilants, to be again punished 
 for offences which the ingenuity of the police or his neighbours 
 might devise that he had in contemplation, even then the 
 machinery of the new law could be brought to bear upon so 
 small a section of the predatory tribes that it would not be 
 operative to any sensible degree. 
 
 ' And for this reason, a very great proportion of the persons 
 constituting the criminal population of the country have an 
 ostensible means of existing without infraction of the law at 
 least sufficient to enable them to give the slip to Mr. Hill. 
 Tribes of housebreakers, robbers on the highway, cottage and 
 garden plunderers, sheepstealers, pickpockets and swindlers at 
 fairs and races, consist chiefly of men having ostensible lawful 
 occupations. Their ranks are filled with locksmiths, working 
 mechanics, costermongers, hawkers and pedlers, boatmen and 
 
 * I never held it out as an 'only remedy.' M. DM. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1 85 1 . 219 
 
 canal trackers, porters in the docks, and a host of others. 
 Gentlemen's servants, both in and out of place, form a very 
 dangerous and considerable portion of the predatory population, 
 and a great number of house robberies are committed either by 
 them or with their privity. If our readers are curious on this 
 subject, we recommend thtJm to refer to the Report of the 
 Commission on Constabulary Force of 1839, and the Reports on 
 the Police of the Metropolis and Criminal Commitments. 
 On these constituent portions of the predatory army it appears 
 to us that Mr. Hill's treatment would find it impossible to lay 
 its hand without stretching authority to the verge of despotism. 
 
 'There is, however, no doubt a class of thieves who do not work 
 even occasionally in any other calling, and to these Mr. Hill's 
 machine would probably direct its efforts. But even with regard 
 to these, Mr. Hill's plan would have no real efficiency, unless 
 as a preliminary step there were established over the entire face 
 of the country a national centralized police, of uniform organiza- 
 tion, such as we suggested in the articles on Crime to which 
 we have before alluded. Mr. Hill has not taken into account 
 the change which has been induced in the modes of working of 
 the enterprising English thief, by cheapness, rapidity, and faci- 
 lity of travelling afforded by railways. He has not been slow 
 to take advantage of this, and, like the fox, the purely pro- 
 fessional thief, who has no other means of living, seldom robs 
 near home. 
 
 ' There was our old friend, CONKEY BEAU, for instance. We 
 commit no treason to him in betraying his mode of working, 
 because he no longer practises the art of conveyance in this 
 country, being at this moment, we hear, an active and influen- 
 tial member of the Vigilance Committee at San Francisco. 
 Does Mr. Hill think that Conkey stole his neighbour's leg of 
 mutton, or that he bore in his appearance unmistakeable evidence 
 of conviction ? By no means. Conkey was a person of most 
 quiet and, indeed, respectable appearance. He usually took a 
 small house or genteel apartments in some quarter frequented 
 by mercantile or law clerks, where he lived a life of scrupulous 
 regularity, varied only by occasional trips of two or three days 
 into the country per favour of a return ticket, where, as he said, 
 he had an aunt to whom he was much attached. We happen to 
 know who that aunt really was, and that her name was Harris, 
 
22O Sequel to Charge of October } 1851. 
 
 but his neighbours at Maida Hill did not know that. Conkey, 
 too,, actually had a small sum of money in the Funds, and on the 
 appointed days Conkey was always to be seen in the Rotunda 
 of the Bank of England waiting to receive his dividends. We 
 happen to know that his own were not the only dividends that 
 went home in his pocket, but his neighbours at Maida Hill did 
 not know it. Now what would Mr. Hill do with Conkey ? On 
 what pretence tie him up or muzzle him. We know that poor 
 Conkey was lagged, but not on suspicion ; he was caught in the 
 very act of conveying the dividends just received by a respectable 
 maiden lady from her pocket to his own by one of the able 
 detectives of the A division, one of that organization found to 
 be so efficient in the metropolis, of which we wish to see the 
 whole country enjoying the advantage. 
 
 ' We might show that it would not practically be very easy for 
 Mr. Hill to get hold of Conkey even after this his first convic- 
 tion, but we will be generous, and hand over that great artist 
 to the Vigilance Committee of Birmingham ; and we will sup- 
 pose that it has been satisfactorily proved that Mr. Beau has 
 been convicted, that he has failed to show that he obtains his 
 living by any of the means particularized by Mr. Hill, and 
 cannot give sufficient security for his future observance of the 
 law. What will Mr. Hill do with him ? Commit him to 
 gaol ? To hard labour ? No ; he can scarcely do that ; for if 
 we understand Mr. Hill rightly, he does not profess to punish 
 Conkey he has been punished for his proved offences he only 
 wants to prevent him from being at large, so he merely inflicts 
 upon him an enforced residence within a limited space at the 
 public cost. For how long ? Till he evinces signs of reforma- 
 tion and repentance till he shows an addiction to the reading 
 of tracts, the singing of hymns, and the instructive conversation 
 cf the chaplain. The versatile Conkey will soon do that, and 
 in less than two months, having won the love and admiration 
 of all the prison disciplinarians, would be let loose upon the 
 world again, his wit sharpened, and his constitution refreshed 
 by his temporary seclusion. It would be some time before 
 Mr. Hill would catch him again. Or, is Conkey perchance to 
 be secluded within four walls till he is really reformed, and the 
 bad spirit driven out of him ? Then the trained, inured, and 
 accomplished Mr. Conkey Beau will remain an annuitant on 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 221 
 
 the means of his benevolent country till the day of his 
 death. 
 
 ' Rely upon it, Mr. Hill, your plan is impracticable. Just 
 that. Practically impossible, and, even if practically possible, 
 it would not be practically operative. A return to the prin- 
 ciple of mutual suretyship, which formed the basis of the 
 machinery for the repression of crime with our Saxon ancestors, 
 though in the present condition of society not very possible, 
 would be far more possible and efficient than the adoption of 
 Mr. Hill's scheme, which would involve the creation of a new 
 principle in law, most objectionable and dangerous, and after 
 all could not be carried into effect without the aid of a police 
 establishment, which would render it unnecessary and useless. 
 
 From the 'Liverpool Mercury,' October 28, 1851. 
 
 ' REPRESSION OF CRIME. 
 
 ' That the experiment, limited, as the learned Recorder pro- 
 poses, should be tried, we think the existence of the evil is 
 quite sufficient to justify. The surveillance which the police 
 exercise at the present moment is notorious. Thanks to the 
 untiring exertions of such men as Mr. Charles Dickens and 
 Mr. Mayhew, the public are perfectly acquainted with the 
 system ; and more than once it has been asked, ' Why, if the 
 police are so intimately acquainted with the persons of notorious 
 criminals, and the places of their constant resort, does crime 
 remain unchecked ? Of what use is this personal knowledge if 
 vice still reigns supreme ?' These are questions which it is 
 most difficult to answer. To say that there is any distinction 
 between guilt which is morally certain, but of which the suf- 
 ficient legal proof is wanting, is simply absurd ; while, on the 
 other hand, were the law to relax its rigour in this respect, it 
 would as unquestionably open the gravest objections on the ground 
 of a most palpable violation of the great constitutional privilege 
 of personal freedom. Mr. HilPs proposal would seem to steer 
 a middle course ; for while, on the one hand, it would secure, 
 to a very great degree, the public from the known violation of 
 the law by criminals, it would, on the other hand, infringe the 
 
223 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 liberty of the. latter to the extent only of calling on them to 
 disprove positive evidence of an irregular and criminal mode 
 of life, by simply showing that the suspected, and already once- 
 convicted, criminal enjoys the means of honest subsistence, 
 either from his property, his labour, the kindness of his friends, 
 the bounty of the charitable, or from his parish. Assuming 
 him, however, to fail in this requisite proof, it proposes to 
 entitle him to his discharge on giving bail, and only in default 
 of being able to comply with any one of these demands is the 
 evidence of competent witnesses as to his general conduct, 
 which must, in the first instance, be of a nature to satisfy the 
 magistrate, to prevail against him. A penitentiary (which, by 
 the bye, should be supported by the labour of its inmates,) 
 would then receive him for a limited period. During the term 
 of his detention, he would, in all probability, be taught some 
 trade, the profits arising from which, after deducting expenses, 
 would serve to maintain him for some little time, at least, after 
 his discharge, without resort being necessarily had to crime. 
 
 ' Such is Mr. Hill's proposal ; and, without presuming to 
 offer any more decided opinion on its merits, we submit it to 
 the calm consideration and reflection of our readers. The 
 subject is one of absorbing interest, and is well worthy the 
 attention of the public. Some means unquestionably ought to 
 be employed, either to provide for the maintenance of criminals, 
 or at least to prevent their maintenance by crime. The first 
 will doubtless be a task of difficulty, and to a certain extent it 
 must be coupled with the infliction of a punishment. The 
 second, if feasible at all, is only so in the mode suggested by 
 Mr. Hill; and for our own part, so convinced are we of the 
 necessity for legislative interference in this respect, we should 
 be almost tempted to advise the trying of the learned Recorder's 
 experiment in this mode of repressing crime/ 
 
 ' Morning Advertiser/ November 8, 1851. 
 
 'At the late sessions, Mr. Hill repeated a proposition of great 
 importance ' The propriety of holding in restraint known male- 
 factors, who could be shown on sufficient evidence to pursue 
 crime as a calling, although, by their dexterity or good fortune, 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 2 23 
 
 they had been able to elude the proof of any specific offences.' 
 Coming from such authority, we take^it for granted that there 
 are people who are well known to live by criminal acts, though 
 never completely detected in the commission of any; and it 
 seems to be a dereliction of duty in those who may be said to 
 have the tutelage of society to suffer them to be at large. But 
 it is not so ; their interference with these known, but non- 
 proven malefactors, would be a violation of the liberty of the 
 whole body of the people, although it should produce the bene- 
 fit of depriving these offenders of the power to injure. In a 
 country where the will of the prince is the law, nothing would 
 be easier and nothing more likely, than the immediate removal 
 of every person of this description from the sphere of his per- 
 nicious activity. The case, however, is very considerably altered 
 when the question is the application of such a power to England. 
 We cannot dispense with evidence in anything that regards a 
 criminal ; and if we set that aside, together with the rules of law, 
 on account of one class, there will be no longer any confidence 
 of security from wrong felt by the other classes. We do not for 
 a moment dispute the desirableness of such removal as Mr. Hill 
 contemplates, either by seclusion, or absolute exclusion from 
 society; but the question is, whether the evil of suffering them 
 to plunder unmolested is greater than the evil of dispensing 
 with law arid the usual course of evidence. We know that 
 there must be a law enacted for the purpose ; but the new 
 statute will abolish the old, and be at variance with the funda- 
 mental maxim of the constitution, that no man shall be fined 
 or imprisoned but by the judgment of his peers. That maxim 
 has been sufficiently violated by the introduction of summary 
 conviction before a magistrate, and an incredible amount of mis- 
 chief has ensued from it in the prodigious increase of juvenile 
 delinquents, as Mr. Sergeant Adams has repeatedly demon- 
 strated. Then, if in this instance, departure from the maxim 
 has produced detrimental effects, we have, primd facie, ground 
 for suspecting no better results from the entire relinquishmerit 
 of the maxim, which will be the case if we proceed to act 
 against people who are known to be habitual malefactors, but 
 cannot be proved to commit a crime. 
 
 ' The abandonment of the constitutional maxim at once renders 
 the government arbitrary, since it will be invested with a power 
 
224 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 of punishing the subject at its own discretion, unguided by 
 evidence of offence, and without any other safeguard for justice 
 than its own unassisted judgment. We do not suppose that 
 Mr. Hill contemplates this result, but that he still has in view 
 that there will be the old laws and the old rules for those who 
 are not known to be habitual offenders. But an experiment, 
 which, if successful, would place every man's person in peril, 
 for we cannot be assured that succeeding sovereigns and govern- 
 ments will be as wise and as just as the present, is far too 
 dangerous to be made, even if the prospect of advantage were 
 greater. We must not part with rules in these matters, and 
 least of all with evidence of specific acts of crime. With those 
 who are detected and brought to punishment we can deal 
 more readily; for we can make a certain number of convictions 
 sufficient to justify entire separation from society; but Mr. Hill 
 is speaking of men who cannot be convicted, and who are yet 
 known to be criminal. Is not, however, Mr. Hill mistaken in 
 calling that knowledge, which, as it is not founded upon proof, 
 is after all nothing more than suspicion, more or less strong, 
 more or less probable ? Belief is not knowledge, neither is it 
 always the consequence of knowledge. It often proceeds from 
 reasons which are incomprehensible to all but the believer. It 
 is also often an effect of impressions for which the subject can 
 give no intelligible account even to himself. Belief, then, in 
 the matter which we are treating amounts only to suspicion, 
 which nothing but evidence can convert into knowledge. The 
 habits of depredation communicate a character to the counte- 
 nance, and not improbably to the motions of the body, and an 
 experienced police officer becomes so well acquainted with the 
 criminal physiognomy that he can feel satisfied of the nature 
 of a man's avocations when he sees him ; but this sort of know- 
 ledge is not sufficient for the magistrate, nor ought it to be, 
 for honest pursuits requiring dexterity and secrecy will commu- 
 nicate the same characteristics on which the police officer con- 
 fidently relies. Here, then, is a species of conviction and belief 
 which is not knowledge, for it is uncertain ; and so we shall 
 find that kind of knowledge of malefactors to be on which Mr. 
 M. D. Hill grounds his proposition to place them under restraint 
 for the prevention of crime. 
 
 ' There is another objection. We are required to make the 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 225 
 
 large sacrifice of confidence in law and justice for a very small 
 advantage, if it be attained. The restraint of known malefac- 
 tors will prevent crime only so far as themselves are concerned, 
 and so far as their example depraves others. This is, however 
 practical it may be, too narrow a view of the subject of preven- 
 tion of crime ; for that properly comprehends, not merely pre- 
 vention in the criminal class and their associates, but in all in 
 whom a criminal tendency may exist at any future time. We 
 can accomplish this, which ought to be the great end of legisla- 
 tion, only by cultivating strong moral convictions in the mass 
 of society, which is to be effected by no other means whatever 
 than the education of the people. Gaols and corporal punish- 
 ments have been tried for thousands of years, and have never 
 succeeded. We are, therefore, weak to confide in such means. 
 No habitual criminals are found in moral communities, and no 
 communities are thoroughly moral which are not well instructed. 
 Show us a high ratio of crime in a country, and we can safely 
 estimate the condition of its population/ 
 
 From the f Manchester Courier,' November 22nd, 1851. 
 
 f One exemplification of anti-popular tendencies has recently 
 occurred. Mr. Hill, the whig-radical Recorder of Birmingham, 
 has broached a notable scheme for purging the body politic. In 
 order to protect the rights of property, which may (as witness 
 the evictions in Ireland) be too exclusively protected, he assails 
 the liberty and rights of the poor, which cannot be too jealously 
 taken care of, he has assumed two principles fundamentally 
 erroneous the one in political economy, the other in jurispru- 
 dence. First : that every man, whatever the state of trade, or 
 of the market for labour, whatever his character or antece- 
 dents in life, can always, if he will, obtain honest employment. 
 Secondly : that persons accused of wilfully omitting to obtain 
 this emplyment, are to be deemed guilty till they prove them- 
 selves innocent. Summary jurisdiction has been said to define 
 as vagrants ' those whose looks the committing magistrate does 
 not like/ This Birmingham Draco would punish his victims 
 because they have been punished before ; would convict a man 
 
 Q 
 
226 Sequel to Charge of October. 1851. 
 
 of crime on the mere surmise that he is idle ; would sentence 
 to perpetual imprisonment persons vainly endeavouring to enter 
 the ranks of the industrious. He borrows the ferocious logic 
 of the Committee of Public Safety, which treated as proven 
 guilty all who were simply ' suspected/ 
 
 ' This extraordinary proposal is deservedly condemned by the 
 Times. Our contemporary, the Manchester Guardian, with 
 others possessing the same regard for popular rights, consis- 
 tently approves it. ' About the principle involved in the 
 matter (he says), we can hardly suppose there is any question 
 that Mr. Hill is right ' and ' the only objection appears to be 
 grounded on the danger of confounding the innocent with the 
 guilty/ And how does our contemporary meet this, it would 
 seem unimportant, consideration? 
 
 ' ' The celebrated dictum (he says), ' Better for ten guilty men 
 to escape than for one innocent man to be punished/ has long 
 appeared to us much more sounding than sensible. Why is it 
 better ? Punishment is the just award of the guilty, by the 
 same law that impunity is the just award of the innocent. It 
 makes no matter whether we refer justice to considerations 
 of abstract right, or of expediency whether we define it to 
 be the fulfilment of a divine retribution, or adherence to the 
 tacit compact of human society. In any case, the reasons 
 for exacting a penalty from the guilty are precisely the same 
 as those by which the innocent is entitled to his acquittal, 
 and necessarily of equal force. The right which we profess 
 to discern in the matter is violated in every instance where 
 guilt or innocence is divorced from its appropriate consequence; 
 and the injury to society being measured by the degree in which 
 the law misses its mark does not vary with the side to which it 
 deviates. It is just as bad for one guilty man to escape as for 
 one innocent man to be punished/ 
 
 e Alas for the people, when a sentiment such as this finds 
 approval amongst their self-constituted defenders ! The pro- 
 posal thus advocated involves some of the worst features of 
 privilege and of caste. We it says the well-to-do and re- 
 spectable, are wholly out of the reach of such a regulation. 
 What matter if mere working people, sometimes or frequently, 
 suffer under causeless imprisonment or persecution ? If the 
 property of the few is thereby rendered more secure in the 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 227 
 
 least, what signifies the freedom or security of the many ? 
 "Whether capital or some lighter punishment be thus inflicted 
 upon the innocent, the argument is the same. To refute such 
 an argument we need only point to the irreparable wrong to 
 the individual by putting him to an unjust death, and the shock 
 to the moral sense, the general insecurity which the discovery 
 of such a legal murder spreads through society. The escape of 
 a person supposed to be guilty produces no such effects. But 
 it is to the flagrant disregard of all the landmarks and safeguards 
 of constitutional freedom, which is indicated by such a scheme, 
 that we desire to call attention. The same disregard is evinced 
 by other proposals, time after time, emanating from the same 
 quarter. Such are the attempts to do away with juries in the 
 first as well as final stages of criminal procedure, and to destroy 
 the popular election of coroners, and the popular constitution of 
 local tribunals; the constant extension of summary proceed- 
 ings ; the substitution of governmental control for local and 
 independent action in educational, sanitary, and other depart- 
 ments. No mere petty economy, no present convenience, how- 
 ever speciously represented, can justify resorting to measures so 
 contrary to all sound principles all constitutional authorities 
 all good government/ 
 
 From the ' Edinburgh Review, October, 1 854. 
 
 'When all [discharged convicts] who can find their way 
 abroad as free emigrants, and by their own pecuniary resources 
 have been put in the way of doing so by such informa- 
 tion and facilities as their friends and their clergyman can 
 furnish; and when others have, through the intermediary 
 stage of these refuges, whose extension and multiplication 
 we would urge so warmly, been enabled to reach the colo- 
 nies, or to find engagements either in domestic service, or 
 on Government w r orks, or with private employers of labour, 
 or as handicraftsmen on their own account; there will still 
 remain a residue, though we hope and believe a very small one, 
 whose reformation is so imperfect, or whose will is so feeble, or 
 whose taste is so incurably vitiated, or whose habits are so 
 hopelessly hardened and corrupt, that their restoration to a 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 course of honest industry must be abandoned as chimerical, or 
 be looked upon, at least, as more than questionable ; men whom 
 we do not feel entitled to retain in permanent confinement, but 
 yet whom we cannot liberate without strong anticipations that 
 they will return to their old way of life, and live by depredation 
 and outrage as before. Against such we are bound to protect 
 society by all reasonable precautions. Thousands such now 
 roam about the land, the terror and the nuisance of every dis- 
 trict they frequent ; hundreds may probably be found still, even 
 after all our plans of reformation and restoration have been put 
 in operation ; men who are well known to the police as habitual 
 criminals, yet who cannot be detected in any specific crime 
 men who are living well, and even wastefully, yet have no 
 ostensible or honest mode of livelihood. With regard to such 
 we see no injustice but, on the contrary, much equity and 
 propriety in putting into action the suggestion of the Recorder 
 of Birmingham. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 ' Mr. Hill's proposal merely amounts to this that a certain 
 amount of specified surveillance after liberation shall be a 
 portion of the punishment to which every convicted offender is 
 sentenced, or, if you prefer so to express it, a condition of his 
 release ; that when once a man has been proved to belong 
 to the criminal population, i.e., to that class which habitually 
 preys upon the community, he shall forfeit that portion of his 
 civil rights which consists in the assumption of his innocence ; 
 that whereas in the case of untainted citizens the onus pro- 
 bandi lies upon their accusers, in the case of liberated convicts 
 the onus should lie with the defendant. In principle we see no 
 objection to Mr. HilPs suggestion. The plea of the liberty of 
 the subject has no force here. When once a man has made 
 himself by crime amenable to the laws of his country, he may 
 justly be deprived of his liberty to any degree, and for any 
 period, which the law deems fit and necessary. Society, which 
 he has menaced and outraged, is obviously just as competent to 
 condemn him to imprisonment for a given term, and to surveil- 
 lance afterwards, as to imprisonment for a longer term, followed 
 by no surveillance to a total deprivation of his liberty for a 
 time (that is), and to a partial curtailment of it subsequently, 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 229 
 
 as to a total deprivation of it for a month, a year, or a life. The 
 convicted criminal has forfeited his social position. Henceforth 
 he is entitled only to that amount of freedom, and to freedom 
 on those terms, which offended society may please to dictate. 
 Nor do we anticipate any mischief in practice, unless such as 
 might equally arise from indiscretion or malice in the adminis- 
 tration of any power. That malignant or over-zealous police- 
 men might, under such a provision, persecute personal enemies, 
 and throw difficulties in the way of unfortunate sinners, who 
 were struggling back to honesty, is just possible as it is 
 possible that they may employ their present official position for 
 purposes of oppression and extortion. It is said they do this as 
 it is. It may be so : all power is liable to abuse, and it is the 
 business of the magistrate to watch with vigilance, and to 
 repress with unsparing severity, all such abuses. The provision 
 in question might, however, be so hedged round with pre- 
 cautions as to make it impossible, or nearly so, to convert it into 
 an engine of injustice or oppression ; while for the public 
 security, we believe, its operation would be of the most signal 
 service. In the first place, the previous conviction (or as we 
 should propose, two previous convictions, to secure his belong- 
 ing to the criminal class] of the man in question must be 
 proved ; then the magistrate (or jury) must have the evidence 
 of two credible witnesses that they believe him to be living by 
 depredation. This done, he is called upon to show that he 
 follows a lawful calling, or that he has property of his own to 
 live upon, or that he is supported by his relatives and friends, 
 or that he has friends who are willing to give bail for his good 
 behaviour. If these facts are so, he can have no difficulty in 
 proving them. The certificate of the employer for whom he 
 works, or the testimony of two cognisable householders that he 
 works at a trade, or any explanation of the mode in which he 
 gains his living, would liberate him at once, and bring a severe 
 reproof on the accusers, who had summoned him. But practi- 
 cally, as all experienced administrators of justice are well aware, 
 mistakes or difficulties would scarcely ever arise : the persons 
 and the habits of professional and regular criminals are perfectly 
 well known to the police ; and the danger is not that the inno- 
 cent should suffer, but that too many habitual offenders should 
 
230 Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 
 
 escape. A great number of the worst depredators would con- 
 trive to allege some plausible and irrefutable source of sub- 
 sistence, and might, only too easily, slip through the meshes 
 of the suggested proviso/ 
 
 It is amusing as well as instructive to contrast the scruples 
 and fears with which a large portion of the press looked upon 
 my proposal to interfere with the liberty of the subject, fenced 
 about as he was to be by manifold safeguards against error and 
 oppression, with the silent acquiescence in which two years after- 
 wards the whole of the Fourth Estate received the provisions for 
 the re-commitment of a licensee under ticket-of-leave at the 
 mere fiat of the Home Secretary, who is empowered to deprive 
 any such license-holder of his ticket without calling upon him 
 to answer the charge upon which he is again to be sent to 
 prison, and without indeed informing him on what charge he is 
 so dealt with ! 
 
 The numbers of criminals at large among us having very much 
 increased since 1850, in consequence of the disuse of transpor- 
 tation, the experience thus furnished appears to have greatly 
 mitigated the objections heretofore entertained by the Times 
 against my proposal. 
 
 1 It is quite obvious that we require some stronger modes of 
 prevention or repression than any now in use among us. We 
 can have little hesitation in saying, that within forty-eight 
 hours the police could hand into the Home Office a very com- 
 plete list, which should contain the names and abodes of the 
 ruffians who infest our streets in the various characters of 
 stabbing assassins, garotters, Notting-hill burglars, and so forth. 
 The list would not be a long one, for it is surprising how small 
 a knot of ruffians can inspire a feeling of insecurity arid terror 
 throughout a large population. In twenty-four hours more, a 
 clean sweep might be made of our professional ruffians, amid 
 the general applause; and .the town would be delivered from its 
 alarms. Why is this not done ? Because it is opposed to the 
 over-magnanimous spirit of British law, which always presumes 
 a man innocent till he is found guilty ; and because it is supposed 
 that in troublesome times an arbitrary Government might abuse 
 a power which would necessarily be abused whenever put forth 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1851. 231 
 
 for any other purpose than the preservation of life and property 
 from violence and wrong. Be it so ; but we must pay the penalty 
 of our chivalry in the shape of daily outrage and nightly fears. 
 We confess we should have little scruple in dealing in a very 
 summary manner indeed with the half hundred Italian ruffians 
 who are now rollicking about Whitechapel and Stepney with 
 their stilettoes and bowie-knives. They, at least, can be got 
 rid of at once ; nor ought the apprehension of what any Mrs. 
 Grundy of the Continental press may say, to deter us from 
 adopting such measures as our own security may require. The 
 question of our own domestic pests is, no doubt, attended with 
 greater difficulty. It is, however, a question which must be 
 very seriously considered ere long, if we are to adhere to the 
 plan of confining our criminal outfalls to the British Isles/* 
 
 * The Times, November T4th, 1856. 
 
232 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1853. 
 
 A LTHOUGH the transactions referred to in this Charge were 
 jLA. of great public notoriety at the time it was delivered, yet 
 they are but imperfectly remembered at the present day ; and 
 (which is much to be lamented) have become distorted and 
 exaggerated to suit the purposes of a popular fiction. To avert 
 so far as I am able the danger of these exaggerations being 
 accepted for truth, I have thought it desirable to insert the 
 following narrative from the Annual Register. If the reader 
 should desire to pursue the subject further, he may consult the 
 Report of the Queen's Commissioners, in which he will find the 
 voluminous evidence, taken before them, in its full detail. 
 
 From the 'Annual Register? 1855. 
 
 CRUELTIES IN BIRMINGHAM GAOL. 
 
 f August 3. At the Warwick Assizes, William Austin, a lieu- 
 tenant in the navy, and formerly Governor of the Birmingham 
 Borough Gaol, was indicted on ten counts, for having committed 
 various assaults by hooks, nails, &c., upon the person of Edward 
 Andrews, formerly a prisoner in the gaol. 
 
 * It appeared by the statement on behalf of the Crown, that 
 Birmingham was formerly, with regard to its criminal business, 
 a part of the county of Warwick. A charter of incorporation, 
 however, having been obtained some years ago, a gaol was 
 erected in 1 849, of which Captain Maconochie was appointed 
 governor; and on his retirement in 1851, Lieutenant Austin, 
 the present defendant, was appointed his successor. In 1 853, 
 in consequence of some circumstances which transpired in con- 
 nection with the death of a prisoner named Andrews, a public 
 meeting was held; Government was memorialised upon the 
 subject, the complaint was referred to the Inspector of Prisons 
 and the borough magistrates, and ultimately, in August, 1853, 
 a commission was appointed to inquire, who made their report 
 
Introduction to Charge of October, 1853. 233 
 
 to both Houses of Parliament.* The Attorney- General having 
 been referred to, the present prosecution was directed. It was 
 admitted that the governor was entitled to hear all complaints, 
 and to apportion punishments for breaches of prison discipline ; 
 but those punishments must be within the limits of the law. 
 It appeared, in connection with the present case, that the boy 
 Andrews, being guilty of noisy and irregular conduct, had been 
 on several occasions subjected to excessive terms of crank labour, 
 the punishment of the jacket, deprivation of food, &c., and that 
 on the night of the 27th of April, 1853, he committed suicide. 
 
 f The evidence detailed a succession of cruelties, for which the 
 misconduct of the deceased certainly afforded no justification. 
 
 ' Mr. G. Hillyard, now governor of the Birmingham Borough 
 Gaol, produced the receiving and punishment books of the prison, 
 from which it appeared Lieutenant Austin, the governor, had on 
 many occasions punished No. 574 (the late prisoner Andrews) 
 for various prison offences, by depriving him of his food for long 
 periods, and by placing him in the punishment jacket. Witness 
 produced the jacket and collar said to have been placed upon 
 Andrews. He had also brought one of the cranks with him, 
 and it was then in Court. Witness had been connected with 
 prison discipline before he came to Birmingham. Cranks 
 were not used for the infliction of hard labour in any prison in 
 which he had been employed before he was appointed to Bir- 
 mingham. 
 
 ' William Brown. I was first-class warder in the Birmingham 
 Gaol in April, 1 853 : remember the boy Andrews ; he was about 
 sixteen years of age, and tall in stature; his conduct and de- 
 meanour were generally respectful. I remember seeing the lad 
 in the punishment-jacket on the I9th of April : he was strapped 
 to the wall ; his arms were bound across his chest, and he had a 
 stiff collar (about four inches wide) buckled tight round his neck. 
 The prisoner seemed to be suffering much from the effects of the 
 jacket ; he had previously called out ' Murder/ and requested me 
 to come to him, and slacken his collar and jacket. I kept a 
 book of my own, in which I made notes : on the 1 9th of April 
 
 * Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the condition and 
 treatment of the prisoners confined in the Birmingham Borough Prison, and the 
 conduct, management, and discipline of the said prison, together with the minutes 
 of evidence. Printed 1854. 
 
234 Introduction to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 I find that Andrews was in the jacket from 1 1 a.m. to 3 p.m. ; 
 on the 24th of April, from 7.30 to loa.m. : he was on bread 
 and water at the time ; he was very wet, and seemed to be suf- 
 fering very much. I released him on that occasion ; that was 
 on a Sunday. I reported to the governor (Lieutenant Austin) 
 the inability of the prisoner to perform the crank labour ; I took 
 him to the cell. This was on the 19th of April. The boy said 
 the crank went heavily, or that it was heavier; the governor 
 said that it was right weight, and that he must do it ; the boy 
 was crying at the time. I took the jacket off on the 24th of 
 April, by direction of Lieutenant Austin. 
 
 ' Thomas Frear. I was chief warder in April, 1853, and knew 
 the prisoner Andrews : he had 10,000 revolutions to perform 
 during the day; he had 2000 before breakfast, 4000 between 
 breakfast and dinner, and 4000 after dinner. If he did not do 
 the 2000 before breakfast, he would not have his breakfast ; and 
 if he failed in performing the 4000 before dinner, he would not 
 be allowed dinner; and if the whole 10,000 were not done at 
 bedtime, he would be put on bread and water. He would be 
 without gas if he had not done his work during daylight. The 
 prisoner Andrews was stubborn at his work. When in the 
 punishment-jacket, I have heard him cry out ; when he was in the 
 jacket, water has been thrown upon him; I did it once : it was 
 the practice to throw it over the prisoners ; it was the practice 
 when prisoners were shamming, or fainting, or something of 
 that sort. Before I was in the Birmingham prison, I was 
 warder in the Leicester Gaol : the jacket and collar were in use 
 at Leicester, and sometimes I found that the prisoners tore off 
 their jackets ; I therefore suggested the use of the collar to keep 
 them on. 
 
 ' The Rev. Ambrose Sherwin. I was chaplain of the Birming- 
 ham Gaol, and am now chaplain of the Pentonville Prison. I 
 knew the prisoner Andrews ; he appeared to me to be of a mild 
 disposition. I went into his cell on the j 9th of April, and found 
 him crying ; they were the cries of a person in much pain ; 
 the word ' murder } was used frequently ; he was strapped to 
 the wall, and complained of the compression of his limbs arid 
 the tightness of the collar round his neck ; I could not get my 
 finger within his collar. I frequently conversed with the pri- 
 soner when he was at work at the crank ; he always complained 
 
Introduction to Charge of October, 1853. 235 
 
 of being too weakly, and so he appeared ; he was always com- 
 plaining. The last occasion when I saw him was on a Sunday 
 evening ; he had been released from the jacket that morning ; 
 he complained then of hunger and want of food ; he was always 
 pained and anxious. He committed suicide on the 27th. 
 
 ' J. Brooks. I was night warder in the Birmingham Gaol in 
 1853, and remember finding Andrews dead in his cell on the 
 night of the 27th of April ; he had hung himself to a bar of the 
 window ; the prisoner had been deprived of his bed that night. 
 
 ' John Wood. I was schoolmaster in the Birmingham Gaol in 
 April, 1853. I knew the boy Andrews; he did not come under 
 my tuition, as he was so frequently under punishment; I never 
 saw him violent or refractory. The Sunday before his death I 
 was attracted by a loud moaning noise in one of the cells, and 
 I followed the noise until I reached the cell from which it pro- 
 ceeded; it proceeded from Andrews. I found him with the 
 jacket on, and the floor was covered with water; in the water 
 lay a pair of socks, and he stood upon them ; his feet were 
 bare ; a bucket was near ; it would hold a large quantity of 
 water. I saw the prisoner released ; T remember he had marks 
 on his arms and body, as if much pressed; he appeared very 
 weakly. 
 
 1 Mr. T. Underhay, crank manufacturer, of London, stated 
 that 5 Ib. weight would slightly move the handle of the crank 
 downwards ; but to carry it round 30 revolutions a minute, it 
 would require a power equal to 20 Ib. upon the handle. 
 
 ' Mr. Kettle. Have there been any attempts at suicide since 
 Lieutenant Austin left? 
 
 ' Witness. Yes; I should say seven or eight ; four or five this 
 year. I generally find they follow each other. 
 
 ' For the prisoner it was urged that he was a most honourable 
 and humane man, and had the greatest consideration for the 
 prisoners under his charge. But his situation was a most dif- 
 ficult one ; his prisoners were committed to him sentenced to 
 ordinary punishment, and if they proved refractory it was ne- 
 cessary that he should have resort to some means of further 
 punishment, which should enforce the discipline of the gaol. 
 
 ' Mr. Justice Coleridge said that the use of the strait-waist- 
 coat, the collar, and water were clearly illegal punishments. 
 
 ' The jury immediately returned a verdict of ' Guilty/ 
 
235 Introduction to Charge of October, 18^3. 
 
 f On the following day, Lieutenant Austin and Mr. Blount, 
 the surgeon of the gaol, were put on their trial, charged with 
 having in various ways illegally assaulted a prisoner named 
 Hunt. 
 
 ' It is unnecessary to give the evidence at length. The princi- 
 pal act was detailed by 
 
 ' Daniel Hart well. I was messenger in the Birmingham Gaol 
 in 1852, and knew the prisoner Samuel Hunt; we generally 
 considered him of unsound mind. I remember the punishment- 
 jacket being put upon him ; it had the effect of entirely confin- 
 ing the man; the governor, Mr. Blount, the surgeon, Mr. Pearce, 
 one of the warders, Mr. Wood, and myself, were present. The 
 jacket was put upon Hunt because he was refractory, and refused 
 to go into the reception-cell ; he had no jacket on when he was 
 taken from the bath to the reception-cell ; the prison clothes 
 were then put on him, and the governor ordered a strait-jacket; 
 the prisoner was striving to bite everybody; I do not think 
 that at that time he knew any one. There was a piece of salt 
 lying in the window, and Mr. Blount requested me to give it 
 to him ; salt was left in every cell for the use of the prisoners ; 
 I gave it to Mr. Blount, and he crushed it into Hunt's mouth; 
 Wood was putting the jacket on at the time; the surgeon asked 
 me for more salt, which I fetched from another cell ; the salt 
 was no longer in his mouth than he could spit it out ; when I 
 fetched another little bit, similar to the first, I gave it to the 
 surgeon, and he put it into Hunt's mouth, who was still being 
 held by Pearce and Wood ; he again tried to bite. I was then 
 called away to another duty; the second time there was, I 
 should say, a tablespoonful put into Hunt's mouth. 
 
 1 Cross-examined. I never knew the prisoner before I saw 
 him on the occasions to which I have referred. I heard a dis- 
 turbance and ran down stairs to give my assistance in the 
 reception-cell; the prisoner refused to go into the cell, and 
 kicked Mr. Wood; I assisted, and we got him in; he was too 
 much for one ; he was naked when he came out of the bath 
 into the passage, and refused to go into the reception-cell. The 
 prison dress was, I believe, put upon him ; while we were 
 putting the dress upon him, Hunt resisted, and made a noise 
 the whole time ; the governor and surgeon were sent for, and 
 I believe they came together; Hunt was still resisting and 
 
Introduction to Charge of October, 1853. 237 
 
 using violence. As far as I can recollect, the governor and sur- 
 geon were not present when we put on the jacket; it was an 
 ordinary strait- waistcoat ; he was not strapped to the wall ; he 
 attempted to bite everybody who came near him, and made a 
 great noise. Reception-cells are sometimes used as confine- 
 ment-cells, and that is the reason the salt was there ; we 
 always left small quantities for the use of the prisoners. When 
 the salt was in his mouth, he could not bite ; but he attempted 
 to bite after the salt was put in the first time ; he was quieter 
 after the jacket was put on ; the governor was present when 
 salt was put into the prisoner's mouth. 
 
 ' The evidence both as to the punishment and as to the almost 
 insane violence of the deceased was corroborated by all the 
 witnesses. 
 
 ' Sir F. Thesiger, for Mr. Blount, urged with great power that 
 upon this occasion at least, whatever might be the truth as to 
 other occasions which were not now in question, Mr. Austin 
 had exceeded neither his power nor his duty. The prisoner, 
 Hunt, had been committed to his custody for punishment, 
 according to his sentence ; and this involved, as a natural con- 
 sequence, that Mr. Austin might do all that was lawful for his 
 safe custody and to enforce discipline. Hunt was well known to 
 the gaolers ; he was known to be violent, he had attempted to 
 throw a gaoler from the top of the stairs ; and upon this occasion 
 he offered to them the most violent resistance to the perform- 
 ance of their duty. Mr. Austin was summoned to the spot ; 
 he came and ordered the prisoner to be secured in a strait- 
 jacket. This was a proper restraint ; he had power to do it, 
 and he had not exceeded his power. With regard to Mr. 
 Blount, he also had been summoned to the case. He found 
 the prisoner exhibiting the utmost violence, and raging like a 
 maniac, and likely to throw himself into a fit. The salt was at 
 hand, and salt was a remedy against paroxysms, such as the 
 prisoner seemed about to fall into. It was perfectly true that 
 he did not administer the salt as a medicine, but it was his 
 duty to check the convulsions of rage into which the prisoner 
 had thrown himself. The salt might have been efficacious, not 
 only as a mechanical obstructive, but because, from its nauseous 
 taste, it would probably serve to abate the prisoner's rage. The 
 salt had not been thrust into the prisoner's mouth with mine- 
 
238 Charge of October, 18 53. 
 
 cessary violence, as appeared from the fact that some of it he 
 spat on to the ground, and some into the warder's face. Mr. 
 Blount enjoyed a most excellent character, and was a most 
 humane man. 
 
 ( Mr. Justice Coleridge said that, in his opinion, there was no 
 xase against Mr. Austin, the governor j but he should leave it 
 to the Jury to say whether Mr. Blount had or had not been 
 guilty of unnecessary violence by the administration of 
 the salt. 
 
 ( The Jury, after a short consultation, acquitted both pri- 
 soners. 
 
 ' Mr. Austin and Mr. Blount were then indicted for having 
 omitted to make certain entries, required by Act of Parliament, 
 in the prison books, and were found guilty in two cases. 
 
 ' The defendant, Austin, was brought up before the Court of 
 Queen's Bench to receive sentence. The Court heard counsel 
 in his behalf; but the case was deemed of such importance, 
 that the Attorney- General appeared to maintain the course of 
 justice. The Court, taking various circumstances into consi- 
 deration, passed sentence of three months' imprisonment/ 
 [The surgeon was not brought up for judgment.] 
 
 CHARGE OF OCTOBER, 1853. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, 
 
 IT has long since grown into a usage that at the present 
 season, which is the commencement of the legal year, T 
 should present to the Grand Jury of the Birmingham Sessions 
 a Charge on some topic of criminal jurisprudence, or intimately 
 connected with that important subject. On the present occa- 
 sion I am about to address you on one to which I am drawn by 
 an irresistible, though painful attraction. Birmingham has 
 recently been the scene of an inquiry which must have filled 
 the minds of every person connected with the town, either by 
 the ties of birth or of residence, with deep humiliation. For 
 myself, I can say that it is the last of a chain of events 
 
Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 among the most unfortunate which have occurred to me 
 in a life now of no very brief duration. Having had, in the 
 course of my professional duties at the bar, and of my official 
 duties as the Recorder of this Court, constantly to deplore the 
 inefficiency for good purposes of the ordinary discipline of our 
 gaols, it was with the brightest hopes that I learned the design 
 of the municipal authorities to build a prison expressly for this 
 Borough; because, from my confidence in the character of those 
 who took the lead in the undertaking, I expected it would be 
 the commencement of a new era in the treatment of our 
 criminals. These anticipations I fondly thought realized by 
 the appointment of Captain Maconochie to the office of governor 
 of the new gaol. And if I had known that in July, 1 850, after 
 an experience of nine months, the magistrates had entered upon 
 their books a minute testifying their satisfaction with his 
 management, I should have considered the wishes and aspirations 
 of years as fully accomplished ; and that my cares would for the 
 future be limited to the agreeable task of watching the deve- 
 lopment of sound principles, and observing them from time to 
 time produce their salutary effects. But I will not detain you 
 by dwelling on the series of disappointments which unhappily 
 soon overclouded so auspicious an inauguration of this experi- 
 ment. Gentlemen, deeply as our feelings were wounded when 
 the c secrets of the prison-house' were laid bare to our eyes, you 
 and I have at least the consolation of reflecting that our con- 
 sciences are not burdened by any participation in act or suffer- 
 ance with the enormities which have made the misgovernment 
 of our gaol the theme of reproach, assailing our ears on which- 
 ever side we bend our steps. But, although we are not 
 responsible for the past, we shall be without excuse for the 
 future, if we do not, each in his own sphere, exert ourselves to 
 the utmost to guard against the recurrence of these disgraceful 
 and afflicting abuses of power. 
 
 Gentlemen, we approach the subject with one advantage. 
 We are not called upon to scan these transactions with a view 
 to the censure of the parties implicated in them : we may, there- 
 fore, withdraw our attention from all mere personal questions ; 
 and regard what has occurred as an event in the history of the 
 treatment of criminals, from which it is our duty to extract as 
 much of instruction as we can make it yield. And let us 
 
24 Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 remember for our encouragement the words of our greatest 
 poet 
 
 ( There is some soul of good in things evil, 
 Would men observingly distil it out. ' 
 
 We will, then, do our best to calm our minds, and contemplate, 
 if we can, the revolting facts before us exclusively in the light 
 of an important experiment in prison discipline ; all the more 
 imperatively demanding our scrutiny, because we are warned by 
 our most solemn duties, as well as urged by our best feelings, 
 to preclude, so far as our power extends, the possibility of its 
 repetition. 
 
 The state of things in the gaol, disclosed to us by the evidence 
 before the Commissioners, is one in which those who are in- 
 trusted with the control of the prisoners seem to have acted 
 under the impression that they could not possibly err on the 
 side of severity ; and that what they had to guard against was too 
 mild a treatment of the individuals committed to their care. In 
 arriving at this conclusion, they altogether mistook, I am per- 
 suaded, the sentiments of their superiors ; at the same time, I 
 am not very much surprised at their mistake. A general im- 
 pression appears to have been made, and it is one which I myself 
 have shared, that the objection to Captain Maconochie's treat- 
 ment was, that it did not correspond with the received notions 
 on the subject of punishment ; in other words, that it was not 
 sufficiently painful to be deterrent. This view may have been 
 adopted in the interior of the gaol; and it may have been 
 strengthened by the appointment of a new governor, known to 
 be what is called a strict disciplinarian. From whatever cause 
 arising, however, it seems quite clear that pain was the great, if 
 not the sole agent relied upon in the management of the gaol. 
 And certainly it cannot be said that the application of this 
 favourite specific was restrained by any of those scruples which 
 would have marred the process if it had been intrusted to 
 persons of ordinary sensibility. The experiment then has been 
 fully tried ; and, even by the testimony of those by whom it 
 was instituted and carried into effect, it has utterly failed. 
 This admission cannot be too highly appreciated ; as no donbt 
 will be entertained that it could only have been extorted by an 
 overwhelming weight of evidence. We have it now established 
 beyond dispute, that the multiplication of punishments, instead 
 
Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 of reducing the number of prison offences, very seriously aug- 
 mented them ; each punishment may therefore be considered as 
 the parent of a large progeny. The legitimate object of punish- 
 ment, then, not having been gained, let us see what results 
 have been produced. On certain of the prisoners, who were 
 able to bear up against these perpetual inflictions, a hardening 
 process appears to have taken place, so that they are found soon 
 to return to the gaol after their discharge ; but, with regard to 
 those of more irritable temperament, they, alas ! are found to 
 have sought refuge from persecution in suicide. Now, putting 
 out of consideration the sufferings of these wretched creatures, 
 forgetting them, if we can, let us consider the consequences 
 which were sure, out of doors, to follow, first or last, such a 
 system of prison discipline. The feelings of the community in 
 whose town such deeds have been committed are lacerated 
 beyond endurance, popular emotion spreads itself abroad until 
 the whole nation is disturbed, and until even foreign journals 
 are filled with vituperation of English inhumanity ; or, what is 
 even more to be lamented, the slaveholder and the despot 
 justify themselves for the wrongs which they inflict on their 
 captives, by pointing the finger at England's cruelties, and they 
 laugh to scorn her admonitions and her censures. Thus in 
 distant regions may the sufferings endured by the inmates of 
 our gaol be made to aggravate the tortures of unhappy beings 
 who never heard the name of our town. Yet, confining our- 
 selves to that town, the consequences of such events as those 
 we have witnessed are deeply to be deplored. Magistrates are 
 lowered in popular estimation, rudely thrust from the bench to 
 be placed at the bar ; criminals leave the dock and are raised to 
 the witness-box, their evidence, in the excited condition of the 
 public mind, being received without those doubts and misgivings 
 which, in a calmer state of feeling, would necessarily and pro- 
 perly attach themselves to testimony drawn from such a polluted 
 source. 
 
 In fine, the criminal becomes an object of sympathy, as 
 against the ministers of the law. Now, although I am the last 
 man to rob the convict of sympathy, or to desire that he should 
 be regarded only with scorn, yet I cannot but feel it to be a 
 calamity when that sympathy is given to the prisoner at the ex- 
 pense either of the law itself, or of those whose duty it is to carry 
 
242 Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 the law into execution. Where such is the public sentiment 
 towards criminals, either the law or its administration must be 
 open to severe censure; or, on the other hand, public opinion 
 itself must be in a most unwholesome state. In either case 
 criminal jurisprudence is grievously weakened in its competency 
 to repress crime ; for let it never be forgotten that the penal 
 sanctions of the law are of little avail unless they have the addi- 
 tional sanction of public opinion. It is indeed to be feared that 
 years may elapse before the moral anarchy which, the events of 
 the last few months have introduced among us, will give way to 
 that wholesome respect for authority, in losing which the cause 
 of order loses its main stay and support. Let me, then, again 
 urge upon you the necessity of balancing in some degree at least 
 these evils, by profiting to the utmost from the lesson which 
 they teach. 
 
 Surely the late unhappy experiment will demonstrate to 
 many a mind which has resisted all former evidence, the folly 
 and the danger of giving an exaggerated value to the deterrent 
 principle of punishment ; since while we have seen that some 
 prisoners have been hardened by it, and others driven to self- 
 destruction, we do not find that to any it has been the means 
 of improvement. 
 
 But whatever shows us the fallacy of trusting to the motive 
 of fear as our sole protective against the recurrence of crime, 
 demonstrates at the same time the propriety of appealing to the 
 higher and better feelings of the prisoner. 
 
 Gentlemen, if we could shut our ears to the prisoner's cry, 
 and if we could bring our minds to keep him deprived of liberty 
 until his death, we might satisfy ourselves with merely segre- 
 gating the evil-doer from the society of his fellow-men, simply 
 confining him in a gaol ; and we might relieve ourselves from 
 all the labours which have for their object to restore him to his 
 place in society, imbued with the principles of honesty, endowed 
 with the power of self-government, and prepared for the 
 struggles of life by habits of industry. But as neither the laws 
 of our country, nor our feelings as men and Christians, will 
 allow of this oblivion, and, moreover, as we who are in authority 
 now find that even if we could ' steep our senses in forgetful- 
 ness/ the people at large will not indulge in the same lethargy, 
 but will arouse us with a voice of thunder we are driven to 
 
Charge of October, 1853. 243 
 
 the conclusion that there is no alternative but to aim at so con- 
 ducting the discipline of our gaols as that we shall do whatever 
 can be done within the limited period allowed by the law for 
 the training to which I have adverted, in order that when the 
 hour of discharge arrives we shall send forth, riot a malefactor 
 eager to rush back into his former courses, but a repentant 
 fellow-man, determined to act honestly, and to do his duty in 
 that station of life to which it has pleased God to call him. 
 
 Gentlemen, I am deeply impressed with the belief that the 
 reformation of the criminal is as truly and sincerely the object 
 which the magistrates of this borough have had in view in the 
 management of the gaol, as I believe that it is my own; and 
 moreover, I believe the cruelties which have been perpetrated 
 were unknown to them, and not only unknown but unsuspected. 
 Again, it is my further belief that the bench of magistrates of 
 the town of Birmingham numbers upon it many gentlemen 
 whose convictions of the impolicy of harshness, and whose desire 
 to rule by hope instead of by fear, are as strong as they are in 
 any one of you whom I have now the honour to address ; and I 
 cannot therefore but indulge the consolatory anticipation that 
 the future management of the gaol will evince a conformity with 
 these principles. Of one of that body, the Chairman of the 
 Visiting Justices, who now sits at my right hand, I speak from 
 an intimacy of more than thirty years. I know well his kind- 
 ness of heart, I know how thoroughly he has studied the 
 principles of prison discipline, and I know that his opinions are 
 in conformity with my own. He had been in office but a very 
 short time prior to the discoveries which led to the inquiry, and 
 immediately on these discoveries he exerted himself with zeal 
 and effect to put an end to the abuses which he in common with 
 ourselves so deeply laments.* 
 
 In short, I hope and trust that we are destined to witness a 
 return to the system of prison discipline advocated by Captain 
 Maconochie, so far at least as the restrictions contained in the 
 laws applicable to the government of prisons will admit of such 
 a course. Now, Gentlemen, what is that system ? I speak 
 not of details, but of leading features ; and, as much misconcep- 
 tion is abroad on the subject, permit me to call your attention 
 
 * Mr. Wills, the author of a valuable treatise on Circumstantial Evidence. 
 
 B 2 
 
244 Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 to a few main points, by which you will be enabled to form an 
 opinion as to whether or not his principles approve themselves 
 to your judgment. The Captain proposes to treat a prisoner 
 who has fallen into crime as a person is treated by society, 
 who, by his indolence, his prodigality, and his imprudence, has 
 fallen into adversity. Such a person is left to work his way 
 out of the unhappy position in which he has placed himself, and 
 the only difference which the Captain would make results from 
 two circumstances the one is, that as the misconduct of the 
 criminal is graver, so must his adversity be more profound, and 
 his sufferings, for his own sake as well as for that of society, 
 more severe, than those of his brother in affliction ; such 
 severity being essential to his reformation. The remaining 
 circumstance is, that the criminal being in captivity, his actions 
 are more completely under control than is the case with the 
 individual to whom reference has been made as being in a posi- 
 tion somewhat analogous. Here, again, the power over the 
 criminal, resulting from his subjection to the governor, is to be 
 used for promoting his reformation, and for that object alone. 
 Yet, believe me, Gentlemen, if the work of reformation be so 
 prosecuted as to lead to a successful result, there must be suf- 
 fering enough endured by the convict to accomplish all that 
 deterrents, truly estimated, can be expected to accomplish. In 
 confirmation of this opinion, permit me to read you a passage 
 from the work of a near relative, who devoted fifteen years of 
 his life to the duties of Inspector of Prisons, partly in Scotland 
 and partly in England, and who has acquired therefore an 
 experience so varied and ample as it has fallen to the lot of few 
 meri to attain. 
 
 Speaking of the Scottish prisons, in which, mainly by his 
 exertions, much progress had been made towards the establish- 
 ment of right principles of prison discipline, he says : 1 1 
 believe the notion that the prisons in Scotland have, to a great 
 extent, lost their penal character, to be quite unfounded ; on the 
 contrary, I am of opinion, notwithstanding all that has been 
 done to improve the condition of the prisoners, that to the really 
 criminal in habits the prisons were never so much dreaded as 
 at this moment. 
 
 ' I attribute the mistake to the superficial view likely to be 
 taken by any one who walks through one of the present prisons 
 
Charge of October, 1853. 245 
 
 in Scotland, and who does not take various matters into con- 
 sideration which it is necessary to bear in mind. Such a visitor 
 will see a number of people neatly dressed, clean, in small 
 rooms certainly but sufficiently warm and tolerably well 
 lighted, busily engaged at spinning, weaving, shoemaking, 
 mat-making, knitting, sewing, picking old cords, and various 
 other kinds of work ; and in his round he will probably meet 
 the chaplain and teacher, employed in exhortation and in- 
 struction. 
 
 ( If he waits till dinner-time, he will see the prisoners get a 
 meal of plain but wholesome food ; and if he should possibly 
 stay till bed-time, he may see them comfortably lodged for the 
 night in their hammocks. And such a visitor may say to him- 
 self, on quitting the prison, ' Why, what is there penal in all 
 this ? These people are probably better fed, better clothed, and 
 better lodged than they would be in their own houses, or than 
 many an honest man is who never injured society ! Such a 
 system must act rather as a premium to crime than as a terror 
 to evil-doers/ 
 
 ' But let the visitor reflect that, first, as respects the honest 
 workman, the prisoner has entirely lost his freedom, and ceased 
 to be his own master ; that he is not only cut off from family 
 and friends, but that, generally, he is deprived of companionship 
 altogether ; that he must neither whistle, sing, nor shout ; that, 
 day after day, and month after month, except at the intervals of 
 exercise, he is confined within the four walls of his little cell, 
 Sundays and holidays affording no relief, the very changes of 
 the season almost unknown to him, for all, at least, that he can 
 partake of their charms, let him think of this, and he will 
 probably be of opinion that, though the prisoners were fed on 
 turtle, instead of barley broth, and slept on down, instead of 
 straw, there would still be few applicants among the honest 
 working class for permission to occupy their places. 
 
 f And let the visitor, further, make himself acquainted with 
 the habits of criminals, and with their ideas of comfort and 
 luxury, and he will probably come to the conclusion that their 
 distress must indeed be severe, and such as to make their being 
 at large dangerous to all around them, before such persons 
 would voluntarily enter a prison. 
 
 ' For what, owing generally to wretched training, are the 
 
246 Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 habits of criminals? Idleness, late rising, and indulgence in 
 drinking, smoking, and gambling. And what regard is paid to 
 these habits, however strong they may be, on entering a Scot- 
 tish prison ? Not the slightest. However great a sluggard, 
 he must rise, the very morning after his admission, even in the 
 middle of winter, when the clock strikes six. 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 any- 
 thing 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 ; and 
 it will be seen that that which is pleasing to the eye of the 
 visitor, and excellent in itself, is often obtained with much 
 though necessary pain ; and the delusion will be dispelled that 
 the prisons have ceased to be places of punishment. 
 
 ' I have no doubt, indeed, that, except the weaker prisoners, 
 who used to be exposed to the tyranny of the stronger, all the 
 worst criminals suffer much more punishment now than when 
 they were allowed to pass their time in drinking, gambling, 
 smoking, stealing from each other, and recounting their mis- 
 deeds/ Hill on Crime, pp. 188 191. 
 
 Having read this passage, let me pause for a moment, and 
 remark upon that portion of it which speaks of the dinner being 
 kept back upon the non-completion of the appointed task ; you, 
 Gentlemen, will not be hurried into condemning the use of an 
 expedient because of its abuse. With such qualifications as dis- 
 cretion and humanity will suggest, it is right to make the supply 
 of food depend upon the exertions of the prisoner, although it 
 
Charge of October, 1853. 247 
 
 is a gross perversion of such an expedient blindly and recklessly 
 to withhold the sustenance which is needful for supporting his 
 strength, and then to urge upon him the completion of a task 
 to which he has thus been rendered incompetent. 
 
 Gentlemen, to be called upon to make bricks without straw 
 would seem to be a slight oppression in comparison with that of 
 being urged to make a crank revolve thousands of times when 
 the sufferer is trembling and faint for lack of nourishment. 
 
 But to return; the crime of the prisoner having plunged 
 him into adversity, let him be put into a state of gradual pro- 
 gress towards redeeming his position a progress which com- 
 mences at the lowest point, and is, or aims at being, a con- 
 tinued rise up to the moment of his discharge from the gaol. 
 Let him, then, in the first instance, be consigned to a separate 
 cell, kept without employment, with merely such allowance of 
 food as nature requires, and visited only by the prison officers, 
 the chaplain, and such humane persons as take upon themselves, 
 under the permission and regulation of the magistrates, the 
 duty cast on all Christians by the highest authority, of visiting 
 the prisoner. 
 
 And here permit me to read another passage from the work 
 which I have just cited. ' Much valuable assistance in the 
 mental, moral, and religious instruction of prisoners, may be 
 obtained by well- selected volunteers from the surrounding popu- 
 lation ; for, to the honour of humanity, the number who thus 
 offer their gratuitous aid is generally sufficient to admit of a 
 considerable choice. 
 
 ' Those, and they are many, who object to such assistance, 
 should recollect that Howard, the first and greatest prison re- 
 former, was himself a volunteer ; and no less so the excellent 
 Mrs. Fry, who worthily followed in his footsteps. 
 
 ' The feeling on the part of the prisoners, that persons who 
 thus, of their own accord, come to visit them, and to labour for 
 their improvement, must have their interest at heart, and can- 
 not be discharging a mere duty for which they are paid, adds 
 much to the power of such instruction ; and if discreetly used, 
 this power may be turned to very good account. The ties, too, 
 which are thus formed with some of the best of their species, 
 feeble as such ties may appear, are often of inestimable value 
 after a prisoner's liberation, as is shown by the large number 
 
248 Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 of offenders who have become respectable members of society 
 through the instrumentality of Mr. Wright, of Manchester. 
 
 ' The divine provision by which he who dispenses good there- 
 by benefits himself, appears to be a strong inducement to this 
 good work. Some time ago, a lady of high rank applied for 
 permission for herself and others to visit the female inmates of 
 a small prison in Scotland; washing to come, not as a conde- 
 scending patroness, but, as she herself expressed it, ' as woman 
 to woman/ with a conviction that she and those associated with 
 her would derive more profit even than the prisoners themselves. 
 
 The following paragraph on the benefit of such visits as I 
 have spoken of is taken from the Report, for 1850, of the 
 Physician of the Eastern Penitentiary, Philadelphia : 
 
 ' f I have heard various estimates of the amount of inter- 
 course afforded to our prisoners, but they were all very much 
 exaggerated. My own observation and the opinion of our 
 most intelligent officers satisfy me that the average daily con- 
 versation of each prisoner does not exceed, if indeed it equals, 
 ten minutes. This is quite too little. 
 
 s f Men of strong and cultivated intellects, with books for 
 companions, might bear uninjured this privation of social inter- 
 course ; but the ignorant and weak-minded prisoner must be 
 more or less injuriously affected by it. If it were not possible 
 to remedy this evil, how far it might be urged against the sys- 
 tem I shall leave others to determine ; but, happily, there is no 
 amount of intercourse necessary, that cannot be afforded with 
 the greatest ease. Heretofore, the individuals permitted to visit 
 the prisoners for the purpose of moral instruction, &c., have 
 been invariably confined to the more educated classes. I believe 
 this to be an error. Among those of our citizens who have 
 less pretensions to intellectual culture, many will be found who 
 possess every qualification necessary to render their intercourse 
 with convicts highly beneficial. I would therefore earnestly 
 recommend that their services be immediately solicited/ ' Hill 
 on Crime, 271 273. 
 
 Gentlemen, since this work was written, an additional reason 
 for encouraging the visits of charitable individuals to the gaol 
 has become obvious to all who reflect on the subject. Such 
 visitors admitted to each prisoner and gaining his confidence, 
 would form a check against oppression, which, as we have now 
 
Charge of October, 1853. 249 
 
 discovered, requires all the checks which invention can suggest. 
 That criminals should be secluded from indiscriminate associa- 
 tion with persons from without cannot be denied ; but neither, 
 on the other hand, can it be denied that abuses readily creep 
 into all establishments from which the light of publicity is with- 
 drawn. Probably the regulated intercourse with the world 
 which the author recommends, would be found to adjust con- 
 tending objections better than any other arrangement. 
 
 The prisoner, precluded from his habitual indulgences, and 
 deprived of all employment, in the majority of instances will feel 
 his position so irksome, that labour, if it be associated in his mind 
 with improvement in his condition, will be received as a boon 
 rather than as a task. Here the question arises as to what species 
 of labour is most desirable for him ; and in determining it we 
 must bear in mind that one great object being to raise his 
 aspirations, and gradually to produce a feeling of self-respect, 
 there should be nothing in his ordinary treatment to interfere 
 with such a process. I therefore consider it essential that the 
 employment should consist of labour which produces a useful 
 result. If the labour be, commercially speaking, profitable, and 
 known by the convict to be profitable, so much the better : yet 
 even if it yield no profit to the managers of the prison, but, on 
 the contrary, entail some slight pecuniary burden, still it is of 
 such importance to form habits of willing industry and incul- 
 cate respect for labour, that it would not be wise to be scared 
 by such a loss. That no such loss need be sustained, and 
 indeed that prisoners may be employed so as to reduce, if not 
 extinguish the cost of their sustenance, lodging, and guardian- 
 ship, there is abundant evidence to prove ; and it is obvious that 
 the recent advance in the price of labour gives new facilities to 
 such undertakings. For many reasons, it is fortunate when 
 agriculture can be made one of the main employments of pri- 
 soners. With regard to the convicts in the Birmingham Gaol, 
 such an application of their labour is not possible : but surely 
 many handicrafts may be found, if diligently sought, and if the 
 prejudice against turning the labour of prisoners to profit were 
 exploded from the minds of the managers. That it can be 
 advantageous to society to prevent any of its members from 
 earning their subsistence, whether such members are in confine- 
 ment or at liberty, is a paradox against which our common 
 
250 Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 sense revolts ; and which has been too often exposed to justify 
 my occupying your time further on such a topic. Let, then, 
 the prisoner be employed in productive labour, if possible, and 
 let him enjoy a portion of the profit, partly in bettering his 
 position, partly in accumulating a store to assist him upon his 
 discharge ; and, by all means, let the prisoner himself have some 
 limited option in the disposal of that fund, with a view to exer- 
 cise his power of self-government. No doubt the strongest 
 motive to frugality that could be offered to him would be that 
 his self-denial, with regard to the indulgences which he might 
 purchase for himself in gaol, should operate to shorten the 
 duration of his imprisonment ; but here the law interposes, by 
 making the period of discharge a fixed point of time, instead of 
 one to be accelerated or retarded by the conduct of the prisoner, 
 a provision on which Captain Maconochie strenuously insists : 
 and, therefore, the managers of prisons are thrown upon the 
 necessity of inventing other motives for stimulating the industry 
 and checking the disposition of the prisoner to immediate indul- 
 gence. But these difficulties, though great, are not insuperable ; 
 and much has been done, even with the law as it is, to induce 
 habits both of industry and thrift. And when it is considered 
 that it is to the want of these habits that so large a portion 
 of the crime of the country may be attributed, no exertion will 
 appear too great which will insure these happy results. 
 
 In the remarks which I have made on productive labour, I 
 have, by implication, condemned the employment of the tread- 
 wheel and of the crank. With regard to the latter, however, 
 I am not insensible to the arguments which are adduced in its 
 favour, and which deserve attention. The crank, when properly 
 constructed, measures the amount of force necessary to produce 
 a given number of revolutions with great accuracy, and with 
 equal accuracy it registers the amount of labour performed ; and 
 it has been said with regard to the unproductiveness of such 
 labour, that to the prisoner it is productive, and has all the 
 encouraging effect of productive labour on his mind, if by the 
 regulations of the gaol, he is rewarded for such labour to the 
 same amount as he would receive if it in truth yielded a profit 
 to the managers. And I think it probable that, with very 
 young persons, the mental effect here described may be pro- 
 duced. At the same time, I must believe that they will very 
 
Charge of October, 1853. 251 
 
 soon feel the repugnance which belongs to all exertions essen- 
 tially barren of useful or agreeable results. It is possible, how- 
 ever, that as a step in his upward course, if it be a step which 
 he has the opportunity of quickly leaving behind by well- 
 directed endeavours to mount higher, the crank may be deserv- 
 ing of a place in a judicious system of prison discipline. 
 
 But experience has shown that it is liable to great abuse, and 
 that its employment should be jealously watched, and restrained 
 within very narrow limits. 
 
 Hitherto I have considered the criminal as gradually working 
 his way out of adversity, without a relapse during his progress ; 
 but this will not be so ; in fact, habits of industry and self- 
 government are not formed without numerous efforts, many of 
 them failures. And here, as in the world at large, failures 
 should bring upon the individual the natural penalty of retarding 
 his progress, by thrusting him down a few steps, and making it 
 imperative upon him to incur the labour of remounting them. 
 After a time (and in the majority of cases, no very long time), 
 the prisoner, by his conduct, will have given proof satisfactory 
 to the mind of a skilful and experienced governor, that his 
 aspirations are steadily directed to right objects, and that his 
 failures, when failures occur, spring from that incapacity for 
 making our actions conform to our sense of duty, which every 
 man among us who faithfully searches his own heart must feel 
 is more or less the common lot of humanity. ' The good that 
 I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do/ 
 Such is the confession of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, and 
 when he was conscious of this infirmity, who of us can claim 
 exemption, and hope to be believed ? 
 
 The efforts of a prisoner in this frame of mind, it will at once 
 be admitted, deserve encouragement, and his errors must be 
 dealt with patiently; but, as there is all the difference in the 
 world between kindness and indulgence, sympathy for his un- 
 successful endeavours must never go to the length of relieving 
 him from the natural consequences of his failures. When the 
 desire to act well has been thus implanted in the mind of the 
 prisoner, the reason for secluding him from the society of other 
 prisoners in a like frame of mind is at an end, and the reason 
 ceasing, the practice should cease with it. Captain Maconochic 
 has found the best effects to result from bringing prisoners thus 
 
Charge of October, 1853. . 
 
 desirous for improvement into society with each other, dividing 
 them, however, into small classes. And he has found also, that 
 by making the penalties arising from failures to fall, not upon 
 the individual exclusively, but upon the little band of which he 
 is a member, the social feeling thus called into action operates 
 more powerfully on the mind for good than could be effected by 
 appealing merely to selfish interests. 
 
 I cannot intrude upon you any further details illus- 
 trating this great principle of treatment, the pith of which 
 is, that instead of dragging the prisoner through a dull 
 routine of duties, like that of a horse in a mill, in which 
 he starts every morning at the same point to find himself 
 at that exact spot every evening, he is exposed to the 
 stimulus of an onward course, in which he may raise himself 
 from a state of adversity to one of comparative enjoyment ; his 
 prison life being fed with hope, and that powerful motive being 
 so directed as to cause the individual to cultivate precisely the 
 dispositions, the energies, and the habits which will lessen to a 
 minimum the chances of his relapsing into crime. But do not 
 let it be supposed, Gentlemen, that every prisoner can at all 
 times be left to the influence of the higher motives without the 
 necessity of ever calling on those of an inferior class. The 
 occurrences which we deplore are, among other evils, not un- 
 likely to produce for a time a sympathy with criminals which 
 may have a morbid action on the public mind; and an indis- 
 position may be created to distinguish clearly between kindness 
 and indulgence. These terms, which appear to the careless 
 observer nearly synonymous, are ' wide as the poles asunder/ 
 
 Kindness, while it is most parsimonious in administering 
 pain, does not shrink from inflicting it when reasonable expec- 
 tation of profit will justify the outlay. If, by a small portion of 
 present suffering, a great amount of future good may be obtained, 
 either for society or for the individual (and, a fortiori, if the 
 pain inflicted shall accomplish both these objects), then to with- 
 hold it would not be true kindness, but, on the contrary, false 
 indulgence. 
 
 But let me impress upon you that skill, experience, and 
 enlightened humanity are to the full as essential for the dis- 
 charge of this delicate and most responsible duty, as for the 
 performance of those of the surgeon or the physician. The 
 
Charge of October, 1853. 253 
 
 duties of a prison governor demand a fund of talent, right 
 feeling, and knowledge of character. The governor who rises to 
 the height of his calling stands upon a level with any member 
 of any profession, and he ought to be allowed as wide a dis- 
 cretion as the law will permit ; moreover, if I have not taken 
 an erroneous view of the question, the law itself will require to 
 be, from time to time, expanded, as the public mind becomes 
 well informed upon the subject, in order to leave him un- 
 shackled though not un watched in the exercise of his arduous 
 functions. 
 
 Let me, Gentlemen, point out one of the many distinctions 
 which he will have to act upon, and which I particularize 
 because it throws light on some of the errors which have crept 
 into the administration of our gaol. So little has the science of 
 the treatment of criminals been cultivated, that it is altogether 
 deficient in that variety and accuracy of terms without which it 
 is very difficult to gain clear conceptions, or, having gained 
 them for ourselves, to convey them to others. 
 
 For instance, we use the word punishment to express pain 
 inflicted under circumstances very distinct in their nature, and 
 where the distinction leads to divergent consequences. Pain, 
 by way of punishment, is administered as retribution for crime. 
 The criminal may repent him of his offence, and he may hate 
 it as sincerely as those who are punishing him ; but he has no 
 power over the past. He can submit to the penalty, and if the 
 punishment is not capital, he may avoid its repetition; but 
 with regard to the crime which has produced the punishment, 
 he is as powerless over it as the child unborn. 
 
 But pain may also be inflicted for the purpose of coercing 
 the criminal to perform some act, or to refrain from some act, 
 which he is then omitting or committing; and when inflicted 
 with this purpose in view, it is still called punishment. 
 
 Here, however, the continuance of the pain, supposing the 
 act or its omission to be within his competency to perform or 
 omit, is the choice of the criminal himself : and in such cases, 
 that pain may be justly, and even humanely, not only continued 
 but augmented, until the proposed effect is produced ; assuming 
 always that the proposed effect is one which it is right and salu- 
 tary to produce. Now, surely every man ought, if possible, to 
 support himself, and not cast that burden upon the public ; and 
 
254 Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 the fact of his being a criminal is anything but a justification 
 for his exempting himself from this duty. If, then, the labour 
 demanded from him tend to lessen that burden upon society, 
 and if the task be clearly within his ability to accomplish, I 
 know of no reason why he should riot be goaded by pain to 
 perform it, supposing the resources of encouragement to have 
 been previously exhausted ; and as the cause must be made 
 sufficient to produce the effect, if slight pain should fail, it 
 must be rendered more intense until the object is attained, that 
 is, until the prisoner submits himself to his duty. But, then, 
 what a responsibility rests upon the head of him who commands 
 and superintends this delicate operation ! The man who can 
 undertake it, except at a great sacrifice of his feelings, is unfit 
 for it. The man who undertakes it without having studied the 
 science which he is carrying into practice, is unfit for it. The 
 man whose scientific studies have not been chastened and cor- 
 rected by experience, is unfit for it. The man who in his 
 exactions can even approach the limit of the prisoner's strength 
 arid capacity to perform his task that man is totally unfit for 
 any office giving him power over his fellow-creatures. What, 
 then, shall we say of cases in which food, the pabulum of 
 strength, has been withheld, and the labour has still been ex- 
 torted? But even if the frame had been sustained by nutri- 
 ment, and if the task were one which a willing agent might 
 with ease fulfil, a distinction is to be observed of great import- 
 ance, though naturally escaping the attention of the sort of 
 mind which appears to have applied itself to the question. It 
 is familiar to the psychologist that the competency to a task, 
 even of unskilled labour, is not to be measured altogether by 
 the power of thews and sinews, but the mental state of the 
 agent is to be brought into consideration. If the labour is one 
 in which he takes delight, whether because he loves it for itself, 
 as we do the sports of the field, or because it is sweetened to 
 him by the hope and expectation of some good arising to him 
 from its performance in either of these cases his capacity for it 
 is increased. He is able to do more than under other circum- 
 stances ; and, e converso, when the task is disgusting to him, 
 when it is loaded with a sense of degradation, when his wishes 
 are drawing him backwards instead of urging him forwards 
 in that latter instance will his power of labour be essentially 
 
Charge of October, 1853. 2 55 
 
 diminished : but the rude, ignorant, irritated, unreflecting task- 
 master knows nothing of all this, and imputes to the unhappy 
 convict as a new offence that failure which arises from irre- 
 sistible depression of body and mind, and visits it accordingly. 
 
 Let me further observe, that the necessity for any resort to 
 force in a well-conducted gaol is rare indeed. There are 
 natures so unhappily constituted as not to yield to encourage- 
 ment, but to demand for their government the stimulus of fear, 
 or the infliction of bodily pain ; where, however, as in a gaol, 
 their conduct is under control, and where the better motives to 
 well-doing can be so easily and effectively supplied, the number 
 who will not yield to those better motives is but small, and 
 consequently a great amount of punishment is a sure criterion 
 that the prison has something rotten in its management. 
 Gaolers instinctively feel the truth of this position : but if they 
 imagine that they avoid its application by drawing untenable 
 distinctions between punishments and privations, they must be 
 quickly undeceived. Let me, Gentlemen, prove and illustrate 
 what I have said by the experience of a young establishment at 
 no great distance from our prison, as measured in miles, but 
 further than arithmetic itself can express if measured by prin- 
 ciples. I refer to the Reformatory at Saltley, established by 
 the wise benevolence of our most excellent friend and neighbour, 
 Mr. Adderley, the member for North Staffordshire, with the aid 
 of Mr. Bracebridge, and other gentlemen some of this town 
 who (acting with him) have made what I am in hopes will 
 prove an admirable choice of a governor in the person of Mr. 
 John Ellis. Those of you who are acquainted with the spot of 
 which I am speaking, will be aware that the soil, which by the 
 exertions of the boys under Mr. Ellis's treatment is now 
 becoming a productive garden, is nevertheless of a nature to 
 demand a great amount of labour for its drainage and cultiva- 
 tion. The lads employed in the undertaking, who had not been 
 much used to labour of any kind, and still less to labour 
 requiring so much bodily effort, became disheartened, and ex- 
 hibited to their friend and master their hands blistered and 
 covered with blood, by their weary toil with the spade. What 
 was to be said ? Nothing : it was not a case for a speech, but 
 it was at the same time far from hopeless. Mr. Ellis, who 
 works with his lads, but who of course had made no complaint, 
 
2 $6 Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 opened his own hands to their view. They saw that except in 
 fortitude he had no advantage over themselves; this was 
 enough : they were ashamed to have faltered ; they returned to 
 the charge with a revulsion of feeling, bore the pain without a 
 murmur, were rewarded by the sight of the task accomplished, 
 and by finding not only their hands, but their whole frame 
 gradually hardened and inured to their lot. 
 
 Again ; this Reformatory is, fortunately for itself, placed near 
 the Diocesan Training School, and the enlightened and accom- 
 plished Principal of that valuable institution takes a deep 
 interest in the welfare of the humbler establishment. The water 
 for the Diocesan School, it appears, is drawn from a well of 
 unusual depth, and to bring it to the surface in sufficient quan- 
 tity is a work of no slight labour. Some time ago he offered 
 a contribution of six shillings per week to the funds of the 
 Reformatory in payment for this daily task. The lads, who, by 
 a plan which I have not time at the present moment to explain, 
 have an interest in the augmentation of all the funds applicable 
 to their maintenance, undertook with cheerfulness the employ- 
 ment which had thus been proffered. The pumps are set in 
 motion by cranks, which admit of two persons to labour at the 
 same time. After fifty revolutions, there was a change of boys, 
 but notwithstanding this relay, the workers found their task 
 very severe, became discouraged, and complained to the master 
 that the cranks of the pump were harder to turn than the 
 cranks of the prison. Mr. Ellis promised to see what could be 
 done, reminding the lads that the loss of six shillings a week 
 was a matter of no trifling importance a view of the question 
 in which they all concurred. He then, having selected a stout- 
 hearted colleague from the group, went himself to the pump, 
 when he and the partner of his toil turned the crank till they 
 had numbered five hundred revolutions, the main body looking 
 on as spectators. They were still continuing, when as by one 
 impulse the lads drew them away by force, and returned with 
 cheers to their work, since which time no complaint has escaped 
 their lips. 
 
 Gentlemen, I have laid before you the qualifications required 
 in the governor of a gaol. I sincerely believe you once had 
 such a governor as I have depicted, and never shall I cease to 
 deplore his loss. Be it clearly understood, however, that I 
 
Charge of October, 1853. 2 57 
 
 mean not for a moment to disparage the governor who has just 
 been appointed ; what little I know of him being altogether to 
 his advantage. Others, Gentlemen, may have had a right to 
 undervalue Captain Maconochie from their own superiority of 
 talent and information. For my part, I must avow that from 
 the study of his writings I have gathered much valuable know- 
 ledge that I could find nowhere else; and have been able to 
 solve difficulties and to adjust differences which had long baffled 
 my unaided exertions. In recommending him for the office of 
 Governor of the Gaol, I fondly hoped I had conferred a benefit 
 on the town, and, through the town, on the country at large. 
 Alas ! Gentlemen, from the operation of causes well known to 
 you, and most painful for me to dwell upon, that hope, how- 
 ever bright at first, was soon quenched in disappointment. I 
 deplore the result for the public ; I deplore it for myself, who 
 have to consign prisoners to the Birmingham Gaol ; I deplore 
 it for Captain Maconochie, whose removal has been followed, 
 even at this distance of time, by consequences which, however 
 painful to himself, are doubly painful to me who brought him 
 amongst us, and so far was the cause, although the innocent 
 cause, of exposing a most honourable man to treatment, in my 
 judgment, utterly undeserved, and, for aught I can see, alto- 
 gether unprovoked. Let me indulge the hope that, when 
 calm reflection has succeeded to excitement, reparation will be 
 offered for an injury, the magnitude of which none are by 
 character and station better able to appreciate than those from 
 whom the wrong unhappily came. 
 
 But here, again, the history of our Gaol, short as it is, fur- 
 nishes matter for useful reflection on the unhappy differences 
 which arose between the magistrates and the governor. The 
 control of English Gaols is vested in the magistrates, acting by 
 a committee of their body, who are called the visiting justices. 
 Now the code of laws regulating Prisons, the administration of 
 which the visiting magistrates have to superintend, was framed 
 when the circumstances of Gaols were very different to what 
 they now are, and the principles upon which they ought to be 
 administered were viewed in a very different light from that 
 which is now dawning upon us. Until the illustrious Howard 
 (whose enterprise was no less than to reform all the prisons of 
 Europe) had by his arduous labours, crowned at length with 
 
25 8 Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 martyrdom, forced the attention of the civilized world to the 
 disgraceful state of the Gaols in all countries, the only care of 
 the authorities appears to have been to keep the prisoners from 
 escaping; that is to say, from an escape by breaking out of 
 prison. One means of evasion was indeed left open to them. 
 Their noisome dungeons were the abodes of fever, which, 
 less cruel than either the law or its administrators, often- 
 times put a speedy termination to their sufferings. But the 
 gaol fever was found to be no respecter of persons. The poison 
 floated up from the dungeon into the court ; and when judges, 
 grand jurors, and counsel became the victims, it was time to be 
 stirring. Selfish fear and benevolence working in the same 
 direction at length cleansed the charnel-house, gradually abo- 
 lished the dungeon, or underground place of confinement, and 
 stimulated exertions to preserve the prisoner in health. Some 
 sort of religious instruction was also afforded; but little was done 
 effectively for the inculcation of sound principles, and still less 
 towards the formation of good habits, especially habits of in- 
 dustry. Even after the improvements to which I have referred, 
 it is quite clear that the duties of a visiting justice were neither 
 very onerous, nor did they demand any skill or peculiar know- 
 ledge for their exercise. 
 
 But now that we are aiming at such a treatment of the 
 criminal while in prison as shall induce him and enable him to 
 avoid a relapse into crime, the ground is changed ; and we must 
 either demand that our visiting justices shall possess the profes- 
 sional skill which would enable each of them to govern a Gaol 
 himself, or they must, in the main, restrict themselves to making 
 a wise and prudent choice of a governor ; leaving him as much 
 as possible unshackled, but taking care to exercise such vigilance 
 as to give them a thorough insight into the real working of any 
 system which he may adopt. But here comes the difficulty. 
 The duties of the visiting magistrates are prescribed by various 
 Acts of Parliament, and have relation rather to the old order of 
 things than to the new. The statutes evidently regard the 
 governor as a mere servant as the rude, uncultivated being who 
 formerly answered, and too often still answers, to the name of 
 gaoler and are totally inapplicable to a person occupying the 
 station and endowed with the feelings of a gentleman; and, 
 what is more, who ought to be far better able to give instruc- 
 
Charge of October, 1853. 259 
 
 tion to the visiting magistrates than they are to furnish it to 
 him. No two human beings can be more distinct than the 
 governor and the gaoler. What the governor ought to be, it 
 has been one object of my remarks to make understood. 
 
 In the case of the mere gaoler, under the old state of things, 
 high qualifications would have been thrown away. No man 
 possessing them could have fulfilled I will not say his duties 
 but I will say what were considered to be his duties ; and at 
 all events it was right that such a person should be under strict 
 control, that his discretionary power should be reduced within 
 the narrowest limits, and that his main occupation should be to 
 carry the orders of his superiors into literal execution. Gentle- 
 men, it is but common fairness that these difficulties and dis- 
 crepancies, and these sources of misunderstanding, should be 
 borne in mind, when we feel tempted harshly to criticise the 
 conduct of visiting magistrates. The office of Justice of the 
 Peace has become of late years one of great difficulty to execute, 
 so as to avoid giving cause of animadversion. For myself, I am 
 more inclined to admire the courage and self-reliance which 
 carry magistrates, without the training of professional educa- 
 tion, through the difficulties and dangers which beset their path, 
 than to complain of errors which to my mind are only matters 
 of wonder for the infrequency with which they occur. 
 
 It has been the constitutional policy of England to engage 
 the services of an unpaid, and consequently of an unprofessional 
 magistracy. Nor, however opposed to theory such a policy 
 may be, can it be altogether condemned by any one who has had 
 the opportunity of observing the state of countries in which all 
 offices are filled by persons who seek in such employment the 
 means of subsistence. We must be content to endure the evil 
 with the good ; and above all must we avoid the error of fixing 
 our minds on the evil alone, and the ingratitude of visiting it 
 with unmeasured severity on individuals who have during many 
 years given us their time and their labour, very much, on the 
 whole, to our benefit. 
 
 Gentlemen, the subject of prison discipline, always important, 
 is now momentous. From causes beyond the control of the 
 Government, transportation is at an end, or so limited that its 
 action in clearing our land of confirmed criminals is paralysed. 
 By an act of last Session, the vast majority of convicts will 
 
 S 2 
 
260 Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 now, after some imprisonment, by way of probation, be let forth 
 upon society under certain regulations, the effect of which is an 
 untried experiment. 
 
 Earnestly do I wish that experiment success ; but no one, I 
 am certain, who is acquainted with the criminal class, can 
 contemplate its possible results without the deepest anxiety. 
 Probably, Gentlemen, this impression will be made on no 
 minds more deeply, than on those of the statesmen who were led 
 by the best motives to devise this important measure. The 
 easy injustice of casting the home-bred criminal on our colonial 
 fellow-countrymen has hitherto enabled us to evade (at least to 
 a considerable degree) the consequences of emptying our prisons 
 of criminals who, not having been made better by their punish- 
 ment, only awaited an opportunity to recommence their course 
 of depredation, of violence, and of the corruption of others. 
 Such opportunities are, I much fear, about to be multiplied ten- 
 fold. Putting, then, the criminal himself, his capacity for hap- 
 piness and for misery, his hopes here and hereafter, entirely out 
 of sight, ought we not, in mere selfishness, to strain every 
 nerve to accomplish the work of reformation while the prisoner 
 is yet under our guidance ? Will you still, after centuries of 
 experience, put a blind confidence in the effect of deterrents ? 
 Have we not seen them pushed to an extreme which has dis- 
 gusted the whole world ? And yet do we not find it admitted 
 by the agents of this hideous infliction, that, even when carried 
 to that extreme, they effected no good object ? They failed 
 even while the prisoner was still under the authority which im- 
 posed them ; and if prison offences could not be prevented by a 
 severity from which there was no escape, and for which he would 
 suffer almost on the instant of his offending, is it not absolute 
 fatuity to expect that the memory of that severity will operate 
 upon his mind after his discharge, and when certain punish- 
 ment, following instantly upon his misconduct, will no longer 
 impend over him ? 
 
 Mark, Gentlemen, the position in which the managers of 
 prisons now stand. They have found that deterrents raised to 
 their highest intensity fail of success ; but they have also found 
 that if these expedients had succeeded in their object, public 
 opinion would resent all such practices as an outrage upon 
 public feeling. 
 
Charge of October, 1853. 261 
 
 Gentlemen, do let the opponents of the reformatory prin- 
 ciple make some approach to consistency. Deterrents have 
 been weighed in the balance and found wanting. If we are, 
 nevertheless, to abandon the work of reformation, let our oppo- 
 nents face the legitimate consequences of their own doctrine, 
 and petition the Legislature to inflict upon criminals perpetual 
 imprisonment. The evil results of a stream of unreformed 
 criminals issuing from the gates of our prisons are such as I 
 for one cannot contemplate with a steadfast mind. The wretch 
 trained to crime and inured to punishment is a beast of prey, in 
 comparison with which the most ferocious of the menagerie are 
 gentle and harmless. It is almost impossible to take up a 
 newspaper at this period of the year without the eye resting on 
 a narrative of some outrage which, if it had occurred in Spain 
 or Italy, and if the perpetrators had been called banditti) or 
 by some such name of mysterious terror, would have been made 
 the subject of boastful comparison between the social condition 
 of England and that of other nations. 
 
 And let it be remarked, that these atrocities are not the off- 
 spring of public adversity. Never, in any period of our annals, 
 were the necessaries and even the luxuries of life, so easily attain- 
 able by honest labour as at the present moment. Consider, 
 then, what is before you, when the hordes of lawless men now 
 roaming the country shall have been reinforced by the addition 
 of all the felons who formerly poured into New South Wales 
 and Van Diemen's Land ; and ask yourselves whether those who 
 are labouring to awaken the public mind to the necessity for 
 securing reformation before the prisoner is restored to his 
 liberty, deserve to be stigmatised as mere sentimentalists ; whose 
 feelings are so absorbed in sympathy for the guilty, that they 
 have no care for the security and welfare of the innocent ? 
 
 For my own part, Gentlemen, I declare now, as I have always 
 declared I will not shrink from inflicting any pain essential to the 
 repression of crime, however great that pain may be ; but I 
 must ever oppose, to the utmost of my feeble power, the falla- 
 cious doctrine which, setting at nought the lessons of all history, 
 would have us expect from mere pain, consequences which will 
 never follow until man has ceased to be the creature which 
 God has made him. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 CAPTAIN MACONOCHIE entitles his plan the t Mark System/ and 
 describes it as follows : 
 
 'The mark system proposes: i. That instead of sentences 
 for a time fixed being passed on criminals, they be required 
 to earn, in a penal condition, a proportion of marks corres- 
 ponding to their several offences. 2. That these marks be 
 used to stimulate and restrain them, precisely as money is used 
 to stimulate and restrain free people in ordinary life. 3. That 
 a reasonable number be thus credited to them daily for work 
 performed, or clay labour duly and punctually rendered, a fair 
 charge be made in them for provisions and other supplies fur- 
 nished, and moderate fines be imposed in them for misconduct 
 exhibited; the clear balance, after all deductions thus made, 
 alone counting towards liberation. And 4, That when men 
 under this system are associated in numbers together, they be 
 required to distribute themselves into small parties (say) of six, 
 with common interests, each man being thus made to labour 
 and refrain for others as well as for himself, and exertion and 
 good conduct being rendered popular, and indolence and mis- 
 conduct unpopular, in the community, by each example of them 
 affecting the fortunes of several together. 
 
 ' The benefits that would be gained by this plan are, that 
 while criminals subjected to it would be still prisoners, still in 
 confinement, giving their labour gratuitously to the public, and 
 kept under strict inspection, they would yet be under the same 
 influences which in ordinary life make men kindly, industrious, 
 prudent, and otherwise well conducted. With religious and 
 other instruction carefully superadded, they would thus much 
 more certainly have their better qualities called out, and their 
 evil tendencies overcome, than when rigorously coerced, dis- 
 gracefully punished, reduced to a condition resembling the 
 deteriorating one of slavery, and required only to exhibit the 
 slavish virtues of submission and obedience; and they could 
 also be much more beneficially employed. But, on the other 
 hand, various objections have been suggested to the system, 
 which seem, however, all to admit of easy reply. 
 
 ' i. It has been said that in operation it would prove uncer- 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 263 
 
 tain, time being an exact measure of infliction, but labour not. 
 On the contrary, however, few more uncertain measures of 
 suffering can be devised than time ; and it presses uniformly 
 most heavily on the best men. By the young, idle, thought- 
 less, single, reckless, profligate, the great bulk of criminals, a 
 loss of time is little felt ; while to the thoughtful, married men 
 who have fallen, it may be once only, under strong temptation, 
 but are anxious to recover themselves, its forfeiture is often 
 utter ruin. To the first a task- sentence would thus be more 
 formidable than is a time-sentence, though in the end, by over- 
 coming their weaknesses, it would prove equally a great benefit ; 
 while to the last it would be immediately felt as a great boon. 
 2. It has been alleged, also, that this system would be unequal, 
 as by making labour the only means of recovery, the strong 
 would have an undue advantage over the weak; but already, 
 p. 3, I have sufficiently explained the provision made on this 
 head. 3. It has also been accused of being too gentle to deal 
 adequately with the desperate men who are often prisoners ; 
 but if this prove so on trial there is nothing to prevent the 
 (supposed) more powerful means now in use from being brought 
 in to supplement it. If the strongest feelings of the human 
 mind, the desire to regain liberty, to stand well with friends 
 and companions, to press forward in a race common to all 
 around, are really found ineffectual as stimulants and restraints, 
 then gyves, stripes, dark cells, and bread and water, may all 
 be added ; but at least let higher and nobler motives have the 
 previous essay. 4. It has been also said, that the system is 
 not in itself sufficiently severe; that it would convert our 
 penal settlements into mere fields of industrial exertion, not of 
 suffering, and that it would thus tend to encourage crime, 
 rather than deter from it. But is this latter conclusion so 
 certain ? It proceeds in itself on the error already noticed, 
 that the sole object of punishment is to deter from crime, 
 instead of generally to prevent it ; but even on this low prin- 
 ciple will the example of necessary industry and submission be 
 more welcome to the criminally-minded, than that of uncertain 
 suffering, perhaps to be evaded, or, if endured, to be met with 
 manly fortitude amid the applause of admiring companions ? I 
 am convinced of the contrary. 5. Again, it has been objected 
 to the system, that its proposal to give prisoners a discretion 
 
164. Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 as to their diet, would place them under constant temptation to 
 exceed, and thus nourish rather than counteract, habits of self- 
 indulgence. But first this is a mere detail, the amount of dis- 
 cretion given being susceptible of any degree of limitation that 
 may be deemed desirable ; and next, unless a field of self-denial 
 is afforded, how can the habit of it be trained ? If the plan 
 would indeed nourish indulgence, no one would oppose it more 
 earnestly than myself; but I am confident that, on the con- 
 trary, it would above everything prepare men to resist the 
 familiar temptations that must beset them on discharge, and 
 which now habitually overwhelm prisoners, as they do sailqrs 
 on first landing from a sea voyage. And lastly, it has been 
 imputed to the system, that it seeks to work only by Hope to 
 the exclusion of wholesome Fear ; but in fact, as far as regards 
 moral recovery, it places but little reliance on either principle, 
 and desires to work by reason and certainty alone. Hope and 
 Fear are good occasional impulses; but as permanent, or even 
 predominant influences, they are most defective. They involve 
 necessarily an idea of uncertainty ; and their activity fluctuates 
 even in the most consistent, according to a thousand circum- 
 stances of constitution, health, or incidental spirits. They also 
 involve an idea of dependence on the will, or it may be the 
 caprice, of another, which is fatal to the recovery of self-respect, 
 and leads even directly to further abasement. To be reformed, 
 prisoners should have conditional rights, not merely claims to 
 uncertain favour; thus only will their manlier faculties be 
 called out. The law should say to them, ' A specific task is 
 imposed as a penalty on your offences ; perform this, and you 
 shall go free, as other debtors do when they have paid their 
 creditors; but until you have done so you will be indefinitely 
 detained/ The principle is just that of Fine, with Imprison- 
 ment till it is paid, which works well in other cases. It gains 
 the will of the culprit to pay the forfeit, while it deters both 
 himself and others from committing again a like offence. And 
 everything would be gained in dealing with prisoners were their 
 will thus won over. Under the influence of time-sentences it 
 is now active for evil ; under task-sentences it would be drawn 
 to good. 
 
 ' The best code is that which operates on the will of those 
 subjected to it, which, while it speaks with authority, still 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 265 
 
 recognises self-government as the primary right and duty of a 
 rational being, and which thus cherishes in the individual, be 
 his condition what it may, a just self-respect' These words 
 are, in the main, Channing's, and are slightly modified from the 
 motto prefixed to an ingenious work on Prison Discipline by 
 Mr. Jevons, of Liverpool, which I have only lately seen, and 
 from much of which I venture to dissent, but which has the 
 incontestable merit of having applied them to this subject as 
 far back as 1834. The whole principle on which convict 
 management may really be improved seems to me embodied in 
 them/* 
 
 TESTIMONIAL TO CAPTAIN MACONOCHIE. 
 
 From the 'Birmingham Journal,' October 25, 1851. 
 
 ' REFORMATORY PUNISHMENTS. 
 f PRESENTATION TO CAPTAIN MACONOCHIE. 
 
 ' On Wednesday evening, a meeting was held in the com- 
 mittee-room of the Town-Hall, for the purpose of presenting a 
 testimonial to Captain Maconochie upon his leaving Birming- 
 ham, to mark their respect for his character, and to express 
 their sympathy with the humane and benevolent views which 
 had led him to labour assiduously in carrying out a reformatory 
 system in the management of prisons. There was a good 
 attendance, and many ladies were present. 
 
 ' William Chance, Esq., took the chair ; and there were also 
 in the room M. D. Hill, Esq., Recorder; Messrs. Joseph 
 Sturge, George Edmonds, S. Thornton, James Turner, W. H. 
 Tyndall, S. Haines, H. Morgan, W. R. Lloyd, W. Morgan, 
 Alderman Hawkes, Rev. Mr. Showell, &c. 
 
 ' The Chairman, in opening the proceedings, observed that 
 they had a pleasing duty to perform that evening, by presenting 
 a tribute of their respect and esteem to a gallant gentleman then 
 present. As some present might not have read the statement 
 at the head of the subscription list, he would read it for prison 
 
 * Remarks on a Report on Secondary Punishment. By Captain Maconochie, 
 B.N., K.H. 
 
2,66 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 their information. Tt was to this effect : ' The undersigned 
 propose to present a purse to Captain Maconochie, R.N., upon 
 his leaving Birmingham, as a testimony of respect for his 
 character, and to express their sympathy with those humane 
 and benevolent views which had induced him to labour 
 assiduously for the purpose of carrying out a reformatory 
 system in the management of prisons. But at the same time 
 they express no opinion as to the best mode of giving effect to 
 such views/ Now they would perceive that this tribute of 
 respect was given by the private friends of Captain Maconochie 
 from their esteem for his character, aided by other gentlemen 
 who sympathised with him in his humane and benevolent views, 
 quite apart from the circumstances regarding the prison which 
 had recently transpired in this borough. And he thought it 
 necessary to state that the proceedings must be confined to the 
 simple and definite objects for which the meeting had been con- 
 vened. Mr. Chance concluded by indicating the order of the 
 business. 
 
 ' The Recorder then presented an address to Captain Maco- 
 nochie on behalf of the subscribers, explaining the grounds on 
 which they had acted. It was impossible to contemplate, he 
 said, the multitude of offences against the laws of God and man 
 which they found springing up on all sides, without a deep con- 
 viction that the means hitherto relied on for the repression of 
 crime, were lamentably inadequate to the end. Severity had 
 been tried and it had failed. It was hoped that a more lenient 
 application of punishment would, by overcoming the reluctance 
 of the injured party to prosecute, and of juries to convict, make 
 punishment more certain ; and thus operate more surely to deter 
 malefactors from pursuing their evil courses, than was found to 
 be effected by a higher penalty, from which the criminal (calcu- 
 lating on the humane feelings of society,) expected to escape. 
 This hope had failed in its turn. Hence the numbers of dan- 
 gerous men who, having endured and braved the penalty of the 
 law, were thrown back amongst us hardened in heart and deep 
 sunk in depravity. Learning, then, by history and experience, 
 that all methods which proposed to repress crime simply by an 
 application of the deterrent principle, had not answered the 
 hopes of the lawgivers who had framed their legislation on this 
 footing, they had watched with great interest the advance of 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 267 
 
 public opinion in another direction, namely, that which points 
 to the reformation of offenders through the instrumentality of 
 a well-devised discipline ; by which our gaols may cease to be 
 schools of crime, as they too frequently are, in spite of many 
 admitted improvements, and may become worthy to be called 
 hospitals for the cure of moral disease. On the possibility of 
 the reform of prisoners in any large proportion of the whole 
 body, there was much difference of opinion ; but surely 
 it must be seen that we had reasonable ground for hope, 
 arising out of the many successful experiments, made in various 
 parts of the world, by philanthropists acting on different 
 methods, and having nothing in common save Christian bene- 
 volence and a strong belief that few were in a state so hopeless 
 as to be insensible to the zealous and persevering efforts of 
 kindness under the guidance of a sound discretion. The term 
 kindness, however, conveyed to so many minds the notion of 
 indulgence, that the subscribers thought it right to guard 
 themselves against being supposed the advocates of lax disci- 
 pline ; or of any treatment of the criminal which had not public 
 good for its first object, and which would not discard all benefit 
 to him inconsistent with that higher purpose. They trusted, 
 however, that both aims may be pursued without any conflict 
 between them ; because in the course of a training from evil 
 to good, the culprit-patient must of necessity undergo a most 
 painful struggle with all his former habits. Not only must his 
 heart be changed, but he must acquire the power of controlling 
 his passions and appetites ; which will remain to torment him 
 long after his aspirations are towards that which is good. 
 They believed, therefore, that as regarded the immediate grati- 
 fication of the criminal, there was no dungeon, however loath- 
 some, in which he was permitted to remain without moral 
 control, which he would not (for a time at least) prefer to the 
 sufferings inflicted by kindness itself with a view to the per- 
 manent good of its object. 
 
 ' But however opinion might vary as to the treatment of 
 adults, on that of juvenile offenders all were unanimous. All 
 felt that for the sins of the child, some one beyond the child 
 itself was answerable. They felt that society could not be held 
 innocent while the crimes of juvenile offenders were to be 
 traced to ignorance and evil training ; and that so long as the 
 
268 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 was the only school of the destitute infant, they were under 
 an awful responsibility to conduct that school in such manner 
 as to undo the wrong which had been inflicted upon him ; by 
 endowing him (though late) with the best gift in their power 
 education. Not that they limited the term education to the 
 imparting of knowledge ; nor to knowledge with the addition of 
 religious and moral precepts. The most important charac- 
 teristic of education must be sought for in the inspired volume ; 
 ' Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old 
 he will not depart from it/ Let them then give him training, 
 if not before imprisonment (as reason would seem to dictate), 
 at least when he was thrust on their notice as a criminal. ' I 
 have now/ said the Recorder, addressing Captain Maconochie, 
 1 laid before the meeting and yourself our views respecting the 
 great undertaking to which you have devoted so many years of 
 your life, and in the prosecution of which you have made many 
 sacrifices views of which we may say (though not forgetting 
 the services of other labourers in the vineyard) you stand 
 forward as the representative. We desire it, then, to be under- 
 stood that we sympathise in your labours. We feel that by 
 your writings, and by the experiments which you have insti- 
 tuted, the science of prison discipline has been much advanced. 
 With regard, however, to the means by which the principles 
 adverted to shall be most happily carried into operation, we say 
 nothing. Years probably must elapse, and many trials must 
 yet be made before a perfect system can be devised; but we 
 feel assured that no future explorer will act wisely, who does 
 not make himself acquainted with the charts which you have 
 laid down before he sails on his voyage of discovery. The 
 attendance at this meeting of so large a body of the inhabitants, 
 gives proof that Birmingham is deeply impressed with the duty 
 of maintaining the onward progress of reformatory punishment ; 
 and has no intention of making a retrograde movement in her 
 march. In so saying, I believe, too, I speak the sense, not only 
 of those who concur with us in the particular object which has 
 assembled us together, but of all those whose absence we regret. 
 I have now, sir, to ask your acceptance of this purse ; 
 and that you will take with it our sincere wishes for your health 
 and prosperity ; knowing how usefully those blessings will be 
 employed in furtherance of the cause which you have at heart.' 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 369 
 
 The Recorder concluded amidst applause, by presenting Captain 
 Macoriochie with a purse containing 250^. 
 
 ' Captain Maconochie, who was received with cheers, said he 
 felt, from the fulness of his heart, extreme difficulty in acknow- 
 ledging their kind address to him, with its accompanying nat- 
 tering donation. If he could conceive that they were tendered 
 to him personally, he should feel so unworthy of them that he 
 should be inclined to disclaim and even reject them. He did 
 not think they were so presented, but rather that they were 
 addressed to him as the tried arid consistent advocate of opi- 
 nions on punishment, which, waiving details, found an echo in 
 their own hearts. The gallant Captain proceeded to point out 
 the necessity for earnest attention being given to this subject, 
 in consequence of the almost total abolition of capital punish- 
 ment, and the declared unwillingness of the colonies to receive 
 transports. It was impossible to deal with this mass of crimi- 
 nality by force. No; they should rather earnestly endeavour 
 to reform them while yet in the earlier stages of their progress 
 in crime, so that fewer might become matured in it, and thus 
 fewer, and progressively fewer still, as the methods of reforming 
 became perfected, might press on the resources of Government 
 for eventual removal. With regard to the means, he might be 
 permitted to say that if they desired to succeed not for the 
 sake of a cold abstraction called society, but for the sake of 
 each individual criminal himself they must bring a missionary 
 spirit into their prisons : they must make their organization 
 industrial and monastic, not military. Everything within them 
 should be made, as it were, to breathe the aspiration after reform. 
 And whom they thus chastened they must also love. He had 
 had a long experience in the management of prisoners, and few 
 had had a greater degree of influence over them in even very 
 difficult circumstances ; but his only secret had been the interest 
 which he had taken in themselves individually : it had created 
 in them a reciprocal interest in his proceedings, and they had 
 proceeded harmoniously to a common end. After a few similar 
 observations, Captain Maconochie gratefully and respectfully 
 bade the meeting farewell. He should never forget their 
 present kindness. It had been at once great and opportune. 
 They had been his friends when he wanted them, and not 
 merely his friends, but the friends of the noblest missionary 
 
270 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 cause that could be conceived. To raise the fallen to rescue 
 the lost a higher and more interesting enterprise could not be 
 devised. And the voice that here bade it God-speed might 
 kindle an interest in it through the length and breadth of the 
 land. Captain Maconochie concluded, amidst applause, by again 
 bidding them farewell. 
 
 ' The Recorder then moved a vote of thanks to their most 
 worthy and excellent friend, Mr. Chance, not only for presiding 
 on that occasion, but for his warm zeal in suggesting the testi- 
 monial they had presented, and as being the chief instrument of 
 bringing it to a successful termination by his personal exertions 
 and great liberality. 
 
 ' Mr. Joseph Sturge, in seconding the motion, also paid a 
 warm compliment to Mr. Chance, and took the opportunity of 
 saying, that after having carefully looked at the subject of 
 criminal jurisprudence, he had long come to the conclusion that 
 Christian principle and sound policy would dictate that there 
 were only two objects to be attained by punishment, namely, 
 the security of society and the reformation of the offender. 
 Retribution hardened the criminal did not reform him. He 
 alluded to the effects of kindness, as illustrated in the exertions 
 of the late Elizabeth Fry, expressed his pleasure at seeing so 
 many ladies present, and felt convinced that much of the success 
 which had attended Captain Maconochie's exertions was due to 
 the sympathy and assistance of the dearest partner of his life. 
 He also alluded to what had been done by kindness in the 
 prisons of America, some of which he had personally visited ; 
 and gave an interesting sketch of a reformatory institution for 
 juvenile offenders at Hamburg, which he had visited last year ; 
 concluding by expressing his belief that although Captain 
 Maconochie's exertions here would for the future be lost to 
 them, yet that their effects would long remain apparent. 
 
 ' Mr. James Turner also paid a high compliment to Captain 
 Maconochie, and expressed his belief that his principles, if 
 carried out, would have prospered. 
 
 ' Mr. W. R. Lloyd said that he had been conversing with a 
 young man that morning who had lately terminated a six 
 months' imprisonment in the gaol. He had received a good 
 education, but had been corrupted by bad companions, and had 
 incurred the penalty of crime. He stated that he considered 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 271 
 
 as a blessing the impression that had been made on his mind 
 by the benevolent influence of the late governor, and the advice 
 of the chaplain. He felt he was a reformed character, and had 
 begun a new career. The general opinion that prevailed of the 
 strict justice and consideration of Captain Maconochie produced 
 in his mind, and, he believed, that of other persons, a respect 
 for the authorities of the gaol, and a real desire to conform to 
 the laws ; and he regretted that this sort of influence was, 
 unhappily, not felt towards other persons in authority, in 
 consequence of a different mode of treatment. 
 
 { The motion having been passed, 
 
 ( The Chairman acknowledged the compliment, attributing 
 much of the success of their endeavours to express their sense 
 of Captain Maconochie's exertions to Mr. Sturge ; and concluded 
 by wishing the gallant Captain and his family every possible 
 success. 
 
 ' The proceedings then terminated/ 
 
 Mr. Chance, who is since dead, was one of the principal 
 inhabitants of Birmingham ; the head of the firm of Glassmakers 
 who supplied the glass for the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. 
 His services, as a magistrate of the borough and a leader in the 
 public business of the town, will be long remembered. He was 
 the ardent friend of education ; and one of the first, if not the 
 very first, employer of that neighbourhood to provide schools 
 for the children of his working-people and his poorer neigh- 
 bours ; not, however, confining his benefactions to the district 
 in which he was particularly interested. His sons and relatives 
 who have succeeded him carry on their vast concerns in the 
 same spirit of enlightened benevolence. 
 
 MR. CHESTERTON ON CAPTAIN MACONOCHIE. 
 
 4 Numerous reflections upon the government of convicts 
 have been made by Captain Maconochie, R.N., gathered from 
 his experience as governor of the penal settlement of Norfolk 
 Island. He has, in various ways, submitted his views upou that 
 subject to the public; but neither his antecedents at Norfolk 
 Island, nor his subsequent career at the New Prison, Binning- 
 
373 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 ham, have invested his opinions with a very high authority. 
 One point, however, which he has suggested is most worthy of 
 consideration, viz., the substitution of ' marks ' for a fixed term 
 of sentence. It is proposed that these marks should be made 
 redeemable by conduct or industry, and thus the convict's fate 
 would, to a great extent, repose in his own keeping/ * 
 
 Mr. Chesterton, who himself has suffered the pain inflicted 
 by hasty censure, and who knows the bitterness of the feeling, 
 should have made himself acquainted with the facts before he 
 allowed himself to sneer at what he calls Captain Maconochie's 
 ' antecedents/ It is quite true that his services at Birming- 
 ham were disapproved by a majority of the magistrates. It is 
 equally true that they were highly valued by a minority of 
 that body ; and that the general feeling of the town was in his 
 favour. 
 
 "With regard to Norfolk Island, it is undeniable, that under 
 the difficult circumstances in which he was placed, the Captain's 
 administration was highly successful. His authority was sub- 
 ordinate to that of the Governor of New South Wales, by whom 
 he considered himself, when he proceeded to the Island, em- 
 powered to hold out hopes to the convicts that his ' mark 
 system ' would be carried into operation. Thus hopes, after- 
 wards disappointed, were proffered to the men that they would 
 be able to regain their liberty by industry and good conduct. 
 Captain Maconochie had to bear the shock which the disap- 
 pointment produced in the minds of the prisoners ; yet, in 
 spite of all adverse influences, he succeeded in ameliorating 
 their conduct to a very high degree. The reader who desires 
 to learn the details of his administration may consult the 
 evidence before the Lords' Committee on the Execution of the 
 Criminal Law, 1847. 
 
 The following extract from a letter from the Chaplain 
 of Norfolk Island, during the residence of Captain Maconochie 
 in that settlement, will show the feeling, towards himself and 
 his plan, of a gentleman possessing no slight experience in 
 the treatment of convicts : 
 
 * Revelations of Prison Life, p. 54. By George Laval Chesterton. Hurst 
 and Blackett. London, 1856. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 273 
 
 Extract from a Letter of the Rev. T. B. Nay lor, formerly 
 Chaplain of Norfolk Island, now Incumbent of Carcow } New 
 South Wales, dated zqth June, 1846. 
 
 ' Enough of myself. I turn rather to the subject 
 
 which, I am rejoiced to find, has still so untiring a champion 
 as yourself to fight its way into the estimation it deserves, and 
 (shall I not add ?) which it must, sooner or later, obtain. I 
 have devoured your book. Its statements are undoubted. The 
 convict is a slave a more absolutely pitiable slave than ever 
 pounded sugar in Barbadoes. His emancipation, his reforma- 
 tion, his restoration (if God so bless the effort), is a debt the 
 nation is as solemnly bound to pay as ever she was to count 
 down, for the other, twenty millions. May she be as honestly, 
 as nobly willing not to make such a sacrifice, but in truth to 
 save money; not to inflict an apprenticeship, but to confer the 
 means of purchasing his own freedom on the convict, and 
 all this, not by advancing money, but deriving it from the very 
 machinery she employs for the accomplishment of this great 
 good. I am heartily and fully persuaded that, under God's 
 blessing, the system of 'marks/ or rather more generally the 
 self-reformatory process, is above all other means the best, if 
 not the only means of uniting the conflicting interests of the 
 criminal and justice. My most devout desire is to see it have 
 a fair trial ; for T am (after having viewed the subject in every 
 possible light) most thoroughly convinced it would succeed, 
 that it would be inexpensive, easily worked, and incalculably 
 beneficial in its results. ' How glad should I have been/ has 
 many a poor fellow, desirous of recovering his station as a free 
 man, said to me, ' how glad should I have been if they had 
 laid out my ten years' work before me when I commenced my 
 sentence, and told me to get it done by hard work and good 
 conduct as soon as I could ! What a different man I should 
 have been V But never let the first attempt again be made, if 
 it be possible to prevent it, upon the men who have received 
 the almost irreparable injury which the past has inflicted on 
 them. I do not mean to say that the process is not equally 
 applicable to them ; but I have seen how deeply branded upon 
 their diseased minds is the fact that they are slaves, and how 
 almost impossible it is to remove the suspicion of some fresh 
 manoeuvre on the part of the Government when any effort is 
 
274 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 made. Words cannot express the demoralization occasioned by 
 past mismanagement. My anxiety is, that the system should 
 have one fair field first, that its truthfulness may be incon- 
 trovertibly proved. If we both have a distinct conviction of 
 the deceitfulness of man's heart, and the necessity of God's 
 blessing to give efficacy to all efforts, as I fully believe we have, 
 I think we are, in all essential points, entirely agreed in this 
 deeply interesting matter. May God Almighty direct and 
 prosper you, my dear friend, and long spare you to give energy 
 to your generous and holy plans 
 
 (Signed) ' T. BEAGLY NAYLOR. 
 
 ' Carcow, New South Wales.' 
 
 The following letter, from the late Mr. Joseph Hume, to 
 Captain Maconochie, will show that his opinion, as to the 
 merits of the latter, was unchanged by what had occurred at 
 Birmingham : 
 
 'Burnley Hall, 3ist October, 1853. 
 
 ' MY DEAR SIR, I have read with attention M. D. Hill's 
 Charge to the Grand Jury at Birmingham, on the I9th inst., 
 as reported in Aris's Gazette. 
 
 ' It is in continuation of his two former Charges, as they 
 have been printed, and I hope he will publish the last Charge 
 with the quotations from his brother's book on Crime. 
 
 f I agree entirely with him, that the experience of deterrents, 
 as a means of reformation of criminals in gaols, ought to sug- 
 gest the opposite of rewards, so granted, along with punishment, 
 as to give hopes of liberty by the predominance of good conduct 
 and labour. 
 
 ' When I expressed to you, in my last letter, that I had no 
 hopes of reformation of criminals in gaols, it was in the under- 
 standing that deterrents alone were used, as they have been 
 generally; although I hope not in all gaols as in that of 
 Birmingham. 
 
 ' If you have copies of any of my letters to Sir George Grey, 
 and other Secretaries of the Home Department, on that sub- 
 ject, when I recommended the ' Mark System/ I think you will 
 find that I made the exception of your mode of rewards as the 
 means likely to be the best of exciting hope of liberty by 
 virtuous and continued exertions. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 275 
 
 c I have always desired to see your plan carried out on a 
 large scale, and I wanted you to be employed at one of the 
 largest receptacles of criminals. 
 
 ' I go further than Mr. Hill does. He alludes to the 
 visiting magistrates and to the gaols being under the direction 
 of the unpaid magistrates, but he does not say, as I have done, 
 ' that the Secretary of State ought to have the appointment of 
 all governors of gaols, and the issuing of all prison rules, and 
 that these rules should be applicable to every gaol, and the 
 same punishment for their infraction in every gaol/ 
 
 ' I have no objection to the magistrates visiting as often, 
 and examining as strictly as possible, every department in the 
 gaol, but not to interfere with the governor. The duty of 
 the visiting magistrates should be to report to the Secretary of 
 State, giving a copy to the governor. I hope yet to see these 
 alterations effected in our prisons ! 
 
 ' I dread the Ticket-of-Leave without the ' Mark System' 
 being fairly tried and in operation. If you see anything more 
 on the subject worth perusal let me see it. 
 
 { I remain, &c., 
 (Signed) ( JOSEPH HUME. 
 
 ' Captain Maconochie, London.' 
 
 Mr. Hilyard, the successor of Lieutenant Austin, amply 
 justified the choice of the magistrates. He proved a zealous, 
 vigilant, and at the same time a most humane governor; and, 
 in addition to the duties of his office, exerted himself to shelter 
 discharged prisoners, old and young, from the destitution into 
 which they are too often thrust forth when the term of their 
 imprisonment expires. 
 
 The mistaken parsimony of the Town Council, on whom it 
 devolves to determine the amount of the Governor's salary, has 
 enabled the magistrates of Kent (December, 1856) to deprive 
 Birmingham of Mr. Hilyard, by offering him a remuneration 
 commensurate with his services. 
 
 Mr. Hilyard, in conjunction with the Rev. John Burt, 
 Chaplain to the Gaol, Mr. Rogers, the Surgeon, and Miss 
 Martha Corfield, the Matron, originated, in April, 1856, our 
 Prisoners' Aid Society, which was immediately joined by Mr. 
 
 T 2 
 
276 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 Stephens, Chief Superintendent of Police, and Inspector Glossop, 
 who stands next in command in that force. 
 
 The difficulty of assigning its proper value to a true prin- 
 ciple is often much greater than that of disproving a false one. 
 
 That deterrents, under given circumstances, have great force 
 cannot be doubted. To a person holding a respectable station 
 in society, whether of high or low degree in the social scale, 
 the mere suspicion of crime is terrible. It is not the punishment 
 threatened by the law which presses upon his mind that 
 may never come his good name is no more the averted 
 eye he must endure in place of the hearty greeting which 
 met him yesterday the consciousness that he has lost caste 
 and is no longer in the judgment of the world a true man 
 these are the reflections under which he writhes in 
 agony. But having passed that Rubicon, experience abundantly 
 shows that when the sole deterrent left to him is the fear of 
 punishment, its force is weakened to an extent hardly credible 
 to an inquirer not yet conversant with the class whose state of 
 mind he will have to consider. 
 
 On all questions of degree, opinions are sure to vary. I have 
 had the misfortune to differ with a friend for whose views I 
 entertain the most sincere respect. As the observations which 
 I have addressed to him in the following letter have been 
 thought to throw some light on the question in controversy, I 
 subjoin it : 
 
 Letter to C. B. Adderley, Esq., M.P. 
 
 ' Heath House, Stapletou, February soth, 1856. 
 
 ' DEAR SIR, I have read your pamphlet with great interest, 
 and in many of your remarks, perhaps in a majority of them, 
 considered as insulated propositions, I entirely concur.* Thus 
 the field of controversy is materially abridged, and the points 
 of difference may, I trust, be disposed of without my tres- 
 passing too much on your patience. 
 
 ' It may wear the appearance of pedantry or formalism to 
 begin by reminding you that the ultimate object of all punish- 
 
 * Punishment is not Education. Parker and Son, West Strand. 1855. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 277 
 
 ment is the diminution of crime to the lowest attainable point ; 
 but experience has convinced me that such a precaution is 
 absolutely necessary. This definition is the compass by which 
 the argument must ever be guided, and to which the eye of the 
 pilot must perpetually recur. But, unfortunately, the proposi- 
 tion is so obviously true, that the mind admits it and forgets 
 it almost in the same instant; although, if steadily kept in 
 remembrance, nine-tenths of the differences which perplex the 
 controversy would adjust themselves. 
 
 f You maintain that we must rely on the deterrent principle ; 
 you believe that punishments must be ' short and sharp/ and 
 you are of opinion that if the pain were exhibited, as the 
 apothecaries term it, in homeopathic doses, with repetitions 
 quantum suff., this remedy, from which the world has expected 
 so much and reaped so little, might yet accomplish the desired 
 object without the aid of long training, which implies a long 
 detention. The deterrent principle captivates the mind upon 
 its mere enunciation ; consequently I am not surprised that it 
 should have laid such fast hold on public favour in all ages. 
 The maxim, metus ad omnes, pcena ad paucos, commends itself 
 as a most specious offer. It proposes by acting on a few to 
 influence all; confining acute suffering to those few, and only 
 producing on the multitude a wholesome dread of incurring a 
 like penalty. Such an offer at once engages our kindly feelings, 
 and falls in with our admiration of powerful effects produced 
 by slight causes. That every stroke on the shoulders of a thief 
 should scare thousands of outstretched fingers from diving into 
 honest men's pockets, and save the owners of those fingers from 
 pain and disgrace, would be a state of things very agreeable to 
 contemplate, if we could forget that it is for the most part only 
 a creation of the fancy. Deterrents have a certain degree of 
 power beyond all doubt ; and that the power, such as it exists, 
 is of the kind indicated by the maxim is also freely admitted. 
 But each expedient which that maxim suggests has been tried 
 in every possible form ; and the state of crime in all ages and 
 in all countries abundantly supports me in asserting that 
 deterrents, however used, whether in large or small doses, whether 
 at once, or with repetitions extended over a long period, are but 
 weak agents, and cannot be relied upon for an efficacious 
 repression of crime. 
 
278 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 ' Perhaps a succinct examination of the causes which pro- 
 duce this debility will disclose reasons why we must not hope to 
 accomplish very much in our attempts to increase their efficiency. 
 It is obvious that if every offence drew down inevitable punish- 
 ment, and if the penalty followed quicky upon its commission, 
 the deterrent principle would be vindicated by perfect success. 
 Crime, although it can never be extinguished, would, at least, 
 be so much reduced, as to be no longer a cause of public 
 anxiety. Offences would be infrequent, and punishments might 
 be slight. If, for instance, a thief knew that his plunder would 
 to a certainty be taken from him in every instance, the for- 
 feiture of his time and labour would be almost of itself sufficient 
 punishment ; sufficient to prevent his repeating his offence, and 
 sufficient to deter others from embarking in so futile an enter- 
 prise as theft would then become. But, alas ! how are we to 
 ensure certainty of detection ? Have we made any near 
 approach to it? Is not the existence of a professional class 
 of thieves conclusive evidence that the proportion of detections 
 to offences must be small indeed? Bearing in mind the low 
 price which the thief obtains for his plunder, as compared with 
 its value to the rightful owner, it will be evident that every 
 person who maintains himself by theft must daily exercise his 
 calling ; and as his term of impunity often extends over many 
 years, we can have no doubt that he looks upon detection as a 
 tradesman looks upon a bad debt, namely, as a misfortune 
 incident to his occupation. The lesson which he draws from 
 it is also identical with that learnt by the tradesman, namely, 
 to exercise greater watchfulness for the future. Now, this 
 being the well-known state of the facts, why are we to be sur- 
 prised at the existing pressure of crime upon society ? And 
 why are we, so long as we build our faith on deterrents, to 
 indulge in hopes that the future will differ from the past ? 
 
 ( In disregarding the chances against him, and in fixing his 
 attention on those which are in his favour, especially when the 
 latter outnumber the former, does not the thief act in conformity 
 with a law of the mind influencing all around him ? Nay, even 
 when the chances are against them, a very large class of the 
 community such are the gambling propensities of mankind are 
 willing to incur enormous risks. Lotteries flourish in all coun- 
 tries in which they are not prohibited; and yet the adventurer 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 279 
 
 knows full well that if he were to buy all the tickets, and con- 
 sequently secure all the prizes, he would nevertheless be a great 
 loser. When Beccaria and his followers magnified the value of 
 certainty as contrasted with severity, they did well. But the 
 fatal defect in their argument is their assumption, that certainty 
 is attainable; shutting their eyes as they did, and still do, to 
 the incontrovertible fact, that while in no age or country has it 
 yet been secured, every addition to our numbers and our wealth, 
 and every step of our progress in the arts, create new tempta- 
 tions to crime, and new facilities for its commission. That they 
 also furnish additional means of repression is not denied ; but 
 on the whole, our approaches towards certainty of detection, if, 
 indeed, we are moving towards that point, are too slow to give 
 any reasonable hope that it will be attained, even in the most 
 distant future ; while it is quite clear that for all present pur- 
 poses it must be put entirely out of calculation. But certainty, 
 even if attainable, would be insufficient unless accompanied by 
 proximity. Indeed, certainty is attained in one sense. Every 
 thief is conscious that sooner or later he must come under the 
 grasp of the law; and that although he will be mercifully dealt 
 with at first, yet in the end his punishment will be severe. 
 Still, he is not prevented from running his course of guilt. 
 And here, again, he follows the example of his betters. The 
 drunkard is painfully conscious that destruction is the inevitable 
 consequence of his vice, and yet he cannot refrain from his 
 bottle. 
 
 ' This habit of disregarding consequences, not immediate, was 
 a few years ago brought to my mind with great force. I hap- 
 pened to visit a Cornish tin-mine, and inspected the various 
 operations performed upon the ore. Some of these were carried 
 on in the open air with the spade, and were, like agricultural 
 employment, which they much resembled, very favourable to 
 health. Other operations were conducted in buildings furnished 
 with stoves burning fiercely. These emitted fumes which I 
 found it difficult to endure, even for the few moments of my 
 stay. On inquiry, I discovered that the painful sensations 
 which I had experienced arose from the presence of arsenic, 
 disengaged from the ore by the process going forward in the 
 stoves. The workmen exposed to these deleterious exhalations 
 are, as might be expected, very short-lived, few attaining the age 
 
280 Sequel to Charge of October, 
 
 of forty. On comparing the wages earned by the labourers at 
 the stoves with those engaged in the open air, I found that the 
 difference is only half-a -crown per week. For this miserable 
 bribe does the victim incur the penalty of a certain and early 
 death ! 
 
 ' Let me relieve for a moment the dryness of this discussion 
 with an extract from an article by Sir Walter Scott, in the 
 Quarterly Review, on Sir Humphry Davy's Salmonia : 
 
 ' ' We happen to recollect an anecdote, indicative of the pas- 
 sionate hold which the sport of angling maintains over the 
 minds of some individuals, with whatever risk it may be accom- 
 panied. It is now a great many years since we met, in fishing 
 quarters, the very pleasing and accomplished gentleman, then 
 engaged in his medical studies, from whom we heard the story. 
 
 e ' In a former fishing excursion, such as that in which he was 
 engaged at the time, our friend had observed a follower of the 
 same sport holding his course down the very midst of the small 
 river ; and the angler in question was a ' noticeable man/ He 
 was of uncommon stature a large and portly figure, brandish- 
 ing with both hands a rod w r hich commanded the stream on 
 either side, while being immersed to the waist, his ' fair round 
 belly ' seemed to project like a dark rock when in the shallow 
 water, and in the deep current to rest and float on the surface 
 of the waters like the hull of some rich argosy. 
 
 ( ' Our friend, could not help looking back more than once, at 
 this singular figure; until he suddenly observed the angler quit 
 the stream, get out upon the bank, and hasten towards him with 
 shouts, which seemed a signal of distress. On his closer ap- 
 proach, our medical friend observed that the countenance of 
 the fisherman, naturally bluff and jolly, and not unfitted to 
 correspond with the height of his stature and importance of his 
 paunch, seemed disordered and convulsed with pain. He begged 
 earnestly to know if our acquaintance had in his basket a flask 
 with spirits of any kind, complaining, at the same time, of an 
 attack of cramp in the stomach, which gave him intolerable 
 agony. This was supplied with all the benevolence which should 
 subsist between brothers of the angle, according to the instruc- 
 tions of their patriarch, Izaak Walton. When the tall fisher- 
 man had experienced the relief which the cordial drop afforded, 
 our informer told him his profession, and inquired whether these 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 281 
 
 attacks were frequent, and whether they were constitutional. 
 ' Very frequent/ answered the lusty edition of Piscator, ' and, I 
 am afraid, rooted in my system/ ' In that case, sir/ replied 
 my friend, ' allo\v me to tell you that fishing, or at least wading 
 while you fish, is the most dangerous amusement you can select 
 for yourself/ ' I know it/ said the poor patient, dejectedly. 
 ' Assure yourself/ pursued the physician, ' that your very life 
 depends upon your forbearing to pursue your sport in the 
 manner you do/ The intelligence seemed nothing new to our 
 forlorn angler. ' I know it, sir/ he said ; ' I have been told 
 so by the best of doctors ; but/ he added, with an air of stoical 
 yet rueful resignation, that might have graced a man who 
 sacrificed life to some mighty duty, ' Heaven's will be done ! 
 I cannot live without fishing, and without wading I can never 
 catch a fin/ So saying, the giant thanked his adviser, went 
 back to the spot where he had left his rod, and was seen a few 
 minutes afterwards bowel -deep in the stream. 
 
 f ' Our friend had the curiosity to inquire after the name and 
 condition of this devoted angler to whom life was nothing with- 
 out wading waist deep after trouts. In the course of the year 
 he saw his death announced by the newspapers. He was found 
 dead on the banks of his favourite stream/ Scott's Works, 
 1835, vol. xx. 
 
 ' Here the prescription of ' short and sharp ' had a fair trial, 
 the doses being repeated until death, an event which interferes 
 with so much medical treatment of the most brilliant promise. 
 In this case the deterrent principle had an advantage which you 
 cannot command. Not only was the immediate pain intoler- 
 able, but it was known by the offender to be a solemn warning 
 that unless he altered his course of life, capital punishment 
 would quickly terminate his career. It will not do to say that 
 this is an exceptional case. The criminal class is itself an excep- 
 tion, and is in the main composed of individuals who, from 
 want of good training, are not amenable to the restraints which 
 are found sufficient to keep the bulk of society within the 
 boundaries prescribed by the law. Again, it would be con- 
 ceding too much to admit that the instances to which I have called 
 your attention are exceptions. As in the case of the tinners, 
 large bodies of working men may be found, who, with their eyes 
 open, encounter, not the risk, but the certainty, of early death. 
 
282 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 Take the trade of needle-making, as it existed some years ago 
 at Redditch, within a few miles of your own Seat. The 
 workman knew by unerring symptoms when his short life was 
 drawing to its close; and if his friends ventured upon soothing 
 him with hopes of recovery, he resented all such delusions as a 
 cruel mockery, yielding himself to his fate as to an evil foreseen 
 and not to be avoided. The gilders of Birmingham were for- 
 merly under the same irrevocable sentence, and many other 
 artisans were subject to a like doom ; nor is it immaterial to 
 remark that when any invention has been made, having for its 
 object to relieve the men from danger, it has frequently been 
 very ill received by them, because it imposed some small trouble 
 or inconvenience on the workman, or led him to fear that his 
 danger being reduced, his wages would undergo a similar 
 change; so inexorable is the tyranny of the present over the 
 highest interests of the future ! 
 
 ' It must not be objected in favour of deterrents that 
 criminals will undergo the sufferings of shame in addition to 
 corporal or pecuniary penalties. Doubtless, by expulsion from 
 the honest part of society, such as were ever members of that 
 order suffer much ; but that suffering conies too late. They 
 have calculated on escaping detection, and have been deceived, 
 or as they call it, ' unfortunate ;' and once enrolled in the 
 criminal class, their sense of shame becomes inverted. Dis- 
 grace then attaches, not to dishonesty, but to want of skill in 
 their avocation, and to repentance under suffering ; and thus it 
 is that the same emotion which at one period presents obstacles 
 to their fall, afterwards becomes a serious impediment to their 
 restoration. 
 
 ( The absence, then, either of certainty or proximity, will so 
 far weaken deterrent action as abundantly to account for its 
 inefficiency ; but in the case of criminals we have, and I fear 
 must ever have, the two causes of uncertainty and delay ope- 
 rating in combination, and, consequently, with multiplied force ; 
 if so, is it not hopeless to put faith in deterrents ? 
 
 f In early times it was natural to suppose that the want of 
 certainty and proximity might be supplied by increasing the 
 severity of punishments. But this expectation was quickly 
 found to be fallacious. More than 2200 years ago this ques- 
 tion was set at rest in the minds of the observant and reflective 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 283 
 
 Greeks. The speech which Thucydides puts into the mouth of 
 Diodotus, in the debate on the revocation of the decree of ex- 
 termination against the men of Mitylene, shows that the vanity 
 of this expedient was no secret at Athens; and the experience 
 of the world from those times to the present has borne uniform 
 testimony to the same effect.* I need not, however, urge this 
 truth upon you, who freely admit it. I will content myself 
 with observing that the crime of forgery was never so rife as 
 when it was a capital offence, and when the Crown was far 
 more inexorable towards forgers than it now is towards murderers. 
 
 ' But to you it appears that the salutary consequences which 
 aggravated severity has failed to produce, will follow upon a 
 milder infliction frequently repeated. Whether pain concen- 
 trated or pain distributed strikes more fear into the criminal, 
 is a question which I will not take up your time in discussing, 
 because it appears to me beside the mark. That by either 
 process the mind of the sufferer may be filled with anguish, 
 and his body racked with torture, that he may, in his moments 
 of suffering, deplore his folly in having subjected himself to 
 such appalling visitations, that his resolutions to avoid them 
 for the future may be sincere and as strong as his mental con- 
 stitution will permit, I make no doubt. But of this I am 
 equally assured, that if you send him forth into the world 
 without habits of industry, and without the power of self- 
 government, to encounter the awful difficulties which stand in 
 the way of every man who has lost caste, and is struggling to 
 recover his position, you embark him on a hopeless enterprise. 
 Not that he is ignorant of the fatal vortex towards which he is 
 irresistibly drawn, not that he underrates the agony which is 
 in store for him, but his necessities are instant, and the penalty 
 is at some distance. The contest is between his present and 
 his future self. And with the members of his unhappy class 
 the future self is as certain to be sacrificed as if it were the self 
 of another being. 
 
 1 And this brings me to what I must consider the fallacy 
 which has misled you, in common with all the votaries of the 
 deterrent principle. You assume that the deterrent force of a 
 punishment will increase in proportion to the pungency of the 
 
 * Book iii. cap. 45. 
 
284 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 infliction ; and you would be right if you had any means of 
 stereotyping the state of mind in which the criminal finds him- 
 self at the moment of suffering. But that is just where all 
 your predecessors have failed, and where you must fail; because 
 the change which you propose, if it were a novelty, which it is 
 not, leaves the defect in the deterrent principle untouched. 
 For the criminal under deterrent action the line, ' Wax to 
 receive and marble to retain/ must be reversed. However deep 
 may be the impression, it quickly wears away. 
 
 ' Thus then the school of criminal jurists, to which I belong, 
 have not deserted received opinions on light grounds; or sought 
 for new principles until the failure of the old ones for the pro- 
 duction of good practical results had been demonstrated by cen- 
 turies of experiment, varied until the wit of man had exhausted 
 all the possibilities of permutation. What course then remained 
 for choice ? None within the scope of my imagination, save 
 two. First, such treatment as incapacitates the criminal from 
 the commission of offences, leaving at the same time his 
 appetites and passions unsubdued, and his desires unchanged ; 
 or, secondly, a treatment which has for its object to reform 
 him, by leading him to yearn after good instead of evil, and by 
 so training his habits as that he shall be able to give effect to 
 his new aspirations. 
 
 ' We are reduced, in short, to Incapacitation or to Reforma- 
 tion. Both these expedients, it must be admitted, are of very 
 humble pretensions, when contrasted with the ambitious aims 
 of deterrent punishment. Incapacitation limits itself to pre- 
 venting the criminal from repeating his offence; either for a 
 time, as when imprisonment is employed, or for ever, as by the 
 infliction of death. But as we are in no wise friendly to 
 capital punishment, we would only use incapacitation as furnish- 
 ing the opportunity for exercising reformatory action on the 
 criminal ; or in extreme cases, for withholding from society one 
 who has resisted all endeavours to improve him. But although 
 we administer pain vuth a reformatory object, yet we inciden- 
 tally obtain the advantage of whatever deterrent effect belongs 
 to that pain; because it is clear that the patient is deterred, not 
 according to the purpose with which the pain is inflicted, but 
 according to the amount of the pain itself. Now reformation 
 implies a long detention, a protracted struggle, and many a 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 285 
 
 disappointment, before the goal is reached. Indeed, one of the 
 grounds of your objection to reformatory treatment is (if I 
 have not mistaken your meaning), that from its extensive dura- 
 tion, it exceeds all just measure of seventy. Let me admit, 
 for the sake of argument, that your censure is just. Surely 
 then, reformatory treatment cannot be objected to as wanting 
 in a copious infusion of the deterrent principle ; and, conse- 
 quently, to compare or contrast reformatory and deterrent 
 punishment must be illogical. For although we find deterrent 
 punishments are too often not reformatory, reformatory punish- 
 ments must of necessity be deterrent; and thus the latter scheme 
 combines the advantages of both systems. 
 
 ' But I am in hopes you will cease to consider what you term 
 a reformatory education as visiting the criminal with excessive 
 punishment, when you call to mind that, while enduring it, he 
 is not merely expiating an offence, but at the same time receiving 
 an inestimable benefit ; for you, I am sure, will not hesitate to 
 admit that reformation is the greatest good to which the 
 criminal can possibly aspire; and that riches, titles, power, or 
 any or all the objects of earthly ambition, ought to be as 
 nothing in his mind in comparison with what we are doing our 
 best to enable him to achieve. 
 
 ' Our first expedient in reformation is, you know, to induce 
 the criminal to labour, until the habit of industry is well formed. 
 Yet although this may be justly called our main expedient, it 
 is far from being our only one ; since the habit of industry, 
 without the power of self-government, would be insufficient to 
 preserve the prisoner when at large from falling a prey to 
 temptation. But his industry may be made to supply a fund, 
 which will enable us to train him in the art of self-government. 
 Let all fines for misconduct, either of a positive or a negative 
 description, be paid out of this fund. As he advances in the 
 work of reformation, relax gradually the various restraints 
 which are imposed upon prisoners. At first he will be kept iu 
 a state of separation from his fellow- sufferers, and cannot there 
 exercise many of the social duties. Still he may do much 
 towards the acquirement of self-control. Let him have a 
 certain limited command over the produce of his industry, 
 which he may at his own option expend for the purchase of 
 indulgences, or retain to accelerate the moment of liberation. 
 
286 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853.' 
 
 If lie snatch immediate gratification at the expense of increased 
 length of imprisonment, it will be seen at once that his power 
 of self-control is inadequate to protect him from the temptations 
 which he will have to encounter on going back into the world. 
 But when there is good reason to believe that their minds are 
 turned into a right direction, however feeble may be their 
 power of acting on their convictions, let a small class of such 
 prisoners be permitted to associate together. Let the little band 
 be under pecuniary liability for the offences of each, or in other 
 words, let the fines be paid out of a common stock. Thus the 
 prisoner will find himself exposed to new dangers, new tempta- 
 tions, called upon for the fulfilment of new duties, all of infinite 
 importance; and his powers of self-government will be developed 
 to an extent for which solitude furnished no scope. So again, 
 if the little community, by quarrels, by supporting each other 
 in misconduct, or by relaxing in any way the efforts of each 
 member towards reformation, showed that the individuals of 
 which it is composed had been brought out of a state of separa- 
 tion before they were prepared to live together with profit, it 
 should be broken up ; and each prisoner must recommence in 
 solitude the labours of self-improvement. 
 
 ' By these and similar means, many of which are not mere 
 speculations, but have been reduced to practice, the prisoner 
 might be so gradually released from one restraint after another, 
 as to make the step to perfect liberty a far less change than it 
 now is.* For instance, one stage might be to remove him 
 from a prison, strictly so called, to some building not surrounded 
 by walls ; to let him know that he was under no physical restraint, 
 but that if he absconded, he would, upon his apprehension, be 
 brought back and consigned again to the gaol, to recommence 
 the toilsome journey towards freedom. Here is a new tempta- 
 tion to resist, the power of which it is almost impossible for 
 any one who has never endured the tedium of a prison life 
 adequately to conceive. Being some years ago at Florence, I 
 made the acquaintance of Signor Salvagnoli, the head of the 
 
 * ' See Captain Maconochie's pamphlet, just published, entitled Prison Discipline. 
 Harrison, Pall Mall. 1856. See also, A Visit to the Great Prison at Munich, by 
 the Rev. C. H. Townsend, in the Zoist for January, 1856. Hall, Paternoster- 
 row.' [Vide Sequel to the Charge of October, 1856.] 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 287 
 
 Tuscan Bar ; a gentleman who, having been a Minister of State 
 during the revolution of 1848, found himself, when the old 
 order of things was restored, consigned to a fortress, in which 
 he was detained for a period of some months. I took the 
 opportunity of inquiring from him, as I had done from others, 
 whether he found the privation of liberty more or less painful 
 than he had anticipated. He, like others, told me that he 
 found imprisonment irksome to the last degree ; and that when 
 he regained his freedom, he spent his whole time for some days 
 in roaming about, changing his route almost at every moment 
 to assure himself that he was not compelled to observe any 
 prescribed course. ' Juvat ire/ he repeated to himself again and 
 again, every time striking into a new path. 
 
 ' To overcome the temptation to wander at large, revisit old 
 scenes and old companions, and more than all, indulge in his 
 old gratifications, would indeed be a great lesson in self-govern- 
 ment ; and furnish a most valuable test that the reformation of 
 the prisoner, so far as it had proceeded, was genuine and sub- 
 stantial. The next stage might be employment on public works, 
 at wages below the ordinary standard, but which employment 
 would, after a time, entitle the prisoner to a Ticket of Leave 
 of the very best kind, because it would be a certificate of 
 character. 
 
 ' I would then place the prisoner under the guardianship of a 
 member of a Societe de Patronage; such as France has long pos- 
 sessed, and such as I trust England will not be long without. 
 By the aid of such a society, prisoners who had gone through 
 the ordeal \vhich I have thus indicated, would be placed in 
 reputable employment, and, to a very considerable extent, 
 guarded from the snares which beset the liberated convict. 
 Meanwhile the liability to recommittal would still hang over 
 him, at least for some years ; and must, if duly exercised, operate 
 as a check, not only upon the commission of crime, but upon 
 the formation of habits and associations which lead to crime. 
 The warning now endorsed upon the back of each Ticket of 
 Leave would then become a truth ; and the holder, if found 
 without visible means of subsistence, or associating with persons 
 of bad character, would be held to have fallen into dangerous 
 courses, and would be considered as about to relapse ; and his 
 licence to remain at large would be revoked. 
 
288 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 f The distinction between a good prisoner and a good man is 
 well established in the minds of all who are conversant with the 
 habits of convicts. It is generally referred to hypocrisy. The 
 good prisoner who, upon his release, turns out a bad member of 
 society, is held to have been playing a part ; and too often the 
 imputation is well-founded. But it quite as frequently occurs 
 that the relapse of the unhappy individual is caused by his 
 finding himself forced upon assuming the reins of self-govern- 
 ment, when his prison training has not only not qualified him 
 for the task, but has thrown into disuse whatever power of this 
 kind he may have taken with him into the gaol. 
 
 ' It is true all this is education, education, as I submit, of 
 the very best kind. But I am sure you will not object to the 
 State affording education to the criminal, unless it can be shown 
 that the benefit to the individual is productive of some injury 
 to the community. Now, any such evil could only accrue if 
 this education really weakened the corrective or the deterrent 
 effect of punishment ; but if the foregoing arguments are valid, 
 the corrective effect of punishment is largely augmented, or 
 indeed it may be said, altogether created, by this educational 
 training ; while, having regard to the vicissitudes of progress 
 and retrogression which the prisoner must necessarily undergo, 
 and which will not only be severe but of long continuance, it 
 can hardly be doubted that their impression on his mind will 
 be greater than that produced by any process of ' short and 
 sharp f as it will also be on the class, on whom whatever he 
 may suffer is likely to have the greatest influence by way of 
 deterrent. Sharp such treatment cannot fail to be ; and it will 
 not only be sharp but long. 
 
 ( I now address myself to your objections. You appear to 
 have no confidence in the labour test ; and instances, you say, 
 have been found in which prisoners, evincing much power of 
 labour while in prison, have abjured all honest industry from 
 the moment of their discharge. Doubtless industry, as I have 
 already said, is not of itself reformation. The habit of labour, 
 however, removes one great difficulty. It endows its possessor 
 with the faculty of self-maintenance, although it cannot be 
 depended upon to prevent relapse if unallied with the faculty of 
 self-government. Thus the high value which we set upon 
 industry, is not merely because it enables the individual honestly 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 to maintain himself if he be so disposed, but also because those 
 who have the control of his prison life may avail themselves of 
 that industry, as a means by which he may be taught to govern 
 himself. Again, I think this education may be defended on 
 your own principles. Not only do you urge by precept, with 
 all the power derived from your talents and your high position, 
 and also by your munificent example, the duty of educating the 
 young, but you seem disposed to go to the length of denying 
 the right of the State to punish juvenile offenders whom it has 
 not guarded from ruin by proper training. If, however, that 
 notion be well-founded, when does the right of the State to 
 punish a non- educated criminal begin? If it be wrong to 
 punish him in his youth, because the gift of education has been 
 withheld, how does he become responsible by effluxion of time ? 
 What has manhood done for him, except to add the chains of 
 habit to those of ignorance ? I must confess it seems to me 
 that every reason which can be alleged to show the injustice of 
 punishing the uneducated boy is strengthened in the case of 
 the uneducated man ; and I cannot but hail it as a most happy 
 coincidence, that in adopting the best known means to arrive at 
 the true end of punishment the repression of crime we do, 
 incidentally, bestow that education at last, which, in the majority 
 of instances, we have neglected to supply at an earlier and more 
 natural stage. 
 
 ' But then you raise an objection which I cannot but honour, 
 although I must not for a moment yield to it. You seem to 
 think there is a want of fair dealing, as between the high and 
 the low,, in imposing on the latter a course of training which the 
 former escape. It is a novelty so agreeable, to find the rich 
 and the well-born evince this jealousy of the rights of those 
 below them, that allied as I am by birth, and by many strong 
 prepossessions, with the class of which you are the champion, I 
 cannot but feel some reluctance to combat what I must never- 
 theless hold to be a fallacy. The rich, you say, are not very 
 likely to commit offences which bring them under the animad- 
 version of the criminal law, although they but too frequently 
 indulge in conduct which cannot be reconciled either with the 
 rules of religion or morality. The consequence which you 
 draw from these undeniable facts is, that we have no right to 
 keep offenders belonging to the humbler classes under a disci- 
 
 u 
 
290 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 pline which shall give us security against their repeating their 
 offences, because there is no correlative treatment for the mis- 
 doings of the higher classes. But if your argument have a just 
 foundation, it must lead, I submit, to a much more sweeping 
 conclusion than that which you have adopted. 
 
 "The punishment which we propose to administer may be 
 considered in two aspects; first, as turning the offenders from 
 evil to good, which is a benefit, and beyond all doubt a benefit 
 of the highest nature, to the individual ; and next, as admi- 
 nistering the pain which is necessarily incidental to such a 
 process. Now it is not to pain, per se, which you object. That 
 you are ready to inflict to as great an amount as is necessary to 
 bring the deterrent principle into full operation. Your objec- 
 tion is pointed against what forms the benefit to the individual ; 
 and if the pain, which we cannot help administering, is greater 
 than that which you would inflict, still, even looking solely at 
 the interests of the patient, he purchases, at the price of his 
 additional pain, an inestimable blessing : while your treatment 
 would thrust him from the prison doors smarting under bodily 
 suffering, his angry passi&ns exacerbated, his thirst for guilty 
 pleasures made intense by privation, and all his habits of mind 
 arid of body, if changed at all, changed for the worse. Surely, 
 then, if this new right of equality which you have discovered is 
 to be established, it would much more reasonably confer a pro- 
 letarian exemption from ' short and sharp/ than from educa- 
 tion ; and thus you would have to exempt the lower classes from 
 punishment altogether. 
 
 ' The deterrent principle sacrifices the individual to the public ; 
 the reformatory principle, though incidentally deterrent, yet 
 repays the individual for his suffering, by bestowing upon him 
 a gift, for which that suffering is well endured. The deterrent 
 principle arms the executioner with the whip, the marking-iron, 
 and the knife. The criminal is flogged, branded, deprived of his 
 ears. The reformatory principle calls in the surgeon, who, 
 although he may cut deeper and inflict far more excruciating 
 torture, has ever the benefit of the patientin view; and subjects 
 him to no pain which is not to purchase for him a greater 
 measure of comfort. Trust me, if you could consult your 
 clients, and if they were cognizant of their true interests, it is 
 against the executioner and not against the surgeon they would 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 291 
 
 instruct you to remonstrate : the latter they would implore you 
 to retain. 
 
 ' You express doubts as to the possibility of discovering and 
 applying effective tests of reformation. Unerring tests, I admit, 
 cannot be supplied ; but neither can they be found in support of 
 the verdict which has consigned the convict to prison. Moral 
 certainty, according to Beccaria, is only a probability ; but one 
 so strong that we are constrained to act upon it.* If you. would 
 be satisfied with a probability, as high if not higher than the 
 one upon which the prisoner has been stamped with the brand 
 of conviction, such a probability can be afforded by daily record 
 of facts pro and contra. The fate of a prisoner ought not to 
 depend on a conclusion formed without precise data, gradually 
 accumulating through a series of months or years. But with 
 those aids to the judgment of the authorities, with his prison 
 life divided into stages of progress each attainable by good 
 conduct, and each to be forfeited by ill conduct, each relaxing 
 some restraint until the last step into perfect liberty is but a 
 slight modification of the state immediately preceding it and 
 with a licence to be at large, revocable for a period sufficient to 
 operate as a check upon even incipient bad courses, I see no 
 insuperable difficulty to be overcome ; that is to say in a large 
 majority of cases. Some prisoners would never work their way 
 out of prison ; but they would be, for the most part, of a tem- 
 perament to suffer little from the restrictions to which, under a 
 mild and enlightened system like that of Captain Maconochie, 
 they would alone be subjected. There is a class of prisoners, a 
 small one no doubt, yet larger than those unacquainted with 
 criminals might expect to find, who are not wholly unconscious 
 of their incapacity for self-government ; and who are happier, or 
 at all events less unhappy, in prison than at large. In prison 
 they behave well, though, knowing their own frailty, they may 
 not exert themselves much to obtain a discharge. Such prisoners 
 
 * ' To parlo di probability in materia di delitti, che per meritar pena debbono 
 esser certi. Ma svanira" il paradosso per chi considera, che rigorosaraente la cer- 
 tezza morale non e che una probability, ma probabilita tale, che e chiamata cer- 
 tezza, perche ogni uomo di buon senso vi acconsente necessariamente per una 
 consuetudine nata dalla necessita di agire, ed anteriore ad ogni speculazione ; la 
 certezza che si richiede per accertare un uomo reo e dunque quella, che determina 
 ogni uomo nelle operazioni piu. importanti della vita.' Dei litti e Ddle Pene, vii. 
 
 U 3 
 
292 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 need not be subjected to a very harsh discipline ; and their lives 
 may be suffered to pass away in a manner best suited,, both as 
 regards the State and themselves, to the infirmities of their 
 nature. 
 
 ' There is one suggestion in your remarks in which I heartily 
 concur, although certain difficulties which would attach to its 
 practical operation have hitherto prevented me from submitting 
 it to public consideration. It is the expediency of calling upon 
 the criminal to compensate those whom he has wronged by his 
 offences. The great value of the suggestion consists in its 
 obvious justice, which would reconcile the public to a long 
 detention of convicts with a view to their labour furnishing them 
 with the means of payment. And, having regard to the present 
 state of the public mind on the subject of punishment, it 
 might be desirable often to make the cost to the community 
 and the individual injured, flowing from the convict's offence, the 
 measure of his punishment. Charge him with the cost of his 
 apprehension, prosecution, and imprisonment, including not only 
 his lodging, food, and clothing, but also the expense of guarding 
 and training him. Add to this an indemnity to the party 
 injured, and a debit would be raised, which it would require a 
 considerable length of time to extinguish. It would, however, 
 be necessary, frequently to exercise the power of remission to a 
 large extent ; as the injury which he has committed is often one 
 which the whole life's labour of the convict would not repay ; 
 especially if he should be weak in body, or unskilled in any 
 profitable employment. But the Crown is in the daily exercise 
 of such a power, and I do not anticipate any difficulty which a 
 sound discretion would not readily dispose of. 
 
 ' With regard to the suggestions which I have thrown out, I 
 know by experience how easy it is to meet them by objections 
 of detail; and where the experiment is conducted by officers 
 who have but weak faith in the principle of reformation, or who 
 have not well considered what are the constituents of a reformed 
 character, just grounds of complaint will but too often arise. 
 The task of those with whose opinions I agree, is consequently 
 one replete with discouragements. Ours is an experimental 
 science, and yet we have no laboratory placed at our command. 
 We must depend upon phenomena disclosed by the mani- 
 pulations of persons who are sometimes avowed opponents of 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 293 
 
 our doctrines, sometimes mere conformists to our views, and 
 seldom more than half converts. Whoever has traced the fate 
 of inventions reduced to practice by persons who had but little 
 confidence in their value, will know how to sympathise in our 
 struggles and our disappointments. Still, I believe we are making 
 way, and I find here and there symptoms that light is peering 
 into places hitherto in utter darkness. 
 f Believe me, dear Sir, 
 
 ' With sincere esteem and regard, 
 
 ' Your faithful friend and servant, 
 
 ' MATTHEW DAVENPORT HTLL. 
 
 <C. B. Adderley, Esq., M.P.' 
 
 That impious contempt of futurity which prompts the eager 
 purchase of a brief term of temporal gratification at the cost even 
 of eternal suffering, is an attribute of human nature recognised 
 in all times. 
 
 The following extract from Lewes' Life of Goethe, places 
 the topic in a light which may be new to the reader. The 
 author is discoursing on Marlowe's Faustus : 
 
 'But we have to deal with the philosophical rather than 
 with the dramatic treatment of the subject. The reader who 
 opens Faustus under the impression that he is about to see a 
 philosophical subject treated philosophically, will have mistaken 
 both the character of Marlowe's genius and of Marlowe's epoch. 
 Faustus is no more philosophical in intention than the Jew of 
 Malta or Tamberlaine the Great. It is simply the theatrical 
 treatment of a popular legend a legend admirably charac- 
 teristic of the spirit of those ages in which men, believing in 
 the agency of the devil, would willingly have bartered their 
 future existence for the satisfaction of present desires. 
 
 c Here, undoubtedly, is a philosophical problem, which even 
 in the present day is constantly presenting itself to the specu- 
 lative mind. Yes, even in the present day, since human nature 
 does not change, forms only change, the spirit remains; 
 nothing perishes it only manifests itself differently. Men, it 
 is true, no longer believe in the devil's agency ; at least, they 
 no longer believe in the power of calling up the devil, and 
 transacting business with him; otherwise there would be hun- 
 dreds of such stories as that of Faust. But the spirit which 
 
294 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 created that story, and rendered it credible to all Europe, 
 remains unchanged. The sacrifice of the future to the present 
 is the spirit of that legend. The blindness to consequences 
 caused by the imperiousiiess of desire the recklessness with 
 which inevitable and terrible results are braved, in perfect 
 consciousness of their being inevitable, provided that a tempo- 
 rary pleasure can be obtained, is the spirit which dictated 
 Faust's barter of his soul : which daily dictates the barter of 
 men's souls. We do not make compacts, but we throw away 
 our lives ; we have no Tempter face to face with us offering 
 illimitable power in exchange for our futurity, but we have 
 our own desires, imperious, insidious, and for them we barter 
 our existence for one moment's pleasure risking years of 
 anguish/* 
 
 Let me close this paper by an extract from the Works of our 
 eldest and greatest of law reformers, Lord Brougham : 
 
 ' Again, in reasoning upon the tendency of punishment, and 
 the motive to offend, we have always committed one serious 
 error. We have considered crimes as insulated, and we have 
 regarded each offence as originating in an occasional gust of 
 passion, or view of interest ; we have argued as if all criminals 
 were like in their nature, and all spectacles of punishment, or 
 exhortations to departure from wrong doing, were addressed to 
 the same minds. Now, nothing can be more certain than that the 
 great majority of all offences committed in every civilized com- 
 munity are the result of immoral character, of gross ignorance, 
 of bad habits ; and that the graver sort are committed after a 
 series of faults less aggravated in their character. It follows, as 
 a necessary consequence from this proposition, that when the 
 example of penal infliction is addressed to the offender, its 
 deterring effect is very much lessened, because it is addressed 
 to a mind which evil habits have entirely perverted ; and thus 
 the guilty-disposed person is to be not merely deterred from 
 doing one wrong act by the fear of punishment, but to be re- 
 claimed from a course of thinking, feeling, and acting, into 
 which he had fallen. 
 
 * The Life and Works of Goethe. By GL H. Lewes. London : 1855. Vol. ii. 
 PP. 321-2. 
 

 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 2 95 
 
 ' It is no doubt to be set on the other side of the account, 
 that the knowledge possessed by the community of punishments 
 being by the law denounced, and being by the administration 
 of that law actually inflicted, tends to produce a habit of 
 thinking and feeling in the people ; and by connecting in their 
 minds the punishment with the offence, may create a general 
 aversion to evil practices. This in truth is the only effect 
 produced by punishment ; but for this effect it would be wholly 
 inoperative, and would indeed be only an aggravation of the 
 evil occasioned by crimes. But it is also certain that this 
 habit has to struggle with other propensities, which are gene- 
 rally found to be more powerful; that ignorance, evil associa- 
 tion, indulgence in lawless passions (first of a less and after- 
 wards of a more hateful kind), the familiar contemplation of 
 vicious excesses, the observation, often the actual experience, of 
 escape from penal visitation, the spectacle of the law so often 
 failing to be effectually executed all engender bad habits, 
 against which the habit of regarding vice as connected with 
 punishment, contends in a vain and fruitless conflict. Hence, 
 the only possible efficacy of the penal code, however wisely 
 framed or ably enforced, becomes feeble to its purpose the 
 repression of offences. For against the habit of reflecting on 
 the criminal act as a thing punishable, is to be further set the 
 temptation to do it as a thing desirable ; and thus that habit, 
 already enfeebled by the other circumstances just enumerated, 
 is easily overpowered by the interest or the passion of the hour. 
 
 ' I fear we may upon the whole regard the criminals who 
 infest society as being a kind of class who have turned crime 
 into a trade or calling, and no improvements in the adminis- 
 tration of criminal justice have yet been able to put down the 
 business, or even to prevent those who follow it from being a 
 very numerous body. 
 
 ' Now, when it is considered how many offences a thief must 
 commit to earn his daily bread, it becomes quite evident that 
 absolute impunity is the rule, and detection only the rare and 
 as it were accidental exception. It may be assumed, without 
 exaggeration, that if one offence in ten was followed by detec- 
 tion, the class could not exist. That his offences must be 
 numerous to enable a depredator to live, may be further proved 
 by considering that his profits are not measured by the losses 
 
296 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 of his victims, but by the miserable pittance which the receiver 
 allows to him, the capitalist, who must be paid, not merely for 
 the ordinary risks of trade but for the danger of discovery, and 
 for the low price which alone he is able to command in the 
 market. 
 
 ' But further, were it possible that in time a species of cer- 
 tainty might be attained, so that a course of crime should 
 inevitably lead to punishment, all would not be enough ; the 
 offender, in the chains of ignorance and bad habits, would 
 pursue his calling, and look upon the gallows itself at a distance 
 with as much calmness as a soldier regards the slaughter of 
 next year's campaign. Why should we expect the thief to 
 abandon his pursuits because years to come he will suffer 
 punishment, when we see the educated man will not forego his 
 bottle, knowing and admitting the inevitable consequences of 
 intemperance? Artisans, who labour in unwholesome manu- 
 factures, sell themselves to certain death for a small increase of 
 wages, which excess over the ordinary rate would in truth 
 amount only to a trifling sum for their whole lives. While file- 
 cutters had not the benefit of the blast to disperse the filings 
 with which the air is filled by the dry grinding, every workman 
 knew for certain that he must die soon after the age of forty. 
 Workers in whitelead and brass are still exposed to the immi- 
 nent risk of palsy a sentence of death by hunger in their case. 
 Yet how small an increase of wages attracts men from whole- 
 some employment to those hurtful trades ! But the same 
 persons would probably shrink from exposing themselves to the 
 risk of instant death, although the chances of escape might be 
 in their favour. Hence, even could we attain the point of 
 absolute certainty (a point assuredly that never can be reached), 
 we should still have done little towards repressing crime 
 unless we could also add celerity to certainty, and ensure to 
 each offender the penal infliction due to his crimes within a 
 very short period of his committing them. Either of these 
 things, it is evident, is most likely never to be accomplished ; 
 the accomplishment of both together we may safely pronounce 
 to be wholly impossible. 
 
 f Now, let us see whether these positions (which we might 
 well deduce a priori from the most superficial knowledge of 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 297 
 
 human nature), are borne out or contradicted by experience. 
 And in arguing this point, instead of having recourse to general 
 statistical details upon the amount of crimes, their proportion 
 to the numbers of the people, or their increase of late years, 
 let us at once resort to a view of the subject which affords a 
 test (severe indeed as regards its unerring certainty, but perfectly 
 fair towards the subject under examination), of the efficacy of 
 punishment as a means of preventing offences by operating on 
 the fears of men, or, what is the same thing, influencing their 
 calculations of self-interest. 
 
 ' It will not be denied, that if the sight of punishment, still 
 more if the hearing of it, can produce any effect, the actual expe- 
 rience of it must produce still more. Consequently, if the 
 undergoing it has little power to deter the sufferer from again 
 offending, his seeing another undergoing it can have still less; 
 and his only hearing of its being inflicted can least of all have 
 this deterring effect. Now, how stands the fact? I have 
 before me the returns of punishment in Manchester for nine- 
 teen years, ending 1827, and I find that of those who during that 
 period were convicted of felony, between a third and a fourth 
 were re-committed to the same gaol for other felonies, beside 
 the great number who may have been committed to other 
 prisons. Of the twelve or thirteen thousand persons committed 
 for felony during three years to the gaols of Salford and Leeds, 
 between three and four thousand relapsed after their sentences 
 expired, or at least after they were liberated. I have before 
 me similar accounts from Hull. But we have the means of 
 tracing this important subject more clearly. The magistrates 
 of Liverpool lately investigated the cases of fourteen boys (taken 
 at random and without selection) under seventeen years of age, 
 and they found that three had been no less than nine times 
 each fully committed for trial in the course of seven years one 
 of them having been so committed no less than nineteen times ; 
 and a child of only seven years old had begun his commitments 
 at that age, and in two years been condemned four times 
 three times to imprisonment for different terms, and the fourth 
 time to transportation. The evidence of persons well acquainted 
 with the subject, who were examined by the House of Com- 
 mons in 1828, shows that, though there is no punishment 
 
298 Sequel to Charge of October, 1853. 
 
 so much dreaded by these young offenders as whipping, yet the 
 impression of it soon wears away and fades from their memory.* 
 I surely have no occasion to go further in quest of evidence, if 
 indeed any were wanted, to demonstrate that the effect of 
 punishment in deterring by example is exceedingly feeble upon 
 the whole, and prodigiously overrated in all systems of criminal 
 jurisprudence, as well by the philosophers who speculate upon 
 the construction of codes, as by the lawgivers who trust to 
 statutes for a protection against offences. 
 
 ' But this is far from being the worst of the errors that have 
 been committed. There are preventives of crime, remedies for 
 moral evil, which both those classes have unhappily overlooked, 
 and no doubt this oversight has been in a great measure owing 
 to their exclusively directing their views towards the all but 
 hopeless task of deterring by the fear of punishment/f 
 
 * Report of Police Committee, 1828. Evidence of Mr. Wontner, Mr. Capper, 
 and others. 
 
 f* On the Inefficacy of simply Penal Legislation. By Lord Brougham. Autho- 
 rised .Report of the First Provincial Meeting of the National Reformatory Union. 
 Bristol : Arrowsmith. 1856. See also Works of Lord Brougham, vol. viii. p. 242. 
 London : Griffin & Co. 1856. 
 
299 
 
 CHAKOE OF MAECH, 1854. 
 
 GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND JURY, 
 
 I HAVE long held it to be no unimportant branch of the duties 
 of a judge exercising a jurisdiction high or low in criminal 
 matters, frequently to invite the attention of Grand Juries to 
 the causes of crime ; and more especially to such of them as by 
 the due exercise of influence on the part of individuals filling 
 your social position may be, if not entirely removed, at all 
 events much diminished. The progress of knowledge, in 
 respect of crime, follows the analogy of all other scientific 
 investigations. The subject ramifies and connects itself with 
 matters not formerly suspected of having any relation, much 
 less any practical relation, to the topic in hand. Half a century 
 ago, the attempt to strengthen our ability for grappling with 
 crime, by exploring the sources from whence flow diseases of 
 our bodies, would have been thought strangely inappropriate to 
 the duties of a court of justice. The essayist would perhaps 
 have been indulged in speculations of this or of any other kind, 
 by the few who take pleasure in inquiries which are not thought 
 to have much bearing on the affairs of life. But men of busi- 
 ness, exercising the duties of a solemn office like yours, would 
 have lent but an impatient ear to discussions resembling that to 
 which I am about to call your attention. 
 
 Some twenty years have now passed since the sanitary con- 
 dition of the dwellings inhabited by the poorer classes attracted 
 the attention of sagacious men, moving in different walks of life, 
 yet each in his own pursuit finding the subject forced upon his 
 attention. Thus Dr. South wood Smith, by his long experience 
 in hospital practice, and by the inquiries which qualified him to 
 produce his valuable work on Fever, was urged to reflect on 
 the imperative necessity for striking at the root of the mischief, 
 and for paralyzing the forces of the enemy, instead of limiting 
 himself to curing the wounds which it had inflicted. On the 
 other hand, Mr. Edwin Chadwick, whose official duties led him 
 to investigate the causes of pauperism, found that it often 
 
300 Charge of March, 1 854. 
 
 sprung from disease; sometimes the connexion was close and 
 apparent, sometimes so remote as to escape the attention of all 
 but the zealous and practised observer. The next step in the 
 inquiry would be to ascertain the causes of disease ; and thus 
 the physician and the Secretary of the Poor Law Board, 
 approaching the subject from opposite sides, arrived at the same 
 point, and met upon common ground. To these gentlemen 
 and their colleagues it became manifest that insufficient drain- 
 age and bad ventilation were the main causes of those preven- 
 tible diseases, which work as a standing plague to ravage the 
 population of the courts and alleys, and the inferior streets of 
 our cities. These causes were found to be very widely in 
 action ; and, indeed, not confined to the dwellings, or even the 
 districts occupied by the poor. For although, as their pesti- 
 ferous effect was not in these latter quarters counteracted by 
 opposing influences, it was here that their baneful powers were 
 most deadly, yet from the ignorance of builders, or the inad- 
 vertence of the wealthier class to the conditions of their own 
 health and comfort, there stood, and I am sorry to say there 
 yet stand, even in the best streets of almost every town, maga- 
 zines of insalubrity, which a few short, well-directed efforts 
 would soon empty and destroy. 
 
 That some considerable connexion must exist between disease 
 and poverty is so obvious, that one is astonished to find it 
 could so long have been overlooked ; practically overlooked, I 
 mean, for that it was either unknown or controverted cannot 
 be for a moment supposed. Every medical man knew that the 
 terrible fevers which always either raged or smouldered in the 
 worst parts of our towns, attacked, as if by preference, persons 
 in the prime of life; thus depriving young families of their 
 natural protectors, and throwing them into destitution. But if 
 the connexion between disease and poverty had been overlooked, 
 we need not be surprised that no similar connexion had been 
 observed between disease and crime ; or between the coincidence 
 of unwholesome dwellings and the abodes of a criminal popula- 
 tion. Yet it was only necessary to observe with ordinary care 
 the operation of unwholesome habitations and districts upon 
 those who inhabit them, to arrive at the conclusion that such a 
 connexion must exist. The state of health is gradually and 
 permanently lowered. The energies are weakened, labour 
 
Charge of March, 1854. 301 
 
 becomes more laborious ; indeed, all the powers of mind and 
 body are debilitated. In this> unhappy condition the ignorant 
 sufferer but too often flies for relief to the stimulus of ardent 
 liquors; and snatches from time to time a few moments of 
 exhilaration and activity, bought, however, at the price of a 
 more lamentable depression, gradually bringing the doomed 
 victim under the curse of an enthralling habit of intemperance, 
 alike fatal to estate, to body, and to soul. And thus the popu- 
 lation of these districts is year after year, and generation after 
 generation, exposed to the accumulated sufferings of disease, 
 drunkenness, indigence, and criminality. 
 
 That many must escape these dangers only shows that even 
 among the lowest of our kind there is much of good ; and this 
 consideration should urge us onward in our exertions to aid 
 them in freeing themselves from that crowd of adverse circum- 
 stances by which they are surrounded and oppressed. With 
 regard to the first of those conditions, insufficient drainage, it 
 is quite clear that society in its aggregate capacity is mainly 
 answerable for this crying evil. Even the richest among us 
 has no absolute mastery over the drainage of his neighbourhood; 
 the consent and co-operation of others being necessary to such 
 arrangements as will enable him to attain his object. But with 
 regard to the poor man, he is the helpless victim of public 
 neglect ; add to which he is also at the mercy of private cupi- 
 dity, for even if the municipal authorities of the town which he 
 inhabits have perfected a system of street drainage, he may yet 
 have no benefit from it by reason of the ill-construction of his 
 dwelling ; or because the owner declines to take advantage of the 
 appliances which have been placed at his command. Now I 
 am not disposed to turn round with stern severity upon any 
 particular class for conduct in respect of which all in our station 
 of life are more or less responsible ; all of us therefore needing 
 the protection of a general amnesty. Our excuse has hitherto 
 been our ignorance, but that excuse we can plead no longer. 
 Each of us must forthwith shake off lethargy; and when we 
 have done our best we may then, but not till then, turn to the 
 class of house owners, and justly warn them, that as they have 
 most in their power, so the country will mainly look to them 
 for prompt and efficient aid in the great work before us. 
 
 From a pamphlet which I hold in my hand, written by Dr. 
 
302 Charge of March, 1854. 
 
 Southwood Smith, and published, I believe, under the sanction 
 of the General Board of Health, I learn that the annual mor- 
 tality in houses which have been erected in various parts of 
 London by the Metropolitan Association for Improving the 
 Dwellings of the Industrious Classes, is only 7 in 1000; while 
 the average of the whole metropolis is more than three times as 
 large, namely, 22 in 1000 ; and the author goes on to state, 
 that the mortality of one of the worst portions of the metro- 
 politan districts, a mass of houses called the Potteries, in the 
 parish of Kensington, rises to the fearful height of 40 in iooo_, 
 being nearly six times the proportion of that in the houses 
 erected by the Association ; although these latter dwellings, in- 
 asmuch as they are built for the accommodation of the working 
 class, are necessarily placed in neighbourhoods which are the 
 resort of that order, and consequently not in the most open 
 and salubrious parts. But to convince the most sceptical that 
 it is from the circumstance of these houses having been built 
 upon sanitary principles that they are found to stand thus high 
 in the scale of salubrity, the author cites a most conclusive 
 fact, which I will lay before you in his own words : 
 
 ' Lambeth Square is situated in the "Waterloo Road district of the parish of 
 Lambeth. It consists of 37 eight-roomed houses, which let at about-28Z. a-year, 
 and are chiefly occupied by the foremen of large establishments, and the more 
 skilled and highly- paid class of artizans. In outward appearance, and in their 
 general aspect within, these houses are very superior to the ordinary abodes of the 
 same class in other parts of the metropolis, and present no obvious cause of peculiar 
 unhealthiness. 
 
 ' According to the last census, this square contains a population of 434 souls. 
 Among this number, on a house-to-house examination, it was found that in one 
 year (1851) there had occurred 80 attacks of disease, and 24 deaths ; that is, nearly 
 one person in every five had been laid up with sickness, which had proved fatal in 
 the proportion of between 50 and 60 in 1000. 
 
 'When built, about twenty years ago, these houses had been fitted up with 
 untrapped closets, communicating with flat-bottomed brick drains, then in 
 universal use. A number of the drains passed directly under the houses ; they 
 were wholly unprovided with any regular water-supply for cleansing ; consequently, 
 instead of carrying away the ordure, they retained it within the houses ; and the 
 emanations arising from the stagnant mass of putrifying matter were carried back 
 into the houses, through the open closets, in a proportion increasing with the 
 obstructions in the drains. 
 
 'At the beginning of 1852 a new system of drainage was applied to the whole 
 square. Water-closets were substituted for cesspools, and stoneware pipes for brick 
 drains, and the apparatus was provided with an adequate supply of water. 
 
 ' By these improvements the houses were placed in the same sanitary condition 
 
Charge of March) 1854. 303 
 
 essentially as the Society's dwellings. The result on the health of the inhabitants 
 was strikingly similar. On a re-examination of this property in November of the 
 present year (1853), it was found that the mortality had been reduced from 55 in 
 1000, to 13 in 1000.' 
 
 Let no imputation, Gentlemen, rest upon the proprietor, who- 
 ever he may be, for the original construction of the houses. 
 Let that error be ascribed to the general absence of knowledge 
 relating to the sanitary conditions to which I have adverted ; 
 let us rather give him praise for being among the first to rectify 
 the mistake which he had committed. Yet even he, I am per- 
 suaded, will never be able to look back on the waste of human 
 life which that mistake has caused, without feelings of the 
 keenest regret; however free that regret may be from any tinc- 
 ture of remorse. By the change in the drainage it appears 
 that the deaths had been reduced in the proportion of 4 to i, 
 so that we may conclude that if it had taken place prior to the 
 year 1851, the 24 deaths of that year would have been reduced 
 to 6 ; and consequently, that the number of lives spared to their 
 families and their country would have amounted in one year to 18 ! 
 I shrink from dwelling upon the carnage which its 20 years of 
 noisome drains must have inflicted on the community of Lambeth 
 Square. But now that the causes of this destruction are 
 understood, it well behoves every proprietor of such tenements 
 to ask himself how he can, for the future, answer it to his con- 
 science to let a similar mischief remain. Or if the state of the 
 public drainage should offer impediments, how he can justify 
 himself for not doing all that in him lies towards a mitigation 
 of so fearful an evil. It is a curious fact with regard to our 
 mral perceptions, that so far from our indignation being en- 
 hanced in proportion to the amount of crime committed, it 
 seems frequently to be weakened and dissipated by the magni- 
 tude of the offence sometimes indeed changed into admiration. 
 To say that ' one murder makes a villain, millions a hero/ is 
 but the pardonable exaggeration of an incontestable truth, not 
 altogether inapplicable to the question before us. For myself, 
 I do not fear but that one of two events will assuredly come to 
 pass ; either self-reproach and the power of public opinion will 
 prevent any proprietor from inviting or permitting human beings 
 to dwell in a house infected by the poisonous exhalations from 
 cesspools and foul drains, or he will as assuredly be brought 
 
304 Charge of March, 1854. 
 
 under the animadversion of the criminal law as if he adminis- 
 tered strychnine or arsenic. 
 
 But our immediate concern is with the relation between 
 sanitary arrangements and crime ; and you will rejoice, there- 
 fore, to learn that the results of an improved sanitary condition 
 of dwellings, are not only advantageous to the physical, but to 
 the moral health of those among the indigent classes who have 
 enjoyed the advantage of this reformation. In the year 1851, 
 we obtained from the Legislature, by the exertions of the Earl 
 of Shaffcesbury, what is called the ( Common Lodging Houses 
 Act/ which gives to the local authorities power to remove com- 
 pulsorily in those hives or dens of population, the lodgings 
 resorted to by the migratory, and oftentimes by the stationary 
 poor, many causes of complaint connected with the neglect of 
 sanitary measures. This enactment has been, Dr. Smith informs 
 us, grievously neglected in many towns ; but still it has been 
 applied, he says, in a sufficient number to indicate the kind 
 and amount of good it is capable of effecting. 
 
 * From the following examples,' he proceeds, 'selected from a great number of 
 similar statements contained in a return recently presented to Parliament, it will 
 be seen that the Common Lodging Houses Act, by enforcing certain conditions of 
 cleanliness, and by preventing overcrowding, has extended to vagrants and others, 
 forming the very lowest portion of the population, the like immunity from disease 
 which the improved dwellings have secured to the industrious labourer and artizan. 
 
 ' In the town of Wigan, for example, there are 24 lodging houses, through which 
 have passed, during the last year, 29,655 lodgers. The Superintendent of Police 
 reports, ' There has not been a single case of fever in any one of those houses since 
 the Act has been in force.' 
 
 ' The town of Wolverhampton affords a still more striking instance. In this town 
 there are 200 lodging houses, through which [are said to] have passed, during the 
 year, the incredible number of 511,000 lodgers. The Superintendent of Police 
 reports, ' There has not been a single case of fever in these houses since the 
 Lodging Houses Act has been in force, in July, 1852.' 
 
 ' Statements to the same effect have been received from Morpeth and Carlisle. 
 
 ' From a return made to the Secretary of State for the Home Department by 
 Captain Hay, one of the Metropolitan Police Commissioners, who has been 
 entrusted with the execution of this Act in the Metropolis, it appears that, in the 
 week ending 23rd of October, 1853, there were reported within the Metropolitan 
 Police district 7253 lodging houses. At that time the keepers of these houses had 
 all been served with notice to register in conformity with the Act. Of this number 
 1308 had permanently registered, and were under efficient regulation. In the 
 houses thus reported, the lodgers numbered at least 25,000. During the quarter 
 ending the 23rd October, there had not occurred a case of fever in any one of these 
 houses ; yet, before they were under regulation, twenty cases of fever have been received 
 into the London Fever Hospital, from a single house, in the course of a few weeks. 
 
Charge of March, 1854. 305 
 
 ' In the whole of the improved dwellings the exemption from cholera has been 
 as complete as from typhus. During the entire course of the epidemic in 1848 
 and 1849, no case f cholera occurred in any one of these dwellings, though the 
 pestilence raged in all the districts in which they are situated, and there were 
 instances of two, and even four, deaths in single houses close to their very walls. 
 Since the reappearance of the pestilence this autumn, it has numbered as many aa 
 twenty victims in one street in the metropolis, and six even in one house, but as 
 yet no case of the disease has occurred in any of the improved dwellings.' 
 
 Gentlemen, this gratifying passage well introduces another 
 which I had principally in view in making the citation : 
 
 ' Moral pestilence has, at the same time, been checked. The intemperate have 
 become sober, and the disorderly well conducted, since taking up their abode in 
 these healthful and peaceful dwellings. No charge of crime, no complaint even of 
 disturbance, has been lodged at any police station against a resident in these 
 dwellings since their first occupancy. 
 
 ' On the classes resorting to common lodging houses the change effected is still 
 more striking. 'Their whole conduct,' says [Mr. James] one of the magistrates of 
 Birmingham, 'is far better since the Act came into operation. Before that time, 
 their manner towards the police and magistrates was sullen and coarse ; now it is 
 respectful, candid, and open they seem to be satisfied that they are doing right.' 
 
 ' ' Since they have been under regulation,' says another highly-competent witness, 
 * neither the houses nor the inhabitants could be recognised as the same ; the lodgers 
 take an active part in assisting the police in enforcing the regulations the value 
 of the improvement effected to society generally, and to the parties immediately 
 concerned, is incalculable.' 
 
 'The Superintendent of Police at Carlisle says, 'Vice and immorality are much 
 less ; crime has decreased to a great extent.' 
 
 ' The Inspector of Common Lodging Houses in Wolverhampton bears the same 
 testimony. 
 
 ' The Clerk of the Local Board of Health of Morpeth says, ' Since inspection 
 under the Act, crime has very much diminished ; since the Act was applied, there 
 has not been one case of felony or misdemeanour in the borough, an exemption 
 from crime which I never knew before.' ' 
 
 Thus far, Gentlemen, I have been reading from Dr. South- 
 wood Smith, on whom I place great reliance, having had the 
 honour of his acquaintance for many years. Still, however, it 
 is fair to observe, that every new remedy, whether physical or 
 moral, is apt to be over-estimated at first ; and I certainly do 
 not expect that, however perfect the sanitary arrangements 
 of Morpeth may be, it will remain for any long period 
 altogether exempt from crime ; especially as I find by the 
 last census that it contains a population exceeding ten thousand 
 in number. 
 
 It would have been a dereliction of duty on my part to give 
 circulation, from the bench, to statements however high the 
 
 x 
 
306 Charge of March, 1 854. 
 
 authority by which they are sanctioned without taking mea- 
 sures to test, so far as my opportunities permit, the accuracy 
 of the facts alleged. As respects this town, I have consulted 
 Mr. Stephens, the Superintendent of Police, and Mr. Simons, one 
 of your medical officers. Each of these gentlemen is known to 
 you for his experience, his intelligence, and his zeal in exe- 
 cuting the duties of his office. The one is peculiarly conversant 
 with the hotbeds of crime in the borough, and the other with 
 the sanitary state of its various quarters ; and they both agree 
 that the abodes of disease and the abodes of criminals are 
 the same. I have instituted a similar inquiry with regard to 
 Bristol, and the results very nearly correspond. We must, 
 however, beware of raising our hopes too high, or we shall 
 suffer from disappointment, not unfrequently the parent of 
 languor and indifference. Part of the amelioration must, I 
 think, be attributed to a change in the class of lodgers or 
 occupants of the improved dwellings. Mr. Simons, in a letter 
 to Mr. Stephens, written very lately, makes the following 
 statement : 
 
 ' In reference to the condition of the Registered Lodging Houses, I have no 
 hesitation in saying that they have much improved in every respect since the 
 introduction of the Act. They are cleaner, better ventilated, much more free from 
 disease, much more orderly, and appear to be inhabited by a better class of people. 
 I seldom or never see intoxication or hear profane swearing. The persons inhabiting 
 these houses appear to be hawkers, tramps, and labourers. I was much struck, 
 during the late inclement weather, with the appearance of comfort in most of these 
 houses, by reason of the association together of persons warmed by the same fire, 
 and amused by the general conversation of the party. In this way they are kept 
 at home, and protected from what would otherwise be the irresistible attraction of 
 the public-house. The class of dwellings where disease and poverty most prevail 
 are Unregistered Lodging Houses : these are to be found in most of the low courts 
 in my district, and are principally inhabited by the dirty and low Irish. When the 
 house consists of three rooms, each will have its family; and thus each room is 
 occupied as a sitting, working, and sleeping room : the consequence of such a 
 system is dirty habits, immorality, disease, and indifference to all improvement. 
 The accommodations for purposes which do not admit of being specified are bad in 
 every respect : too small, badly constructed, and not fit to be used six months in the 
 twelve ; exposing to view the most revolting sights, and utterly destructive to all 
 sense of decency in both sexes. Very little fever exists in the Registered Lodging 
 Houses ; much more in the Unregistered. I think there is less illness in Registered 
 Lodging Houses than in other houses not under supervision.' 
 
 To this letter from Mr. Simons let me add a curious anec- 
 dote related by a London Missionary : 
 
Charge of March, 1854. 307 
 
 'I was much struck a short time ago, while visiting one of these houses in 
 Westminster, with the improved condition of the place ; so much so, that the 
 keeper herself seemed to have become a new woman. I asked her if she were the 
 same party who kept the house twelve months ago ? She replied in the affirmative, 
 and expressed her surprise that I did not know her ; she asked the reason. I told 
 her she looked so much more comfortable and younger like. She said, ' You know, 
 sir, they have made a new law for our houses : now we must keep them much 
 cleaner and more comfortable for our lodgers, and it would never do for me not to 
 look clean and tidy too ; I like it much better now, although I did not like it much 
 at first." 
 
 Gentlemen, some light has been thrown by these extracts on 
 the manner in which sanitary improvements operate in the 
 diminution of crime. With restored health, temptations to 
 indolence and inebriety diminish in force, one amendment 
 prompts another : self-respect is taught, gradually the aspira- 
 tions are elevated, and a general course of improvement set on 
 foot. But again, let us guard ourselves against extravagant 
 expectations; and especially against hoping that the moral 
 results will always keep pace with the physical benefits. It 
 would be rash indeed to expect that the best conducted drain- 
 age or the most perfect ventilation will on the sudden produce 
 any signal change in habits of intoxication or profane swearing. 
 Whoever has given due attention to the subject must, I think, 
 have arrived at the conclusion, that the aggregate of crime in 
 any age or country is produced by a multiplicity of causes, and 
 asks for a multiplicity of remedies. Early training, the general 
 spread of knowledge, and of sympathy between class and class, 
 more earnest and practical convictions, moral and religious, 
 with a better observance of all that relates to the health of 
 body and mind, and an improved system of police jurisprudence 
 and reformatory discipline it is to all these various appliances, 
 acting together in harmony, and not to any one alone, that I 
 look forward, as I do with confidence, for the gradual but cer- 
 tain diminution of crime. That we shall move on but slowly is 
 what I expect and believe. Long experience has made me but 
 too well acquainted with the numerous impediments which 
 encumber our path, to admit of my entertaining expectations of 
 a rapid progress. That we shall somewhat amend our pace I 
 venture to hope, for indeed it has hitherto been that of the 
 tortoise. But if it should be found that in spite of our endea- 
 vours we cannot excel this type of slowness in speed, let us at 
 all events emulate him in perseverance. 
 
 X 3 
 
308 Charge of March, 1854. 
 
 To return, Gentlemen, to the dwellings of the poor. Let 
 such of us as may have no property of this kind remember that 
 we ought not to shrink from taking our share of the burden; 
 which, though it must necessarily fall heavier on some classes 
 than on others, must not be evaded by any who are possessed 
 of competent means. The Improved Dwellings in London, to 
 which I first called your attention, were erected by a Society 
 which raised a capital for that purpose by virtue of a Royal 
 Charter, limiting the liability of every Shareholder to the 
 amount of his shares, but restricting also his possibility of profit 
 to 5 per cent, on the capital expended. The privilege of 
 limited liability was granted in consideration of the benevolent 
 purpose for which the Society is founded ; and it is to be 
 regretted that the Crown was unable to take another step in 
 this course of liberality* The cost of the two Charters, granted 
 to the Society to enable them to accomplish objects essential to 
 the public welfare, amounted, we learn from Dr. Southwood 
 Smith, to the exorbitant sum of I43O/. / Gentlemen, we shall 
 not, I am sure, deny that nothing can be more delightful than 
 
 ' To taste the luxury of doing good.' 
 
 "We shall also admit that we must pay for our enjoyments, and 
 we are told by financiers that luxuries are fair subjects for taxa- 
 tion ; yet, in spite of the demands which must be made on our 
 fiscal resources by the War, I cannot but hope that the enor- 
 mous rate of duty which is thus levied on the article ' bene- 
 volence/ will be found safely to admit of considerable and 
 immediate reduction. 
 
 Under one of the Society's Charters, Branch Institutions 
 may be founded in any part of England and Wales, and they 
 will be clothed with a like privilege of limited liability ; the 
 parent Society receiving the gratuity of a half per cent, on the 
 outlay, and another half per cent, from year to year on the 
 same amount ; as a compensation for the use of the Charter, and 
 also for some other facilities which it supplies to those affiliated 
 bodies. Four Branches have been already formed. From two 
 of them the one at Brighton, which has been in action for 
 some years, and the other at Dudley, which is preparing to 
 build I have received assurances that their connexion with 
 the parent Society is highly satisfactory ; relieving them from 
 
Charge of March, 1 854. 309 
 
 the expense and delay of obtaining a Charter, and giving them, 
 all the benefit of the somewhat costly experience of those who 
 led the way in this good work; while on the other hand the 
 .Branch Institutions do not feel themselves under any constraint, 
 being left to the exercise of their own discretion. 
 
 Into the financial results, either of the Parent or of the 
 Branch Societies, I shall not enter. Already a return of mode- 
 rate interest has been obtained ; and as the classes sought to be 
 principally benefited become more and more aware of the 
 advantages in store for them, it may fairly be expected that the 
 profits will be augmented. At the same time, I do not feel 
 myself justified in suggesting these undertakings as affording 
 the means of gainful investments. In the present state of our 
 experience they should be instituted on other grounds, and the 
 expectation of profit should be a secondary consideration. 
 
 Another means of accomplishing the same purpose is fur- 
 nished by the 'Labouring Classes' Lodging Houses Act, 1851.' 
 By the powers of this Act, Municipal Corporations and some other 
 bodies are enabled to borrow money, on the security of their 
 rates, for erecting new dwellings or for altering existing houses. 
 I have not been able to learn that this Act, which appears to me 
 to be well framed for the attainment of the end in view, has 
 yet been adopted in any instance. Representative bodies are 
 excusably reluctant to increase the burdens which press upon 
 their constituents ; and although it seems quite clear that after 
 no long period the outlay of capital in any town, which should 
 have the effect of rendering it more salubrious, would, in various 
 ways, operate in relief of the rates yet, as at first it would 
 produce some slight augmentation of their amount, it may be 
 that these bodies are waiting the growth of a public opinion in 
 favour of the measure. In justice to your municipal authorities 
 I feel bound to remark that the call for their interposition is 
 not so pressing in this place as in many others. I have 
 examined the returns of the last census for every town in the 
 Island containing more than 100,000 inhabitants; and I find 
 that, as regards the proportion of houses to population, Bir- 
 mingham stands, with the single exception of Leeds, at the head 
 of the list. We have also, in the site of our borough, in its 
 elevation above the sea, and in the subsoil of a great portion of 
 it, sanitary advantages over other places. Great merit must 
 
310 Charge of March, 1 854. 
 
 also be conceded to the Council for the vast improvements 
 which they have effected in the drainage. But I am sure you 
 will agree with me, that whatever may be our comparative 
 state, the positive evils existing among us are such as to demand 
 immediate attention, and unwearied exertions for their extirpa- 
 tion; and I think it cannot be denied, that as the proposed 
 changes would remove many dangers from which no inhabitant, 
 high or low, can be sure to escape, and would tend to the dimi- 
 nution of pauperism and crime, which throw heavy burdens on 
 the borough, justice points to the expense being levied on the 
 whole community which is to receive the benefit, rather than it 
 should be cast upon the few who happen to feel more than an 
 ordinary interest in the welfare of their neighbours. But, 
 passing by the particular means by which the object is to be 
 accomplished, I am led to believe that you and your fellow- 
 townsmen have it in your power to make Birmingham as dis- 
 tinguished for the health and morals of its inhabitants, as it is, 
 and long has been, for their industry, their perseverance, and 
 their ingenuity. 
 
 Let me, then, in conclusion, invite your attention to the 
 whole subject. Investigate for yourselves. Inquire first 
 whether any interposition, either by benevolent institutions or 
 by local authorities, is desirable ; and if you find, as I firmly 
 believe you will, that such interposition is not only expedient, 
 but that it stands before you as an imperative duty, you will 
 next have to consider which of the two modes pointed out 
 should be selected ; and having made up your minds on the 
 whole question, I would respectfully but most earnestly call 
 upon you to act, each in your own position, and according to 
 your own means and influence, as your consciences may direct. 
 
 Gentlemen, one word more and I have done. The awful 
 scourge of cholera hangs over our country while I speak, or 
 rather, it is at this moment descending upon us. We must abide 
 the visitation in our actual state, such as it is. But let the 
 nation at least draw this lesson from past neglect, that if we 
 pause during the rage of the pestilence, we shall, when it 
 relaxes its force, come again under the old temptation to pro- 
 crastinate yet further, until it gathers up its virulence anew, 
 and still finds us defenceless against its assaults ! On the other 
 hand, if we forthwith make a right use of our affliction, we 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 311 
 
 may turn our punishment into a blessing : we may insure to 
 thousands, nay, millions of our brethren, a larger measure of 
 health to body and to soul than it has ever yet been their lot 
 to enjoy, or our privilege to witness. 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF DWELLINGS FOR PROMOTING TEMPERANCE OR 
 THE CONTRARY. 
 
 [Memorandum of a conversation with Dr. Southwood Smith, June, 1854.] 
 
 THE bettering of dwellings, by improved drainage and venti- 
 lation, produces a marked effect on the drinking habits of the 
 inhabitants. The atmosphere being relieved of its heavy and 
 poisonous ingredients, the dweller is also relieved from that 
 craving for stimulants produced by living in bad air; and if 
 the habit of drinking has not become inveterate, as the craving 
 passes away, so does the indulgence ; or at least, it is very much 
 lessened. The wish for improvement arises in the mind. The 
 luxury of a table is aspired to, a couple of chairs follow, by 
 and by a few ornaments appear on the chimney-piece, and last 
 of all, one or two flowers in pots are placed outside the windows. 
 Meanwhile, cleanliness and neatness have made progress within- 
 side the room, and the flowers, like the rainbow after the flood, 
 show that the poor depressed human being, sunk in the deluge 
 of misery and vice, has at length seen dry land, the waters have 
 subsided, and his future is brightened with the prospect of 
 happiness. 
 
 In spite of all that has been done for the sanitary improve- 
 ment of our large towns, a careful inspection of the statistics of 
 mortality, combined with information which I have obtained 
 from persons of the highest authority, who have made statistics 
 in general, or sanitary investigations in particular, the study of 
 their lives, has convinced me of the mournful truth that all our 
 large and dense populations are steadily becoming less and less 
 healthy. Doubtless, the exertions which have been made since 
 
312 Sequel to Charge of March, 1 854. 
 
 the subject has attracted public attention have done much 
 towards diminishing the rate of downward progress, but far more 
 must be accomplished than has yet even been attempted, before 
 that progress can be arrested. Even yet the popular feeling 
 has not been sufficiently roused ; municipal bodies, which must 
 be taken to reflect the opinions of those whom they represent, 
 are by no means so sensitive to the necessity for checking pre- 
 ventible disease, by every means which money and science place 
 at our disposal, as to be willing to incur the outlay requisite for 
 success. 
 
 I copy with much pain the last Report made by Mr. Town- 
 send, the late medical officer of Birmingham : 
 
 ( BOROUGH OF BIRMINGHAM. 
 
 ' At a Monthly Meeting of the Council, held on Tuesday, the 
 Third day of October, 1854, the Mayor laid before the Council 
 a communication from the Officer of Health, addressed to the 
 Borough Inspection Committee ; which that Committee by reso- 
 lution and deputation had requested him to lay before the Council. 
 
 ' The communication having been read and received, was 
 ordered to be printed, and a copy forwarded to each member of 
 the Council. 
 
 f To the Borough Inspection Committee. 
 ' GENTLEMEN 
 
 ( In compliance with the request contained in your 
 minute, No. 809, I beg leave to offer the following suggestions 
 for additional precautions against epidemic disease. 
 
 ' i. That the Medical Officer of Health be supplied with the 
 weekly death returns from the local Superintendent Registrar, 
 on the terms proposed by him to your Committee, until the Town 
 Council is enabled to obtain them by other arrangements. 
 
 ' 2. That there should be an immediate increase in the number 
 of assistants in the Inspector of Nuisances department, the 
 duties of that office being very inadequately performed, for the 
 want of a sufficient staff. 
 
 ' 3. That all streets, alleys, and courts should be periodically 
 inspected; all accumulation of filth removed; all houses in a 
 dirty or otherwise unwholesome condition, cleansed and lime- 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 313 
 
 washed ; and where contagious or infectious diseases prevail, the 
 sick removed if practicable, and urged to obtain immediate 
 medical aid, parochial or other gratuitous assistance being ren- 
 dered easily accessible to those whose means require it. 
 
 ' 4. That the attention of the Borough Surveyor be imme- 
 diately called to all cases where bad drainage is found to exist, 
 or the pavements are in an improper state ; and that means be 
 adopted for giving an adequate quantity of the best attainable 
 water to those courts and houses where the present supply is 
 insufficient in quantity, or unfitted for domestic use. 
 
 ' 5. That strict supervision be exercised over all slaughter- 
 houses, knackers' yards, boiling houses, manure depots, and 
 all such other places, where trades prejudicial to public health 
 are carried on; and reports made of any circumstance arising 
 from their condition, requiring attention. 
 
 ' 6. That no open midden, cesspool, or pigsty, in crowded 
 courts, or in close contiguity to dwelling-houses, be permitted 
 after the expiration of two days' notice. 
 
 ' 7. That no dwelling-house or workshop be suffered to be 
 occupied over privies or cesspools. 
 
 <8. That the Medical Officer of Health should personally 
 inspect, if possible, all those localities in which deaths from 
 fever, cholera, or other zymotic diseases are known to have 
 occurred. 
 
 ' 9. That the lodging-house system be revised by the Medical 
 Officer of Health, the -minimum number of cubic feet to each 
 lodger increased from 450 to 600 feet, and the number of 
 lodgers regulated by him according to the locality, cleanliness, 
 and general means of ventilation. 
 
 ' 10. In the event of a sudden outbreak of epidemic cholera, 
 that a complete and efficiently organized system of house to 
 house visitation by medical men be immediately adopted, and 
 such medical men and the Inspector of Nuisances to report 
 daily to the Medical Officer of Health during the continuance 
 of such epidemic. 
 
 ' It must so frequently have occurred to every member of 
 your Committee that many houses are constantly being erected, 
 back to back, with very insufficient ventilation, and in defiance 
 of, or with an utter disregard to, all sanitary considerations ; to 
 meet this, I deem it of the greatest moment that your next 
 
314 Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 
 
 bill should contain a clause, requiring all houses to be erected 
 on certain approved principles of ventilation and drainage, and 
 that every court should have a sufficient number of privies, 
 capable of being well flushed, by means of self-acting apparatus. 
 
 'The preceding suggestions embrace all that I am desirous 
 of bringing under your consideration at the present moment, 
 but I cannot allow this occasion to pass without making a 
 few observations on the debate which took place in the Town 
 Council, on the application of your Committee for the weekly 
 death returns, as reported in the local papers of Saturday last. 
 
 ' You will observe that I have placed this suggestion first 
 on the list, and I have done so notwithstanding the result of 
 the debate, from a conviction of their great importance, and a 
 sense of the solemn responsibility which devolves upon me, 
 as your Officer of Health, in the performance of my duties ; 
 and I must again urge you to use every argument to induce 
 the Council to re-consider their decision on this momentous 
 question. 
 
 f I cannot say that I felt great surprise, that your report 
 should not have received the approval of a larger number of 
 the Town Council : for much as is said of reform in the present 
 day, the Corporation of this Borough have exhibited no undue 
 haste to promote it in relation to sanitary questions; yet, 
 surely it might have acted not unwisely by following the 
 example of those towns in which this subject has engaged 
 public attention with so much satisfaction during several past 
 years, and with still more future promise. Here, unfortunately, 
 we have evidence of how much may be said, and how little 
 accomplished, by those who, though their motto is ' Forward/ 
 hesitate to advance one single step, whilst the fate of thousands 
 awaits their decision. 
 
 ' I regretted to observe the name of one member of your 
 Committee as expressing an opinion that such returns ' were 
 unnecessary; but as that gentleman has not in any instance 
 been present at your meetings since my appointment to this 
 office, I must presume that he was unacquainted with the facts 
 presented by me, and which, had he known them, might possibly 
 have led him to an opposite conclusion. 
 
 ' It was also remarked, that ' we might pay too much for 
 statistics, and that the parish weekly returns of sickness and 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1 854. 3 15 
 
 death afford a very sufficient knowledge of the health of the 
 Borough ;' to this I reply, that the weekly death returns form 
 the very basis of the usefulness of Medical Officers of Health ; 
 from them it is ascertained where deaths from preventible 
 causes have occurred, and would almost of necessity again occur 
 if those causes were not removed. Having served this most 
 valuable purpose, I certainly cannot see why they should not 
 be made available for further use, unless, indeed, any advantage 
 could be hoped for by not suffering the public to know how 
 much, or how little the health of the borough had improved 
 under the watchful superintendence of its faithful guardians. 
 
 ' To the other assertion I may remark, that the parish records 
 of Birmingham and Aston, of which the Officer of Health can 
 now avail himself, show the average weekly number of deaths 
 to be about 20, whilst the weekly average of the entire borough 
 was last year about 128. What then can be the reason for 
 remaining satisfied with a knowledge of the cause of death in 
 one-sixth of the number only ? 
 
 ' There is one other point which merits passing notice. It 
 was remarked that my deservedly ' esteemed predecessor did not 
 require these returns, yet he was always ready to give statis- 
 tical information of the health of the borough ;' I apprehend, 
 statistics of death not based upon the returns could be of 
 little service indeed ; and I beg with the utmost respect to 
 inform your Committee, that not one of my predecessors either 
 took the title or performed the customary duties of Medical 
 Officer of Health ; neither has the Council, at present, accorded 
 to myself the means of fully and satisfactorily carrying out the 
 object of my appointment in its fullest sense. Let us note 
 the consequences, in 1849 the death rate for the Parish of 
 Birmingham was 23.26 per 1000. Parish of Aston, 19.61. 
 Parish of Edgbaston, 11.80. What would your statistics show 
 it to have been four years later, from June 3oth, 1853, to the 
 same period in 1854? 
 
 ' Parish of Birmingham . . . . 30.84 per 1000 
 Aston .... nearly 27 
 Edgbaston, including the 
 
 whole of King's Norton 23.06 
 
 Whilst, if we take the first half only of the present year, we find 
 that in the Parish of Birmingham the mortality has even reached 
 
31 6~ Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 
 
 the unprecedented rate in Birmingham of 33.86 per 1000 ! ! 
 Gentlemen, I leave these facts to your own consideration ; it is 
 needless for me to make any comment, I will but remind you, 
 that in consequence of our increasing death-rate, from fifteen to 
 eighteen hundred more persons died in one year, 1853-54, 
 than in 184950, after allowing for increase of population or 
 than ought to have died, according to the rate of mortality in 
 the last-named period, distant only four years ! ! Suffer me 
 then to inquire where and with whom does this fearful respon- 
 sibility rest ? Is it with the Corporation of Birmingham and 
 their Officers of Health, or is it not ? Yet will I say that half 
 a score of murders, or the sacrifice of so many lives from a 
 single accident at our Central Railway Station, or the falling 
 of a house, would create far more consternation, far more 
 sympathy, than have these four times let us say TEN hun- 
 dred lives ; which, in as many years, death has prematurely and 
 silently snatched from among us. It is much to be appre- 
 hended, that in four years hence the same sad tale of past 
 neglect, with its terrible consequences, may be repeated, with- 
 out the aid even of that much dreaded disease, cholera ; which 
 is, in truth, even less to be feared than other diseases produced 
 by similar causes, and annually destroying many hundreds of 
 our population. 
 
 ' As to the question of making this a paid appointment, and 
 inviting the most eminent members of the profession to become 
 candidates, permit me to say that it is one to which I shall 
 feel no sort of objection ; and I trust the public will duly ap- 
 preciate so wise a decision. Whenever that is arrived at, I 
 shall have infinite satisfaction in resigning the trust which the 
 Council has reposed in me, to place myself on the same equa- 
 lity with others for re-election, should the proposed salary be 
 adequate to the heavy labours of the most important office that 
 can be filled by any member of the medical profession. 
 
 e I shall offer no apology for the length of these remarks, 
 which I trust your Committee will think of sufficient moment 
 to diffuse among the entire body of the Corporation. 
 
 f l remain, Gentlemen, your very obedient humble Servant, 
 ' CHARLES TOWNSEND, Medical Officer of Health. 
 
 '70, Newhall-street, September soth, 1854.' 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 317 
 
 I grieve to have to record that the answer given by the 
 Council to this earnest appeal was, not the adoption of the 
 recommendations contained in the Report, but the dismissal 
 of its author by the abolition of his office ! 
 
 If the language of the Report had attacked individuals, I 
 should have been reluctant to reproduce it here ; and it is due 
 to Mr. Townsend to insert his own comment upon it in a letter 
 to myself, dated January n, 1856 : ( I beg to enclose the last 
 copy of my Report to the Borough Inspection Committee, 
 which I have only this moment laid hands upon. With regard 
 to the figures, I think you may fully rely on their accuracy, but 
 a re-perusal of the pamphlet, which was not intended for other 
 readers than the members of the Committee to whom it is 
 addressed, convinces me that it possesses faults, for which I must 
 claim your indulgence. I perhaps had no right to criticise the 
 conduct of the Council, and may have erred in the excess of my 
 zeal to perform the duties of a most responsible and important 
 office at which time I imagined that language milder than I 
 then used would probably fail to make any impression on the 
 Council/ 
 
 There is no reason for believing that the inhabitants of 
 Birmingham rank below those of other towns in their appre- 
 ciation of the importance of sanitary measures, and of the 
 necessity for accurate information on which to found them. I 
 fear we must look upon the apathy evinced in this town to be 
 the exponent of the general indisposition to expend money, 
 except with a niggard hand, for objects on which scarcely any 
 outlay could be too large. 
 
 It is right also to state that, if we may trust to existing data, 
 the rapid increase of mortality, to which Mr. Townsend adverts, 
 must be referred to some temporary cause ; as it would seem, 
 by later accounts, that the rate has fallen back to what it was 
 in 1849. But, although the perils of delay may not be so 
 alarming as they appeared to Mr. Townsend, no man who has 
 examined the subject can doubt that the number of deaths by 
 preventible disease is enormous that every addition to our 
 towns adds force to those causes already but too powerful, which 
 injure the public health and that every year calls for more 
 strenuous efforts to contend against our potent and insidious 
 enemy. 
 
3 1 8 Sequel to Charge of March, 1 854. 
 
 I subjoin certain questions which I proposed to Mr. Town- 
 send about the commencement of the year 1856, together with 
 his answers : 
 
 Question i. Can you state the rate of mortality in Birming- 
 ham and its suburbs ? 
 
 Answer i. I have no means of ascertaining the positive rate 
 of mortality in Birmingham and its suburbs later than the date 
 of my Report to the Council. Though the Borough has un- 
 questionably participated in the general diminution of mortality 
 which has prevailed throughout the kingdom in the past year, 
 it will as certainly rise again to the high rate of former years. 
 
 Q. 2. Whether such rate is on the increase or decrease ? 
 
 A. 2. My calculations do not extend over a sufficient series 
 of years to determine very precisely what is the exact ratio of 
 increase in our death-rate ; but that it is progressively increasing, 
 if we take the last half of any decennial period, particularly in 
 certain parts of the town, I have no manner of doubt. 
 
 Q. 3. Will comparison with the neighbouring disconnected 
 parishes tend to show that the cause of a high rate of mor- 
 tality in Birmingham is confined to Birmingham ; or extends 
 to the district in which Birmingham is situated ? 
 
 A. 3. I believe a careful comparison with the neigh- 
 bouring disconnected parishes will show that the cause of the 
 increased rate of mortality in past years is confined to Birming- 
 ham. The rate of mortality in the surrounding districts will 
 probably be found somewhat higher, but not relatively so. 
 
 Q. 4. If confined to Birmingham, to what causes should you 
 attribute the high rate ? Bad ventilation ? Imperfect sewerage ? 
 Height above the sea, as regards pulmonary complaints ? &c. 
 
 A. 4. I attribute the high rate of mortality in Birmingham, 
 in part, to the same causes which influence it in the manu- 
 facturing town populations of the midland districts generally, 
 namely, the old, dirty, ill-constructed, and badly-ventilated 
 dwellings of the poor in our courts and alleys, and certain 
 inefficiently-drained localities. To our over- crowded graveyards, 
 numerous offensive trades and others injurious to life, the 
 prejudicial effects of carbon from the non-consumption of smoke 
 from almost countless manufacturing chimneys. To the insuf- 
 ficient supply of water, in many places, as also to the quality of 
 the water itself, whether derived from the source which at 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 319 
 
 present supplies the town, or from private wells, many of which 
 derive their impurities from the leakage or escape of gas, and 
 the percolation of animal matter through the porous subsoil, 
 from the numerous privies, cesspools, dumb-wells, &c. Neither 
 can the temptations to drunkenness, which here exist in such 
 superabundance, be omitted from the list of causes bearing so 
 largely on the health of the town. As regards the elevation of 
 the town above the sea, it is highly probable that this circum- 
 stance most favourably influences the mortality by carrying off 
 rapidly the noxious vapours emanating from some of the above- 
 mentioned sources, whatever influence it may exercise in the 
 production of certain diseases of the respiratory organs. 
 
 Q. 5. Has the employment of women in manufactories any, 
 and what effect, on the rate of mortality in children ? 
 
 A. 5. I am greatly impressed with the conviction that the 
 employment of women in factories is productive of a large amount 
 of physical suffering from overcrowding and its usual attendant 
 consequences; but more especially from its influence on the infant 
 mortality of this and other manufacturing towns similarly situ- 
 ated, by reason of the withdrawal of the mother from attention to 
 her children, where in some dirty, ill-ventilated dwelling they 
 are frequently shut up for hours, under circumstances but too 
 surely provocative of disease; whilst the infant, deriving its 
 sustenance at long intervals from the breast, is plied with nar- 
 cotics to procure sleep and quiet in the mother's absence. The 
 facile manner in which these destructive agents are obtained is 
 much to be regretted, and the pernicious effects of the system 
 much to be deplored. 
 
 Q. 6. Has the late improvement in the sewerage been pro- 
 ductive of results decidedly beneficial, so marked as to be con- 
 sidered as facts instead of inferences ? 
 
 A. 6. I do not think any appreciable advantage to the 
 health of Birmingham can be justly attributed to the present 
 plan of deep sewerage ; nor is it likely to arise until house 
 drainage into the sewers is generally adopted, and the present 
 plan of privy accommodation and open cesspools abolished. As 
 yet, the deep sewers serve scarcely more than the old ones for 
 the street drainage rainfall, with a very limited number of 
 water-closets. 
 
 Q. 7. Please to enumerate the localities in which disease is 
 accompanied with crime ? 
 
320 Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 
 
 A. 7. I am altogether unable to determine as regards the 
 close connexion which undoubtedly exists between crime and 
 disease in very many parts of this borough, which fact depends 
 on the other. Possibly, and I am inclined to think it is so, 
 each often gives rise to the other, but on which side the pre- 
 ponderance lies I know not. Of their co-existence I have no 
 doubt; but I have not given sufficient consideration to this 
 subject to enable me to speak from my own knowledge of more 
 than a few of the principal localities in which they seem 
 chained together. T will instance the few following : John- 
 street, the Gullet, Slaney -street, Drury-lane, New Inkleys, 
 North- Wood-street, Thomas-street, Lichfield-street, Park-street. 
 Allison-street, Green's Village, Livery-street (part), Staffer d- 
 street, Steelhouse-lane, Brick-street, Old Inkleys, and Cheapside. 
 
 There are many others in which disease prevails to a great 
 extent that I am not aware possess a close affinity to crime ; 
 more particularly in the district of St. George's, and some 
 parts of the parish of Aston. 
 
 Seventeen years of experience as Recorder enable me to 
 corroborate the enumeration given by Mr. Townsend of the seats 
 of the criminal population in the Borough. 
 
 The Lodging Houses Act, by thinning the number of lodgers 
 in each house registered, has a tendency to drive the poor in 
 greater numbers to those houses which registration has not 
 reached, either because they are not within the Act, or because 
 their occupants have not complied with its requisitions. It is, 
 indeed, self-evident that if no additional houseroom is provided, 
 the improvement by the lessened numbers in the registered 
 lodging-houses cannot be looked upon with anything like unal- 
 loyed satisfaction, when we know that it is bought at the expense 
 of still further overcrowding the class of houses below them. 
 
 A few extracts from Mr. Godwin's tract, London Shadows, 
 will sufficiently confirm my statement : 
 
 ' The following case shows the operation of the Act in this 
 respect : A widow, very poor, with three children, the eldest 
 ten years of age, is charged 3$. 6d. a week for lodging in a 
 house in ' Short's Gardens/ Drury-lane. This is an amount of 
 weekly rent which it is totally out of the power of this woman, 
 

 Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 321 
 
 in her present circumstances, honestly to pay. The lodging- 
 house keeper says that, having known the woman for some 
 years, he has, since his house was licensed, let her and the chil- 
 dren sleep there for 35. 6d. a week a sum less than he ought 
 to charge ; the ordinary charge would be \d. a night for the 
 mother (2s. ^d. a week), and half-price for the children (35. 6d. 
 a week) ; in all 55. lod. This is a startling amount of rent, 
 but the lodging-house keeper, as he observed, since he dare not 
 admit more than a certain number of inmates, must charge 
 the amount allowed by law to enable him to live, and at the 
 same time pay his rent and taxes. 
 
 1 Immediate and large provision of lodgings is required by 
 the present condition of things, particularly for the very poor 
 who have families of children. - 
 
 ' In a small room in Rosemary-lane, near the Tower, fourteen 
 adults were sleeping on the floor, without any partition or 
 regard to decency j and in an apartment in Church-lane, St. 
 Giles's, not fifteen feet square, were thirty-seven men, women, 
 and children, all huddled together on the floor. 
 
 ' The house was dirty, dilapidated, and swarming with 
 vermin : this was the condition of two houses after they had 
 been thinned by the police. The following is an account of 
 part of a house of ten rooms in this neighbourhood (Rosemary- 
 lane), let to the poor Irish at is. 3d. per week : One of these 
 rooms, kept by Daniel Jones, contained five beds, as they were 
 called, but which, in fact, were nothing but bundles of rags, 
 similar to those described in Clerkenwell. In 'Bed' No. i, 
 Daniel Jones, the keeper, his wife, and children, aged eight, 
 seven, and five years. ' Bed' No. 2, occupied by Cornelius 
 Toomy (paid 6d. a week to the keeper), John and Peter Shea, 
 in the same bed, paid 6d. each is. 6cl. for this bed. 'Bed' 
 No. 3, John Sullivan and his wife, paying jd. per week. f Bed' 
 No. 4, Cornelius Haggarty, his wife, boy, thirteen, and girl, 
 eleven, pays is. per week. 'Bed' No. 5, Patrick Kelly and 
 wife, paying lid.; in all fourteen persons in one room; the 
 original rent is. 6d. The keeper received from lodgers 4$. per 
 
Sequel to Charge of March , 1854. 
 
 week. At the time of Sergeant Price's visit (24th of August, 
 1852) the greater portion of these persons were in a state 
 almost of nudity, huddled in this manner together. 
 
 ' Let us look into a house in an adjoining street. This 
 consists of five small rooms, and a back kitchen or washhouse, 
 and is occupied by five families, numbering thirty -three indi- 
 viduals, distributed as follows, viz. : Seven in the kitchen, 
 which is underground a man, his wife, and five children; 
 seven in the room over the kitchen a man, his mother, wife, 
 and four children ; in the room behind this are four labourers, 
 who sleep upon two small beds, which fill the room; eight in 
 the top front room a shoemaker, his wife, and six children ; 
 seven in the top back room six men and women, with one 
 child, occupying only two beds. The kitchen is very dirty, 
 has two sinks, both unt rapped, communicating with the drain, 
 and contains the waterbutt for the supply of water to the several 
 families. The house itself is filthy, the walls besmeared with 
 dirt, and the yard contains an open cesspool and stagnant 
 water. No wonder that cholera has already been busy in this 
 house. 
 
 ' Persons congratulate themselves on the removal of ' rooke- 
 ries/ and look with complacency at the noble warehouses and 
 streets which rise to occupy the sites of the wretched hovels. 
 But what has been done in this great metropolis to provide for 
 the living creatures who, by the improvements, have had their 
 hearths destroyed ? Literally nothing. A short time ago we 
 witnessed the ejectment, from Orchard-place, Portman-square, 
 of nearly fifteen hundred men, women, and children ; the place 
 was in a bad condition, and fever was a constant visitor; yet 
 the people were sorry to leave the place, knowing the difficulty 
 of obtaining, with their limited means, a better lodging, or even 
 any lodging at all. Single men could manage well enough, 
 but it was distressing to see the wretched furniture, if so it 
 could be called, and families in the muddy street on a rainy 
 day, the parents hunting in all directions to obtain shelter. 
 These poor people would go, as a matter of course, to the 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 323 
 
 already thickly crowded parts of Marylebone, St. Pancras, 
 Clerkenwell, &c., for no provision had been made for them of 
 an improved kind/* 
 
 It is worthy of remark, that whenever the Legislature 
 attempts to promote the welfare of any class of the community, 
 by means of restraint upon their freedom of action, there is too 
 often a large drawback to be made from the apparent good 
 produced, by reason of the alternatives to which those intended 
 to be favoured are necessarily driven. The following passage 
 from a Report of Mr. Frederic Hill, late Inspector of Prisons 
 for Scotland, affords an instance of the evil caused by Legisla- 
 tive interference : 
 
 ' The following is an extract from a letter I have received 
 from a lady residing in this district [Newcastle], who takes a 
 warm interest in the welfare of the working classes, especially 
 those of her own sex : 
 
 ' ' When Lord Ashley's Bill first took effect here, it caused a 
 great many females who had previously wrought in the coal- 
 pits, to suffer from the pressure of want (as you are well aware 
 that there is no relief for able-bodied persons by the provisions 
 of the Scottish Poor-law). This bore particularly hard upon 
 widows with young families, of which there are always a great 
 many at all collieries, from the circumstance not only of mining 
 being an unhealthy occupation, but also from the many casual- 
 ties destructive of life to which colliers are liable. I am happy 
 to say that in this district the distress was less felt than it 
 would otherwise have been, from the fortunate commencement, 
 shortly after Lord Ashley's Act came into operation, of exten- 
 sive iron-works in the neighbourhood, which have hitherto 
 given employment to a number of females in the simple occupa- 
 tion of assisting in turning a windlass used in sinking the 
 shafts to get at the ironstone, and also in removing the iron- 
 stone from the baskets to the truck provided for carrying it 
 away from the pit-mouth. This is, no doubt, a degrading 
 occupation for women; but you will observe, they do not con- 
 travene Lord Ashley's Act by so working, their employment 
 
 * London Shadows : A Glance at the ' Homes ' of the Thousands. By George 
 Godwin, F.R.S. London: Routledge. 1854. Price is. 
 
 Y 2, 
 
324 Sequel to Charge of March } 1854, 
 
 being above ground; and unless they could learn to live, like 
 chameleons, on air, they must and will find the means of evading 
 the most stringent Acts of Parliament which ingenuity can 
 devise.' '* 
 
 Another example occurs in one of the Reports of Mr. Senior. 
 He mentions a poor boy who sat in a mine, in the dark, to open 
 and shut a door as the railway trucks, by which the coals were 
 drawn along the driftway to the perpendicular shaft, passed 
 and repassed; and who, on being asked why his parents set him 
 to such an irksome task, answered, that it was because he was 
 too young for admission to the cotton factories ! 
 
 By the kindness of Sir Richard Mayne I am in possession 
 of documents which show the working of the Lodging-House 
 Act to January, 1856. They are too long to admit of insertion 
 even in abstract. It would seem, however, from the Report of 
 Mr. R. Reason, Chief Inspector, that the over-crowding of 
 inferior houses, to which reference has been made, has been 
 diminished to some extent by the operation of new causes. 
 
 ' The decrease of the evil of over-crowding is very apparent 
 in all the lowest class of sublet houses, without any known 
 increased burden upon the rates of the several parishes. This 
 may in part arise from an improved rate of wages paid to the 
 poorer class of the Irish population in their own country, which 
 lessens their migration to England, and from the large number 
 of men who have by enlistment, or by employment on works 
 connected with the present war, been withdrawn from the 
 metropolis. The majority of over-crowded rooms were, and 
 now are, occupied by the poor Irish. Many houses have been 
 erected or converted into Model Lodging-Houses for the work- 
 ing classes by societies, &c., but few of these lodgings are cheap 
 enough for the means of the classes who have been found as 
 lodgers in common lodging-houses, or in over-crowded sublet 
 rooms. Upon inquiry, it has been ascertained from the police 
 doing duty in the neighbourhood of the courts and alleys where 
 many of the lowest class of lodging-houses are situate, that 
 since the Act came fully into operation, a visible change has 
 taken place in the habits of the people, drunkenness and gross 
 acts of obscenity having materially lessened.' 
 
 Eleventh Report of the Inspectors of Prisons. 1846. p. xviii. 
 
Sequel to Charge of March } 1854. 325 
 
 It is quite obvious, however, that a vast increase of house- 
 room for the lower classes of London is much to be desired. 
 Yet, unless it can be furnished on the commercial prin- 
 ciple of demand and supply, it would seem almost hopeless to 
 contend with the difficulties of the case. The labours of bene- 
 volent societies have as yet done little more than offer models to 
 the observation of capitalists a most important service no 
 doubt, but only the first step towards the accomplishment of 
 the end in view. 
 
 It might be supposed that the high rents exacted by the 
 keepers of lodging-houses would invite competitors into their 
 trade; and it is to be presumed that such an effect is in pro- 
 gress. But there is a fallacy in the use of the term rent to 
 designate the payment made by the lodger, which, when it is 
 understood, will tend to damp the hopes of those who may be 
 sanguine in their expectations that the demand for accommo- 
 dation will be adequately met by a natural supply. The keeper 
 has to be paid for a most revolting task. His inmates are 
 noisy, quarrelsome, drunken, sometimes ferocious, and often 
 dishonest. And thus a very large proportion of the total payment 
 goes to remunerate him for exposing himself to the perils and 
 discomforts of his vocation ; but when this remuneration is sub- 
 tracted from the payment, the remainder, which alone can be 
 truly denominated rent, shrinks into a comparatively small 
 amount. Yet that amount is the fund to which the capitalist must 
 confine himself, in his estimate of the return to be expected upon 
 an investment in dwellings for the class under consideration. 
 
 The late Captain Hay, in his last Report, dated April, 
 1854, speaks of 'the prevailing habit of intemperance' as 
 absorbing ' those means which could be applied to the payment 
 of the required minimum of decency in human habitations/ 
 Here, then, is the great obstacle. Intemperance is the chief 
 agent in producing that state of manners and morals which 
 enhances the remuneration demanded by keepers; while on the 
 other hand it diminishes the means of payment. How to get 
 rid of intemperance the impediment which thwarts us at every 
 turn is the problem to be solved. Into whatever path of 
 benevolence the philanthropist may strike, the Drink-demon 
 starts up before him and blocks his way ! 
 
 Early in the year 1855 the Mayor of Bristol, Mr. Shaw, 
 
Sequel to Charge of March ^ 1854. 
 
 endeavoured to engage the Council of that city to bring the 
 'Labouring Classes' Lodging Houses Act, 1851,' into operation; 
 but notwithstanding a clear and forcible statement of the 
 advantages to the city likely to accrue from such an under- 
 taking, he was unsuccessful. In the same year, at the instance 
 of Dr. Monk, the late Bishop of Gloucester arid Bristol, a 
 Society was formed to accomplish that object. It became a 
 branch of the Metropolitan Association for Improving the 
 Dwellings of the Industrious Classes, and it has now (December, 
 1 856), built thirty-three small houses. These are placed round an 
 airy court in Christmas-street, communicating with a garden 
 which is being prepared for a drying ground. The court, which 
 has more than 6000 square feet of superficies, is paved with flag- 
 stones, and is kept clean at the expense of the Association. 
 There is a convenient washhouse, and pumps with hard and 
 soft water for the use of the tenants, who may require a greater 
 supply than is taken from the Water Company. This Company's 
 Works supply each house with twenty-two gallons per diem for 
 household purposes, including the flushing of the water-closet, 
 with which each tenement is furnished. The houses are in 
 three tiers or flats; the communication with the upper tiers 
 being by outside galleries. Each contains a living-room, 
 eleven feet by ten, a bed-room, and a scullery. Some of the 
 houses have two bed-rooms ; the rent of the latter is 35. 6d. 
 per week; of the former, 3$. This sum, which is paid weekly 
 in advance, includes taxes, repairs, painting, water-rates, and 
 indeed every other outgoing. The sanitary arrangements, includ- 
 ing ventilation, are excellent. The houses have now been ready 
 for habitation twelve weeks, but as yet they are only half filled, 
 although the average rent through the city of a single room, 
 without any of the advantages enumerated as belonging to the 
 Society's dwellings, is is. yd. per week ; some of the houses so 
 let being in a dilapidated state, and in other respects uncom- 
 fortable and unwholesome. The reluctance of the classes for 
 whom these dwellings have been erected to avail themselves of 
 the boon thus offered to them, is believed to be their dread of 
 interference with their liberty of action by rules and regula- 
 tions. This, however, is a mere prejudice, and is passing away. 
 The Association makes a strict scrutiny into the character of 
 their tenants, as the introduction of a single ill-conducted family 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 327 
 
 might destroy the comfort of the whole body; especially 
 as the children associate together in the court-yard. Of the 
 financial results, nothing of course can be said at present. The So- 
 ciety contemplates further erections in other quarters of the city. 
 The recent changes in the law, which authorize the establish- 
 ment of associations involving only a limited liability on the 
 part of members, render the cost of a Charter, like that referred 
 to in the Charge, unnecessary. It is impossible to revert, 
 without regret and disgust, to the spoliation inflicted on the 
 benevolent persons who founded the admirable Society for 
 Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes. 
 
 In the following paper, communicated by a friend (being the 
 summary of a larger work), the suggestions are founded on the 
 duties and responsibilities of house-owners ; and it may, there- 
 fore, properly be inserted in this place : 
 
 ( SUMMARY. 
 
 ' i . That there exists in most, if not all, our large towns, a 
 numerous class of habitual depredators, cheats, forgers, and 
 others, who make crime their ordinary, and, for the most part, 
 their sole occupation, having no dependence for a subsistence 
 except upon the plunder of their fellow-men. Further, that 
 many persons, possessing more or less capital, employ them- 
 selves and their means, wholly or partly, in harbouring, traffick- 
 ing with, or otherwise aiding and abetting, the said class of 
 habitual depredators. 
 
 ' 2. That the evils, moral and economical, inflicted on society 
 by this class are almost incalculable, the mere expense of 
 repression, imperfect as this is, amounting in London and 
 Middlesex alone to more than half a million sterling per annum, 
 in the shape of Police and County Rates, and allowances from the 
 Consolidated Fund; whilst the value of the property injured 
 and stolen is probably much greater still ; and to all this must 
 be added personal injuries, and sometimes the loss of life itself. 
 
 '3. That all classes of society, the unhappy criminal class 
 most especially, are deeply interested in the speedy and total 
 suppression of habitual criminality. The wealthy for the safety 
 of their persons and property. The honest poor for the safety 
 of their families from that contaminating influence which now 
 
328 Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 
 
 but too often pervades the neighbourhoods in which they are 
 obliged to dwell. The wretched criminals themselves, that by 
 a salutary compulsion they may be at once and for ever rescued 
 from that fearful network of criminality in which they have 
 become so fatally entangled. 
 
 ' 4. That the efforts of society to repress and to procure the 
 ultimate extinction of this class, whether by means of religious 
 and moral instruction and training, or by penal legislation, 
 police establishments, and other repressive measures, much as 
 they have undoubtedly accomplished, are still far from having 
 attained a satisfactory success ; seeing that thousands still con- 
 tinue to live in open defiance of the law, cheating, robbing, 
 and sometimes even murdering their fellow-men ; their persons, 
 residences, and guilty occupations being for the most part well 
 known, and their absolute number actually increasing in spite 
 of every effort made for their repression. Hence it is surely 
 the part of wisdom (whilst nowise relaxing the vigorous use of 
 the recognised means of repression) cheerfully to accept the aid 
 of any suitable auxiliary means that may be pointed out, and 
 shown to be really at our command. 
 
 '5. That children and youths in large numbers (the rising 
 generation of criminals) are well known to be now growing up 
 in habits of dishonesty; being in many cases trained and 
 actually by force driven to beg and steal for the support of their 
 idle and profligate parents. 
 
 '6. That no plainer legislative duty, none that is more 
 imperatively dictated by feelings of humanity, or that can have 
 greater or more obvious moral and economical advantages, can 
 well be imagined, than that of stepping forth to rescue these 
 most unhappy beings from the deplorable fate of thus being 
 scourged into crime in their tender years, with the sure prospect, 
 unless mercifully relieved by death, of ultimately falling into 
 the grasp of the law, to be then scourged out of crime ; if 
 indeed this has not, by that time, become so deeply ingrained 
 as to defy the process. 
 
 ( 7. That to effect the rescue of these miserable children 
 would be to intercept and stop at its source that supply by 
 which the criminal ranks are mainly recruited; and thus, in 
 time, happily to set at rest that most painful and perplexing 
 of questions, ' how to dispose of our convicts/ 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 329 
 
 ' 8. That taking the estimated numbers of the criminal class 
 in a given town (London, for instance), and assuming that the 
 number of crimes they commit amounts upon the average to 
 only one crime per day for each member of the class, the total 
 number of crimes obtained as the result is so enormous as to 
 justify the conclusion, that such total must necessarily constitute 
 an overwhelming majority of the whole number of crimes therein 
 committed. Ex. gr., the predatory class in London is, at the 
 lowest estimate, 5000 persons, who, at the rate given, will 
 commit 5000 crimes a day, or 1,825,000 a year ! a result that 
 would lead one to suppose that no large number of crimes can 
 be assigned to mere casual offenders. 
 
 ' 9. That the common impression that this vast multitude of 
 plunderers consists mostly of unconnected individuals, each fol- 
 lowing his own course of crime without any necessary concert 
 or even concurrence with others, is erroneous; the truth being 
 that (allowing for such restriction as arises from the necessity of 
 concealment), the business of depredation has, and of necessity 
 ever must have, its division of labour, just like any other 
 business ; and that those engaged in depredation neither do nor 
 can any more carry on their operations without the concurrent 
 action of others, than persons engaged in honest pursuits. The 
 business of depredation combines the operations, amongst 
 others, of the capitalists (who, finding ready money for stolen 
 property, are virtually the employers of the thieves) , the trainers 
 of thieves, the burglars' instrument-makers, the keepers of flash 
 houses, of thieves' lodging-houses, and of brothels, the coiners, 
 forgers, passers of counterfeit money, illicit distillers, and, 
 lastly, the great body of mere operative criminals, as burglars, 
 thieves, pickpockets, &c. The mutual dependence of the opera- 
 tives, receivers, trainers, implement-makers, and harbourers, is 
 obvious ; nor would it be difficult to show that, without concert or 
 concurrence, habitual criminality must be rare, if not impossible. 
 
 ' 10. That this necessary connexion and mutual dependence 
 of the various kinds of criminals and their abettors makes it 
 proper to regard their collective operations as the working of a 
 single great mechanism, the efficient action of which can only 
 be maintained so long as its various parts continue to move in 
 accordance with each other, each correctly performing the 
 function assigned to it; and therefore, in order to bring such 
 
33 Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 
 
 action to a stand, it will be enough that any one essential part 
 of such mechanism be withdrawn or disabled. 
 
 ( u. That the use of premises adequate to its purposes is an 
 essential condition of the continued operation of the predatory 
 class"; so absolutely essential, indeed, that it may be correctly 
 likened to a main wheel of a machine, the withdrawal of which 
 must necessarily disorganize such machine, and stop its action 
 altogether. A predatory class, utterly destitute of house and 
 home, must, in a populous district at least, very soon become, 
 like the gipsies, virtually extinct. Macaulay's narrative of the 
 instantaneous and easily-effected dispersion (when once fairly set 
 about) of that horde of robbers and cutthroats, who, a century 
 and a half ago, had gathered themselves together in the Sanc- 
 tuary of Whitefriars, furnishing us with a striking and instruc- 
 tive instance in point. 
 
 ' 12,. That the house property in a town (excepting so far as 
 it may virtually compete with possible suburban extensions) 
 really bears the burden of the rates levied for the repression of 
 crime. For although these rates are collected of the tenants, 
 yet every one knows that a tenant looks simply at the total 
 amount he has to pay, not concerning himself what proportion 
 of such total falls to his landlord and what to the tax-collector. 
 The tenant will not go beyond a certain sum in the whole ; 
 and therefore the more the rates absorb, the less (in the long 
 run) will the landlord receive. Indeed, cases were not un- 
 known, under the old Poor-law, in which the rate -collector, 
 took the whole rental, driving the landlord fairly out of the 
 field. Further, a notorious want of security in any neighbour- 
 hood is a direct injury to the owners of the property, since it 
 scares away valuable tenants. 
 
 ' 13. That consequently the existence of a predatory class 
 presses with peculiar severity upon the owners of house pro- 
 perty; inflicting upon them the double injury of disheartening 
 acceptable tenants by the fear of violence and robbery, and of 
 intercepting an important fraction of their annual returns in 
 order to meet the expense of magistrates, police, gaols, &c. 
 Hence the owners of house property, as a body, have a much 
 greater pecuniary interest in getting rid of the predatory class 
 than any other body of men whatever. 
 
 1 And since no landlord need accept any one as a tenant 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 331 
 
 until satisfied that he is nowise connected with the predatory 
 class, it is clear that if the body of landlords were one and all 
 to refuse admission to any one who should fail to satisfy them 
 of his non-complicity with that class, the whole predatory 
 class, together with their aiders and abettors, must become 
 utterly houseless; and unless they at once took to honest 
 courses (an attempt which should receive every encouragement 
 and help), would be left without alternative other than the 
 workhouse or the gaol. And if any large town, being infested 
 by such a class, were to become the sole property of some one 
 man, who, thoroughly understanding his own interest, was 
 determined to protect it by the best means in his power, there 
 can be no doubt that he would at once adopt the most energetic 
 measures for thoroughly clearing his property of a class from 
 whom it was suffering such serious injury. Further, if such a 
 property, instead of thus falling into the hands of one man, 
 should fall into those of a corporate body (also well knowing 
 their interests and resolute to protect them), the result would, 
 doubtless, be the same. 
 
 ' 14. That the Sutherland Estate in Scotland presents an 
 instance, as regards the offence of smuggling, of the successful 
 application of the principle of making tenancy depend upon 
 abstinence from offence. Complete abstinence from smuggling 
 having been for these many years, and ivith perfect success, made 
 a binding covenant in all the leases granted upon houses and 
 lands adjacent to the sea. 
 
 '15. Although the perfect freedom of our towns from resident 
 plunderers, were it once acquired, could be thenceforward main- 
 tained without hardship to any one, yet, as the first expulsion 
 of the predatory class must necessarily dislodge and render 
 homeless a large number of individuals, and thereby cause a 
 great though temporary pressure upon the workhouse system, 
 some temporary expedient will probably be required to meet 
 such pressure, as has been found necessary during the visitations 
 of cholera. 
 
 '16. That thus to deprive the predatory class of harbourage 
 (upon the withdrawal of which they must thenceforth neces- 
 sarily cease to infest our towns), is not only a subject of deep 
 importance to the interests of the great body of house pro- 
 prietors, but also a matter of plain and obvious duty to every 
 
33^ Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 
 
 individual proprietor. For surely no man has a right to allow 
 his property to become in effect the accomplice of crime, he 
 receiving a portion of its proceeds as rent. Enjoying his pro- 
 perty under the shadow of the law, how can he be justified in 
 suffering it to shelter those by whom the law is broken and 
 defied ? 
 
 '17. That however earnestly the large majority of the house 
 proprietors, when rightly understanding their interests in this 
 matter, may desire to protect them (and with their own, the pub- 
 lic interests also), they are without the necessary means of doing 
 so, since they have not the requisite legal power to bind the 
 careless or unprincipled minority, through whose default the 
 whole mischief is let in upon them. 
 
 e iS. That since, but for such default, the predatory class 
 must be speedily extinguished, and the heavy expense of their 
 repression become thenceforth needless, it would be nothing 
 more than a simple act of justice to throw the whole weight of 
 such expense upon such defaulters, so long as they voluntarily 
 remain in default. And it would be as politic as it is just ; 
 since the pressure of such a burden must very soon constrain 
 such delinquents to yield obedience to the dictates of justice, 
 and to pay due attention to the common interest. 
 
 ' Therefore, to discover and to apply the means of concen- 
 trating the whole expense incurred in the repression of crime, 
 upon the shoulders of those, but for whose default such expense 
 might cease, would, in effect, be to discover and apply the means 
 of totally extinguishing the predatory class } together with their 
 aiders and abettors ; in other words, to accomplish the object 
 in view. 
 
 '19. That since all house property is now subject to the 
 Police and County Rates, one mode of carrying out the principle 
 in question (and, for the reasons hereafter stated, probably the 
 best mode), would be to provide means by Act of Parliament for 
 exempting from so much of these rates as may be required exclu- 
 sively for the repression of crime all property concerning which 
 reasonable proof can be furnished that it is not now (nor for a 
 given time back has been) tenanted by any one connected, 
 whether directly or indirectly, with the practice of crime. 
 
 ' 20. That the plan of making exemption a privilege, instead 
 of making the payment of the rates a punishment, is greatly to 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 333 
 
 be preferred, ist, because exemption is the most natural step 
 from the present state of things, under which every one pays ; and 
 2ndly, because it would impose the task of making out the case 
 upon the party who must needs be best acquainted with the facts, 
 viz., the applicant himself; the good effect of which would be 
 to render unavailing those manifold equivocations, refusals to 
 answer pertinent questions, falsifications of names and dates, 
 pleas of ' non mi recordo' &c., by which the cunning are but 
 too often enabled to evade a direct accusation, even when the 
 case is too clear to admit of any moral doubt. For the least 
 reluctance to afford the information asked for, or the smallest 
 attempt at double dealing, things which would be but little 
 noticed in a case where conviction and punishment were im- 
 pending, would be quite enough to ensure the refusal of a 
 privilege; or, at least, to induce its postponement, until the 
 arbiter could become better satisfied of the propriety of 
 granting it. 
 
 ' 2 1 . That since no dwelling, however great or however 
 humble, can be either concealed or protected from the inroads 
 of the rate-collector, and since, to every place he reaches, he 
 must necessarily convey the influence of the principle, in its 
 full, unbroken force, it would follow that those places (the 
 f Hells ' amongst others) which have hitherto been the shame 
 and reproach of the law, scorning its threats and foiling its 
 attacks, must speedily succumb under the accumulating burden 
 which the operation of the new principle would inevitably bring 
 down upon them. 
 
 ' 22. That with an object before us of such unspeakable im- 
 portance, both morally and economically, as the suppression of 
 the whole body of habitual depredators (the expenses and losses 
 inflicted by whom cannot be less in the aggregate than several 
 millions per annum), no ordinary difficulties, nothing indeed 
 short of impossibilities, ought to bar our way. Arid since 
 experience ever shows that the impossibilities of the timid, the 
 feeble, and the resourceless, are often nothing more than the 
 healthfully stimulating difficulties of the energetic, the perse- 
 vering, and the ready-minded, it would surely be the part of 
 wisdom, in order to insure success in carrying the principle 
 into effect, to secure the services, in devising and working out 
 the necessary measures, of men well known to combine such 
 
334 Sequel to Charge of March, 1854. 
 
 qualities with sound practical knowledge in the highest degree. 
 A plan adopted with such eminent success in the case of the 
 Common Law Procedure Act. 
 
 ' 23. That in order to avoid opposition, to give a reasonable 
 choice, and that too much may not have to be done at once, 
 it might be advisable to make the adoption of the proposed 
 Act (like that of some existing Acts) optional with the several 
 towns and districts; offering, however, as an encouragement to 
 its early adoption, the help during its initiation of men of 
 experience in the conduct of such affairs; together with the 
 loan of a moderate sum of money to cover the immediate 
 expenses ; such sum to be repaid by easy instalments out of 
 the future savings. 
 
 ' Many valuable improvements as, for instance, the reduc- 
 tion of the Rates of Postage, and the repeal of the ' Taxes on 
 Knowledge/ have, in the outset, necessarily presented the un- 
 palatable condition of an important, though perchance tempo- 
 rary, relinquishment of revenue. Other great measures, as the 
 repeal of the Corn Laws, and the Reform of the Municipal Corpo- 
 rations, have necessarily called for the abrogation of long- 
 cherished privileges, clothed with something of the sacredness 
 of vested interests. Again, in the accomplishment of certain 
 great changes, as those brought about by the Poor-law Amend- 
 ment Act, the Public Health Act, and the Building Act, the 
 creation of new authoritative bodies, armed with highly excep- 
 tional powers, has been deemed unavoidable. 
 
 'No relinquishment of revenue is called for by the plan 
 herein proposed ; but, if successful, it must cause a large saving 
 in our local expenditure. And seeing that few things could 
 act more healthfully upon our general prosperity than the 
 effectual suppression of the predatory class, the transformation 
 of the thousands of enemies and destroyers who now lurk 
 amongst us, into friends and fellow-workers, and since an 
 increase of national prosperity invariably tells upon the revenue, 
 it is clear, that if successful, the plan must increase the copious- 
 ness of its purest sources. Nor is any surrender of vested 
 interests asked for, since no one can pretend to a vested interest 
 in the promotion of crime. Nor is exceptional authority wanted, 
 the decisions required being altogether of a judicial nature/ 
 
335 
 
 CHAKGE OP SEPTEMBER, 1854. 
 From the 'Midland Counties Herald. 3 
 
 ' BOROUGH SESSIONS. 
 
 ' A SESSIONS of the Peace for this Borough was held at the 
 JLA. Public Office, Moor-street, on Monday last, hefore the 
 Recorder, who was accompanied on the Bench by the Mayor 
 and the Hon. and Rev. Grantham M. Yorke. Lady Noel 
 Byron was present during the delivery of the Charge/ 
 
 GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND JURY, 
 
 ONE of the duties of our local courts in early times, was to 
 promulgate new statutes to the people collected in these 
 assemblies; and prior to the invention of printing, such a 
 usage, it will be conceded, was founded on imperative necessity ; 
 unless the laws were to remain altogether, what in truth they 
 have too much remained, a sealed book to the body of the 
 nation. Customs, when harmless, are often valuable posses- 
 sions ; and may frequently be turned to good account, even 
 when the causes from which their origin is derived have passed 
 away. But the usage of which I am speaking, to be made 
 practicable in the present age, must be greatly qualified. 
 Every Session of Parliament produces a whole volume of public 
 statutes of general operation, to say nothing of a huge mass of 
 local and private Acts. We are driven, then, to a narrow 
 selection ; and probably you will agree with me, that our 
 choice ought to rest upon such only as call into action some 
 new principle affecting large classes of our fellow- subjects. 
 And perhaps you will further agree with me in thinking that 
 if the changes which have been thus wrought in the law touch 
 the administration of criminal justice, they will possess an addi- 
 tional claim to our attention in this place. In exercising the 
 duty of selection, no particular regard can be had to that 
 fleeting excitement indicated by the multiplicity of speeches, or 
 the warmth of debate, which may have ushered the new measure 
 into the world. For while questions of temporary interest. 
 
336 Charge of September, 1854. 
 
 but of no real moment, often absorb attention both in and out of 
 Parliament, the Legislature not unfrequently passes Acts with 
 little discussion in either House, and with less observation by 
 the public, whose effects on society are nevertheless as deep 
 and permanent, as the jarrings which fill the columns of the 
 newspaper are trifling and evanescent. 
 
 Lasting and progressive will, I trust, be the action of the 
 statute, entitled ' The Youthful Offenders Act/ to which I now 
 respectfully invite your attention. During many years, as some, 
 if not all of you, can testify of your own knowledge, the doctrine 
 that reformatory treatment of criminals ought to be substituted 
 for retributive punishment, was often impressed 011 the public 
 mind; and latterly, by the aid of the public itself, it has been 
 urged on the attention of the Government and of the Legislature. 
 
 Neither the fact of such a pressure, nor the arguments by 
 which it was justified, need be dwelt upon in this town, which 
 has been chosen as the scene of two most important Conferences, 
 of whose debates and resolutions the statute which I hold in 
 my hand may justly be considered the fruit. 
 
 After many struggles and disappointments, and much delay, 
 this all-important principle, so far as it applies to the young, 
 has at length obtained the solemn recognition of the greatest 
 Legislature on earth; and is henceforward withdrawn from the 
 troubled regions of controversy, to take its place among esta- 
 blished and undeniable truths. And, so far as relief can be 
 given by the provisions of an Act of Parliament, judges and 
 magistrates are now relieved from the odious necessity of ex- 
 posing children to treatment at once revolting to humanity, 
 and condemned by experience, as inevitably leading to conse- 
 quences the very opposite of those which its administrators had 
 vainly contemplated. 
 
 Gentlemen, it is not an easy thing to fix upon that class of 
 the community which ought most to rejoice over this revolu- 
 tion. The mind naturally turns first to the poor children 
 themselves, the objects of the new enactments. But, if lan- 
 guage did not fail me, I would ask to speak for the ministers 
 of justice; and I would attempt to convey to your minds a due 
 appreciation of the boon conferred upon us, in our release from 
 the odious task of inflicting pain, to be followed, not by good 
 but by evil. What, Gentlemen, is the waste of gold, or of 
 
Charge of September, 1854. 337 
 
 precious stones, or of any earthly treasures, compared to the 
 waste of human suffering ? If it savour of presumption for 
 erring man, deliberately and by law, to inflict pain upon his 
 brother (as it assuredly would do were it not justified by abso- 
 lute necessity), how awful is the duty cast upon him to look 
 well to the consequences of such infliction, and to abstain from 
 any unprofitable exercise of this fearful prerogative, as he would 
 abstain from self-destruction ! Can we, then, who preside in 
 courts like this, be too grateful that we are no longer to be the 
 agents of these absurd and cruel visitations ? 
 
 Nor, Gentlemen, while congratulating myself upon what has 
 been gained, can I repress the desire to look upon the position 
 we have reached, more as an earnest of further progress than 
 as a place of rest. Providence has endowed children with a 
 potent influence upon our sympathies, but as they advance to 
 manhood the talisman drops from their hands. As then public 
 opinion is more easily won over when approached by sentiment 
 than by argument, it was wise on the part of the philanthropist 
 to put into the front of the battle the cause of the young, and 
 to keep back that of the adult until vantage-ground had been 
 secured. That the treatment of children must differ from the 
 treatment of men is obvious, whether the children and the men 
 are at large or under legal coercion. But as regards the propriety 
 of applying the same principles of punishment to each class, no 
 valid distinction between the two can be established. The solid 
 foundation on which the claims of the young to reformatory 
 treatment must be based, is that it has been proved to be advan- 
 tageous, not merely to youthful offenders, but to the community 
 at large not to a part only, but to the whole. Yet this ground 
 being once conceded to the young, it will be found, on examina- 
 tion, to support the claims of the adult to similar treatment. 
 
 That greater difficulties will have to be surmounted, and that 
 the incurable will constitute a larger proportion in the latter 
 class than in the former, may be admitted. Yet these admis- 
 sions can safely be made without at all disturbing the general 
 conclusion ; which is, that, as to both classes, reformatory disci- 
 pline ought to be regarded as the rule ; leaving the exceptions 
 to be dealt -vyith as best they may. But the claim of the adult 
 portion of the offending classes, even upon our sympathy, will 
 be strongly felt by all whose charity can be awakened by reflec- 
 
33 8 Charge of September, 1854. 
 
 tion, and is not altogether dependent on outward impressions 
 or instinctive impulse. The little outcast of tender years, stand- 
 ing at a criminal bar, over which he can scarcely lift his eyes, 
 becomes, upon the instant, and without time being given for 
 thought, the object of our compassion. But suppose years to 
 pass away ; suppose him still to remain the creature of ignorance 
 and abandonment; all this time will evil habit be doing its 
 work ; slowly but surely reducing him to a slavery hopeless of 
 redemption. Let us now suppose the period of life to have 
 arrived when appetites and passions, which had slumbered 
 through his adolescence, awake to urge him on to his ruin, 
 with a force which his unhappy training has deprived him of all 
 power to resist ; even if the desire for better things should still 
 survive. Is such a being, I ask you, Gentlemen, less an object 
 of commiseration to the thoughtful Christian, than the neglected 
 child ? If pity, in minds well regulated, has relation rather to 
 the depth of the misery which calls it forth, than to the aspect 
 winning or repulsive which that misery may chance to wear, 
 the neglected and ill-trained man has even a stronger claim on 
 our consideration than belongs to his younger competitor. And 
 if, as it has now been solemnly admitted, the community is 
 bound to take charge of the child, with the intent to reform 
 him, can it be relieved from that responsibility by permitting 
 him to remain in his vicious courses until he grows up a man ? 
 Surely, if by our indifference we have sinned against the youth, 
 so far from expiating our offence we double it, if we persist in 
 our apathy until he is mature in years as well as in crime. I ask 
 you, then, Gentlemen, to give your aid in this good work. Let us, 
 like our brave countrymen and allies, having seized one position, 
 use it to complete our conquest over the whole fortress of error. 
 The next great principle established by this Act is that the 
 State, while it assumes, as it ought to assume, the parentage 
 of the child, neglected or perverted by those who have brought 
 him into existence, has a right, and is called upon by duty, to 
 prevent the father and the mother from creating for themselves 
 a benefit out of their own misconduct. To this end the Act 
 invests the Court which consigns the child to a Reformatory 
 Institution, with authority to impose a weekly payment for its 
 sustentation on every parent able to contribute to its main- 
 tenance. Doubtless, in many instances, this authority will be 
 
Charge of September, 1854. 339 
 
 inoperative, by reason of the poverty which the parents may 
 have brought on themselves by indulging in vice and indolence ; 
 or which may have fallen upon them by some calamity for 
 which they are not responsible. But no pains must be spared 
 to prevent the parent from throwing off a burthen imposed upon 
 him by every law, human and divine, under any pretence, how- 
 ever specious. 
 
 The third great principle sanctioned by the Legislature in 
 this Act, is that of voluntary guardianship. In various parts of 
 this country, as in others, earnest and benevolent men and 
 women have already taken upon themselves the duty, hitherto 
 neglected by the State, of reforming juvenile offenders. They 
 began, and they persevered in this noble enterprise under cir- 
 cumstances of all but insuperable difficulty. Their control over 
 their young wards not being recognised by law, they have had 
 to depend upon their power over the hearts of such of these 
 poor, ill- trained, wayward, and rebellious children and youths, 
 as they could persuade to remain under their care and guidance; 
 and when we consider that the end in view is to change the 
 aspirations and the habits of the pupil ; to make him hate 
 that which he has loved, and love that which he has hated ; to 
 induce him to submit to wholesome control, instead of indulging 
 the caprices of an unbridled will ; to become laborious where he 
 had been indolent ; and to abstain from all gratifications incon- 
 sistent with his position, and consequently not merely from 
 those condemned by religion and morality, but also from such 
 as are too expensive for his narrow means and expectations, or 
 dangerous from their tendency to dissipate his attention from 
 the imperative duty of learning the art of self-support, we shall 
 feel that these faithful guardians imposed upon themselves a 
 labour which demands for its endurance a philanthropy the 
 purest and the deepest one perpetually to be urged forward 
 and solaced by Christian zeal and Christian hope. 
 
 Remember, Gentlemen, when you estimate their toils, that 
 neglect and ill-usage has sealed up, as it were, all inlets to the 
 confidence and affections of those outcasts ; that proffered gene- 
 rosity would excite suspicion; and that the objects of this 
 high benevolence would at first be engaged in casting about to 
 discover sinister motives, hidden, as they believed, under such 
 a display of compassion. True it is that this coldness, after a 
 
340 Charge of September ', 1854. 
 
 time, thaws under the genial warmth of kindness, which the 
 young person finds, by experience, has no motive except the 
 desire for his good. But the conduct of this experiment is not 
 the work of a day ; and it has been consequently found that the 
 hard problem to be solved is, how to retain the recipient of 
 the benefits of good training, until he can be convinced that 
 he is under treatment which has his welfare for its object, un- 
 adulterated with any taint of selfish interests. That examples, 
 without number, can be adduced, both at home and abroad, in 
 which these distressing impediments, even under their most 
 aggravated forms, have been surmounted, is now an indis- 
 putable fact ; but that the proportion of failures would have 
 been far less, had a power of legal detention been conferred on 
 the managers of private Reformatories, cannot be doubted ; and 
 this power, by the provisions of the Act under review, they 
 will now possess. 
 
 Let me, however, pause for a moment, to explain why I do 
 not consider the absence of such power up to the present time 
 as altogether a misfortune. I am of this opinion, because the 
 absence of coercive authority concentrated the aims of experi- 
 mentalists endowed with the richest gifts, intellectual and 
 spiritual, upon forcing a passage to the human heart, even in 
 its most hardened state ; and of bringing vicious habits and the 
 mutinous will under subjection, with no weapons but those fur- 
 nished by faith, by charity, and by good sense. The efficiency 
 of these weapons has thus been manifested to an incredulous 
 world, too prone to fly to coercion as the sole expedient ; 
 whereas \ve have now abundant proof that it should only be 
 called into action as a last resort, and even then employed with 
 reluctance and reserve. And no doubt caution and forbearance 
 will be requisite hereafter, lest too much reliance should be 
 placed on the legal control which the Act supplies. The walls 
 of the gaols have not only kept the bodies of prisoners in 
 durance, but have had a somewhat analogous effect on the in- 
 tellects of gaolers j confining them within the narrow routine 
 of a discipline whose only resources are pain of body or of 
 mind. As Reformatories will not be surrounded by walls, the 
 reliance on force never can approach the degree to \vhich it has 
 attained in prisons ; but should force ever come to be regarded 
 as a substitute for an alliance with the will and the affections 
 
Charge of September, 1854. 341 
 
 of the patient, sound cures will cease to be wrought. For as 
 the discipline of the Reformatory is of no avail unless it fructifies 
 into good conduct in the after-life of the ward, when its 
 restraints and artificial motives are withdrawn, so the object of 
 the conductors must continue to be, first, to make the ward or 
 patient desire to do right, and then to give him habits of 
 industry and self-government which shall enable him to act up 
 to his convictions. 
 
 And this brings me to the last, but, in a practical sense, the 
 most important topic of my Charge. The Legislature has now 
 placed Reformatory Schools established by voluntary societies 
 among the recognised institutions of our country, and is ready 
 to bear the expense of the board and instruction of the inmates ; 
 or at least so much of that cost as cannot be exacted from the 
 parents. In furnishing us with these provisions, it has offered us 
 most important facilities to the multiplication of such establish- 
 ments. And this is all that can be done without infringing on the 
 voluntary principle, which is wisely kept sacred from intrusion. 
 
 It will depend, then, upon those who are duly impressed 
 with the obligation which our Christian brotherhood with the 
 poor outcast imposes upon us, whether this noble statute, which 
 breathes the very spirit of our holy religion, shall operate as 
 widely as the necessity for its application is spread ; or whether, 
 by our supineness or by oiir quailing before the difficulties 
 which always beset a new enterprise, the Act shall remain a 
 dead letter, proving against us that we are of those who know 
 their duty, but fail in performing it ; who set at naught the de- 
 nunciations which hang over the servant that ' knew his Lord's 
 will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to His will/ 
 
 Gentlemen, I have done. I am in no frame of mind to 
 dwell on the few spots which fell upon the Bill in its passage 
 through the Houses of Parliament. These blemishes are not 
 of its essence, nor can they obscure its beauty; and, believe 
 me, many an eye which has long and anxiously watched for 
 this auspicious dawn, will be too much dimmed by emotion even 
 to discern them. Let me, then, in the words of Milton, ex- 
 press my confidence that 
 
 ' the ethereal mould, 
 Incapable of stain, will soon expel 
 Her mischief, and purge off the baser part 
 Victorious.' 
 
342 Sequel to Charge of September, 1 854. 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 From the 'Quarterly Review' December, 1855. 
 
 f IN the year 1851 three distinguished leaders of the Reforma- 
 tory cause Miss Carpenter,* Mr. M. D. Hill, and Mr. Sydney 
 Turner 'invited all persons interested in the matter to meet and 
 discuss it. A Conference was accordingly held at Birmingham 
 in December of that year, the proceedings of which were after- 
 wards printed in the form of a pamphlet, and widely circulated. 
 At this Conference the subject of Reformatory Schools was 
 placed in almost every possible light by the various speakers. 
 Some, like the Rev. W. C. Osborn, Chaplain to the Bath House 
 of Correction, brought forward striking facts to show how the 
 unfortunate children that once enter the criminal class, take up 
 crime as a profession, and ebb and flow into and out of our 
 gaols with periodical regularity ; others, like the Rev. J. Clay, 
 Chaplain of Preston Gaol, showed to bow great an extent the 
 sins of these children were chargeable on parental neglect, and 
 also to what a large amount society was a loser by juvenile 
 depredations. Mr. Sydney Turner described Red Hill, and 
 gave a sketch of the state of the law bearing on young offenders. 
 Mr. Wolryche Whitmore entered into details as to the system 
 of industrial education successfully pursued in the Union School 
 at Quatt. Mr. Power, the Recorder of Ipswich, gave an 
 interesting account of the exertions of John Ellis, a shoemaker, 
 in a very humble position of life, who had opened a sort of 
 Industrial School in the neighbourhood of the Regent's Park, 
 and had succeeded in reclaiming several confirmed and expert 
 London thieves, and putting them in the way of obtaining an 
 honest livelihood. The Chairman himself, Mr. M. D. Hill, the 
 
 * ' Miss Carpenter is chiefly known by her books ; but she has been a labourer in 
 the field of juvenile reformation for twenty years, and has much practical acquaint- 
 ance with the condition of the lower classes. She is now managing the Red Lodge 
 School for girls, established by Lady Noel Byron, at Clifton.' 
 
 [The above statement is slightly incorrect. Red Lodge is situated in Park Row, 
 Bristol. It was purchased by Lady Noel Byron with the intention that it should 
 be converted to its present use, and is let to Miss Carpenter at a very low rent : 
 she must, however, be regarded as the Founder of the school. She also suggested 
 the first Conference at Birmingham.] 
 
Sequel to Charge of September, 1 854. 343 
 
 able Recorder of Birmingham, than whom no one has paid 
 more anxious attention to the whole subject of criminal legisla- 
 tion, clearly laid down the principles upon which all were agreed, 
 and summed up in a convincing manner the evidence which 
 proves both that criminal children are, for the most part, capa- 
 ble of being reformed, and that the cost of their reformation is 
 as nothing when compared with that which is entailed upon 
 society by their maintenance as criminals. 
 
 ' These, and many other interesting particulars, were thus for 
 the first time brought under the notice of a great portion of 
 the public. The attendance at the meeting had not been very 
 large, and those who had assembled in the most sanguine frame 
 of mind felt a little disappointed, we believe, at the apparent 
 poverty of the result of their Conference ; but they soon found 
 that the publication of their proceedings was to produce effects 
 far beyond their hope/* 
 
 The following resolutions were unanimously adopted at the 
 Conference : 
 
 ' i st. That the present condition and treatment of the 
 ' perishing and dangerous classes' of children and juvenile 
 offenders deserve the consideration of every member of a Chris- 
 tian community. 
 
 ' 2nd. That the means at present available for the refor- 
 mation of these children have proved totally inadequate to 
 check the spread of juvenile delinquency ; partly owing to the 
 want of proper Industrial, Correctional, and Reformatory Schools; 
 and partly to the want of authority in Magistrates to compel 
 attendance at such Schools. 
 
 ' 3rd. That the adoption of a somewhat altered and extended 
 course of proceeding, on the part of the Committee of Privy 
 Council, is earnestly to be desired for those children who have 
 not yet made themselves amenable to the law, but who, by 
 reason of the vice, neglect, or extreme poverty of their parents, 
 are not admitted into the existing Day- Schools. 
 
 ' 4th. That for those children who are not attending any 
 School, and have subjected themselves to police interference, by 
 vagrancy, mendicancy, or petty infringements of the law, legis- 
 lative enactments are urgently required, in order to aid or 
 
 * Quarterly Review. December, 1855. pp. 57-8-9. 
 
344 Sequel to Charge of September, 1 854. 
 
 establish Industrial Feeding Schools, at which the attendance 
 of such Children shall be enforced by Magistrates, and payment 
 made for their maintenance, in the first instance from some 
 public fund, power being given to the public authorities to 
 recover the outlay from the Parents of the Children. 
 
 ' ^th. That legislative enactments are also required in order to 
 establish Correctional and Reformatory Schools for those Children 
 who have been convicted of felony, or such misdemeanours as 
 involve dishonesty; and to confer on magistrates power to com- 
 mit Juvenile Offenders to such Schools instead of to Prison/ * 
 
 The sixth appointed a Committee, to adopt measures for 
 obtaining the requisite Parliamentary enactments, and for 
 memorializing the Committee of the Privy Council, with a view 
 to the attainment of the objects laid down in the foregoing 
 resolutions. Thus it will be seen that the Conference contem- 
 plated preventive as well as reformatory schools. Public atten- 
 tion, however, being mainly absorbed by the desire of saving 
 young offenders brought to the bar from the contamination of a 
 gaol, it w r as thought advisable for the Committee principally to 
 employ themselves in promoting such a change in the law as 
 would facilitate the establishment of Reformatory Schools. 
 
 Chiefly by the exertions of Mr. Adderley, 'in the year 1852, 
 a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to take 
 into consideration ' the present treatment of criminal and desti- 
 tute juveniles in this country, and what changes are desirable 
 in their present treatment in order to supply industrial training, 
 and to combine reformation with the due correction of juvenile 
 crime/ The Committee sat during two sessions of Parliament, 
 and in 1853 presented a Report strongly advocating the refor- 
 matory system /f 
 
 The conclusions at which this Committee had arrived 
 received effectual support from a second Conference held at 
 Birmingham, in December of the latter year. The increased 
 attendance showed the progress which the question had made 
 in the public mind in the two years which had elapsed 
 since the former Conference. A morning meeting for dis- 
 
 * Report of the Proceedings of a Conference on the subject of Preventive and 
 Reformatory Schools, held at Birmingham on the 9th and loth December, 1851. 
 London : Longmans. 
 
 f Quarterly Review, p. 59. 
 
Sequel to Charge of September, 1 854. 345 
 
 cussion was held under the able presidency of Sir John 
 Pakington ; and in the evening of the same day a vast concourse 
 thronged the ample spaces of the Town Hall, and listened with 
 attention and ardent sympathy to appeals from the Earl of 
 Shaftesbury the Chairman, Sir John Pakington, Mr. Adderley, 
 the Rev. John Clay, the Earl of Harrowby, the Recorder, Lord 
 Lyttelton, Mr. Wolryche Whitmore, Mr. R. M. Milnes, Mr. 
 Arthur Kinnaird, the Rev. Sydney Turner, Lord Calthorpe, Mr. 
 Joseph Sturge, and Mr. Morgan, calling on the assembly and 
 the country at large to promote the objects of the Conference. 
 
 ' In 1854 an Act was passed (17 and 18 Viet., c. 86) which 
 has placed that [the Reformatory] system upon a recognised 
 basis, by empowering the managers of Reformatory Schools to 
 apply to the Secretary of State for licences, and by authorizing 
 judges and magistrates to commit children under sixteen years 
 of age to such institutions, for periods varying from two to five 
 years ; the managers being free to choose whether they will 
 accept the children consigned to them or not, and being armed 
 with fall authority to control them while under their care, and, 
 if necessary, to send them to prison for any attempt to abscond, 
 or for any gross breach of rules. No child is to be sent to a 
 Reformatory School without undergoing a previous imprisonment 
 of at least a fortnight, which may of course be made as much 
 longer as the judge thinks right. A power is taken of charging 
 the parents or guardians with a weekly contribution towards 
 defraying the expense ; and the Treasury is also authorized to 
 assist. The practice, we believe, is for the latter to pay the 
 school managers at the rate of five shillings a week for every 
 child; the sum assessed upon the parents being levied from 
 them afterwards (if at all) in aid of the Treasury contribution/* 
 
 It may as well be added here, that in the Session of 1856 
 the Young Offenders Act was amended by a Bill carried through 
 Parliament by Sir Stafford Northcote. In the autumn of the 
 same year the allowance out of the Consolidated Fund made to 
 the managers of Reformatory Schools was raised from 55. per 
 week to 75. 
 
 A large number of these establishments have been opened in 
 Great Britain ; and preparations are making in Ireland for 
 
 Quarterly Review, p. 59. 
 
Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 
 
 adopting the system there, but at present [November, 1856] 
 Irish philanthropists labour under the disadvantage of being 
 without the facilities afforded by the English Acts ; which, with 
 suitable alterations, have been extended to Scotland. 
 
 In August of that year the National Reformatory Union 
 held its first Provincial meeting at Bristol ; Lord Stanley pre- 
 sided. His Inaugural Address, together with twelve papers 
 which were read on that occasion on various branches of refor- 
 matory science, are published under the title of The authorized 
 Report of the First Provincial Meeting of the National Refor- 
 matory Union* The authors were Miss Mary Carpenter, Lord 
 Brougham, Mr. E. B. Wheatley, Mr. Frederic Hill, Captain 
 Crofton, Mr. Alfred Hill, Mr. Handel Cossham, Mr. Thomas 
 Philpotts, Mr. Brougham, Rev. Sydney Turner, and Sir Staf- 
 ford Northcote. 
 
 The reader, on comparing the speeches at the Birmingham 
 Conferences with the carefully- written papers of Lord Stanley 
 and his coadjutors, will probably arrive at the conclusion that, 
 for conveying ample and exact information, written compositions 
 have a great advantage over spoken addresses. On the other 
 hand, it may be well doubted whether, when the object is to 
 impress an audience and induce them forthwith to act, an oral 
 appeal is not far more efficacious. 
 
 In April, 1 855, the Sheriff" of Warwickshire called a meeting 
 for the establishment of a County Reformatory School, at which 
 the following speech was delivered. It is inserted here because 
 it pursues the topics of the Charge, and because it contains a 
 succinct history of the reformatory movement in Warwickshire: 
 
 From the 'Leamington Spa Courier.' 
 
 ' M. D. Hill, Esq., Recorder of Birmingham, then addressed 
 the meeting as follows : Mr. High Sheriff, Though neither a 
 magistrate nor a freeholder of Warwickshire, I have been 
 honoured with an invitation to this meeting, and with a request 
 to take part in your proceedings. Sir, I offer my hearty 
 support to the motion before you. Not only do I feel that the 
 
 * London: Cash, Bishopsgate-street. Bristol: Arrowsmith, 29, Clare-street. 
 Price Two Shillings. 
 

 Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 347 
 
 establishment of a Reformatory School for this county is greatly 
 to be desired, but I must be permitted to say that it stands 
 before my eyes as an imperative duty on the inhabitants. It is 
 difficult, if not impossible, for me to produce in other minds the 
 deep impressions which, in my own, have been the work of 
 many long years, and of a large experience in the treatment of 
 criminals. My best chance, however, of showing in a clear 
 light the practicability of reformation, and the value of Reforma- 
 tory Schools in effecting that object, will be to yield myself up 
 to the train of thought which the town where we are assembled, 
 the audience I address, and the object which has called us 
 together, have set in motion ; and to recapitulate very briefly 
 the steps by which I arrived at these conclusions. Eive-and- 
 thirty years ago I joined the Bar of the Midland Circuit, and 
 became an attendant at the Warwickshire Sessions. At that 
 time the whole judicial business of the county, including that 
 which arises at Birmingham, was transacted at Warwick; with 
 the exception only of such as belonged to Coventry and the 
 small district forming the county of that city. Such being the 
 case, I hardly need say that the docks of the two courts in the 
 neighbouring Hall were, every sessions and every assizes, filled, 
 emptied, and replenished many times in the day, and for many 
 successive days. It is needless, also, to tell you that a young 
 barrister, whose friends were not numerous, and whose pre- 
 tensions were humble enough, was not so encumbered with 
 briefs but that he had sufficient leisure to observe what was 
 hourly challenging his attention, and to reflect upon the conse- 
 quences which flowed from the administration of criminal justice 
 as the law then stood. Then, Sir, as now, the great majority of 
 offences were slight in character, and were not visited with 
 heavy punishment ; especially at our sessions, over which a tone 
 of great humanity uniformly prevailed, at least, during the 
 fourteen years of my attendance a fact which those who re- 
 member the three Chairmen before whom I practised will have 
 no difficulty in believing. When I joined the Sessions Bar, I found 
 the Court under the presidency of the venerable Wriothesley 
 Digby, whose clemency was proverbial. His successor was Sir 
 Grey Skipwith. The urbanity of this gentleman made him a 
 universal favourite, even among those who knew him but 
 slightly; while a more intimate acquaintance disclosed the 
 secret of his winning manners, which had their origin in 
 
348 Sequel to Charge of September , 1854. 
 
 genuine kindness of heart. The third whom, on quitting 
 the Warwickshire Sessions, I left still presiding as Chair- 
 man, was Sir Eardley Wilmot, a very early, zealous, and able 
 supporter of the principles on which the Meeting is this day 
 assembled to act principles which you, probably, know are 
 inherited by his son, the present Baronet, my excellent friend 
 and neighbour. The feelings of the Chairman and his brother 
 magistrates were in unison, and all prisoners yes, even 
 poachers ! were dealt with in a merciful spirit. The Court, 
 however, strove to make their sentences efficient as well as 
 humane; and if they succeeded but ill in these praiseworthy 
 attempts, the fault was not theirs it was in the law which 
 they were bound to administer. Experience came in aid of the 
 promptings of a kindly nature, to disincline them to inflict long 
 imprisonments. They knew but too well that our prisons, as 
 then conducted, were schools not of reformation, but of de- 
 pravity ; and that the longer the prisoner remained under the 
 tuition which he there received from his companions, the more 
 confirmed he was in a guilty career. The expedient to which 
 they had resort was, to lash the culprit not with rods, but 
 with sharp words ; to assume a severe aspect : as if a counte- 
 nance which beamed with good nature the moment before and 
 the moment afterwards, could have its permanent characteristic 
 so obscured by a transitory frown, as to impose upon the pri- 
 soner ! Alas ! Sir, he received all this objurgatory eloquence 
 with impatience and inattention. He wanted to know his fate ; 
 and when the punishment was announced, it was often so much 
 in contrast with the awful sounds in which it was conveyed, 
 that the effect was almost ludicrous. The lesson was quickly 
 forgotten ; as was proved by the speedy re-appearance of the 
 prisoner in the dock, perhaps, even at the next sessions. "We, 
 of the bar, recognised our old acquaintances ; and if their names 
 were such as to attract attention, as they sometimes did, from 
 their oddity or uncouthness, we knew, when we read over the 
 calendar which we found on our arrival, whom it was we 
 should have the pleasure of meeting. Even at this distance of 
 time I remember lads, with whom I became acquainted by their 
 frequent re- appearance in the court ; but, as they may now fill 
 respectable positions in one or other of our Colonies, I will not 
 run the risk of hurting their feelings by mentioning their 
 
Sequel to Charge of September, ] 854. 349 
 
 names, some of which, however, are too well fixed in my 
 memory ever to be forgotten. 
 
 ' Sir, The frequent repetition of scenes like those which I 
 have described, could not fail of driving me to reflect upon the 
 great and humiliating contrast between the means employed and 
 the end attained. Let us, for the reasons given by Sterne, take 
 a single case many such daily passed under my observation. 
 An urchin, with or without a little schooling, but certainly 
 without religious and moral training, is wandering about the 
 streets of Birmingham. Some article attracts his eye, which a 
 shopkeeper has placed outside his door to draw the attention of 
 customers. He carries it off, escapes detection, and repeats his 
 offence, until he is caught at last. Perhaps he knows that he 
 has been doing wrong; perhaps, on the contrary, the applause of 
 bad companions and wicked parents who share his plunder im- 
 press him with the belief that he is doing right, worthily 
 filling his appointed place in society. Again, in the benighted 
 state of his moral perceptions, it may be that he is uncertain as 
 to whether he is doing right or wrong. The goods were in the 
 street, he took them up ; and who had taught him to know 
 where finding ends, and stealing begins ? What instruction did 
 he ever receive as to the limits which divide trover from lar- 
 ceny ? Or, Sir what is more to the purpose who had culti- 
 vated in his soul those fine and noble instincts, which, without 
 giving him time to reason upon what he was about, would have 
 checked him by the unhesitating conviction that he was falling 
 into crime? He then finds himself, after a time of impunity 
 not unfrequently a long period grasped by the strong hand of a 
 policeman, conveyed to the station, brought before the presiding 
 constable, thence despatched to the lock-up-house ; and in due 
 course he is ushered into the awful presence of the Magistrate. 
 Here, witnesses are examined, their evidence taken down in 
 writing he is called upon for his defence, which his attorney, 
 if he has one, advises him to reserve for his trial ; and he is 
 brought away to Warwick, enjoying perhaps, for the first time, 
 the luxury of travelling in a carriage ; he is taken to the County 
 Gaol, and there introduced to a society, who receive him, not as 
 one deserving censure or reproach, but with the feeling of 
 ' Hail, fellow, well met !' After a while comes the trial ; and 
 what is the result ? It is his first offence ; that is to say, his 
 
35 Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 
 
 first detected offence. That circumstance and his youth enable 
 the Court to indulge their sympathies; and he receives a light 
 sentence, a month or two, or a week or two, no matter which. 
 He is then turned out on the world. If by accident he brought 
 any remnant of religious or moral impressions into gaol, be sure 
 none went forth with him. If he came regretting the loss of 
 his position in the society of the honest and well-disposed, 
 depend upon it the new community of which he has become a 
 member has reconciled him to his lot. Yet, thus morally 
 frail to the last extremity of weakness, he is turned adrift and 
 called upon to make the choice of Hercules. Honest Industry 
 stands on his right, but, alas ! she is perched on an inaccessible 
 rock; and, moreover, he feels that she must be a very dull 
 companion, even if he could climb up to her; while the evil 
 genius who personifies a short life and a merry one beckons 
 him from the bottom of an easy slope, a tankard in his hand 
 and a pipe in his mouth. 
 
 And this is the object attained by the complicated and expen- 
 sive machinery of the law ! Here is the result of the labours of 
 policemen, attorneys, counsel, justices, recorders, judges and juries, 
 grand and petit grand and petit indeed vast in the means, miser- 
 able in the end ! How we are reminded of the verses of Young 
 
 ' An ocean into mountains rais'd 
 To waft a feather or to drown a fly !' 
 
 Nay, it is worse, for the fly is not drowned. He is soon cast 
 upon the shore, dries his wings, buzzes away as troublesome as 
 ever, and what is worse, finds out that he has a sting. His 
 offences become the less tolerable as he grows older ; and, after 
 many trials and many convictions, a penal colony or the gallows 
 is his destination. Sir, I am not here to dispute that five- 
 and-thirty years have made many changes in this picture 
 changes at which no man rejoices more than myself. But as 
 regards even the youngest criminals, until the last Session of Par- 
 liament, the legal principle of retributive punishment was alone 
 recognised ; and hence all your improvements only mitigated, in 
 some slight degree, the evil which I have depicted it was by 
 no means rooted out. 
 
 { To return, however, to the magistrates of the Warwickshire 
 Sessions, in whose court I practised. Their kindness and good 
 
Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 
 
 sense, let me hasten to say, led them to discard this illusory 
 treatment in the few instances in which opportunity was favour- 
 able. Sometimes they ventured, when the prosecutor came 
 before them and humanely consented to receive back his dis- 
 honest young servant or apprentice, to consign the youth 
 immediately to his care. On these occasions I have narrowly 
 watched the countenances of the prisoner and his friends, 
 including the prosecutor his best friend to enable me to form 
 a conjecture as to whether the experiment was likely to be 
 successful ; and the conclusions which I drew from the imperfect 
 evidence at my command were favourable to the plan. But it 
 was tried under many disadvantages. It frequently happened 
 that the evidence of the prosecutor not being required, he 
 remained at home, and in such case his assent could not be 
 obtained. Again, the magistrates had no means of forming an 
 estimate of the prosecutor's respectability but from his appear- 
 ance; and, if that were against him, they felt, and rightly felt, 
 bound not to entrust the prisoner to his care. But the most 
 serious defect of the plan was that they had no sure means of 
 learning the results of their clemency ; except that, in case of 
 failure, it sometimes happened that the prisoner came again 
 before them, but not always, as he might have chosen a field for 
 the exercise of his calling in a district out of their jurisdiction. 
 Being, however, much impressed with the value, or what, with 
 all its drawbacks, I considered to be the value, of this mode of 
 disposing of juvenile prisoners, I determined, when I was ap- 
 pointed Recorder of Birmingham, to try the experiment myself, 
 under circumstances more favourable than those under which 
 the County Magistrates acted; because at Birmingham the 
 master or the parent was at hand, even if not in court ; because 
 inquiry could readily be made as to their character ; and, above 
 all, because by keeping a register, the failure and success 
 of the plan, in each instance, could be recorded. Aided by the 
 Chief Superintendent of Police, I have had inquiries made, from 
 time to time, as to the conduct of the prisoner ; and the result 
 of these inquiries being reduced to writing, I am possessed of 
 all the means necessary for accurately testing the value of such 
 a measure. I hold in my hand an abstract of my register, 
 which dates from the beginning of 1842. The abstract was 
 made after the April Sessions of last year, 1854, and, con- 
 
35 2 Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 
 
 sequently, extends over the space of twelve years and a quarter. 
 The total number of prisoners during that period consigned to 
 their friends is 417. Of these only 80 are known to have been 
 reconvicted. Of the remainder, 94 bear a respectable character ; 
 many of them retaining this character after long years of proba- 
 tion. Of 343, the best we can say is that they are not 
 known to have been in custody since they w r ere so given up 
 to their friends. 68 could not be found. 15 were given 
 up to friends residing at a distance from Birmingham, and, 
 therefore, the periodical inquiries which have been made as to 
 the others do not apply to them. But as they were taken away 
 from the evil associations of a large town, I consider them 
 placed under very advantageous circumstances for redeeming 
 their character. 17 were dead; thus making up the total 
 number of 417 of which I have been speaking. These results, 
 I submit, would, of themselves, prove the fact which, to be 
 sure, has been abundantly proved by a varied experience, both 
 at home and abroad that the reformation of youthful offenders 
 is far from being so difficult and hopeless as was formerly 
 the prevalent belief, a belief still entertained by many; 
 although, as popular opinion is now strongly with us, they 
 are loth to exhibit themselves in the ungracious and invidious 
 light of opponents. 
 
 ' Sir, when considering the hope of reformation which the plan 
 I have adopted holds out, we must never forget that it is in 
 truth but a rude expedient, labouring under one enormous 
 defect. The young person is sent back into the same position 
 exactly as that which he occupied when he fell. He is open to 
 the same temptations, it is difficult to keep him aloof from the 
 same companions ; and thus, while he is too often exposed to the 
 scorn and reproach of persons whose ill opinion he most dreads, 
 he has the far greater misfortune of being open to the seduc- 
 tions of those whom his former errors have armed with a 
 pernicious influence over his actions. It, however, has one 
 redeeming feature, which is worthy of the most attentive 
 consideration the young offender is received into the bosom 
 of a family ! And the head of that family is moved to this act 
 of Christian benevolence, by feelings which give no slight 
 guarantee that he will faithfully execute his trust. 
 
 ' Sir, the various dangers and difficulties to which I have 
 
Sequel to Charge of September, 1 854. 353 
 
 adverted, as impeding the course of the magistrates in making 
 these humane consignments, and the large number of youths for 
 which no family Asylum can. be found, may have suggested to 
 them the good and great work which they began nearly forty 
 years ago; by contributions furnished by themselves, and by other 
 benevolent persons influenced by their example. I, of course, 
 refer to their founding the Reformatory Establishment at Stret- 
 ton-on-Dunsmore ; an Institution which has conferred on the 
 magistracy of this county the distinction of being the first of 
 their body throughout the whole country, to turn their feelings 
 of commiseration to good account to ripen benevolence into 
 beneficence. 
 
 ' The history of the School or Refuge at Stretton is very 
 instructive. Its progress in effecting its object was slow but sure. 
 At first the failures exceeded the number of cures; but gradually 
 the balance was turned. I cannot enter into the statistics. 
 The various accounts which I have received do not quite agree ; 
 and by the death of that excellent and zealous friend to the 
 Institution, the Rev. Townsend Powell, the Secretary, we have, 
 perhaps, lost the means of verifying the results with sufficient 
 exactitude to justify a reference to figures, without qualifications 
 which would produce a tedious detail ; I may, however, say that 
 for many years they were highly satisfactory. The number of 
 successful cases constantly increased, while, of course, the pro- 
 portion of failures as regularly diminished. Sir, I must deny 
 myself the pleasure of specifying magistrates whom I remember 
 as actively engaged in the management of this Institution ; 
 because I cannot mention all, and to select would be in- 
 vidious. But I am sure the meeting will feel that I could not 
 advert to the labours of the lamented Secretary without a 
 passing tribute of respect labours well known to me, often 
 brought as I was into communication with him ; though perhaps 
 the fact that at his death the Institution languished and soon 
 itself came to an end, affords the most conclusive testimony to 
 his worth. I mourned his loss, and I still deplore its con- 
 sequences. 
 
 f But, Sir, to-day you are assembled to revive this Institution ; 
 not, as I am informed, as it originally stood, but by uniting 
 your project to that which, mainly through the munificence, and 
 what is even better than munificence, the zealous and persevering 
 
 A A 
 
354 Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 
 
 exertions of my friend Mr. Adderley, lias been already set on 
 foot at Saltley, in the neighbourhood of Birmingham. This 
 will be indeed a consolation for the loss of Stretton; and 
 cordially do I hope that the proposed union will answer the ex- 
 pectations of this most respectable meeting, if it should be your 
 pleasure to adopt it. As I have already addressed you at con- 
 siderable length, and as I am to be followed by gentlemen who 
 will direct your attention to the school at Saltley with more 
 particularity than it would be proper for me to do (while the 
 question is as yet undecided as to whether you shall establish a 
 Reformatory or not), I will limit myself to a few brief remarks 
 on the principles on which it appears to me these Institutions 
 ought to be founded and conducted. 
 
 ' Sir, it is quite clear that the resources of private benevolence 
 would be inadequate to the maintenance of the juvenile offenders 
 with which our gaols are crowded. Nor would it be right to 
 tax the generous with a burden which ought to be borne by the 
 whole community. If these young creatures must be maintained 
 at the public expense, either in our gaols or by their plunder 
 when at large ; if they are indeed the children of the State, as 
 they surely are, the cost of their sustenance and training ought 
 to be borne by the State, and not by individuals. In passing 
 the Juvenile Offenders Act, the Legislature has sanctioned this 
 principle; and it is already, to some extent, carried by the 
 Government into practical effect. I look forward with confidence 
 to the time when that effect shall cease to be partial, and become 
 complete, till when we must not be disheartened, however practice 
 may lag behind acknowledged principle; meantime one advantage 
 of no slight importance results from managers bearing a portion 
 of the cost. It lets in the operation of the voluntary principle 
 under wholesome checks. Contributors who prove the sincerity 
 of their zeal by giving their money, may be well entrusted with 
 the management of these Institutions ; subject of course to 
 Government inspection, which I consider no burden or draw- 
 back, but a great benefit. Then, Sir, with regard to the tone 
 which should pervade the discipline of these schools. Many 
 who have heard it said that kindness must be the principle of 
 treatment, immediately picture to themselves a system of false 
 and pernicious indulgence ; but there are no two qualities more 
 opposed to each other than these. Indulgence of the present 
 
Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 355 
 
 desires, of the evil passions, and of the impatience of labour of 
 the criminal, is not kindness, but rather the worst cruelty. Let 
 the discipline in these schools resemble that exercised by a wise, 
 firm, and Christian father. Let no present ease or pleasure be 
 granted to the lad at the cost of his future welfare. Let his 
 nerves of body and mind be well braced. Let him be armed 
 within and without for the battle of life. But let all be done 
 in a parental spirit. Let no pain be inflicted but that which is 
 essential to produce the change from evil to good that mighty 
 and arduous revolution. Such a discipline faithfully wrought out 
 must be accompanied, in its early stages, at least, by many a severe 
 struggle of the poor outcast with his former habits and desires ; 
 and the pain of mind and body that he will have to suffer from 
 restraint and labour, both new to him, will be amply sufficient 
 to prevent the probation of the Reformatory School acting as 
 an incentive to crime, although it betters the condition of the 
 criminal a danger to which some, for whose opinions on many 
 subjects I have the highest respect, have feared it liable. Sir, 
 it has been hastily assumed that a benefit must operate as a 
 temptation. But this is not so. The highest conceivable good, 
 immortal happiness, is contemplated by the depraved without 
 more than a listless and idle wish to attain it ; while, on the other 
 hand, the most alluring temptations do not draw us towards real 
 benefits, but decoy us into vices which by and by bring us to 
 sorrow. The youth who is hovering on the verge of crime is 
 not tempted to plunge into the abyss by the hope of reaching 
 the toil, the restraints, and the privations of a Reformatory 
 School. Does he desire to go to a place from which all vicious 
 indulgences are banished, where indolence must become industry, 
 where there can be no debauchery, and where his coarse luxuries 
 must be exchanged for a diet which, though wholesome, never 
 pampers his appetite; where the vagrant, accustomed to roam 
 wherever his will may prompt, discovers that he is fixed to one 
 spot, and where his days must, to his thinking, be a perpetual 
 round of austere and slavish observances ? But then it is said that 
 all this, though no temptation to him, must be one to his parents. 
 We admit the danger, and we have guarded against it. At our 
 instance the Legislature has adopted the principle of casting the 
 pecuniary burden, or a portion of it, on the parent. The provi- 
 sions by which this responsibility is to be enforced are, it is 
 
 A A 3 
 
356 Sequel to Charge of September } 1854. 
 
 true, very imperfect. Mr. Adderley, however, has undertaken 
 to bring in a Bill to remedy this defect, and it is impossible 
 that the duty could have been confided to better hands. At 
 the same time, I trust the meeting will clearly understand that 
 it is a moral effect which we seek when we fix responsibility 
 upon the parent ; and that we are by no means sanguine as to 
 the financial results of this responsibility. Many of the outcasts 
 are orphans. Many the children of persons who, from vice or 
 misfortune, are themselves destitute. But, in these cases, as 
 the poor child subsisted upon what he could pick up in the 
 streets, or obtain from charity, he was in truth no burden upon 
 his parents, if he had any ; and, consequently, there was no 
 sinister motive to procure his admission into a Reformatory 
 School. Again, objectors forget that, before the passing of this 
 Act, if a parent were so abandoned as to plunge his child into 
 crime, so soon as the lad found his way to prison the parent was 
 eased altogether of his maintenance. Now, however, if the parent 
 have anything wherewith to pay, he will be called upon to con- 
 tribute; and if he have nothing, why, then, you know, it has passed 
 into a proverb, that in such cases even the King must lose his 
 own. I shall advert to but one principle more, and that is 
 what I would call the Family principle. The abstract which I 
 have laid before you will enable you to form your own judgment 
 of its power, even when contending with many difficulties. Its 
 value is highly appreciated in those Reformatories which have 
 been most successful. Mettray, in France, is a collection of small 
 communities, in which, the essentials of a family are as far as pos- 
 sible combined. So at the Rauhe Hans, near Hamburgh ; so at 
 lied Hill, the Farm School of the Philanthropic Society. By these 
 sub-divisions the dangers attendant on the aggregation of large 
 numbers are averted, while the advantage of high and skilful 
 superintendence is preserved. Mettray, the most splendid ex- 
 ample of reformatory success which the world has yet seen, 
 contains from six to seven hundred young offenders; and surely 
 it must be obvious that a Demetz, a Wichern, a Sidney Turner, 
 or last, not least, a Mary Carpenter those gifted philanthropists 
 are not found in sufficient numbers to justify us in confining 
 their tutelage to a few. I would speak as I feel, with respect 
 and admiration, of the smaller establishments, which able and 
 benevolent men, like Mr. Baker, of Hardwicke, have set on 
 
Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 357 
 
 foot on their own responsibility. It is for them to regulate the 
 extent of their own labours. I rejoice in every new Institution 
 of a similar kind ; but, where numbers are to be provided for out 
 of subscriptions which experience tells me it is not easy to keep 
 up, I would venture to suggest that the economy which results 
 from uniting them in one establishment (if you provide for sub- 
 division), is of itself a strong motive not to depart from the pre- 
 cedents which I have cited Mettray, the Rauhe Haus, and Red 
 Hill ; the more especially when such a departure enhances the 
 difficulty, already most perplexing, of finding superintendents 
 who have the gifts essential to the performance of their arduous 
 duties. 
 
 ' Sir, I cannot come to an end without asking you and this 
 meeting to unite with me in grateful rejoicings. All here 
 present will have shared that depression of spirit into which the 
 abortive results of our criminal jurisprudence have so often 
 thrown every reflective mind. The worthy magistrates who 
 surround me know how this feeling is embittered, when we have 
 to administer laws in whose beneficial operation we have no 
 confidence. But a good time is coming nay, is come. The 
 labourers in a good cause, if ever cause were good, among 
 whom it has been my privilege to be enrolled, have proved by 
 indisputable facts that the reformation of offenders, and espe- 
 cially of the young, is not the dream of visionaries ; but a task 
 to which, under Providence, human agency is fully competent. 
 This truth our friends in Parliament have urged on the Legisla- 
 ture, and urged with success. The Youthful Offenders Act, no 
 doubt, is capable of great improvement, but with all its defects 
 it stands and, please God, shall ever stand a noble sea-mark 
 to direct the difficult and intricate course of criminal jurispru- 
 dence. For myself, Sir, my reward is ample indeed I have 
 lived to witness this glorious triumph I am invited to stand 
 this day among the chief men of my native county, not chief 
 simply in rank and wealth, not chief even merely in talent and 
 knowledge, but chief in that which is better than rank, better 
 than wealth, and better than talent chief in benevolence, and 
 in the consciousness of the duty which man owes to man. They 
 themselves ardent and powerful friends of Reformatory enterprise 
 call upon me to plead the cause of the young outcast before a 
 tribunal which will cordially recognise his claims. His coun- 
 
358 Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 
 
 teriance may be darkened by ignorance ignorance botli of the 
 head and the heart it may be disfigured by evil passions and 
 unbridled appetites, but you feel, and you will not shrink from 
 avowing, that he is still your brother. You are his keeper, and 
 you will not repudiate your charge ; but, like good and faithful 
 servants, execute your sacred trust V 
 
 In what follows I have put together such proofs as I had at 
 hand, and which are not furnished elsewhere in the course of 
 this work, of good effects flowing from the establishment of 
 schools, whether Reformatory or Preventive. This, I trust, 
 will hereafter become a task, demanding for its execution much 
 time and space. At present we are in the day of small things. 
 
 ' To the Honorary Secretary of the National Reformatory Union. 
 
 1 Chief Constabulary Office, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Aug. i6th, 1856. 
 
 ' SIR, As I hold the appointment from the Secretary of 
 State for the Home Department to proceed, under the Acts of 
 Parliament 18 and [9 Viet., c. 87, and 17 and 18 Viet., c. 86, 
 with the view of enforcing parental responsibility in connexion 
 with the children confined in the Reformatory establishments of 
 the north of England, I shall be most happy to supply you with 
 any information which I can give in connexion therewith ; and 
 perhaps I may be permitted to say, that I know from my own 
 personal knowledge and observation, that, since parental respon- 
 sibility has been enforced in the district, under the directions of 
 the Secretary of State, the number of juvenile criminals in the 
 custody of the police have decreased one-half. I know that 
 many of the parents, who heretofore were in the habit of sending 
 their children into the streets for the purposes of stealing, 
 begging, and plunder, have quite discontinued that practice, 
 and several of the children so used and brought up as thieves 
 and mendicants, are now at some of the free schools of the 
 town, others are at work, and thereby obtain an honest liveli- 
 hood ; and, so far as I can ascertain, they seem to be thoroughly 
 altered, and appear likely to become good and honest members of 
 society. I have for my own information conversed with some of 
 the boys so altered, and, during the conversation I had with them, 
 they declared that they derived the greatest happiness and satis- 
 
Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 359 
 
 faction from their change in life. I don't at all doubt the truth 
 of these statements, for their evident improvement and indivi- 
 dual circumstances fully bear them out ; and I believe them to 
 be really serious in all they say, and truly anxious to become 
 honest and respectable. I attribute in a great measure this 
 salutary change to the effects arising in many respects from the 
 establishment of Reformatory Schools ; but I have more parti- 
 cularly found that greater advantages have emanated from those 
 institutions since the parents of the children confined in them 
 have been made to pay contributions to their maintenance, for 
 it appears beyond doubt that the effect of the latter has been 
 to induce the parents of other young criminals to withdraw 
 them from the streets, and, instead of using them for the pur- 
 poses of crime, they seem to take an interest in their welfare ; 
 and I know that many of them are now really anxious to get 
 such employment for their children as will enable them to 
 obtain an honest livelihood ; and it is my opinion, that the 
 example thus set to older and more desperate criminals, belong- 
 ing in many instances to the same family as the juvenile thief, 
 has had the effect of reforming them also, for many of them 
 have left off their course of crime, and are now living by honest 
 labour; the result is, that serious crime has considerably 
 decreased in this district, so much so, that there were only six 
 cases for trial at the recent Assizes, whereas, at the previous 
 Assizes the average number of cases were from 25 to 30, which 
 fact was made the subject of much comment and congratulation 
 by Mr. Justice Willes, the presiding judge ; and I have to add, 
 that the six cases embrace all the offences reported to the 
 police since the preceding Assizes, so that the usual distinctions 
 made betweeen committed crime, the proportion of it detected, 
 and the number of offenders brought to justice, cannot be used 
 in estimating the crime of this district for the period referred to. 
 ' Hoping I will be pardoned for the observations I have ven- 
 tured to make, 
 
 ' I have the honour to be, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most obedient humble servant, 
 
 ' J. DUNNE, Chief Constable.'* 
 
 * Authorized Report of the Bristol Conferenca, p. 29. 
 
360 Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 
 
 'ABERDEEN FEEDING SCHOOLS. 
 
 ( The effects of the schools have been most gratifying. The com- 
 mittals to the Aberdeeiishire gaols of children under twelve years 
 old were, during the first ten years of the schools, as follows : 
 
 j8 4 i 
 
 1842 
 
 1843 
 1844 
 
 1845 
 
 61 
 30 
 63 
 
 1847 
 1848 
 1849 
 1850 
 1851 
 
 27 
 
 J 9 
 16 
 
 22 
 
 8 
 
 1846 . . . 
 
 f It will be observed, that in ] 843 there was a serious increase 
 in the committals. At this time the first interest taken in the 
 schools had passed away, and the public in general had not yet 
 appreciated their value. The subscriptions had consequently 
 fallen off; owing to this circumstance, admission to the schools 
 was necessarily much restricted, and many destitute children 
 were left unprovided for. The increase in committals therefore 
 is not to be wondered at. In 1854, unfortunately, there was 
 a great increase of juvenile crime in Aberdeen, and a belief was 
 entertained by many persons that the schools had failed ; upon 
 examination, however, not only does this belief prove to be 
 unfounded, but the soundness of the principle on which the 
 institutions are based is ascertained. This increase of juvenile 
 crime was not peculiar to Aberdeen ; at other manufacturing 
 towns, such as Paisley and Dundee, an increase is observable, 
 though to a less extent. For this, various causes are assigned 
 an important one is a restriction in the administration of 
 Poor-law relief, which was made about this time. By a printed 
 table which I have received from Aberdeen, I find that in three 
 years ending with 1852, the expenditure for Poor-law relief in 
 that city amounted to 19,930^, and the average number of 
 paupers on the out-door roll to 1762; while in the three years 
 ending with 1855, the expenditure in relief was only 16,525^, 
 and the paupers 1465, although the latter period was one of 
 less prosperity (particularly at Aberdeen, where several of the 
 spinning-mills had stopped), and of dearer food than the former 
 one. This alteration was owing, I am informed, to a refusal 
 of relief to able-bodied women having each not more than one 
 child dependent on them. 
 
 ' Another cause of the increase of youthful offenders was the 
 establishment of a class of shops called ' wee pawns/ at which 
 
Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 361 
 
 small articles may be easily disposed of. At Aberdeen, indeed, 
 some receivers of stolen goods actually copied the system of the 
 Industrial Schools, took in destitute children, and fed and trained 
 them, but to evil instead of good. However, the main cause of 
 the great increase at Aberdeen was owing to the restriction of 
 admission to the Boys' Schools. On account of the general dis- 
 tress in the town, the subscriptions fell off, and at the same time 
 a large increase in the price of provisions enhanced the expenses 
 of the establishment. In consequence of this, the committee of 
 gentlemen who manage the Boys' Schools, felt themselves con- 
 strained to restrict the admission to the most destitute. The 
 committees of ladies who manage the Girls' Schools acted upon 
 a different principle, and the consequence is, that far more girls 
 than boys have, during the last few years, been maintained in 
 the schools. At present there are in all the establishments 202 
 girls and only no boys; now, assuming that there are as many 
 destitute boys as girls in Aberdeen (and the experience of other 
 Scotch towns proves that the boys are more rather than less 
 numerous), it follows that there are 90 destitute boys at large 
 who are probably engaged in vagrancy or crime; and, indeed, 
 this has been found to be the case. Mr. Sheriff Watson informs 
 me that the Superintendent of Police reports ' there has been 
 a great increase of thefts during the year, chiefly by boys of 
 tender years. In the female column of thefts there is a great de- 
 crease, which I attribute solely to the Female Industrial Schools/ 
 ' Dividing the last fifteen years into three equal periods, we 
 find that the juvenile committals in them were as follows : 
 
 ist period. 2nd period. 3rd. period. 
 
 Boys 189 ... 1 88 ... 134 
 
 Girls 55 ... 24 ... 9 
 
 Total . . 244 212 143 
 
 ' The numbers of children under twelve committed for crime* to 
 the Aberdeen prisons during the last six years were as follows : 
 
 Males. Females. Total. 
 
 16 
 
 1850-51 
 
 
 . 8 . . 
 
 
 1851-52 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 . . 8 
 
 1852-53 
 
 
 
 . . 24 
 
 1853-54. 
 
 
 
 
 1854-55 . 
 
 4.7 
 
 2 
 
 . . 40 
 
 
 
 
 
 The return does not distinguish the sexes of vagrant children. 
 
362 
 
 Sequel to Charge of September, 1 854. 
 
 ' It will be observed, that in the last three years there has 
 been a great increase of boy crime, contemporaneously with an 
 almost total absence of girl crime, though formerly the amount 
 of the latter was considerable. Now, since this extraordinary 
 difference coincides in point of time with the fact of full Girls' 
 Schools and half-empty Boys' Schools, the inference can hardly 
 be avoided, that the two facts bear the relation of cause arid 
 effect, and that so far from the late increase of youthful crime 
 in Aberdeen anywise impairing the soundness of the principles 
 on which the schools are based, it is its strongest confirma- 
 tion. In moral as in physical science, when the objections to 
 a theory are upon further investigation explained by the theory 
 itself, they become the best evidence of its truth. Indeed, it is 
 proved by the experience not only of Aberdeen, but, as far as I 
 have been able to ascertain, of every town in Scotland in which 
 Industrial Schools have been established, that the number of 
 children in the schools and the number in the gaol, are like the 
 two ends of a scale-beam, as the one rises the other falls, and 
 vice versa.'* 
 
 The following list of imprisonments of children attending 
 the schools of the Bristol Ragged School Union shows con- 
 siderable progress in the right direction : f 
 
 Year. 
 
 1847 
 
 l8 4 8 
 
 1849 
 26 
 
 1850 
 
 1851 
 
 1852 
 
 1853 
 
 
 
 1854 
 
 1855 
 
 Imprisoned. 
 
 12 
 
 J 9 
 
 9 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 > ist 4years, 66, averaging 16.5 per year on number of 417 children, 
 In subsequent 5 ,, 3 0.6 
 
 728 
 
 Difference 15.9 
 
 16.5 : 15.9 : : IOO ; 96.36. 
 
 ' Thus/ says Mr. Thornton, ' it appears that the diminution of 
 the average annual number of children attending our schools 
 imprisoned in the latter period of five years, as compared with 
 the annual average of the previous four years, is 96 per cent. 
 a striking fact, which is, I think, a manifest proof of the benefit 
 conferred on them by the religious and secular instruction they 
 
 * On the Industrial Schools of Scotland, and the working of Dunlop's Act. By 
 Alfred Hill, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. Authorized Report of the Bristol Conference, 
 p. 95. f Authorized lleport, p. 40. 
 
Sequel to Charge of September, 1 854. 363 
 
 receive in our schools ; or, at the very least, of the advantages 
 of rescuing them from the temptations of idleness, and from 
 evil companionship and example/* 
 
 THE ST. JAMES'S BACK RAGGED SCHOOL, BRISTOL. 
 
 1 The commencement of all Ragged Schools presents nearly 
 the same difficulties and aspects, yet this record by the master 
 is too graphic to be omitted : ' I shall never forget/ he wrote, 
 ' that afternoon only thirteen or fourteen boys present, some 
 swearing, some fighting, some crying, one boy struck another's 
 head through the window ; I tried to offer up a short prayer, 
 but found it impossible ; the boys, instead of kneeling, began 
 to tumble over one another, and to sing ' Jim Crow/ ' This 
 school now comprises a juvenile day school for about eighty 
 children ; an infant school for eighty or one hundred ; an evening 
 school for older boys and girls. The afternoon of each day is 
 devoted to the industrial training of both schools, under competent 
 instructors. A playground and playroom are connected with the 
 school, where the children may remain, bringing their dinners 
 to eat during the interval between morning and afternoon 
 school ; there is a bath-house, where the children are bathed in 
 rotation, some each afternoon, also a washing apparatus in the 
 school-room; the premises are cleaned by the children, under 
 proper superintendence, as a means of industrial training. The 
 houses adjoining the school in the court being the property of 
 one of the committee, security is given that no external injurious 
 influences will be allowed to interfere with the working of it. 
 # # # # # * 
 
 ' In visiting this and other Ragged Schools in the city, a stranger 
 will probably inquire with some scepticism whether these are 
 really children of the class contemplated, so orderly and so clean, 
 though poorly dressed, do most of them appear. Were he to 
 inspect the neighbourhood during holiday time, he would hardly 
 recognise the same children in their ordinary condition ; and if 
 pointed out to him, he would forcibly perceive the benefit such 
 schools were conferring on society, as well as on the children 
 
 * Letter, dated 26th March, 1 856, to her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, the Rev. 
 H. W. Bellairs, from Lee Thornton, Esq., Honorary Secretary to the 'Society for 
 establishing Educational and Industrial Ragged Schools in Bristol and its Vicinity.' 
 
364 Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 
 
 themselves, by bringing under good influences and habits so 
 large a mass of our juvenile population, who would otherwise 
 be on the road to ruin. Of the positive good effects of this and 
 similar schools in Bristol,, it is difficult to speak; there will 
 always be great disappointment, owing to the irregular attend- 
 ance of the children, and the apathy or bad example of the 
 parents. Yet in numberless instances children may be seen 
 growing up decently, who owe their only training and instruction 
 to the school; young persons are noticed in regular work who, 
 before they attended the Ragged Schools, were vagrants, or even 
 thieves; not unfrequently a visit is paid at the school by a 
 respectable young man, who proves to have been a wild and 
 troublesome scholar of former times. Not the least encouraging 
 instance is that of a wild lad who was the plague of his neigh- 
 bourhood, and had been twice in prison, but over whom 
 considerable influence had been gained, and who owed all his 
 instruction to this school. After having been for a time at 
 Red hi 11, through the kindness of the Rev. Sydney Turner, 
 he emigrated to America, and subsequently enlisted in the 
 British service. Having been ordered to India, he is now going 
 on most steadily, is employed by the schoolmaster to help him, 
 and writes regularly to his friends at the St. James's Back 
 School most intelligent and interesting accounts of the country, 
 the last received speaks of this once wild youth having been 
 appointed as one of the guards of the royal treasury at Lahore. 
 He evinces constant anxiety for his younger brother, who has 
 been brought up from his infancy in the school, and is now a 
 steady carpenter's apprentice, the efforts made for the elder 
 son having produced on the parents the effect of stimulating 
 them to greater care in the education of the younger one/* 
 
 The following extract from an address to the Literary and 
 Scientific Institution of Paulton, in Somersetshire, furnishes a 
 glimpse of the difficulties to be overcome by the conductors of 
 Ragged Schools. That referred to is St. James's Back : 
 
 1 Put a stop to drunkenness, and Ragged Schools would be 
 relieved of nine-tenths of their scholars. A terrible instance 
 of the present state of things among the class of which he (the 
 
 * Paper on the Reformatory Institutions in and near Bristol. By Mary Car- 
 penter. Authorized Report, p. 40. 
 
Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 365 
 
 Lecturer) was now speaking came to his knowledge recently. 
 It occurred at a Ragged School in Bristol, in the management 
 of which he and other members of his family took part. One 
 of his daughters was present a few days ago when a little 
 fellow, nine years old, applied to the master for leave to go 
 home. He was asked why he wanted to go home, when he 
 replied c he must let mammy out/ and on further inquiry it 
 appeared that this poor lad, shortly before coming to school 
 that morning, had found his mother drunk in a public-house; 
 he had contrived to get her home, and then, in order to save 
 her from injury in his absence, he had locked the door of her 
 room, and put the key into his pocket. It was now time, he 
 calculated, for her to have so far recovered from her intoxica- 
 tion as to be set at liberty. The Lecturer besought his 
 hearers to reflect upon this hideous inversion of natural duty, 
 in which the little child became the warder of his loathsome 
 parent. What must be the feelings of the boy towards his 
 mother ! What must he himself become with such an example 
 before him !'* 
 
 St. James's Back, built on the site of an ancient wharf, as 
 the name implies, is one of the least reputable parts of Bristol. 
 Prior to the opening of the school, it was considered dan- 
 gerous for a policeman, unsupported by a comrade, to enter 
 its precincts. The ladies interested in it, when first they 
 visited their establishment, were encountered by the neigh- 
 bours with repulsive, and even insulting language : ' Why do 
 you come here? We don't want big folks here to look down 
 upon us. Be off!* The ladies, however, were Christian gentle- 
 women, showed no resentment, returned courtesy for insolence, 
 proved by their works that they had the good of the poor at 
 heart, and now they find themselves guarded by the respect 
 and attachment of the inhabitants from any approach to ill- 
 treatment. Wherever, in our large towns, a population is 
 found entirely, or mainly, of the lowest class, it would be 
 worth while to establish a school, if only to furnish a reason 
 and a justification, in the eyes of the dwellers, for those who 
 stand higher in the social scale to visit their quarter. 
 
 * Lecture by M. D. Hill, Recorder of Birmingham. Literarium, December 
 1 7th, 1856. 
 
366 Sequel to Charge of September, 1854. 
 
 The subjoined table is self- explaining : 
 
 BEISTOL POLICE FOECE. 
 
 ' Return of Juvenile Offenders, 16 Years of Age and under, Apprehended 
 in Bristol during the folloiving Years. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Number 
 Appre- 
 hended. 
 
 Number 
 Committed 
 for Trial. 
 
 Summarily 
 Convicted. 
 
 Discharged. 
 
 1847 
 
 1004 
 
 69 
 
 348 
 
 587 
 
 1848 
 1849 
 
 775 
 487 
 
 59 
 37 
 
 III 
 
 439 
 
 284 
 
 1850 
 
 44 8 
 
 38 
 
 166 
 
 244 
 
 1851 
 
 422 
 
 40 
 
 140 
 
 242 
 
 1852 
 
 373 
 
 40 
 
 114 
 
 219 
 
 1853 
 
 453 
 
 33 
 
 92 
 
 328 
 
 1854 
 
 449 
 
 32 
 
 119 
 
 298 
 
 1855 
 l8 5 6 
 
 473 
 
 584 
 
 29 
 
 18 
 
 155 
 
 218 
 
 348 
 
 'Superintendent's Office, January 6th, 1857.' 
 
 Mr. Wheatley, one of the Chairmen of the "West Riding 
 Sessions, and the Manager of the West Riding Reformatory 
 School, in a letter to Mr. Baker, of Hardwicke, dated February 
 28, 1857, says, that going to bed the night before at one o'clock, 
 he was awakened half-an-hour afterwards by the cracking of 
 slates upon his stables, which were on fire ; but that the boys 
 "fromt he school, who ( worked like Trojans/ got the fire under 
 before the engines came. Mr. Baker cites this instance to 
 show that certain gentlemen of Monmouthshire, who object to 
 the establishment of a Reformatory School in their neighbour- 
 hood, may be foregoing an advantage ; his own experience at 
 Hardwicke, and the inquiries which he has made regarding 
 every similar school in England, have convinced, him of the 
 harmlessness of such establishments as regards the neighbours.* 
 
 * The Merlin and Silurian, March 14, 1557. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO CHARGE OF JANUARY, 1855. 
 
 IN the summer of 1 854 I was, by the kind aid of an American 
 lady, resident in England, placed in communication with 
 Dr. Stone, a Physician, of Boston, in the State of Massachusetts; 
 to whom I am indebted for answers to various queries on the 
 subject of the Maine Law, and its working in the United States. 
 
 The extracts from his letter, which will be found below, 
 furnish a sufficient introduction to the following Charge. 
 
 1 There is a difference of opinion concerning the working 
 of the [Maine] Law, but its friends generally control the 
 temperance organizations of this State [Massachusetts], and 
 throughout the country. Clergymen, anti-slavery, and total- 
 abstinence men are almost unanimously friendly to the law. 
 Hotel-keepers, liquor-sellers, grocers, apothecaries, and regular 
 drinkers are about as unanimously opposed to it. Moderate 
 drinkers are divided in sentiment. My own opinion can be 
 very briefly expressed. Naturally shrinking with aversion from 
 some of the more stringent portions of the law, in consequence 
 of an early and unrepressed feeling in favour of the largest phase 
 of personal liberty, which includes an opposition to general 
 sumptuary legislation, I looked upon the law, when first enacted 
 in our sister State, with some suspicion. But the statistics 
 exhibiting its remarkable effects in securing the diminution of 
 crime, of intemperance, and of pauperism, early compelled me 
 to waive all my scruples. I therefore believe it to be, in the 
 main, widely beneficent in its operation, at the same time that 
 I regard it to be subject, as is all other human legislation, to 
 such amendment and improvement as the course of time and 
 the wisdom of experience shall best evince to be necessary, in 
 order the better to accomplish its important objects. 
 
 ' From time immemorial, persons charged with crime, and 
 whose principles are not firmly fixed, have endeavoured to avoid 
 the consequences thereof, by evasions and subterfuges. As in 
 the past, so it will be in the future, until human nature under- 
 goes transformation. The law in question was early subject to 
 
368 Introduction to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 this criticism. Yet I know not why it should be more pro- 
 perly amenable to it than any other law has been or would 
 be, which has exerted, or which can exert, over the passions 
 and the follies of men an equal control. It is one of the 
 peculiarities of this law whatever theories drawing a different 
 conclusion we might, in advance, apply to it that where it 
 has been most efficiently executed, where the greatest results 
 in the suppression of crime and pauperism have been most 
 satisfactorily achieved, it has seized with such strong hold on 
 the hearts of the people, that its popularity has there and 
 then become invincible. 
 
 ' From the best evidences that I can gather concerning the 
 influence of unaided moral measures, the average effects of 
 pledges to total abstinence is, that fifty per cent, adhere for 
 a single year, thirty-three per cent, for five years, and twenty- 
 five per cent, permanently. In procuring the most decisive 
 results from moral suasion, organization into permanent asso- 
 ciations has undoubtedly been productive of much good. And 
 the Temperance Societies of the country have, generally, long 
 since given up, as a failure, the early efforts of organization for 
 the sake of partial abstinence, and now strenuously advocate 
 total abstinence only. 
 
 ' There can be little doubt that the moral means resorted to, 
 for the purpose of repressing intemperance, have at once pro- 
 duced good results, and at the same time have prepared the 
 public mind for compulsory measures. 
 
 ' The opposition of those previously engaged in the traffic, 
 where the law has been thoroughly executed, has been some- 
 times removed by a very simple process. Many, acting as law- 
 abiding citizens, among the law-loving people, in a law-main- 
 taining State, have at once relinquished their sales, and com- 
 menced other occupations. Others have been indicted, and 
 their liquors destroyed. They have resumed business, and the 
 enactment has been again enforced. Then, deterred either by 
 the prospect of the loss of means, or the nearer vision of the 
 State-prison, they have transferred their capital into other 
 branches of industry, and thereupon a twofold object induces 
 them to maintain the law : first, their interests are no longer 
 engaged in its infraction ; and second, being themselves pre- 
 vented from violating the law, they are naturally desirous of 
 
Introduction to Charge of January, 1855. 369 
 
 prohibiting others from exercising privileges which they do not 
 themselves possess. 
 
 1 No considerable class of our citizens maintain that beneficial 
 results accrue from the constant use of alcoholic drinks as a 
 beverage. The radical difference between the Temperance men 
 and their opponents, is rather upon the question, ' Do injurious 
 results follow such use? one class of the community con- 
 tending for the affirmative, and another class for the negative 
 of the proposition ; while the latter class do not generally go 
 so far as to maintain the absolute improvement of the health 
 and strength from such use. 
 
 e As a general rule, in different parts of the country, the 
 character of the water exercises a greater ostensible control 
 than the climate [over our habits in the use of wines, &c.]. 
 West of the principal eastern cities, the water is, in many 
 places, either impregnated with lime, discoloured by the soil, or 
 offensive to the taste ; and it is the custom of many, seeking 
 an excuse for their luxurious habits, to attribute the cause to 
 the water, rather than to their perverted appetites. 
 
 ' To allude to my own experience, allow me to say that, while 
 travelling in different parts of New York State, South Caro- 
 lina, Kentucky, Missouri and Canada, many of my acquain- 
 tances have insisted upon it that it was unhealthy to drink the 
 water of the place, and have therefore strongly urged the use 
 of wines and brandies ; but it was observed that, while refusing 
 myself to follow their kind advice, those of my travelling com- 
 panions who were more fearful, or less scrupulous, were also 
 much more liable to temporary illness than myself. 
 
 * But why, after all the efforts that have been made, does 
 drunkenness, and the crime and pauperism consequent thereon, 
 still continue ? The answer is, the law has not yet been carried 
 into complete effect. The cases have not yet been adjudicated 
 before our highest courts. Obstructions have been constantly 
 placed in the way. Great improvement of morals has, however, 
 been made. 
 
 'Not many years since, many artisans and employers, such 
 as shoemakers, stage-drivers, &c., were habitually accustomed 
 to drink freely. Now, the practice has much abated, and we 
 even hear of ( Stage-drivers' Temperance Conventions/ and the 
 money formerly devoted to the purchase of liquor is now used 
 
 B B 
 
370 Introduction to Charge of January, 
 
 to elevate them into a higher position in society, and to satisfy 
 those wants which that higher position originates. 
 
 ' No branch of the Temperance reform has more thoroughly 
 succeeded than that which had reference to public entertain- 
 ments. It is only, I think, since the time of Mayor Quincy, 
 now [1854] about eight years, that the public dinners of this 
 city [Boston] have been prepared upon a temperance plan. 
 And at this time nearly all the great public festivals and enter- 
 tainments in this vicinity, at which several hundred people are 
 expected to be present, including the time-honoured Commence- 
 ment-dinner of Harvard University, are conducted upon tem- 
 perance principles, no beverage being provided but lemonade, 
 water, and coffee. The transformation of public opinion that 
 would allow of this change, has only been gradually achieved. 
 But its accomplishment has been the result of the expenditure 
 of much labour, time, and money/ 
 
 The following extracts bearing upon the operation of the 
 Maine Law may not be considered out of place here. The 
 first occurs early in the very interesting work from which it is 
 quoted. The second is taken from the summary of what the 
 author observed in the United States, with which she concludes 
 the narrative of her tour in America : 
 
 [The author had just arrived by sea at Portland, in Maine.] 
 
 ' A polite custom-house officer asked me if I had anything 
 contraband in my trunks, and, on my reply in the negative, 
 they were permitted to pass without even the formality of being- 
 uncorded. ' Enlightened citizens they are truly/ I thought ; 
 and with a pleasant consciousness of being in a perfectly free 
 country, where every one can do as he pleases, I entered an 
 hotel near the water, and sat down in the ladies' parlour. I 
 had not tasted food for twenty-five hours, my clothes were cold 
 and wet, a severe cut was on my temple. These circumstances 
 I thought justified me in ringing the bell, and asking for a 
 glass of wine. Visions of the agreeable refreshment which 
 would be produced by the juice of the grape appeared simul- 
 taneously with the waiter. I made the request, and he brusquely 
 replied, ' You can't have it. It's contrary to law.' In my 
 Jialf-drowned and faint condition, the refusal appeared tanta- 
 
Introduction to Charge of January, 1855. 371 
 
 mount to positive cruelty, and I remembered that I had come 
 in contact with the celebrated ' Maine Law/ That the inhabi- 
 tants of the State of Maine are not ' free ' was thus placed 
 practically before me at once. Whether they are ' enlightened' 
 I doubted at the same time, but leave the question of the 
 prohibition of fermented liquors to be decided by abler social 
 economists than myself. 
 
 ' I was hereafter informed that to those who go down stairs 
 and asked to see the ' striped pig/ wine and spirits are pro- 
 duced ; that a request to speak with e dusty Ben ' has a like 
 effect ; and that on asking for ' Sarsaparilla' at certain stores in 
 the town, the desired stimulant can be obtained. Indeed, it is 
 said that the consumption of this drug is greater in Maine than 
 in all the other States put together. But in justice to this 
 highly respectable State, I must add that the drunkenness which 
 forced this stringent measure upon the Legislature was among 
 the thousands of English and Irish emigrants who annually 
 land at Portland/* 
 
 ( The larger portion of the crime committed is done under 
 the influence of spirits ; and to impose a check upon their sale, 
 that celebrated enactment, known under the name of the 
 ' Maine Law/ has been placed upon the statute books of several 
 of the States, including the important ones of New York, 
 Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Nebraska. 
 
 ' This law prohibits, under heavy penalties, the manufacture 
 or sale of alcoholic liquors. It has been passed in obedience 
 to the will of the people, as declared at the elections ; and, 
 though to us its provisions seem somewhat arbitrary, its working 
 has produced very salutary effects/f 
 
 * The 'Englishwoman in America, ' p. 90. London: Murray. 1856. 
 t Ibid., p. 442. 
 
 B B 
 
373 
 
 CHAKGE OF JANUABY, 1855. 
 
 GENTLEMEN or THE GRAND JURY, 
 
 THOSE among you who bear in mind the Charges which 
 have been delivered from this Bench, on the causes of 
 crime, will naturally ask how it is that the enormous con- 
 sumption of intoxicating liquors which prevails through the 
 land a source of crime not only more fertile than any one 
 other, but than all others added together should have been 
 hitherto passed by ; or only have been brought under notice as 
 incidental to some other topic. Let it not be supposed, 
 Gentlemen, that such an omission has been the result of 
 inadvertence. The subject has occupied my thoughts for 
 years ; strange, indeed, must have been the state of my mind if 
 it had not forced itself on my attention ; since the evil arising 
 from the abuse of intoxicating drinks meets us at every turn. 
 And for myself, I cannot pass an hour in Court without being 
 reminded, by the transactions which are put in evidence before 
 me, of the infinite ramifications of this fatal pest. In truth, 
 almost every form of suffering which is common to any large 
 class of our fellow -creatures, is connected with vicious in- 
 dulgence in these ensnaring stimulants. Indigence, over- 
 whelming temptation to crime, insanity, bodily disease, and 
 death, such are the retributive consequences which wait on 
 drunkenness. Individual drunkards may and do escape some 
 portion of this retribution ; the instances, however, are rare 
 indeed, if not fabulous, in which they run a career of in- 
 toxication arid remain wholly unscathed. But what is the too 
 frequent lot of their families ? At first sight it would strike us 
 as impossible to discover a more unhappy being than the 
 virtuous wife of a drunkard, and the mother of his offspring. 
 Yet, if we turn our eyes towards the children of drunkenness, 
 to little creatures, both of whose parents have become the 
 victims of the tempter, we shall indeed contemplate human 
 nature in its deepest affliction, short of the misery of guilt. 
 
Charge of January, 1855. 373 
 
 Take the description, Gentlemen, of one who well knew the 
 class of which he \vas writing, Samuel Johnson : 
 
 ' Nor does the use of spirits/ says he, ' only impoverish the 
 public by lessening the number of useful and laborious hands, 
 but by cutting off those recruits by which its natural and 
 inevitable losses are to be supplied. The use of distilled 
 liquors impairs the fecundity of the human race ; and hinders 
 that increase which Providence has ordained for the support 
 of the world. Those women who riot in this poisonous 
 debauchery are quickly disabled from bearing children, by 
 bringing on themselves in a short time all the infirmities and 
 weakness of age; or, what is yet more destructive to general 
 happiness, produce children diseased from their birth by the 
 vices of their parents; children, whose blood is tainted with 
 inveterate and accumulated maladies, for which no cure can be 
 expected, and who, therefore, are an additional burthen to the 
 community ; and must be supported through a miserable life by 
 that labour which they cannot share, and must be protected by 
 that community to whose defence they cannot contribute/ 
 
 Gentlemen, so long (I may add) as such a family remains in 
 existence, struggling against the wholesome harshness of those 
 natural laws which condemn it to early extinction, it is driven 
 to find its maintenance in crime ; and, if not brutified by 
 ignorance, disease, and a guilty life, remorse is added as the 
 culminating stone of this pile of suffering. But I will not 
 pursue the theme for the reason assigned by the great writer 
 \vhose \vorks I have just quoted. ' It contains [says he] such a 
 concatenation of enormities, teems with so vast a number of 
 mischiefs, and therefore produces in those minds that attend to 
 its nature, arid pursue its consequences, such endless variety of 
 arguments against it, that the memory is perplexed, the 
 imagination crowded, and utterance overburdened. Before 
 any one of its pernicious effects is fully dilated, a thousand 
 others appear. The Hydra still shoots out new heads, and 
 every head vomits out new poison to infect society, and lay the 
 nation desolate/ 
 
 But, Gentlemen, imbued as I have been with the deepest 
 concern that intemperance should be so widely spread among 
 us, T have been deterred from entering at large into this topic 
 from my utter inability to point out any legislative measures 
 
374 Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 which, as it appeared to me, would furnish reasonable hope of 
 subduing by force of law, the enormous evil which we are now 
 contemplating. Law, however, has not been wholly inoperative ; 
 and other weapons drawn from the armoury of religion and 
 morals have been launched against the foe with indomitable 
 zeal, and with some effect. So that the state of the country, 
 although bad indeed, compared with what it ought to be, is 
 nevertheless better than it was in the time of Johnson. 
 
 To interpose from the Bench in a contest in which the law 
 took such a minor part would, I felt, be passing beyond the 
 widest limits assigned to the duty which I am now performing 
 a duty, I apprehend, confined to the enforcement of con- 
 siderations arising out of the law as it is ; or to suggestions 
 which have for their object to produce such a tone of public 
 opinion as shall have a tendency, more or less direct, to bring 
 the law into conformity with our convictions of what it ought 
 to be. Any interference by me with the duties of the pulpit 
 would be uncalled for and presumptuous ; especially in this 
 town, where your religious ministry is so richly endowed with 
 all the qualities demanded for the conflict in which it is 
 engaged. Nor would I willingly pass by the services of the 
 various Societies, which, under the leadership of earnest and 
 able men, have sought to alarm the consciences of drunkards ; 
 and teach those who are yet free from the toils of the enslaver 
 to elude his arts and withstand his temptations. 
 
 But since I began to lay this matter to heart, a great 
 change has come upon us. The Legislature is in motion. 
 During the two last Sessions of Parliament Bills have passed 
 into law, by which restraints have been placed, as to one day of 
 the week, on the sale of intoxicating liquors, throughout the 
 whole island. Since the third day of June, it has been 
 unlawful in Scotland to sell, except to travellers, any species of 
 intoxicating liquor on the Sunday. The English Act, which 
 came into operation on the seventh day of August, does not go 
 so far. It only puts a narrower limitation than heretofore 
 existed upon the hours, during which it is lawful to furnish by 
 sale a supply of such beverages. These Acts, and the recom- 
 mendations of a Committee, of which I shall speak hereafter, 
 pointing to further changes, seem likely, if we may judge from 
 symptoms already visible, to bring two powerful and very 
 
Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 numerous parties into conflict ; those who are of opinion that 
 the cause of temperance may be advanced by law, and those 
 who,, for whatever reason, and urged by whatever motive, are 
 adverse to such an exercise of legislation. The latter party 
 will probably be composed of various and heterogeneous bodies. 
 The first of such bodies will be naturally formed of the 
 producers and vendors of alcoholic drinks, brewers, publicans, 
 or licensed victuallers, and the keepers of beer-shops, distillers, 
 wine and spirit merchants, and the keepers of dram-shops. 
 These we may expect to form a corps by no means insignificant 
 even in mere numbers ; but far more powerful by its wealth, by 
 its organization, and by the magnitude of its pecuniary interests, 
 which are at stake upon this contest. Another body will be 
 formed out of those who, confiding in moral influences, fear 
 lest these may be weakened by an alliance with coercion. 
 And certainly it must be conceded, that it is only under a 
 happy combination of circumstances, that force and persuasion 
 can be coupled together without conflicting action as the 
 consequence. Then, again, there will be many who will 
 object that such laws are an unjust attack on their per- 
 sonal liberty ; and are imposed upon them by those whose 
 superior wealth and station will practically exempt their hands 
 from the fetters in which they are seeking to bind all below 
 them. The last of the bodies, composing the second party to 
 which there is need to advert, is that made up of hard and 
 obstinate drinkers; although, on grounds which I shall by and 
 by lay before you, I believe this division of opponents will not 
 be so numerous as might naturally be anticipated. 
 
 That a review of our course of legislation relating to the sale 
 of alcoholic drinks, is not calculated to inspire unlimited confi- 
 dence in the salutary power of law to restrain the abuse of 
 stimulants, cannot be denied. On the other hand, a careful 
 examination of the various measures adopted by the Legislature, 
 together with the effects produced by them, would disclose 
 so many errors which might have been avoided, that, while the 
 particular statutes cannot be defended, the great question of the 
 policy of legislative interference may perhaps be found to remain 
 undecided. It will also appear that the state of society in which 
 former experiments were tried was so different from that which 
 now exists, and still more from that towards which we are 
 
376 Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 tending, as very much to weaken the force of any conclusions 
 against the possibility of efficient legal control which history, 
 superficially read, might seem to furnish. 
 
 In the year 1729, it so happened that by the defective framing 
 of an Act of Parliament, the ardent spirit, gin, was relieved from 
 taxation. The passion for this liquid poison, which had already 
 attained a fearful height, was thus urged on by a new incitement; 
 and scenes of disgusting profligacy, infinitely repeated, were the 
 result of the unhappy blunder. Seven years were permitted to 
 elapse without any endeavour to stem the tide of excess that swept 
 over the land; when the Legislature suddenly interposed by 
 prohibiting all sales of less quantities than two gallons, except 
 by persons paying fifty pounds per annum for their license, and 
 also paying twenty shillings a gallon on the liquor itself so 
 retailed. This ignorant and rash attempt at prohibition, for 
 such was the object in view, had the most deplorable results. 
 In the seven years during which the Act encumbered the statute- 
 book, the consumption of gin was greater than it had been in 
 the seven years when all control was abandoned. But, Gentle- 
 men, the causes of this failure are not far to seek. The governing 
 orders, small in number, were haughty, devoid of sympathy for 
 their inferiors, ignorant of their ways, and disdainful of their 
 opinions. The lower classes could only exercise the power 
 inherent in numbers, by turbulence leading to insurrections, 
 more than commonly dreaded in those times by reason of the 
 assistance which might thus be given to the great Jacobite party 
 of the nation. If, then, it were an easy thing for the aristocracy 
 to pass at their pleasure laws to curb the populace, it was scarcely 
 less easy for the populace to resist the execution of such laws, 
 and to deprive them of all their intended effect; the more espe- 
 cially in the absence of any body of peace officers, who, either in 
 extent or in discipline, deserved the name of a police. For 
 the execution of this most stringent measure, which declared 
 instant and uncompromising war against habits which the Legis- 
 lature had fostered by its own supineness, the statute and the 
 Government depended on the vigilance of informers, whose 
 rapacity was awakened by an offer of a large share in the 
 penalties. It was, however, soon found that illicit vendors and 
 their customers were too numerous to be so dealt with. Informers 
 were marked, cruelly maltreated, and, in some cases, murdered 
 
Charge of January, 1855. 377 
 
 in the streets, none daring to interfere in their behalf. Even 
 the personal safety of the magistrates was endangered ; until at 
 length the drunkard reigned supreme over the la\y and its 
 ministers. How complete was this victory may be gathered 
 from the fact, that, during the seven years of restriction, only 
 two licenses for the sale of spirituous liquors were taken out in 
 England and Wales ! 
 
 And, Gentlemen, when we calmly consider the law, and the 
 circumstances under which it was passed, we can hardly regret 
 its fate. In those days drunkenness was the prevailing vice 
 of all classes, in truth, it was not deemed a vice in itself, but 
 was looked upon by the higher orders rather as a privilege 
 attached to wealth and station, which was not to be invaded by 
 those below. And whoever shall read the debates of that period 
 will find that, in the arguments employed against permitting 
 excesses among labouring men, the speakers treated these, their 
 fellow-creatures, very much as we now treat our horses and 
 cattle. Their limbs were required for the toils which enabled 
 the rich to live in luxury, their blood was required to carry on 
 the wars in which the country might be engaged ; wars, as we 
 all know, having little relation to the welfare of the people, or 
 little care for any such object. In conformity with such views, 
 the prohibitory Act left this same pernicious liquor, when sold 
 in considerable quantities, almost or altogether untaxed; evincing 
 thereby a very clear intention not to interfere with the vices of 
 any above the level of the meanest in rank. In short, while 
 no measure was ever devised more difficult of execution, so no 
 measure was ever framed in a manner to enlist such a host 
 of passions against it. And, doubtless, it could only have been 
 successful among a people who, to the sensuality and ignorance 
 of the English populace, should have added the slavish obedience 
 of the Russian serf. But whether we deplore this failure or 
 rejoice at it, certainly it will cause no surprise ; nor shall we be 
 led to depreciate the power of legislation, exercised in what 
 Shakspere calls ' a learned spirit of human dealing/ by examples 
 presented to us by such botchers in the art of law-making as 
 the Parliament of 1736. One inference we may safely draw 
 from these occurrences, because it will be corroborated by the 
 experience of all history; and it is this, That laws affecting 
 our daily habits of life can never be enforced, unless they have 
 
Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 the hearty consent of the people at large ; as evinced by the 
 opinions of a majority vastly preponderating in numbers,, and in 
 every other element of power, over the dissentients. 
 
 The limits of a Charge do not admit of my tracing the history 
 of legal supervision over the traffic in drinks. I must be satis- 
 fied with indicating a few salient points. 
 
 The experience of a century had shown that although 
 attempts at prohibition had failed, yet that the impediments 
 thrown in the way of the vendors of alcoholic drinks, partly by 
 the imposition of duties on the manufacture or importation 
 of the article, and partly by the system of licenses, had 
 diminished, or at all events kept in check, the consumption of 
 intoxicating liquors. We need, Gentlemen, no statistics to 
 prove to us that the state of the country in 1830 was much 
 better in regard to temperance than it was a century before 
 that period, an improvement which none will attribute to 
 education -who are acquainted with the slow progress which it 
 made during that interval, however it may have aided us since. 
 At the latter date a great change was effected. Complaints 
 had been prevalent that malt liquor was supplied to the 
 labouring class of a quality far from genuine, and in other 
 respects inferior to what ought to be furnished for the price 
 demanded. It was considered that this evil augmented the 
 desire for ardent spirits; the increased consumption of which 
 article had produced great anxiety, in the minds of all to whom 
 the welfare of this invaluable class was an object of regard. The 
 unsatisfactory state of the beer trade was imputed to monopolies 
 exercised by brewers ; who, as we all know, have by means of 
 large capitals invested in the ownership of public-houses, ob- 
 tained a control over landlords in the purchase of the article 
 which they vend; and, it was thought that a free trade in beer 
 would raise its quality, and thus the customer who had been 
 seduced by the insinuating poison of gin would return to his 
 former beverage. Unerring experience has demonstrated the 
 fallacy of these expectations. Malt liquor is no better than it 
 was formerly, and the sale of spirits has increased; while, on 
 the other hand, the establishment of the beer-shop, which was 
 to check these evils inoperative to that end has introduced 
 mischiefs of its own ; and indeed is universally denounced as a 
 curse upon the land. One truth, however, one important truth, 
 
Charge of January , 1855. 379 
 
 it has thoroughly established, viz., that to increase or diminish 
 the number of places where liquor may be had, is to increase 
 or diminish the quantity of liquor consumed ; and the experi- 
 ence of the last few months has satisfied me, that the same 
 rule governs restriction upon the hours of sale. In Scotland, 
 where the whole of Sunday is put under prohibition, the fact is 
 too palpable to be denied, by any inquirer who will carry an 
 unbiassed mind into the investigation. In England, where the 
 prohibition is not so stringent, the effects are less obvious. But 
 yet, after some inquiry, I have encountered nothing which goes 
 to show that the tendency is otherwise than might a priori have 
 been expected. 
 
 Gentlemen, we have thus made the discovery, or rather the 
 truth has been forced upon our attention, that the traffic in 
 alcoholic drinks obeys that great law of political economy which 
 regulates all other commerce ; viz., that any interference with 
 the free action of manufacturer, importer, vendor, or purchaser, 
 diminishes consumption. Whether the restriction has revenue 
 for its object, as in the imposition of duties, or whether it has 
 morals and good order for its purpose, as in regulations respect- 
 ing the number of vendors, and the hours during which they may 
 exercise their vocation, still the effect is found to be the same, 
 diminution of the quantity consumed. But the restrictions 
 must not only be imposed by the Legislature, they must be 
 carried into effect by the ministers of the Law ; and that they 
 should be efficient, they must not be opposed by a dominant 
 public opinion. The history of the struggle in the early part of 
 the last century, puts, as I have already said, that truth beyond 
 a doubt. Yet, even where, through the agency of a better 
 organized police, opposition by open force would be unsuccessful, 
 failure might still arise from evasion. In short, from whatever 
 point of view we regard the subject, we shall see that our hopes 
 of improvement have no solid foundation, except in the enlight- 
 ened sentiment of the people. And we are to remember that 
 evasion, practised as it would be, if practised at all, by large 
 masses of the community, would bring in its train a host of evils 
 arising out of a systematic contempt of the law. Neither are we 
 to forget that to find the means of evasion and to establish its 
 habitual practice are an affair of time ; and that restrictive laws, 
 which may be enforced while of recent enactment, will be eluded 
 
3 So Charge of January, 
 
 when the requisite knowledge has been diffused, and the requisite 
 machinery supplied, for setting them at defiance. Doubtless no 
 probable amount of evasion could bring up the consumption to 
 what it would be if the trade were free; but no diminution 
 attainable in the face of such a sinister influence would compen- 
 sate for the mischiefs which would thus be incidentally produced. 
 So far, Gentlemen, I have walked by the light of history ; 
 but I am now called upon to consider the recommendations of 
 the Committee on Public-Houses, which sat during the two last 
 Sessions of Parliament. That the labours of these gentlemen 
 are highly valuable, that some of their suggestions will approve 
 themselves to all candid men, and that whoever differs from any 
 of them is bound to a most careful examination of the points 
 of such difference, cannot be denied. Such examination I have 
 made; and I must not shrink from stating that I entirely 
 dissent from one of their most important conclusions, which is, 
 that the sale of all intoxicating liquors ought to be made free; 
 the limitation upon this freedom being, that the vendor must 
 be a person of good character, and must pay a high price for 
 his license. Practically speaking, the only impediment to the 
 sale of liquor would be the duty upon the license, added to the 
 duty paid by the importer or the manufacturer. Now, it may 
 be that the free-trade ingredient of the new rule will overpower 
 the effect of the new fiscal restriction ; or, it may be that the 
 new fiscal restriction will be too strong for the free-trade por- 
 tion ; in other words, the restriction created by the imposition 
 of a new duty, which would have a tendency to raise the price 
 of the article, might diminish consumption in a greater degree 
 than would be countervailed by annulling the limitation on the 
 establishment of public-houses : or, on the other hand, the 
 power of multiplying public-houses might increase the sale so 
 as to overbalance the effect of the new duty. Gentlemen, I 
 must confess myself unable to find the data on which the Com- 
 mittee resolved this question in their own minds ; nor can I be 
 quite sure that they arrived at their conclusion upon any con- 
 sideration of it at all. It appears to me possible that their 
 thoughts were distracted by the introduction of another element 
 into their decision, calculated, as I think, to lead them astray. 
 Gentlemen, from various portions of the evidence, I am led to 
 believe that the free-trade principle was contemplated as likely 
 
Charge of January, 1855. 381 
 
 to check adulteration, and that such contemplated effect was a 
 principal motive for introducing it. Now, on this topic I have 
 two observations to make. The first is, that the public evil of 
 adulteration in alcoholic liquors has been over-estimated ; since, 
 for the most part, the ingredients appear from the investigations 
 of the Committee to be innoxious, as where water is used, which 
 it is to a large extent ; or if not entirely innoxious, yet less 
 deleterious than the alcohol which they displace; and even in 
 those instances in which they are more injurious, the propor- 
 tion of adulterating matter appears to be very minute. I may 
 add, that if any drinkers are alarmed or disgusted by the adul- 
 teration of liquor, and so led to abstain, it would not be very 
 easy to deduce a public misfortune from such a fact, however 
 severely we may condemn the dishonesty of the trader. But 
 admitting that the adulteration of intoxicating liquors is an 
 evil against which it is wise to legislate (a proposition which I 
 am not about to dispute), upon what ground is it to be inferred 
 that free trade will correct that evil ? Free trade introduces 
 competition, competition lowers price universally ; but its 
 effect on quality is far more limited. Where differences of 
 quality are very apparent, some such consequence may be pro- 
 duced; but where the detection requires knowledge and skill, 
 the experience of every day shows that it is beyond the com- 
 petence of free trade to ensure the supply of a genuine article. 
 In this very town, a most important Conference has been held, 
 with a view of obtaining legal provisions for ensuring that 
 articles of food and medicine shall be suppled only in a genuine 
 state, articles which it is notorious have been for years adul- 
 terated in every possible manner ; and yet their manufacture and 
 sale is, and has been, subject to no restraint. Concurring, 
 therefore, in the recommendation for a high duty upon licenses, 
 I can see no sufficient ground for throwing the trade open. 
 Gentlemen, I am very suspicious of free trade. I know too 
 well its potency in stimulating the demand for any article which 
 comes under its influence ; and when, therefore, I desire to see 
 that demand languid and attenuated, I much prefer the reverse 
 principle, protection, or as we should call it, restraint. I desire 
 then to retain the discretionary power of the magistrates, which 
 it is much easier to keep now that we have it, than it will be to 
 restore when once abandoned ; and before I conclude, I shall 
 
383 Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 submit facts to your notice, drawn from the experience of 
 another country, which may lead you to think it probable that 
 the restraining power of the magistracy over the sale of drinks, 
 may be in future more efficiently exercised than heretofore. 
 
 Gentlemen, from what has already fallen from my lips it will 
 be evident, that while I regard existing restrictions as too 
 valuable to be relinquished, I have no very sanguine expecta- 
 tions that any great or striking results will follow from mere 
 regulations. A few years ago I should have ventured upon a 
 bolder proposition. I should have held that it was beyond the 
 art of man to frame a restrictive law which should be very 
 efficient in lessening consumption ; and even supposing a great 
 effect could be produced, I should have had but little hope that 
 the good would be purchased, except at the price of a more than 
 countervailing amount of evil. But since that period a momen- 
 tous experiment, on a vast scale, has been in trial across the 
 Atlantic. In the year 1851, Maine, one of the States of the 
 Republic of North America, enacted a law entirely prohibiting 
 the sale of intoxicating liquors. This law, with some modifica- 
 tions, has been adopted in six of the other States. Nor is that 
 all, for the State of New York, the most powerful member 
 of the Union, is, after a protracted struggle, on the eve of 
 coming under the dominion of the Maine Law. Already has 
 the measure passed both the Senate and the House of Repre- 
 sentatives of this great community, called, from its pre- 
 eminence, the Empire State. The late Governor put his veto 
 upon the Bill, and prevented it from becoming law ; but he has 
 been replaced by another Governor, chosen expressly on the 
 ground that he is a supporter of the measure. Gentlemen, I 
 have carefully investigated, by all the means open to me, the 
 progress and operation of this extraordinary movement. I have 
 read all the printed documents which I could procure on the 
 subject. I have sought interviews with intelligent and well- 
 informed Americans, some of them of high position, I have 
 corresponded with persons in the United States, who have been 
 kind enough to aid my inquiries. To say that I have arrived at 
 conclusions free from doubt, on all the questions involved in the 
 enactment of a Maine Law, would be far from true. But I 
 have satisfied myself that the Maine Law is a reality, that it 
 has wrought great effects in many cities and large districts, 
 
Charge of January, i%$$. 383 
 
 that it has had very decided success in diminishing pauperism, 
 and in emptying prisons, that no countervailing evils have as 
 yet sprung up to any alarming extent, that no State where it 
 has been once adopted has abandoned the measure, and that it 
 is destined to make progress, if not throughout the whole 
 Union, at least over a very considerable portion of. I may add, 
 that it has received a favourable reception in the Legislature of 
 our own Province, Canada. These matters being, as I believe, 
 indisputable, I was led to inquire how such marvels had become 
 possible. And this is the explanation. Five-and-twenty years 
 ago the scourge of drink was intolerable, all classes appear to 
 have been sufferers ; and hence it was in America that Societies 
 arose for the promotion of temperance, by enforcing on the 
 minds of men the disastrous consequences of indulgence, and by 
 administering pledges to abstain. The labours of these institu- 
 tions spread abroad an earnest desire to lessen, and even to 
 extinguish, the consumption of intoxicating drinks; and the 
 vendors being, as in England, subject to a licensing system, 
 when public opinion had in any district pronounced strongly 
 against the traffic in these beverages, the authorities (them- 
 selves elective officers) refused to .grant any new licenses, and 
 eventually even to renew those in operation; until in various 
 places, beginning where the sentiment was strongest, no liquor 
 could be retailed without a breach of the law. 
 
 Thus, Gentlemen, you will observe that the change was not 
 suddenly made, but that the policy which now prevails rose up 
 gradually, and gathered strength by degrees ; so that when the 
 Maine Law came into the Union, it was no great shock to the 
 habits of the people. I hardly need inform you that in the 
 United States every law must of necessity be popular, at least 
 in its institution ; as otherwise it could not pass a popular Legis- 
 lature, nor would it receive the sanction of a Governor popu- 
 larly elected. Indeed, a very extensive popularity will alone 
 account for the existence of this measure, and for its now being 
 maintained after trial. And, Gentlemen, it is impossible to 
 contemplate the astonishing fact, that it has come into existence, 
 and that it has spread from State to State, without our being led 
 to inquire how, in a country in which drinking habits had widely 
 prevailed, and where the people themselves are their own law- 
 makers, the general good- will could have been gained towards a 
 
384 Charge of January, 18 55. 
 
 coercive law such as no despot has ever dared to contemplate, a 
 restriction on personal liberty, which, I must own, I should have 
 predicted would be so opposed to American instincts (at all 
 events as regards the actions of white men) as must have ren- 
 dered any such enactment a political impossibility. 
 
 Gentlemen, this is the solution. At all times, and in 
 all countries, one half the human race will gladly support a 
 measure which gives hope of rescuing their husbands, their 
 brothers, and their sons from the tyranny of liquor. I do not 
 stay to estimate the necessary deduction for the number of 
 women enslaved by the same habit. Some deduction, how- 
 ever, must unhappily be made; and yet it does not follow 
 that the cause of temperance will lose the good wishes even of 
 those unhappy beings who have degraded their sex by becoming 
 drunkards. For it must be remembered that even drunkards, 
 whether male or female, in the hours of sobriety may hate their 
 vice, bitterly feel their humiliation and enthralment, and 
 ardently desire to be protected from their own infirmity of pur- 
 pose. Thus, Gentlemen, we see how intemperance itself may 
 furnish a large class of earnest advocates for a measure of coer- 
 cion ; and this fact, united to other considerations, may diminish 
 our astonishment at the existence and spread of the Maine Law, 
 and our incredulity with regard to its alleged success. It is 
 true of the laws of all nations, that their satisfactory working 
 very much depends upon whether they are in harmony or in 
 discord with public sentiment. But this is emphatically trua 
 of the laws in the United States, and most emphatically true of 
 one which hourly interferes with the routine of ordinary life. 
 In districts where the stream of public opinion does not flow in 
 the direction of the Maine Law, or where it moves but slowly, 
 the law is very much a dead letter ; while, on the other hand, 
 even in States which the Maine Law has not yet reached, there 
 are districts where the sale of intoxicating drinks is so generally 
 condemned, that no vendor is willing to brave the odium attendant 
 on such a traffic. The Maine Law is then altogether the creature 
 of popularity. Unless there had been in its favour a large majority 
 of whatever State has adopted it, such an enactment would never 
 have found its way into the statute-book; and unless its sup- 
 porters are thoroughly diffused throughout the adopting commu- 
 nity, it will receive only a partial enforcement. So deeply are the 
 
Charge of January, 1855. 385 
 
 American Legislatures penetrated with the belief that an over- 
 whelming majority is required to support a law which thus 
 materially interferes with personal habits, that the practice has 
 arisen among them of calling on their constituents to meet at 
 the poll, and give a vote of adhesion to the measure before they 
 will pass a Maine Law Bill. 
 
 Gentlemen, this review of the circumstances under which a 
 Maine Law, instead of remaining the dream of some benevolent 
 visionary, has become a practical truth in the Western hemisphere, 
 will, I apprehend, also show that the time is far distant, if it 
 can ever arrive, when such a measure will be adopted at home. 
 Voluntary Societies have not produced the abiding effect among 
 us which they appear to have done in America. To one indica- 
 tion I may advert as showing the permanent hold which the 
 principle of abstinence has obtained throughout the Union. 
 It is, I am informed, held disreputable, even in States which 
 have not adopted the Maine Law, for a clergyman to touch an 
 alcoholic beverage of any kind. Public opinion then is feeble 
 here as compared with its action in the United States, and its 
 progress is but slow and wavering; we therefore cannot be sur- 
 prised that it has not yet acted, or only slightly acted, upon the 
 licensing bodies : nor that we should find in this country no 
 single district in which the experiment of prohibition has been 
 tried or approached. You will agree with me, Gentlemen, that 
 it will be necessary for those who have taken up the advocacy 
 of a Maine Law in this country, well to consider these facts. It 
 is quite true that they repudiate, and I am sure repudiate with 
 sincerity, the notion of calling on Parliament to force such a 
 law upon the people; but they have not yet succeeded in pro- 
 tecting the popular mind from the fear of coercion; and thus 
 they are in danger of encountering a popular hostility fraught 
 with consequences most perilous to their enterprise. The 
 people will be led to believe that the wealthy and powerful are 
 about to make them abstain by the rigors of an Act of Par- 
 liament, which will not affect the enjoyments of the upper 
 classes. It will be said that so long as importation is per- 
 mitted, the rich man may enjoy his bottle of wine, while the 
 poor man's tankard of ale is put under the ban of the law. 
 The facts of the case raise the same argument in the United 
 States; but the answer of the million in the great Republic would 
 
 c c 
 
386 Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 be^ t -y\f e kayg CB \\ e {[ for this law for our own protection. We 
 look upon it as a shield to guard us from harm not as a sword 
 to smite us. If the higher classes choose to leave themselves 
 and those who are dear to them open to temptation, so be it : 
 theirs is the fault, and theirs will be the penalty. Our offspring 
 will never pray at night not to be led into temptation, and yet 
 arise in the morning to contend that temptation is a birth- 
 right; and that withholding it from them is an invasion of 
 their liberties/ 
 
 But, Gentlemen, you will perceive that the American people 
 have had a long training to this doctrine ; and that the demo- 
 cratic form of their government, with all its drawbacks (and 
 they are numerous), assuredly confers one advantage. It 
 becomes impossible for the many to believe that any law can be 
 thrust upon them by the few ; on the contrary, they must see 
 that legislative acts are but the formal expression of the popular 
 
 will. 
 
 The chief lesson, then, to be drawn from what has been 
 submitted to your consideration is, that until the sale of 
 alcoholic drinks has fallen into public disfavour until those 
 who feel themselves and their families exposed to temptations 
 which they may not be able to resist, are willing to submit to 
 privations for the sake of closing the door against the tempter, 
 and until that smaller class, which feels strong in the power of 
 self-control, is willing to make some sacrifice for the benefit of 
 their weaker neighbours, to enact a Maine Law in England 
 would be only to repeat the fearful error of the last century. 
 
 Although something has been done, the public mind is yet 
 incredulous of the indisputable truth, that the utility of 
 alcoholic drinks is far more limited than we have any of us, 
 until lately, been taught to think ; while their abuse is far more 
 extensive than can be even imagined by those who have not 
 thoroughly investigated the subject. These two great facts 
 must every day, in season and out of season, be impressed on 
 the English head and heart. And here the labours of the advo- 
 cates for the Maine Law are, like those of other Societies for the 
 promotion of temperance, working for good, and they deserve 
 our grateful acknowledgments. 
 
 But, Gentlemen, it is easy to desciy new dangers to be 
 avoided, which may possibly accelerate our speed. From a 
 
Charge of January, 1855. 387 
 
 combination of causes we are exposed, as a manufacturing 
 people, to an extent and severity of competition to which we 
 have hitherto been strangers. Improvements in navigation, 
 and in other means of transport, have made it competent to all 
 nations to command raw materials whereon to exercise their 
 industry and their skill ; while, on the other hand, that super- 
 fluity of labour which enabled us to meet any amount of 
 demand without an inordinate rise of price, is now, by the exten- 
 sion of our trade, and of emigration, to say nothing of the war, 
 very much diminished, if not exhausted. It behoves us, then, 
 to economise our stock of labour; and our working men we 
 must hope will, by increasing their individual efficiency, aim at 
 compensating for inadequacy in their numbers, f a consumma- 
 tion devoutly to be wished/ even more for their welfare than 
 for our own ; because the profit of such augmented efficiency will, 
 as it ought to do, fall in larger measure to them than to us. 
 
 Gentlemen, how deeply the value of a working man, to 
 himself, to his family, and to his employers, is inj ured by intem- 
 perance, some whom I have now the honour to address may 
 probably, in their own manufactories, have but too much reason 
 to know and to deplore ; and this injury will, I presume, be more 
 and more keenly felt as we make way in that course of gradual 
 change, long since begun, which, by the extended application of 
 machinery, is constantly substituting for the rude, uncultivated 
 labourer, the trained and skilful artizan. 
 
 Birmingham, Gentlemen, is so intimately connected by 
 commerce with the United States of America (soon perhaps to 
 become our chief competitor), that you know, far better than I 
 can tell you, how quick is the progress in that land of the 
 changes to which I .have adverted, and perhaps you would 
 receive it as no extravagant proposition, if I were to affirm that 
 the retention of our manufacturing superiority is absolutely 
 dependent on our ability, by some means or other, to remove 
 from among us the foul reproach of intemperance. That we 
 are an intemperate people, no man, who has honestly given his 
 rnind to the subject, can deny. The truth is self-evident, and 
 stares us in the face on every side. Two facts, however, I will 
 lay before you. The cost of stimulants (alcoholic drinks and 
 tobacco) is upwards of fifty millions sterling per annum. Indeed, 
 according to the deliberate opinion of Mr. Clay, the able and 
 
 c c 2 
 
388 Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 experienced Chaplain of Preston Gaol, than whom no man has 
 more carefully studied the question, the true cost to the British 
 nation is little short of a hundred millions, aggravated as it is 
 by the profits of retailers, and by those fraudulent additions to 
 the price which are the result of adulteration. Again, this 
 enormous expenditure is not to buy strength or lasting welfare ; 
 but to purchase disease and debility, poverty and death. 
 
 Let me contrast this hideous waste with our outlay in what 
 is good. I learn from the highest authority on the subject, 
 Mr. Charles Knight, that the whole annual sum expended on 
 literature, including newspapers, is no more than five millions 
 sterling; a small fraction indeed of that wealth so much of 
 which is worse than thrown away ! Let me earnestly and 
 affectionately entreat the working classes of our town to ponder 
 well this contrast between the cost of poison for the body and 
 food for the mind ! In asking for their attention I am 
 addressing myself to thoughtful men, who comprehend all the 
 evils of intemperance. Many of them, I know, offer in their 
 own persons and families bright examples of perfect freedom 
 from this odious vice. I would fain hope I may venture to 
 speak so of the majority; yet of a large minority I grieve to say 
 none but their flatterers can speak thus, none but their 
 flatterers can say that they have not wilfully so mis-used by 
 excess in drink the prosperity which Providence has vouch- 
 safed to us of late years, as to make it a curse instead of a 
 blessing ; for although, thank God, the criminal class is com- 
 paratively small, yet in absolute numbers it is enormous, and 
 is constantly fed from the classes who begin their course of 
 error by giving way to drinking habits. Crime, Gentlemen, is 
 the extreme link in the chain of vice forged by intemperance, 
 the last step in the dark descent and thousands who stop 
 short of criminality, yet suffer under all the other miseries 
 (and manifold they are), with which the demon Alcohol tortures 
 his victims ! 
 
 I fear, Gentlemen, my Charge, which has now come to an 
 end, is open to the objection that its views are scarcely settled, 
 and its recommendations by no means definite. 
 
 If such a complaint should be made, my justification, or 
 rather excuse, must be, that, although I have spared neither 
 time nor labour of inquiry or of thought, I have not been able 
 
Charge of January, 1855. 389 
 
 to gain a full mastery over this most difficult and perplexing 
 subject. Nevertheless, if what I have submitted to you shall 
 have furnished useful materials for reflection, I am willing to 
 hope your patience will not have been altogether abused; and 
 that you will pardon my long intrusion on your valuable time. 
 
 On Saturday afternoon, when the Grand Jury came to be 
 discharged, Mr. W. E. Hunt said he had, on their part, 
 1 to thank the learned Recorder for the very admirable ad- 
 dress which he had delivered the day before. The Jury 
 entirely concurred in that address, and believing it well 
 calculated to promote the object of the Recorder, they hoped 
 that he would allow it to be published and circulated as widely 
 as possible/ 
 
 The Recorder said he should take care that the Charge was 
 published forthwith. 
 
 ADDENDUM. 
 
 More than one eminent writer having misapprehended the 
 opinions intended to be set forth in this Charge,, it is reasonable 
 to presume that some ambiguity, or other want of distinctness, 
 has clouded the expression of the Recorder's views. That he 
 may do his best to guard himself from being misunderstood, he 
 subjoins the following short abstract : 
 
 ist. He desired to show that the consumption of alcoholic 
 beverages is so excessive as to make it of the highest moment 
 that it should be greatly reduced. 
 
 2nd. That all schemes for effecting such reduction must, to 
 be efficient, be founded on the desires of a largely preponderating 
 majority of the people. 
 
 3rd. That restraint on the sale of intoxicating drinks, when 
 made in conformity with public opinion, diminishes consumption 
 in proportion to the stringency of the law. 
 
 4th. That the experience of six of the United States of North 
 America shows that, under similar conditions as to public opinion, 
 such restraint may be tightened into absolute prohibition; and 
 yet remain effective. 
 
 5th. That very decided good results have already been pro- 
 
39 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 duced in the six States by such prohibition, in diminishing 
 pauperism and crime. 
 
 6th. That the progress in America towards a Maine Law had 
 its beginning many years ago ; while in England we have scarcely 
 taken our first step in that direction. 
 
 7th. That consequently the institution of a Maine Law in 
 this country, must be deferred to a distant future. 
 
 8th. That it can only be safely enacted when it shall be 
 demanded by large numbers, who desire to protect themselves 
 against temptation; or desire a similar protection on behalf of 
 their families and those in whose welfare they are immediately 
 interested. 
 
 9th. That to such numbers must be added the smaller, but 
 more powerful, body, who, not feeling the necessity for such 
 control, are yet willing to forego their moderate use of alcoholic 
 beverages as the necessary condition of a great national benefit. 
 
 loth. The controversy between the advocates of total absti- 
 nence and of moderate use, is meant to be left (as a question of 
 health) altogether untouched; the medical authorities being in 
 conflict on that part of the subject. 
 
 HEATH HOUSE, STAPLETON, NEAH BRISTOL, 
 Jan. v^rd, 1855. 
 
 [The extracts from Dr. Johnson's Reports of debates in 
 Parliament, it will have been observed, are cited as the 
 language and sentiments of Johnson himself; and, whoever 
 has read BoswelFs account of the manner in which these 
 lleports were concocted, will think it very unsafe to ascribe 
 the matter to the speakers from whom it purports to have 
 proceeded.] 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 t Remarks in answer to Objections advanced against a Charge on 
 the Abuse of Intoxicating Liquors, delivered by the Recorder 
 of Birmingham, in January, 1855. 
 
 ' THIS Charge satisfied neither of the contending parties. The 
 prohibitionists, although they concurred in the principles laid 
 down, were of opinion that the period at which a Maine Law 
 had a chance of being obtained was relegated to a future far 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 39 x 
 
 more distant than consisted with the reasonable prospects 
 afforded by a public opinion advancing, as they think, rapidly in 
 that direction. The opponents of prohibition, on the other 
 hand, passed over almost without notice the conditions on 
 which alone I contemplated the possibility of a Maine Law; 
 namely, that it should be demanded by a majority of the 
 people so large as to ensure the smooth working of the measure; 
 and they consequently treated my Charge as if it had been a 
 call for immediate action on the part of the Legislature an 
 action which, if it should not go the length of prohibiting the 
 traffic, was yet to tighten all the restraints upon it. I there- 
 fore think it may be useful to examine the grounds on which 
 the question ought to be discussed, and upon which it must 
 eventually be decided. 
 
 ' Inquiry as to the propriety of enacting any proposed law 
 ranges itself under two heads. Is the contemplated object one 
 to be desired ? And if so, will the attempt by the proposed law 
 to attain such object yield a balance of good over evil, or of evil 
 over good ? Many wrongs must go unredressed, many evils 
 remain without a remedy, because we are not able to frame a 
 law which would not inflict greater wrongs, and produce worse 
 evils, than those against which it is to be directed. Ingratitude 
 is a cruel wrong to the benefactor; and, inasmuch as it weakens 
 the motives to benevolence, is a great evil to the community. 
 Yet who can devise a law for the punishment of ingrates which 
 shall not be a remedy worse than the disease ? Again, how 
 cruel are the injuries which the husband can inflict on the wife, 
 or the wife on the husband. Some of these are, it is true, 
 cognizable by law, not only law as it may be, but law as it is. 
 But others, however exquisite the pain which they cause, are 
 not cognizable at all; and in the Courts which have jurisdiction 
 over conjugal strife a preliminary question often arises, whether 
 the scandal, or, in other words, the injury to public decency 
 which would flow from the inquiry, does not outweigh the 
 benefit to the individual consequent on aiding him or her to 
 obtain the justice which is demanded. 
 
 ' Before the principle, thus indicated, can be applied to the 
 present question, several branches of inquiry must be pursued. 
 It is obvious that the first of these branches is that which will 
 enable us to determine the value of the enjoyment which it is 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 proposed to limit or extinguish, as compared with the amount 
 and intensity of the injury of which indulgence in that enjoy- 
 ment is the cause. As regards this branch I must rely, for the 
 most part, on the physiologists. I have taken some trouble to 
 inform myself as to the preponderance of opinion entertained 
 by medical men on the subject ; and I find the belief among 
 them to be all but universal, that to man in his normal state 
 alcohol imparts no strength ; and that its good effects are 
 confined to an exhilaration of the animal spirits ; that all good 
 purposes, except this one of exhilaration, may be comprised 
 under the head of medical purposes, in short, that alcohol in 
 its many forms of ardent spirits, wine, beer, cider, and so forth, 
 neat or diluted, can only be used without injury when required 
 as medicine ; unless when taken in very small quantities. As 
 a medicine, alcohol is efficient in a high degree, and to abstract 
 it from the pharmacopoeia would be to cripple the curative 
 resources of our physicians to a very serious extent. But 
 physiologists, T believe, will agree that the office of food and 
 that of medicine are essentially distinct, and even repugnant. 
 Aliment supplies the fuel for a species of combustion essential 
 to the maintenance of life. Medicine, on the contrary, is a 
 sort of poison intended to act hostilely against some deleterious 
 substance or influence which has found its way into our bodies ; 
 and medicine, as we all know, ceases to be useful, or even 
 harmless, the moment the enemy is overcome. It is one 
 poison counteracting another, and becoming itself injurious as 
 soon as its legitimate functions are at an end. No pro- 
 hibitionist, I believe, ever went the length of desiring to put 
 any fetters on the discretion of the medical man, whether he 
 give general directions to his patient, or govern his case by a 
 specific prescription; and, therefore, whenever the recipient is 
 acting on medical authority, no law would seek to interfere 
 with him. 
 
 ' The only sacrifice, then, which would be demanded, relates 
 to that very moderate use which the majority of physiologists 
 might permit, as not injurious to the constitution; but which, 
 at the same time, they tell us, conduces in the healthy subject 
 neither to the preservation of that health, nor to the increase 
 of strength. The sacrifice demanded, then, by the sternest law 
 of prohibition ever proposed, is simply the pleasure arising from 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 393 
 
 the exhilarating effect of alcoholic drinks. Now, I do not 
 mean to undervalue this or any other source of enjoyment. I 
 desire to estimate it fairly I may say liberally. I will put it 
 at the highest amount at which it would be placed by any 
 reflecting person. But let me be permitted to call attention to 
 some considerations which may qualify our estimate of its 
 intrinsic value. Probably it has been found by every one 
 trying the experiment, that the quantity of alcohol imbibed 
 must be very small when it is not followed by consequences, 
 which, although they may not be serious, are yet sufficiently 
 disagreeable to overbalance the enjoyment obtained by the 
 exhilaration produced. Again, it is in the nature of a stimu- 
 lant gradually to lose a portion of its force, and consequently 
 to require augmentation from time to time; so that although 
 exhilaration may be at first produced by a harmless quantity, 
 to continue the effect that quantity must be increased until it 
 ceases to be harmless. Neither is it quite clear that exhilara- 
 tion from alcoholic drinks is a real addition to our stock of 
 animal spirits. It may be only drawing upon it; as we draw a 
 cheque upon our banker at the expense of our stock of money 
 remaining in his hands. Persons who abstain altogether from 
 alcohol do not appear, so far as I have observed, to be on the 
 whole less joyous than those who avail themselves of moderate 
 indulgence; while, as compared with those who indulge im- 
 moderately, it will be admitted that the abstainers have, in this 
 respect as in all others, the advantage. Voyagers have from 
 time to time discovered whole communities which had never 
 tasted alcohol in any shape ; and certainly their descriptions do 
 not lead to the conclusion that the hilarity of these primitive 
 tribes had suffered from their privation. We must, however, 
 in taking our account add to the loss of the enjoyment 
 whatever that may be the irritation produced by the con- 
 sciousness of restraint which would be felt under the operation 
 of a prohibitive law, by such as differed from the Legislature 
 in their opinion of its necessity. 
 
 ' Let me now inquire what is the nature and amount of 
 the evil which is sought to be cured, or greatly lessened, by 
 legislation. 
 
 ' The first item on this debtor side of the account is the huge 
 pecuniary cost of the indulgence, ten or fifteen times as large 
 
394 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 as the total cost of literature, including newspapers. We may 
 make a very ample deduction for all that portion of the expen- 
 diture which may be reasonably estimated to belong either to 
 medicine or to harmless consumption ; and yet, looking simply 
 at drinking as a question of finance, how frightfully does it 
 absorb and turn to waste the productive efforts of our capital 
 and industry. Consider how all other means of happiness 
 might be augmented, what a cheerful and salubrious dwelling 
 each family might command, what leisure might be purchased, 
 what studies might be pursued, what recreations enjoyed, 
 how easy it would be for every man to provide for his old age; 
 his abstinence acting doubly, first enabling him to accumulate 
 more rapidly than he does now, and again making a less 
 accumulation necessary for his wants. But while on the 
 question of money, let us remember that not only are our 
 earnings wasted, but our power of earning is grievously 
 weakened by this baneful indulgence. I am not at the 
 moment speaking of that excess which runs into drunken- 
 ness. Even when it stops far short of intoxication visi- 
 ble to by-standers, indulgence in liquor injures and ulti- 
 mately destroys the health, relaxes habits of industry, and 
 makes labour harder to bear. But when we come to the 
 drunkard we see that he not only paralyses his own power of 
 creating property, but he diminishes, and often just as much 
 destroys, that of his family. His children, ill -taught and ill- 
 trained, grow up unskilled and idle; and, even if they remain 
 honest, cannot be called useful members of the community. 
 Thus to the waste of acquired property we must add a quantity 
 of wealth not to be measured, which indulgence in alcoholic 
 drinks precludes us from acquiring. Surely, if there were no 
 other item in the account, a very moderate share of patriotism 
 would impel us all to forego the evanescent enjoyments of 
 alcohol, for the sake of accomplishing so much public good as 
 would result from its disuse. 
 
 ' But let us proceed. If the poverty into which the drinker 
 plunges himself were borne by him alone, and if its evil 
 consequences did not press on his neighbours, it might be 
 contended that the mischief did not fall within the province of 
 legislation to remove or control. But every civilized people 
 has either found or is finding the necessity of providing for the 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 395 
 
 subsistence of all its members, deserving and undeserving. 
 Want in this country forms an unanswerable claim to the 
 necessaries of life, such necessaries being furnished by the 
 industrious. It follows also, from the doctrine that all must 
 be maintained, that you cannot relieve any self-supporting class 
 from sharing the burden of sustaining those who cannot or will 
 not support themselves. At all events, such is the state of our 
 law; and, as I believe, a state which cannot be altered. The 
 consequence is, that labouring men artizans and small shop- 
 keepers, are called upon to diminish the pittance which ought 
 to belong to their families, in order to feed the pauper. This is 
 no place for sentiment ; and I shall expose myself fearlessly to 
 any censure which I may draw down for using harsh language, 
 when I assert it to be a notorious fact, that the proportion of 
 the destitute who are reduced to pauperism by their own mis- 
 conduct, or the misconduct of their parents, is vastly greater 
 than that which is brought to the poor-house by misfortune. 
 And it is equally notorious that the misconduct to which I refer 
 is, in the main, indulgence in drink. 
 
 ( Let us then, when we speak of the pain produced by legal 
 restraints on the moderate use of alcohol, reflect for a moment 
 on the bitter feelings with which the honest, hard-working, and 
 temperate man must regard the spoliation of his property, to 
 feed his once riotous neighbour ; whom he has often seen reeling 
 home at the early dawn, when he himself, after a scanty night's 
 rest, has been returning to his daily toil. And while on this 
 topic, let me remind my readers of the far deeper affliction which 
 bows down the drunkard's wife ; who, day after day, beholds 
 her husband wasting his substance, and leaving her, and what 
 she finds much harder to endure her children, bare of food and 
 clothing; and moving on towards a future still more gloomy 
 than the past or the present. Surely if the pain caused to the 
 innocent by indulgence on the one hand, or by restrictions on 
 the other, is to be made the criterion, prohibition is far more 
 merciful than licence ! 
 
 1 Descending still further in the scale we come to crime. Now 
 it is part of the definition of crime that it is an injury to others. 
 If, then, the inflictions of crime upon the community are in any 
 great part the creatures of alcoholic drinks, who is there that, 
 supposing absence from crime, or a considerable diminution of 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 it, were the only good consequence to arise from prohibition, 
 would not be ready to sacrifice his alcoholic exhilarations as a 
 trifling contribution towards the purchase of such a blessing ? 
 But on this head the testimony is so full and so uniform that 
 it cannot possibly be gainsayed. Every person whose avocations 
 in life have brought him frequently into a Criminal Court, 
 must admit the truth of what is stated by our judges, day by 
 day, and year after year, that by far the greater number of all 
 the offences committed have their origin in the love of drinking ; 
 generally in the intemperance of the offender, not seldom, how- 
 ever, in that of the injured party, who thereby affords an oppor- 
 tunity for attack. 
 
 ' But, it is objected that, according to the proverb, we must 
 not argue against the use because of the abuse. I venture to 
 question the soundness of the maxim. It appears to me that 
 if the abuse cause more of evil than the use does of good, it is 
 wise to sacrifice the latter to get rid of the former. I grant 
 that if it be practicable to put away the abuse and yet retain 
 the use, in such case the sacrifice is not necessary. And this 
 is the point to which I will now call attention. It cannot be 
 denied that whenever alcohol has been accessible, it has offered 
 to a very large proportion of all who partake in the indulgence 
 an overwhelming temptation to go beyond the limits of 
 moderate enjoyment. In many of our pleasures satiety furnishes 
 a limit soon reached. But, in drinking, every glass appears 
 to create far more thirst than it assuages. And thus the use 
 draws on the abuse by an irresistible force. The principle, that 
 where use has a strong tendency to become abuse abstinence is 
 the legitimate remedy, is no novelty. Every one feels that Dr. 
 Johnson was quite right in refraining altogether from wine, for 
 the reason which he himself gives that he found it much easier 
 to abstain than to be temperate. Perhaps he meant to intimate 
 that he was able to abstain, but could not be temperate. He 
 was, however, a man of resolute will, and might therefore intend 
 no more than his words literally import. 
 
 ' Still in a very large number of cases, the question does not 
 lie between that which is easy and that which is difficult ; but 
 between that which is possible and that which is impossible. 
 This class can resist if they steer clear of the temptation arising 
 from tasting liquor. But there is a class of weaker men. These 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 397 
 
 may have tlie same desire to escape the enthralment of alcohol 
 as the former, but they are unable to resist the temptation 
 of opportunity. If drink be within their reach they must have 
 it ; and, if they have it at all, they plunge into excess. Thus, 
 then, there are three classes of drinkers. The first can indulge 
 without losing their self-command. The second cannot indulge 
 without losing their self-command, but they can abstain. The 
 third cannot abstain, and always indulge to excess. Now, if all 
 drinkers were of the first class, and could be sure of remaining 
 in it, there would be no abuse ; and, consequently, the use need 
 not be sacrificed. So, again, if all drinkers fell into one or 
 other of the two first classes, there need only be a partial 
 sacrifice namely, the one which the second is willing to 
 make; and thus the objects of prohibition might be gained 
 without the aid of law. The difficulty, then, is created by the 
 existence of a third class, which cannot be protected by any 
 power of its own ; while on the other hand the evils resulting 
 from the abuse of drink are almost altogether the work of these 
 unhappy persons. What power, then, short of prohibitive law 
 are we to invoke for the control of this third class ? We are 
 told that the progress of improvement has lessened the quantity 
 of drunkenness in the world, and I hope the statement is true. 
 It is certainly lessened in the upper and middle ranks by that 
 amelioration of manners which is the result of a higher civiliza- 
 tion. But I am by no means sure that any improvement which 
 has taken place in the ranks below, is in any great degree to be 
 attributed to the same cause. It seems to me rather to be the 
 consequence of legal, and more especially fiscal restraints. And 
 I judge so, because we do not find that in time of prosperity the 
 labouring classes are able to withstand the temptations to 
 drink ; high wages giving them a similar command over intoxi- 
 cating liquors as would be caused by repealing the tax upon 
 them. At all events, the improvement, if perceptible, is very 
 slow ; and any hope of great effects is consequently postponed to 
 a future so distant as to be out of the range of prevision. 
 
 ' Thus the hope must be abandoned, as it appears to me, of 
 eliminating the use from the abuse. They must both go or 
 both remain. But the moderate drinker is supposed to say, 
 ' Why should I, who am endowed with self-command, give up 
 an enjoyment which works me no ill, that my neighbour, who 
 
398 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 has no self- command, should be protected from the consequences 
 of his own infirmity of purpose ?' One answer is, that the 
 consequences of his misconduct will reach you, and cause you 
 more discomfort than will be counterbalanced by the pleasure 
 you will derive from alcoholic exhilaration. While Ilobinson 
 Crusoe lived alone, he might apply to his case bottles now and 
 then with impunity ; but when he was joined by Friday, if that 
 model servant had been given to drink, it would have been a 
 wise act in his master to pour out his rum upon the sand. 
 That we suffer from the misfeasances and nonfeasances of those 
 about us, is the great tax we pay for living in society ; and if 
 we are of opinion that on the whole we do not gain more than 
 we lose by associating with our kind, our obvious course is to 
 seek the desert. 
 
 ' But have we not an interest in banishing this temptation, far 
 higher than any which belongs to money ? If mature habit may 
 have given us a right to feel secure, that in our own persons we 
 can resist all inducements to excess, have we none dear to us to 
 guard from peril, whose habits have yet to be formed ? Have 
 we not our children ? Let not parental fondness close our eyes 
 to their dangers. Let us not indulge too much in those day- 
 dreams of their future, in which they are always to do better 
 than we have done, because they are to be made wise by our 
 advice and experience. If we cannot but look upon them as 
 
 'Our little selves re-form'd in finer clay/ 
 
 we must not act on such vain imaginings. No, not even as to 
 him, the little paragon of the nursery, so pure and sensitive, so 
 gifted with talent, so rich in animal spirits, so ardent and suc- 
 cessful in the studies of childhood, and who so revels in its 
 innocent enjoyments ! Beyond a doubt 
 
 'Spirits are not finely touch'd 
 
 But to fine issues/ 
 
 and murmuring these exquisite lines, we project ourselves into 
 the future with a confidence which disdains all misgiving; 
 looking forward to the day when father, mother, brothers, and 
 sisters shall be chiefly known and respected as members of his 
 family, and as bearing his name. Alas ! how many proud 
 hopes arid confident anticipations has accursed Alcohol dashed 
 to the ground ! The son and brother whose steps were watched 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 399 
 
 with such affectionate interest, whose slightest word or gesture 
 was noted with love and praise in the household circle, is 
 become an object of shame, reproach, and fear ; and the 
 mourners learn the bitter truth that the more delicate the 
 organization the keener is the relish for pleasure, the greater is 
 the danger, and the more hideous the ruin. Who has not 
 himself known many a hearth so desolated ; and who then shall 
 affirm without presumption that his own peace of mind will 
 never be so blasted ! 
 
 1 We should now be sufficiently advanced in our journey to be 
 able to see that if it could be done by voluntary acts it would 
 be wise in any community to abstain from intoxicating drinks. 
 But an objection has been raised in this part of the case which 
 must be disposed of before the conclusion can be finally proffered 
 for acceptance. It is said that to get rid of temptation by 
 removing the tempting object precludes us from acquiring the 
 power of self-government ; and consequently deprives us of all 
 the advantage resulting from that great acquisition. To this I 
 answer, that the necessity of self-government is felt every hour 
 of the day. In action and repose, in pleasure and in suffering, 
 in our desires and in our antipathies, we ever stand in need of 
 self-control, and man must thoroughly change his nature before 
 that noblest of faculties will cease to be his most urgent want 
 and inducements to yield when we ought to stand firm will always 
 abound. Even if religion had been silent, philosophy might 
 have taught us the wisdom of avoiding temptation. There were 
 Grecian sages, we are told, who maintained an opposite opinion ; 
 and who exposed themselves to certain moral dangers in order 
 to test their capacity for resistance. But as I never heard that 
 their example has been followed in modern times by any who 
 aspired to a reputation either for sound morals or for good 
 sense, I do not think it necessary to enter into any controversy 
 upon such a doctrine. 
 
 ' I submit, then, to my readers, that I have proved national 
 abstinence to be desirable. And most assuredly it cannot be 
 obtained on the voluntary principle. For although it might 
 not be a hopeless, though certainly it would sometimes be a 
 difficult undertaking, to persuade the drunkard to consent that 
 the doors of the tavern should be closed against him, yet we 
 shall always have an opponent in the tavern-keeper himself, 
 
400 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 on whom the arts of persuasion will be exercised in vain. The 
 drunkard, in his intervals of sobriety, is another being as com- 
 pared with himself when under the dominion of his insane 
 thirst for liquor; and often longs for protection against his own 
 weakness, even with stronger aspirations than those which urge 
 him on, at other moments, to his destruction. But the trader 
 who makes his livelihood from the manufacture or sale of alco- 
 holic drinks, is subject to no such alternation of opposing desires. 
 He steadily seeks from morning to night, and from night to 
 morning, to augment their consumption. To him the advantage 
 is permanent ; and so great that his share of the public mischief 
 arising from the trade is as nothing compared to his particular 
 benefit. Until, therefore, the patriotism of this body reaches a 
 height which it would be absurd to expect, and of which no 
 other class of the community is likely to set an example, we 
 must not look for their voluntary co-operation in destroying the 
 traffic. 
 
 ' Repulsed, then, in every other quarter, we seek, though not 
 without reluctance, the aid of the law. But here again we are 
 met with an objection which it may be well to dispose of at 
 once. Such a prohibition, we are told, is not within the 
 province of legislation ; but how and upon what principle the 
 limits of that province are defined, we are not told. I know 
 of no other principle than this, which I have already in sub- 
 stance enunciated. The object must be right, and the law 
 must work more good than harm; or, to simplify the pro- 
 position, more of good than of harm must flow from the law 
 when it is put in action ; a result which can never be obtained 
 unless the law is rightly directed; although, as we know to our 
 cost, a law may be rightly directed, and yet may produce more 
 of harm than of good. 
 
 ( It cannot be denied, and ought not for a moment to be con- 
 cealed, that to make the action of a prohibitive law, interfering 
 in the daily affairs of private life, work well or even tolerably, 
 is a task of great and of all but insuperable difficulty. But 
 having regard to the immense importance of the object to be 
 obtained, the question remains, Is it quite insuperable ? For if 
 the difficulty can be surmounted, by any degree of exertion, the 
 enterprise ought not to be abandoned. And here we arrive at 
 a stage in which theory is more likely to mislead than to render 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 401 
 
 us useful assistance. Theorists have usually been considered 
 as tempting us to undertakings beyond our strength; and that 
 they frequently err on that side is perfectly true. But they 
 sometimes err on the other side, and condemn, as futile, endea- 
 vours which are eventually crowned with success. The world 
 was deprived of locomotive engines for many years by a belief, 
 I might almost call it a superstition, which prevailed among 
 mechanists that the friction between the wheel and the rail 
 would be too slight to ensure a progressive motion. And, after 
 experience had proved this belief a delusion, a very eminent 
 professor of mathematics limited the attainable speed of trains 
 drawn by such engines to thirty miles in the hour : all higher 
 velocity, he said, would be found impossible, from the resistance 
 of the atmosphere. I myself, as late as the year 1841, while 
 experiments were making in England for the establishment of 
 the electric telegraph, asked the opinion of a foreign electrician, 
 one of the most celebrated in Europe, as to the feasibility of the 
 undertaking. He answered at once in the negative ; giving as 
 his reason that the electric influence would die away after 
 having been carried a very short distance along the wire ; and 
 that, consequently, stations must be repeated at intervals so 
 frequent as to make electricity, as a vehicle of communication, 
 both too slow and too costly for adoption. 
 
 It seems to me, therefore, but reasonable to declare a truce 
 with theoretic objections to a Maine Law, until we learn the 
 success or the failure of the grand experiment, now trying in the 
 United States and the British Provinces of North America. 
 And I own I am not a little disappointed by the tone and the 
 temper in which this great struggle to attain an object of the 
 highest value, is contemplated from our side the Atlantic. 
 That a contest in which strong appetites are allied with great 
 pecuniary interests should be waged with fierce determination, 
 was to be expected. That in such a war there should be some 
 fluctuations of victory and defeat is also in the ordinary course 
 of events ; yet every little advantage obtained by the opponents 
 of the Maine Law is magnified, not from fear lest a great enter- 
 prise in favour of human happiness should prove hopeless, but in 
 triumph ; as if it were a fine thing to discover that society is 
 not sufficiently advanced, or that human nature is too unchange- 
 ably perverse, to enable us to bear a restraint so much for our 
 
 D D 
 
403 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 benefit. The undertaking may prove itself beyond human ability 
 to accomplish. I trust not ; and, at all events, the contest is not 
 yet brought to a conclusion. The fight, 
 
 ' Now leaning this way, now to that side driven,' 
 
 is still raging, 
 
 ' And none doth know to whom the day will fall.' 
 
 Doubts and misgivings I can comprehend. I, myself, am by no 
 means free from them. But how any mind, not biassed by sinister 
 interests, can desire a termination to the American controversy 
 adverse to the Maine Law, I must confess I no more understand, 
 than that it should have been hailed as a triumph if the experi- 
 ments on the electric telegraph, had demonstrated the suggested 
 incompetency of the electric influence to perform the required 
 service. In the United States, a land of democracy, no such 
 law can be passed unless it is the will of the majority to put 
 themselves under the restraint in question. Nor can it remain 
 on their Statute-book unless that public opinion, to which it 
 owed its origin, is permanent. Again, that majority must be 
 very large; it must be supported by the wealth, the intelligence, 
 and, above all, by the moral and religious convictions of the 
 nation, All these are elements of power, and every element 
 must concur to enable such a law to work itself into the habits 
 and manners of the people. For supposing it only to be desired 
 by a bare majority, the recalcitration of the minority, and the 
 countenance which would be given by so large a body to evasion, 
 would produce mischiefs more than counterbalancing the good 
 which could be effected by the prohibition. These consequences 
 would act on the opinions of the majority; which would gra- 
 dually melt away and leave their antagonists in the ascendant. 
 The Americans of the United States, then, are, at their own 
 cost and peril, conducting a momentous experiment, from which 
 we may draw a lesson of inestimable value. I have already 
 pointed out in my Charge the advantages which they possess 
 over any other nation, for instituting that experiment successfully. 
 If, nevertheless, they fail, I for one should accept the result as 
 conclusive evidence that to seek the attainment of prohibition 
 in England, would be to engage in a vain quest. On the other 
 hand, if our American friends prove it to be feasible, it would 
 ill become us to abandon the cause and confess our inferiority ; 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 403 
 
 although, certainly, we have some difficulties to encounter which 
 do not stand in their way. The greatest of these arises out of 
 the fact that the legislative power in our own country is in the 
 hands of the minority; a state of things which leads even minds 
 the best disciplined, erroneously to assume that every law must 
 be forced upon the people ; and, throughout the whole contro- 
 versy, I have observed a tacit assumption of this kind perpetually 
 intruding itself into the argument. 
 
 Now, I not only admit, but most earnestly contend, that any 
 law which interferes with the habits of private life, cannot in our 
 age and country be thrust on the people. We must wait until 
 they demand it for themselves. This demand, it is predicted 
 by the opponents of the law, will never be made. Such as are 
 of this faith may sit themselves down in tranquillity ; assured 
 that no Government, even the most despotic, could impose it on 
 the nation against its will. The enactment of prohibition, then, 
 pre-supposing a popular demand for it, the question is narrowed 
 to this : Ought that popular demand to be resisted ? And I am 
 persuaded that if the proposal of a Maine Law were considered 
 from this point of view, it would be seen at once that hostility 
 is out of place. There is all the difference in the world between the 
 legislator imposing his notions of right and wrong on the people 
 for whom he is making laws, and his yielding to theirs. In the 
 latter event, the objector, instead of representing the desires of 
 a whole nation, and pleading the sound policy of leaving their 
 own affairs in their own hands, now represents only a minority, 
 which, rather than unite with a majority in a small concession, 
 oppose themselves to the entreaties of the many for the removal 
 of evils, the magnitude and enormity of which they cannot 
 deny. To me this is the pivot upon which the whole contro- 
 versy turns. If, therefore, I could be permitted for a moment 
 to suppose myself clothed with dictatorial power, I would not 
 use it, for the enactment of prohibition, until the minority became 
 small enough to ensure that all opposition to the law should be 
 so borne down, by the stream of public opinion, as to be unable 
 to set up any counter current of its own. 
 
 What, then, are the probabilities that these very stringent 
 conditions of a Maine Law will ever be satisfied ? They rest on 
 the suffering which flows from the present state of things ; on 
 the hopelessness of that suffering being assuaged to any very 
 
 D D 2 
 
404 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 large extent without the aid of law; on the fact which certainly 
 has not been sufficiently considered, that many, perhaps even the 
 greater portion, of those who are enslaved by habits of indulgence, 
 would consider prohibition as their protector and not their op- 
 pressor; on the deep interest and intense desire of all who are 
 connected by family ties with the miserable victims of intoxica- 
 tion, to place them under this valid safeguard; on the small 
 sacrifice which is required to purchase the inestimable blessing 
 of temperance for the whole nation ; and finally, on the growth 
 of enlightened philanthropy which, to those under its influence 
 (a body daily increasing), makes a thousand such sacrifices as 
 that of intoxicating drinks felt as nothing, when put in com- 
 parison with the delight with which they would contemplate the 
 mass of happiness of necessity arising from the extinction of 
 drinking habits among their countrymen. And, coming down 
 from speculation to experience, I cannot but consider the pro- 
 gress already made in the United States and the adjoining 
 British Provinces, though insufficient both as to time and 
 extent to set the question at rest, has, nevertheless, placed it in a 
 position in which I believe no man on this side the Atlantic, 
 until within the last two or three years, ever expected to find it. 
 I will now address myself to one or two objections which 
 have been urged against the enactment proposed. The first is 
 usually thus expressed. l You cannot make men sober by Act 
 of Parliament/ Now this, as a universal proposition, is not 
 true. We make our prisoners sober by denying them intoxi- 
 cating drinks ; and we obtain the power so to deny them by Act 
 of Parliament. At the moment I am writing, journals of great 
 influence, directly opposed to a Maine Law, are demanding the 
 suppression of canteens in the Crimea. What, then, is meant 
 by the objection? The meaning, probably, is, that you cannot 
 inculcate the love of sobriety by Act of Parliament. But even 
 in this sense the objection is fallacious ; as it does not apply 
 itself to the conditions, without which it is admitted that no 
 Maine Law can or ought to pass. I am supposing a Maine 
 Law demanded and supported by public opinion. Would not 
 the beneficial consequences of such a law in diminishing poverty, 
 disease, and crime, augment and strengthen that love of sobriety 
 on which the law was founded ? But assume the law inoperative 
 to change the desires of those who, but for legal impediments, 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 405 
 
 would fall into pernicious indulgence. Is it, therefore, of no 
 use ? Are the laws against theft of no avail because you cannot 
 make thieves love honesty by Act of Parliament? Indeed, a 
 little consideration will show us that if the impolicy of the law 
 is to be determined by the test implied in the question so trium- 
 phantly proposed, reasons far stronger might be urged against 
 the prohibition of theft than the prohibition of drink. The law 
 would operate on the drunkard by putting intoxicating liquors 
 out of his reach ; but it cannot so operate on the thief. Our 
 goods and chattels cannot be placed out of his reach ; and con- 
 sequently every increase of our wealth, in adding to opportunities 
 for larceny, has a tendency to augment the number of our thieves; 
 a tendency by the force of which we should be overwhelmed, but 
 for our constant endeavours, by improvements in our system of 
 police, and now by preventive and reformatory checks, to coun- 
 teract the fecundity of the species. 
 
 Another objection rests on the fallacy that if you cannot 
 do everything, you must be held to have done nothing. That 
 the good ship Prohibition would leak a little is very probable. 
 Can any law be specified which is never broken ? What are 
 our Courts of Justice, our Assizes, our Sessions, and our Police 
 Offices, but so many testimonies that laws are not expected to 
 extinguish offences ; but only to keep down their number by 
 dealing in the best manner we are able with offenders. If, 
 then, laws are to be considered as useless because they are not 
 unfrequently broken, our best course will be to put the Statutes 
 at Large into the fire, turn out the lawyers, and apply West- 
 minster Hall to some new purpose. ' It is evident/ says Arch- 
 bishop Whately, ' that every instance of the infliction of a 
 punishment, is an instance, as far as it goes, of the failure of 
 the legislator's design. No axiom in Euclid can be more 
 evident than that the object of the legislator in enacting that 
 murderers should be hanged, and pilferers imprisoned or trans- 
 ported, is not to load the gallows, fill the gaol, and people 
 New Holland, but to prevent the commission of murder and 
 theft ; and that, consequently, every man who is hanged, or 
 transported, or confined, is an instance, pro tanto, of the ineffi- 
 ciency, i.e., want of complete efficacy of the law/* 
 
 * Appendix to Lectures on Political Economy. J. W. Parker and Son, 1855. 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 A further objection is, that by bringing the power of law 
 into the field, we shall weaken the force of moral persuasion. 
 If such an effect were to follow, there would be much to deplore ; 
 although most assuredly moral persuasion has no great success 
 to boast in the war against intoxicating drinks. But I confess 
 I cannot see the danger. The law itself would be based upon 
 moral convictions ; and the conservation 'of those impressions 
 will always be necessary to its maintenance. The two forces 
 will be moving precisely in the same direction ; and instead, 
 therefore, of the one force being subtracted from the other, 
 both will be added into one sum. 
 
 I am not sure that the next objection which I am about to 
 answer has ever been very broadly or very clearly put forth ; 
 but I understand the doctrine suggested to be, that to remove 
 temptation is not within the legitimate scope of jurisprudence. 
 In holding out temptation it may be said neither fraud nor 
 violence is exercised. The tempted is free to stand or fall. 
 The Legislature, therefore, in making laws to prohibit a temp- 
 tation, is, in truth, guarding a man against himself; and thus 
 going beyond the functions of society, which was formed solely 
 to protect men from each other. In answer to this objection I 
 would submit, that whether the victim is ensnared by fraud or 
 overcome by violence, or falls a prey to allurements which he 
 cannot resist, although not deceived as to the consequences 
 which he is bringing upon himself, is immaterial. The true 
 question remains untouched, Is an injury inflicted which law 
 can prevent without the introduction of a greater evil ? Are 
 the objectors, I would ask, prepared to leave the sale of alcohol 
 entirely without restriction? Are they prepared to permit 
 brothels to be opened, or gambling to be practised with im- 
 punity ? If not, the principle of interference is conceded ; and 
 that being so, the quantum of restraint, from the slightest inter- 
 meddling up to prohibition itself, must be determined entirely 
 by the consideration of how the law may be made most effec- 
 tive for its object, with a never- sleeping caution, however, 
 against letting in consequences which overbalance the benefit 
 produced. 
 
 But a distinction has been taken. It has been said you may 
 legislate against temptation to do that which is wrong ab initio, 
 or, in other words, which has no use attached to it, but is alto- 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 407 
 
 gether abuse; and thus they would justify the suppression of 
 brothels and gambling. But is this a valid distinction ? Cer- 
 tainly it is not one sanctioned by usage either in this or in any 
 other country ; and is in contradiction to the doctrine of the 
 objectors themselves, who justify the moderate use of alcohol, 
 and at the same time admit that its manufacture and sale 
 cannot be put on the footing of other articles of consumption, 
 like bread, meat, and so forth. Again, it would not be easy to 
 prove that all gambling is morally indefensible. The Vicar of 
 Wakefield's twopenny hits at backgammon with his clerical 
 brother, were not only an act but a habit of gambling, yet he 
 must be straitlaced, indeed, who would reprehend it. Our law 
 does not ; thus tacitly acknowledging that there may be a use, 
 and legislating only against the abuse. And if by this moderate 
 exercise of control, gambling can be so kept within bounds as to 
 work no great amount of public injury, a sound discretion is 
 exercised ; for in no case ought coercion to extend beyond the 
 requirements of the general welfare. So in regard to the sale 
 of alcohol ; if regulation had been found sufficient, prohibition 
 would not be justified. 
 
 It would, however, be a want of candour to conceal that in 
 bringing temptations within the scope of criminal jurisprudence, 
 the Legislature is treading upon ground which demands extreme 
 wariness at every step, that personal freedom of action is a 
 sacred right and of immeasurable value, not merely to the indi- 
 vidual, but to the community of which he is a member ; and 
 that the law must overlook many aberrations, rather than 
 weaken the spirit of enterprise and self-reliance, created and 
 fostered by this high privilege. 
 
 I now arrive at the crowning objection by which the advo- 
 cates of a Maine Law are sought to be placed between the horns 
 of a dilemma. You admit, say the objectors, that you will 
 not even ask for a Maine Law until you have secured an im- 
 mense preponderance of power in its favour ; that power con- 
 sisting not only of numbers but of property, of intelligence, and 
 of moral sentiment. But, they continue, if you have won over 
 these potent allies, why ask for a Maine Law at all ? Why not 
 depend on that overwhelming public opinion which you concede 
 must come into existence before a Maine Law is admissible ? 
 This, they say, is your dilemma. While your cause is unpo- 
 
408 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 pular, a Maine Law cannot be obtained. When it becomes 
 popular, it is not required. What is your answer ? My answer 
 is, that the dissident minority still retain the power of inflicting 
 great evils on the majority by excesses, of which their innocent 
 families and their sober and well-conducted neighbours must 
 bear the consequences ; and that the minority will be joined in 
 their mischievous acts by that large class of which I have 
 already spoken, whose capacity for self-government is unequal 
 to the task of making their conduct conform to their convic- 
 tions. So long as this class is not protected from temptation 
 by a Maine Law, although their sober opinions coincide with 
 those of the majority, their practice will go to swell the public 
 mischief caused by the minority. 
 
 ( There remains only to consider the aids and the obstacles 
 which present themselves for and against the enactment of a 
 Maine Law in this country. The aids are limited to that 
 growing conviction of the necessity for such a measure which, 
 so far as I can judge, is making its way among all classes ; a 
 sentiment which I expect will be quickened by the competition 
 for supplying the markets of the world with manufactures, 
 which we shall have to encounter from other nations not so 
 enthralled as ourselves by the vice of drunkenness. The late 
 Exhibition in France must have shown our manufacturers, that 
 foreigners lack neither skill nor enterprise; and if we are for 
 the present protected by our enormous capital, and our won- 
 derful means of distributing our products throughout the world, 
 yet we must not forget that capital has often changed her 
 metropolis. That her Western progress, from Venice through 
 Genoa and Amsterdam, may not have arrived at its termination 
 in London ; but may be continued to New York. That on all 
 sides thick-coming portents indicate that we shall have to 
 encounter a severe struggle for pre-eminence ; and that in the 
 race for commercial existence with young and active compe- 
 titors, we shall not be first at the goal if we cannot shake off 
 the weight of intemperance. 
 
 With respect to the obstacles to the progress of Maine Law 
 doctrine, they are indeed mighty and numerous. As regards 
 the press, a fearful majority of those journals and periodical 
 works which are most conspicuous for their talent, or most 
 formidable from their popularity, are earnestly, not to say vio- 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 409 
 
 lently, opposed to prohibition. And so long as Minerva throws 
 her <egis over Bacchus, his bloated carcase will be secure from 
 assault. Doubtless it is true that when the public mind shall 
 have changed, either the present representatives of its opinion 
 must change with it, or new ones will be substituted in their 
 place; but meanwhile they exercise a most baneful influence 
 upon that opinion, and retard, though they cannot altogether 
 prevent,, its amelioration. Their hostility is the more potent, 
 as it is for the most part free from suspicion of sinister motives ; 
 and thus the Anti-Maine Law cause obtains credit for sincerity 
 in its advocates. Nevertheless, that reputation masks no incon- 
 siderable force of opposition, which cannot be referred to a justi- 
 fiable origin. This state of the press, arms with great power 
 the body which is organized for the protection of pecuniary 
 interests. Formidable as this body is by their numbers, their 
 wealth, and their discipline, they would fight under great disad- 
 vantages if they stood alone. When the question is How shall 
 we deal with the traffic which has wrought us so much of 
 suffering ? we should lend an unwilling ear to the pleading of 
 brewers and distillers, if it found no echo in the applause of 
 disinterested bystanders. The cries of Demetrius and the 
 silversmiths, that their craft was in danger y were not calculated 
 to make the world, beyond the walls of their city, conform to 
 the creed urged with such passionate iteration, that ' Great is 
 Diana of the Ephesians.' Hence the importance to the enemies 
 of the Maine Law, of that alliance with literature which at 
 present it cannot be denied they enjoy. 
 
 But they make their power felt in another way, which has 
 never yet obtained a notice commensurate with its importance. 
 The tradesmen engaged in the sale of intoxicating drinks, form, 
 in every large town, a numerous and compact body of voters; 
 each followed by a knot of obsequious customers, kept in 
 dependence upon him by a long array of chalk scores behind 
 the door of his tavern. And this body consequently holds in 
 its hands a fearful amount of elective power ; both as regards 
 Parliament and the Municipal Councils. Some of our principal 
 towns are at this moment entirely at its command; and others 
 have only been redeemed by severe contests between it and such 
 of the inhabitants as are free from its influence. 
 
 In pointing attention to the body engaged in this traffic, I 
 
4*0 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 am influenced by no personal feelings of hostility towards its 
 members. On the contrary, my predilections are with them. 
 For many years I acted as Counsel to the great Association of 
 the Licensed Victuallers in London. I have had occasion to 
 know and to admire their efforts to provide for the wants of 
 their less affluent brethren. I stood by them while Lord 
 Melbourne, then Prime Minister, laid the first stone of a noble 
 edifice erected at their cost, for the education of their orphan 
 children. I was their professional adviser in the establishment 
 of their Insurance Office ; which they founded that each among 
 them might be induced to make provision for his family after 
 his death. I was not infrequently called upon professionally 
 to consider the course pursued by the daily journal which they 
 have established, and raised to a position of great influence ; and 
 I always found it the steady and able advocate, of the principles 
 of civil and religious liberty and of social progress. 
 
 The manufacturers and vendors of intoxicating liquors, follow 
 the calling to which they were brought up. Until of late years 
 none censured the tradesman, and few censured the trade itself. 
 It would therefore be not only uncharitable, but unjust, to assume 
 that the individuals engaged in the traffic, are conscious that their 
 avocation is one inconsistent with the welfare of their country- 
 men. Not the most ardent prohibitionist will place the sale of 
 intoxicating liquors on a footing with the slave trade, or the 
 holding our fellow-creatures in bondage ; and yet the time was 
 when the purest and most enlightened friends of liberty, were 
 unconscious that the negro race had any claim to the rights of 
 man. History does not furnish us with a name standing higher 
 than that of John Locke, as an opponent of despotism whether 
 of the mind or the body. As a philosopher, he investigated 
 and established many true principles of liberty, civil and religious. 
 As a citizen, he endured with firmness, exile and persecution for 
 their sake ; and yet this great political philosopher, when called 
 upon to frame a constitution for the Province of Carolina, 
 formally enacted that every freeman of the State should have 
 absolute power and authority over his negro slaves. After such 
 an example it would be absurd indeed, as well as unjust, 
 to doubt that the plainest of moral principles may remain 
 undiscerned by individuals of honest and intelligent minds. It 
 is, therefore, impossible not to feel concern for those who may 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 411 
 
 be losers by the reformation in view. And if I could forget 
 the suffering which the procrastination must necessarily entail 
 on multitudes, I should rejoice to be able to state, what I 
 nevertheless must admit, that I see no prospect of any living 
 tradesman witnessing the extinction, or even the serious dimi- 
 nution, of the liquor traffic. But if I were likely to possess 
 influence over any individual engaged in the trade, I would 
 advise him to pause before he resolved to bring up his offspring 
 to his own avocation. It may already be doomed ; although he 
 himself may not live to witness the execution of the sentence. 
 Many trades have passed away ; and those who have clung to 
 them to the last have suffered for their want of foresight, or for 
 lack of resolution to break up a concern in which their capital 
 was embarked, and for which they were fitted by long training. 
 Let, then, the licensed victuallers and their brethren, not con- 
 centrate all their exertions upon the maintenance of a cause, 
 which every advance of civilization will expose to new dangers. 
 It matters not to the tradesman by which of his opponents he 
 is overcome. If moral persuasion has the efficacy attributed to 
 it by many able writers, then, even should a Maine Law never 
 pass, the consequences to him will be much the same; perhaps 
 even more disastrous, as the absolute extinction of a trade im- 
 peratively calls upon all those who follow it, instantly to betake 
 themselves to some other pursuit ; while, as regards the trade 
 slowly dying away, many still cling to it in the vain hope of its 
 resuscitation. And if moral control shall be found, as I fear it 
 will be found, in the future as in the past, insufficient to produce 
 the desired effect, this experience will furnish many a recruit to 
 the Maine Law banner, from the advocates of moral persuasion. 
 But suppose intemperance to prevail, and to ward off all the 
 attacks of both its opponents. Who is so bold as to answer for 
 the nation itself not succumbing to the ardour of its numerous 
 rivals ? presenting to the trading classes of our posterity an 
 arena in which the struggles to live are severe but hopeless, 
 the slain a countless host, the survivors a scanty remnant ! 
 
412 
 
 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 PRESENT STATE OF NORTH AMERICA RELATIVE TO LEGISLATION 
 AGAINST THE SALE OF INTOXICATING LlQUORS, JAN. I, 1857 : 
 
 UNITED STATES. 
 
 PROHIBITION in full and satisfactory operation in the following 
 of the United States : 
 
 STATE. 
 
 Date 
 
 of 
 Law. 
 
 Area 
 in 
 Square 
 Miles. 
 
 Population 
 (1850). 
 
 Repre- 
 senta- 
 tives in 
 Con- 
 gress. 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 Massachusetts 
 
 1852 
 
 7250 
 
 994,514 
 
 II 
 
 In this State, after much opposi- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 tion, the law stands firm. 
 
 Khode Island 
 
 1857 
 
 I2OO 
 
 J 47>545 
 
 2 
 
 Much obstructed at first, has 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 since been improved, and is 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 now in beneficent operation. 
 
 Vermont . . 
 
 1852 
 
 8000 
 
 314,120 
 
 3 
 
 Adopted at the earliest date, by 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 unanimous acclamation ; this 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 law has always been effectively 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 sustained. 
 
 Michigan 
 
 1853 
 
 56,243 
 
 397,564 
 
 4 
 
 The legal difficulties which at 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 first obstructed this law have 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 given way ; the Supreme 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Court, with one dissentient 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 voice, having pronounced the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 law constitutional. 
 
 Connecticut . 
 
 1854 
 
 4750 
 
 370,792 
 
 4 
 
 After repeated efforts, this State 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 rejoices in an effective admi- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 nistration of the law. 
 
 Delaware 
 
 1855 
 
 2I2O 
 
 9 r >532 
 
 i 
 
 The first of the Slave States to 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 adopt prohibition. 
 
 Iowa . . . 
 
 NewHampshire 
 
 1855 
 
 1855 
 
 50,914 
 9280 
 
 192,214 
 317,976 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 Ratified by a popular vote. 
 Completing the list of New Eng- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 land States. 
 
 States in which PROHIBITION is the Law, but in which its 
 operation has been impeded or set on one side by hostile legal 
 decisions : 
 
 STATE. 
 
 Date 
 of 
 Law. 
 
 Area 
 in 
 Square 
 Miles. 
 
 Population 
 (18^0). 
 
 Repre- 
 senta- 
 tives in 
 Con- 
 gress. 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 Indiana . . 
 
 New York . 
 
 1855 
 1855 
 
 33,809 
 46,000 
 
 988,416 
 3,097,394 
 
 II 
 
 33 
 
 Is practically useless, having 
 been declared in its present 
 form unconstitutional. The 
 difficulty is, however, merely 
 technical. 
 After six months of most bene- 
 ficial operation, the law has 
 been decided to be unconsti- 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 STATE . 
 
 Date 
 of 
 Law. 
 
 Area 
 in 
 
 Square 
 Miles. 
 
 Population 
 (1850). 
 
 Repre- 
 senta- 
 tives in 
 Con- 
 gress. 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 tutional. The points raised 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 were, of course, purely techni- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 cal and local such as a colli- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 sion between State and general 
 law, the peculiar difficulty of 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 a Federal Union, and the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 power given by the State Con- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 stitution to the Legislature as 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 regards confiscation of pro- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 perty. The law will be 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 amended, not repealed. 
 
 Minnesota . 
 
 1852 
 
 141,839 
 
 6,077 
 
 
 
 The Supreme Court decided 
 
 (Territory) 
 
 
 
 
 
 that this law was unconstitu- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 tional, on the ground that it 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 had been submitted to a direct 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 vote of the people. The people, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 however, having sustained it 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 by a large majority, the Legis- 
 lature has not repealed it. 
 
 In the following States PROHIBITION has suffered temporary 
 popular disaster : 
 
 STATE. 
 
 Date 
 of 
 Law. 
 
 Area 
 in 
 Square 
 Miles. 
 
 Population 
 (1850). 
 
 Repre- 
 senta- 
 tives in 
 Con- 
 gress. 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 MAINE . . 
 
 1851 
 
 35> 
 
 583, 1 6 9 
 
 6 
 
 The Pioneer of Prohibition ; 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 complicated with the Nebraska 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 and Kansas questions, the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 cause of prohibition was de- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 feated in 1855, an d a law of 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 the most stringent and severe 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 restriction was substituted. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The results even of this were 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 so alarming as to result in the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 indignant rejection of the Go- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 vernor of 1855, and the elec- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 tion of representatives unani- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 mous for prohibition, which 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 will be immediately re-enacted 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 by larger majorities than ever 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 known in the State on any 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 question. 
 
 Illinois . . 
 
 1855 
 
 55.409 
 
 851,470 
 
 9 
 
 An ill-constructed law, since 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 repealed, to be replaced by a 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 better. 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1 855. 
 
 States and Territories in progress towards PROHIBITION, or in 
 which Laws of Partial PROHIBITION, or severe Restriction, have 
 been already adopted: 
 
 STATE. 
 
 Date 
 of 
 Law. 
 
 Area 
 in 
 Square 
 Miles. 
 
 Population 
 (1850). 
 
 Repre- 
 senta- 
 tives in 
 Con- 
 gress. 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 Ohio . . . 
 
 1854 
 
 39>964 
 
 1,980,329 
 
 21 
 
 A stringent law prohibiting sale 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 of all liquors, except wine and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 cider, made from native pro- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 duce. 
 
 Pennsylvania 
 
 1855 
 
 46, 000 
 
 2,311,786 
 
 25 
 
 Retail trade prohibited, but legal 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 difficulties obstruct the full 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 operation of the law. 
 
 Wisconsin . 
 
 
 
 53,924 
 
 305,391 
 
 3 
 
 The elections of 1855 resulted in 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 the choice of a Governorfavour- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 able to prohibition, but the law 
 
 Maryland . 
 
 1855 
 
 11,124 
 
 583,034 
 
 6 
 
 was lost by a narrow majority. 
 Passed by the Representatives, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 but lost in the Senate (Slave 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 State). 
 
 New Jersey . 
 
 
 
 8,320 
 
 489,555 
 
 5 
 
 The law recently lost by an even 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 or tie- vote. The Council of 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Jersey city have carried out a 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 sort of prohibitory ordinance 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 among themselves by a vote 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 of ten to one. 
 
 South Carolina 
 
 1856 
 
 29,385 
 
 668,507 
 
 6 
 
 Slave State. Total prohibition 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 on Sundays. 
 
 Tennessee . 
 
 I8 5 6 
 
 45,600 
 
 1,002,717 
 
 10 
 
 Slave State . Prohibition of sales 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 in quantities of less than one 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 quart. 
 
 Texas . . . 
 
 
 
 237,504 
 
 212,592 
 
 2 
 
 A law prohibiting retail sales 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 was sustained by an over- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 whelming majority in 1854, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 and has since received exten- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 sion. 
 
 Nebraska. . 
 
 
 
 335,882 
 
 
 
 
 
 Almost unanimous petitions all 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 the females joining. 
 
 Mosquito 
 (INDIAN). 
 
 
 
 
 
 Total prohibition, as stipulated 
 expressly in the treaty recently 
 signed by Lord Clarendon and 
 Mr. Dallas. 
 
 BEITISH AMEEICA. 
 
 NEW BEUNSWICK. A law of partial prohibition in 1853 repealed in 1854. 
 Total prohibition adopted 1855, and enforced in 1856. The hostility of the 
 Lieutenant-Governor to the law enabled its enemies to repeal it. The 
 province is now under most stringent licence. Prohibition will shortly, in 
 all probability, be re-enacted. 
 
 NOVA SCOTIA. Narrow majorities in some technical points of order have delayed 
 the measure in this province. 
 
 PRINCE EDWARD'S ISLAND. Narrowly defeated in 1854. 
 
 CANADA. Lost in 1856 by 51 to 50. Many counties are under 'No-licence' 
 authorities, and are consequently without the sale of intoxicants. 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 415 
 
 These tables came to me from a highly respectable source. 
 Still, it is right to avow that my informant holds pro-Maine 
 Law opinions. 
 
 A table, nearly similar, dated April, 1856, I sent to the 
 Honourable George Boutwell, late Governor of Massachusetts. 
 In November of that year, he returned me an answer, from 
 which I give the following extract : 
 
 ' The Maine Law movement has been entirely overshadowed 
 by the contest upon slavery, yet there is no reason to suppose 
 that public sentiment has retrograded, though there may have 
 been no progress since the repeal of the Missouri prohibition. 
 
 ' The principles of the Maine Law are, however, firmly fixed 
 in the policy of the Eastern (I mean the New England) States, 
 and will not be abandoned. Changes there may be, as in 
 Maine itself last year, but they will be temporary. The people 
 will secure the power to close any dram-shop whenever they 
 please. And this is a great conservative force of society, and 
 practically used or neglected, according to the local public 
 sentiment. You are, no doubt, told that in the cities and 
 large towns the traffic is almost uninterrupted. This statement 
 is not entirely false ; indeed, it may seem to some to beliterally 
 true, yet, even in the cities, the dealers are obliged to preserve 
 an appearance of respectability, while in the rural districts the 
 traffic is broken up, or carried on in secret. Your table seems 
 to me to be correct, though I have not the authorities by which 
 I can verify all the statements/ 
 
 ' On the Effect of Good or Bad Times on Committals to Prison. 
 BY THE REV. JOHN CLAY. 
 
 [Read before the Statistical Section of the British Association for the Advancement 
 of Science, at Liverpool, 23rd September, 1854.] 
 
 ' It has long been a popular opinion that committals to 
 prison increase under the pressure of ' bad times, 3 and diminish 
 when that pressure is removed. This opinion appears to be in 
 many respects erroneous ; and it may not be useless, therefore, 
 to show how, in reality, crime and disorder, as indicated by 
 committals to prison, are affected by the vicissitudes in the 
 industrial and social state of the working classes. 
 
 ' The facts and observations which I have to submit are 
 
41 6 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 drawn from the Annual Reports which it has been my duty to 
 present to the magistracy of Lancashire since 1824. They 
 relate to the County House of Correction at Preston the chief 
 prison for the northern division of Lancashire which division 
 includes the large manufacturing towns of Preston, Blackburn, 
 Burnley, Chorley, Haslingden, Accrington, &c. The population 
 of North Lancashire was 402,600 in 1841, and 461,400 in 
 1851.* My report for 1826 contained the first notice of the 
 connexion between distress and committals ; and I therefore 
 venture to quote the following passage in it : ( The interval 
 between July, 1824, and July, 1825, was one of general 
 prosperity and comfort among the labouring classes of the sur- 
 rounding district; that from July, 1825, to July, 1826, included 
 a period of perhaps unprecedented distress. Yet in this latter 
 
 period, the felony list presented no augmentation 
 
 While 40,000 or 50,000 of the poor were existing upon 
 charitable contributions, it cannot be ascertained that a single 
 theft (recorded in the calendar) was caused solely by hunger. 
 The few persons who pleaded distress as an excuse for their 
 offences were, in every case, old offenders/ 
 
 ' During the prevalence of this distress, I had many oppor- 
 tunities of witnessing what I have often seen since the fortitude 
 and patience exercised by the working-classes in times of 
 suffering, and the admirable self-denial with which many, who 
 were themselves in poverty, assisted the utterly destitute. 
 From a table given in my Report for 1830, it appeared that, 
 during the four ordinary years ending with June, 1824, the 
 annual average of committals to the sessions was 119; the 
 prosperous year 1825 produced 177 committals; the following 
 year of distress, 172; and the year of reviving prosperity 
 (ending July, 1827) no less than 269. 
 
 'This lamentable anomaly in the moral condition of the 
 working classes can only arise from the fact that high wages, 
 to the ignorant and uneducated poor, bring with them the 
 means of gratifying the propensity to intoxication, which is so 
 fatal to their comfort and character/ 
 
 * 'The Hundred of Lonsdale commits cases for trial to the Lancaster sessions. 
 These cases few in number are therefore excluded from consideration. All 
 offenders convicted summarily are sent to Preston. This having been the inva- 
 riable practice, the question treated of in this paper is not affected by it. ' 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 417 
 
 f The opinion thus expressed a quarter of a century ago has 
 been but too well confirmed by the experience of every suc- 
 ceeding year. 
 
 1 The ten years ending with June, 1 844, were marked by 
 several events greatly prejudicial to the moral and industrial 
 welfare of the working classes in North Lancashire. In 1836-7, 
 a spinners' 'strike' at Preston threw nearly 9000 hands out of 
 employ for about four months. Nearly two-fifths of these 
 hands were under nineteen years of age; and the consequence 
 was, a great increase in the number of young offenders com- 
 mitted to the sessions. It was noted, however, at the time, 
 that ' idleness, and not want, had been the immediate cause of 
 crime in almost all the cases which could be clearly referred to 
 the 'strike.'* And even in this year of distress, the com- 
 mittals to the sessions were less by fifty -nine than those of the 
 corresponding period ten years before, when ' employment for 
 the poor had again become pretty well distributed /f From 
 1838 to 1842 (with a favourable interval in 1840), want of em- 
 ploy, and consequent privation, gradually pressed more and more 
 upon the manufacturing population of North Lancashire, until, 
 in the winter of 1842-3, their sufferings became severe almost 
 beyond example. At this time, also, a spirit of sedition and 
 riot had loosened the restraints which the masses in North 
 Lancashire are usually willing to acknowledge ; and the autumn 
 of 1842 was marked by an amount of agitation and violence 
 which betokened no slight danger to the permanent welfare of 
 the manufacturing districts. Two years before this time, how- 
 ever, and owing, no doubt, to the growing (and providential) 
 conviction of the necessity for such a measure, the County 
 Police Force had been organized ; and it was now found capable 
 of arresting and of permanently subduing the dangerous spirit 
 which had been excited into action. Under all these circum- 
 stances, therefore, a considerable increase in committals might 
 be expected. The zeal and activity of the new constabulary 
 added to the number of apprehensions and committals, though 
 there might be no corresponding increase of actual crime. 
 Political disaffection encouraged dishonesty and violence to an 
 extent which poverty alone would not have provoked : at this 
 
 * Report for 1837. t Report for 1830. 
 
 E E 
 
4 i8 
 
 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 time, also, prison discipline in North Lancashire was in a state 
 calculated to promote rather than repress crime ; and to all 
 this it may be added that, hitherto, little or no progress had 
 been made in efforts to extend the benefits and blessings of 
 education. 
 
 ' ' Of ninety-six men tried for riot, &c., in the Chartist out- 
 break in the autumn of 1842, sixty were unable to read, and 
 thirty-six were ignorant of their Saviour's name/ 
 
 ' I present a sumnmry of the committals for the ten years 
 now treated of, in which it will be observed that, in the year of 
 greatest distress, the ordinary committals were 20 per cent, 
 below those of the preceding year. Tn order to free a com- 
 parison between the several years from the effects of temporary 
 or accidental influence, the following offenders are excluded : 
 i, soldiers under sentence of court martial; 2, debtors; 3, 
 females under summary conviction ;* 4, Chartist rioters. The 
 remarks are literally or substantially quoted from the reports 
 of the respective years : 
 
 Year ending 
 ist July. 
 
 Committed 
 to Sessions. 
 
 Committed 
 summarily. 
 
 EEMAEKS. 
 
 1835 
 
 1 68 
 
 6 4 2 
 
 
 1836 
 
 187 
 
 7 r 5 
 
 
 1837 
 
 277 
 
 62? 
 
 ' Spinners' strike, which lasted from the end 
 
 
 
 
 of October to February.' 
 
 1838 
 
 302 
 
 762 
 
 ' Suffering among band-loom weavers.' 
 
 1839 
 
 36l 
 
 655 
 
 ' High price of provisions and scarcity of 
 
 
 
 
 employ.' 
 
 1840 
 
 394 
 
 937 
 
 ' Increase of committals mainly attributable 
 
 
 
 
 to the establishment of the County Police.' 
 
 
 
 
 ' No want of employ, and times favourable.' 
 
 1841 
 
 485 
 
 901 
 
 ' Trade in a depressed state. ' 
 
 1842 
 
 611 
 
 io53 
 
 ' Great and prolonged suffering.' 
 
 1843 
 
 497t 
 
 1215 
 
 ' The depression at its lowest point.' 
 
 1844 
 
 433 
 
 894 
 
 ' Full employ. Prison discipline well esta- 
 
 
 
 
 blished.' 
 
 'The next ten years, ending with June, 1854, embraced two 
 seasons of great manufacturing prosperity, and one of extreme 
 distress. The following is a short summary of the period, 
 framed on the same principle as the one given above : 
 
 * These are excluded because at one time they were committed to Lancaster 
 Castle, and at another to the Preston House of Correction. 
 
 f This number is exclusive of 123 Chartist rioters. 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 
 
 419 
 
 Year. 
 
 Sessions 
 Cases. 
 
 Summary 
 Convictions. 
 
 EEMAEKS. 
 
 1845 
 
 301 
 
 700 
 
 ' Abundance of work. Prison discipline in 
 beneficial operation.' 
 
 1846 
 
 289 
 
 666 
 
 ' Occupation at the factories not so readily 
 
 
 
 
 obtained. Many hundreds of hand-loom 
 
 
 
 
 weavers out of employ.' 
 
 1847 
 
 366 
 
 646 
 
 ' Never have the combined evils of scarcity 
 
 
 
 
 of food and scarcity of employ pressed so 
 
 
 
 
 heavily.' 
 
 1848 
 
 343 
 
 843 
 
 'The distress at its maximum.' 
 
 1849 
 
 339 
 
 1279 
 
 'Times greatly improved.' 
 
 1850 
 
 2-2? 
 
 1323^1 
 
 
 1851 
 
 O 
 
 387 
 
 O O I 
 
 1456! 
 
 ' A period of great and continued prospe- 
 
 1852 
 
 417 
 
 1226 f 
 
 rity.' 
 
 1853 
 
 442 
 
 IOI2 J 
 
 
 1854 
 
 470 
 
 957 
 
 ' The Preston strike.' 
 
 'The first season of prosperity (ending with June, 1845,) 
 occurred at a time when a vigorous and reformatory prison 
 discipline had begun to develop highly satisfactory effects in 
 the decrease of committals, and especially of recommittals. 
 The manufacturing distress which followed in 1847-8, unlike 
 that of 1842-3, was attended by no Chartist excitement, nor by 
 any other influence likely to aggravate whatever tendency to 
 crime distress might have created. 
 
 ' In my Report for 1847, 1 observed : ' Never within the term 
 of my chaplaincy have the combined evils of scarcity of food 
 and scarcity of employ pressed so heavily as during the last 
 winter ; and never to the great credit of thousands of suf- 
 ferers have offenders, pleading distress for their faults been 
 fewer in number/ Yet, in these very hard times, the com- 
 mittals to the sessions were not increased to the extent which 
 might have been expected, and the summary convictions were 
 fewer than they had been for ten years. 
 
 ' The increase to the sessions, as invariably the case in times 
 of compulsory idleness, and as previously exemplified in the 
 strike of 1836-7, consisted almost entirely of boys. 'It is 
 chiefly from among the idle, not the hungry, factory-boys that 
 the additions to our year's calendar are drawn/ e Juvenile 
 delinquency (as compared to the preceding year) was increased 
 to the amount of 92 per cent/* In the winter of 1847-8, dis- 
 
 Eeport for 1847. 
 E E 2 
 
42O Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 tress pressed upon the operative classes with a severity never 
 before exceeded, perhaps never before equalled. My report for 
 that year contains a table framed from data collected by the 
 Chief Constable of the County, Capt. Woodford, ( showing the 
 absence of any marked connexion between poverty and crime, 
 as well as the creditable disproportion between sufferers and 
 offenders. 3 It appeared from the returns in question that, 
 during this disastrous period, 45,000 mill-hands in North Lan- 
 cashire, irrespective of other operatives, were either working 
 short time, or were altogether unemployed, and that in the 
 Preston Union nearly 12,000 adults were receiving out- door 
 relief; yet the committals to the sessions,, so far from exhibiting 
 an increase, showed a decrease of nearly 7 per cent, on the 
 committals of the preceding year. 
 
 ( The excess of summary convictions in 1847-8 arose chiefly 
 from vagrants and workhouse disorderlies.* In 1849, the 
 prosperity, which had ebbed so far and so long, began to flow 
 once more through our manufacturing districts, until in the 
 summer of 1853 it reached a height seldom equalled in the in- 
 dustrial history of the country. But the figures in the preceding 
 page bear witness that this tide of material benefit was produc- 
 tive of at least accompanied by no little moral wreck. When 
 the season of suffering had passed away, it became too manifest 
 that the wholesome lesson which it might have taught had been 
 neglected. Thousands who had resisted the temptations of 
 distress yielded to the temptations of prosperity. Good wages 
 were too often squandered in vicious indulgence ; and commit- 
 tals for offences occasioned by drunkenness began and increased 
 with lamentable rapidity. If a comparison be made between 
 the crime and disorder attendant on the three years of operative 
 distress (1846 to 1848) and the four years of abundant work 
 and high wages (1850 to 1853), it will be found that the 
 
 * In the very valuable Eeport of Capt. Willis, the Chief Constable of the Borough 
 of Manchester, for 1847, that gentleman expresses his satisfaction that 'upon the 
 expiration of a year marked by almost unexampled prostration of the trade and 
 commerce of the country, and consequent distress amongst the working classes, ' he 
 can produce ' returns which will bear advantageous comparison with those of pre- 
 vious years.' A table given by Capt. Willis shows that the committals for trial and 
 under summary convictions in the Borough of Manchester, for the two prosperous 
 years, 1844 and 1845, amounted to 10,436; and that for the two years of distress 
 which followed, 1847 and 1848, they amounted only to 7635, 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 421 
 
 average yearly committals to the sessions during the hard times 
 were 33 2, while during the yood times they were 390. The 
 yearly average of summary committals during the hard times 
 was 718, during the good times it was 1249 or j taking all the 
 committals together, 1051 was the yearly average from 1846 to 
 1848, and 1639 the yearly average from 1850 to 1853.* The com- 
 parison now made rests on conditions only affected by good and 
 bad times. No social or political agitation interfered with those 
 conditions; no changes in police or in prison discipline influ- 
 enced the number of apprehensions or of committals ; and the 
 ten years now under consideration may therefore be regarded as 
 well calculated to show the true relation which subsists between 
 crime and disorder on the one hand, and good or bad times on 
 the other. 
 
 ' The last of the ten years under consideration the year 
 ending ist July, 1854 saw the town of Preston, with its 
 70,000 inhabitants, suffering from a contest which will leave 
 its disastrous consequences behind for many years. 
 
 1 The Preston strike threw out of work about 1 8,000 factory 
 hands, to say nothing of other operatives whose employment 
 depended more or less directly on the mills. The results in 
 respect to committals from the town were such as the experience 
 of similar events in past years prepared me to anticipate. On 
 comparing the six months of the strike with the corresponding 
 six months of the previous year, it appeared that the committals 
 to the sessions, of youths under 21, rose from 18 to 36; youths 
 committed summarily decreased from 49 to 40. The committals 
 of male adults to the sessions rose from 42 to 52 ; male adults 
 summarily convicted decreased from 71 to 47 . The committals 
 of young females decreased from 30 to 10; the decrease in the 
 committal of older females was from 68 to 40. As a general 
 result, committals of all kinds from Preston during six months 
 of the strike (from ist November, 1853, to 3oth April, 1854) 
 diminished 227 per cent, as compared to the corresponding six 
 months of the preceding year ; they diminished 32 per cent, as 
 
 * ' During the four prosperous years the committals were much more affected by 
 Irish immigrants than during the three years of distress. Putting the Irish out of 
 the question for both periods, and taking sessions and summary cases together, the 
 discrepancy remains very striking : viz., average of three bad years 946 ; of four 
 good years 1,346.' 
 
422 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 compared to the committals of the six months immediately 
 preceding the strike. 
 
 ' To be taken in connexion with these facts is one which will 
 serve to explain them, viz., the diminished squandering of 
 money in public-houses and beer-houses to the amount of 
 iooo/. per week during the time the strike lasted. 
 
 ' In order also to do justice to the good conduct during the 
 strike of those who had been misled into the deplorable act, it 
 should be remembered that while only 86 young persons 
 under 21 years of age were sent to prison, more than 8500 
 young persons of the class to which they belonged had been 
 living for more than six months in complete idleness, and in 
 considerable suffering. 
 
 e The general conclusions deducible from the facts now detailed 
 appear to be, that ( bad times' may add a few cases to the sessions' 
 calendars, and that 'good times' greatly aggravate summary 
 convictions; that the increase to the sessions consists of the 
 young and thoughtless, who, when thrown into idleness, are 
 liable to lapse into dishonesty; and that the increase of summary 
 cases arises from the intemperance which high wages encourage 
 among the ignorant and sensual. 
 
 f In my Report for the prosperous year 1 845, it was shown 
 ' that when, in 1842-3, the operative was suffering most severely 
 from want of employment, intoxication, as a cause of crime, 
 was, compared to other causes, less than 17 per cent.; while 
 now (1845) that labour and skill are in the greatest demand, 
 arid wages are unusually high, the criminality attributable to 
 this debasing propensity has swollen to 41 per cent/ In a 
 previous Report (1843), in noticing the small proportion of 
 females committed during the distress of 1842-3 (i female to 
 6 '6 males), it was suggested that ' in it we find what strengthens 
 the opinion as to the inadequacy of poverty alone to account 
 for the amount of crime. Every one conversant with the con- 
 dition and habits of the poor knows that when distress falls 
 upon their families, it is the mothers who feel it most poignantly. 
 Too often they and their children are wanting necessary food 
 while their husbands are spending the last sixpence in the ale- 
 house. Too often, when the husband is on the tramp seeking 
 employ, or still worse, when he has entirely deserted his family, 
 the poor wife is left to resist as she may the temptation to 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 423 
 
 obtain by dishonesty the bread for which her children are 
 crying. When, further, the large amount of destitute widow- 
 hood is taken into the account, the conclusion appears to me 
 irresistible, that 'want and distress, uncombined with dissolute 
 habits, are rarely operative in producing crime.' ' 
 
 'I venture to hope that the truths which I have now 
 endeavoured to establish will not be regarded as the barren 
 results of a mere statistical investigation, but as a matter of 
 deep moral and social significance. 
 
 ' In this country, and at this time, it ought to be felt as a 
 grief and a reproach demanding anxious attention, that the 
 material prosperity of the industrious classes should be so con- 
 stantly accompanied by the moral degradation of a large portion 
 of them. In the tendencies and habits of many of our artizans 
 and labourers, there must be something deeply wrong when 
 ' what should have been for their wealth is to them an occasion 
 of falling' The deplorable truth is, that the wide want of 
 moral and religious instruction, and of really useful knowledge, 
 debars MILLIONS of our working population from the true use 
 and enjoyment of the advantages within their power. The money 
 earned by their toil and skill, instead of being employed in 
 accordance with the dictates of prudence and the requirements 
 of civilized life, is dissipated in rioting and drunkenness ; and 
 the results are misery, crime, and the gaol/* 
 
 EFFECTS OF PROHIBITION IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The information which the reader will derive from the 
 following extracts, is due to Dr. Frederick Lees, from whose 
 work on ' Prohibition' they are drawn. The book itself is a 
 highly instructive and interesting repertory of facts and argu- 
 ments in favour of adopting the Maine Law in this country. I 
 regret to observe that the learned author is now and then 
 betrayed by his zeal into personalities^ 
 
 148. Let us now indicate, by some facts and figures, and 
 by official, political, and professional testimonies, beginning with 
 
 * Journal of the Statistical Society of London, vol. xviii., part. I., March, 1855. 
 Parker & Son. 
 
 f An Argument for the Legislative Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic. By 
 Dr. F. R, Lees. London; Tweedie, 1856. Price is. 6d. 
 
424 
 
 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 NEW YORK STATE, what have been the social results of an 
 imperfect because initial and impeded prohibitory law. 
 
 { In publishing statistics on this question, we shall, so far as is 
 possible with the documents before us, eliminate or distinguish 
 
 sources of fallacy and confusion For example, we shall not, 
 
 in estimating crime lessened by the law, take account of the 
 cases of violation of the law itself which, are for acts that, in 
 their relations to the public, were the same before they were 
 treated as offences as now, only vastly more numerous and 
 mischievous. Sometimes, even, we shall not notice ' Drunken- 
 ness/ first, because, in this argument, we treat of drunkenness, 
 not so much on its own account, as for that to which it leads 
 and, second, because, in very many places, before the law was 
 passed, simple drunkenness was left unheeded by the police, but 
 offer the law it was narrowly watched, and instantly pounced 
 upon. In both such cases, the acts of offence might be greatly 
 diminished, while the committals were somewhat enlarged.* 
 
 ' The returns in the following table, illustrating the partial 
 operation of the New York Law, are for the same period (save 
 Utica), which is but for four months, instead of six namely, 
 from the 6th July to the 3ist December inclusive of each year, 
 excluding cases of simple drunkenness : 
 
 Committals for Offences excluding 
 Drunkenness. 
 
 1854. 
 
 . 
 
 Decrease in 
 favour of the 
 Law. 
 
 Cayuga County Gaol 
 
 85 
 H8 
 
 59 
 
 IO3 
 
 26 
 
 2 
 
 
 7c 
 
 -28 
 
 J.7 
 
 Ontario ,, 
 
 80 
 
 A? 
 
 
 Albany Watch-house 
 Syracuse (Police Record) .... 
 Auburn . 
 
 oy 
 1974 
 778 
 IO4. 
 
 1278 
 
 515 
 CQ 
 
 696 
 263 
 
 C A 
 
 Rochester ,, 
 
 J C 2 
 
 *7JO 
 
 812 
 
 Utica 
 
 165 
 
 80 
 
 8< 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4960 
 
 2898 
 
 2062 
 
 * ' Some one quoted Judge H. W. Bishop, to prove that the Law made bad 
 worse. ' Criminal business has very largely increased under the New Law.' Was 
 this true ? Quite true for one side of truth. Turning to his Charge, we find he 
 goes on to explain, ' I had, in my last term in the county of Middlesex, no fewer 
 than 104 indictments under the new law. I say, without fear of contradiction, that 
 nine- tenths of all crimes of personal violence are committed in a state of intoxication ; 
 and if the source; of the evil is dried up by the new law, Judges by-and-by will 
 have little criminal business to attend to.' ' 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 425 
 
 ' Such results, however, were nothing new. In the County 
 of ONTARIO, under the operation of No-licence, the inmates of 
 the gaol were reduced from i 2$ in the year 1 845, to 53 in 1486. 
 In 1847, licences were again granted, and the inmates of the 
 gaol increased to 132. In the County of GENNESSEE, a similar 
 course of things No-licence succeeding to Licence produced 
 similar issues. 
 
 ' So in Potter County, PENNSYLVANIA, the traffic has been for 
 a considerable time suppressed, the Judge refusing to grant any 
 licence. The consequences have been, that the prison has 
 become tenantless ; there is not a solitary pauper in the county ; 
 the business in the Criminal Court has ceased, and taxes have 
 been reduced one-half. 
 
 ( PORTLAND CITY, MAINE STATE. 
 
 ' Ten Months' Effects (June ist to March loth). 
 
 1851. 185-2. Decrease. 
 
 ' Committed to Alrahouse . . . .252 146 106 
 
 Inmates of Almshouse on March 2Oth . . 112 90* 22 
 
 Outdoor aid to Families . . . . 135 90 45 
 
 Committed to HOUSE OF CORRECTION for Intem- 
 perance ....... 46 iof 36f 
 
 ' 'At the term of the District Court, in March, 1851, there 
 were 17 indictments; at the term for 1852 there was but one 
 (for petty larceny), and that the result of a mistake/ 
 
 ' In the time of Mayor Dow, the House of Correction was 
 empty : but some relaxation in the police (the seven-years 
 electoral justices, be it remembered, yet contain rum-men 
 amongst them, who wink at evasion) having followed, we find 
 that in 1854, nearly one a week was sent to the House. In a 
 pamphlet of 100 pages, published at Toronto, entitled The 
 Maine Law Illustrated, being the tour of investigation made in 
 February, 1855, by Mr. A. Farewell and Mr. G. P. Ure, 011 
 behalf of the Canadian Prohibition League, we find a vast 
 number of testimonies to the same effect, from persons of the 
 highest character, including bishops, judges, governors, mayors, 
 marshals, magistrates, ministers, professors, physicians, counsel- 
 lors, representatives, &c. Their own conclusion is thus stated : 
 
 * N.B. 75 of these came here through intemperance. 
 f Notwithstanding much greater activity of the police under the new law. 
 
426 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 f It is almost universally acknowledged to be as successful in 
 its operations as any other penal law that was ever enacted/ 
 At Calais, on the New Brunswick border, N. Smith, Jun., of 
 the Executive Council, says : ' Where enforced, the results are 
 good ; the only places where it can be said to have failed are 
 where they have had Anti-Maine-Law Justices irresponsible 
 for seven years, save by impeachment. Many of those who 
 sold liquor have turned their attention to other businesses, and 
 are now better off than when selling liquor. They have far fewer 
 bad debts, and more reliable customers/ Mr. Sydney Perham, 
 Speaker of the House of Representatives, says : ' My know- 
 ledge of the workings of the law extend over a large section of 
 the State : I can assure you, the law works well' Professor 
 Pond, of Bangor, says : ' I have not seen a drunken man in 
 our streets for the last six months. The House of Correction 
 has been, at times, almost empty ; I know not but it is so now. 
 The expense of paupers is greatly diminished/ 
 
 1 Under date of September, 1 854, the Edinburgh News Com- 
 missioner thus writes of Water ville : 
 
 1 Ten or eleven years ago the cost of pauperism rose in a 
 manner unaccountable, but for excessive drinking, from 700 
 dollars to 1800 dollars a year. I am told that this year, with 
 twice the population, the public payments for the poor will not 
 exceed 1000 dollars. The amount of crime is also greatly 
 lessened. Those who still deserve the name of drunkards are 
 mostly Irishmen and French Canadians, the latter people having 
 settled somewhat extensively in the northern parts of Maine/ 
 
 ' On the 8th of March, 1852, the Marshal of Gardner 
 reports that ' at the commencement of the official term of office, 
 there were in the city 14 places where intoxicating liquor was 
 sold ; some of them the habitual resort of drunken, riotous, and 
 disorderly persons. But one person has been convicted of 
 drunkenness for the last four months ; but two sent to the watch- 
 house for the last six months. The law has been rigidly and 
 quietly enforced/ 
 
 ' The Marshal of Augusta reports for 1852 as follows : 
 
 ( ' Augusta had four wholesale stores ; business worth 200,000 
 dollars a year ; retail-shops, 25. The city was (officially) 
 exempted from the New Law for 60 days ; one dealer made a 
 profit of 900 dollars. As soon as the 60 days were out, three 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 427 
 
 of the wholesale dealers sent off their liquors to New York. 
 The remaining firm persisted in selling, until about 1000 dol- 
 lars' worth of their liquors was seized. Liquor may be sold at 
 the principal hotels, but stealthily : one of the keepers has been 
 twice convicted. The police used to be called up 100 nights in 
 a year : since the passage of the law, they have not been sum- 
 moned once.' 
 
 ' A gentleman well known to the philanthropic world, and 
 who has several times visited the Western hemisphere in the 
 interests of the slave, writes us as follows : ' Near Chelmsford, 
 8th month nth, 1856. Esteemed friend, Dr. Lees. In the 
 early part of the year 1854, whilst travelling in the State of 
 Maine, we came to Augusta, its capital. We were driven 
 through the city in a sledge, by our friend, J. B. Lang, of Yas- 
 salboro', who, as we passed along, pointed out to us the city 
 gaol, the ivindows of which were boarded up. ' This/ he said to 
 us, ' is owing to our Maine Law/ I think he remarked, c It is 
 empty now/ I remain, thy assured friend, JOHN CHANDLER/ 
 
 ' The Mayor of Bangor, in his Message to the Council, 
 April 22nd, 1852, says: ' On the ist July, when I gave notice 
 that I should enforce the law, 108 persons were selling liquors 
 here, openly; 20 of them have left the city. Of the remain- 
 ing 88, not one sells openly/ He furnished the following 
 statistics : 
 
 1850-1. Inmates of Almshouse and House of Correction . . 12,206 
 1851-2. Ditto ditto ditto . . 9,192 
 
 Decrease 3,014 
 
 1850- r. Number of public prosecutions ..... 101 
 
 1851-2. Ditto ditto . . 58 
 
 Decrease 43 
 
 ' 150. Southward, we pass to MASSACHUSETTS, regretting that 
 want of space compels us to abridge. The Hon. H. W. Bishop, 
 Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, says : f The violations 
 of the laiv itself add to the criminal business. The operation 
 of this new law has diminished the other class VERY MUCH. 
 Crimes of personal violence have hitherto constituted two-thirds 
 of all our criminal business. Several years will pass before the 
 Courts are satisfied as to the bearing of this new law/ 
 
428 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 1 The Rev. Mr. Seeley, of Springfield, says : ' Its beneficial 
 effects are very remarkable. It evidently made a very great 
 change in the moral state of the entire city. Its effects are 
 very marked upon our young men. Our Lyceum lectures were 
 never half so well attended.' 
 
 1 Mr. Chapman, Counsellor-at-Law, says : ' There is not 
 the one-hundredth part of the drinking in Springfield that there 
 was before the temperance movement commenced. Even those 
 who in their own families use their wine, give their influence 
 in favour of the Maine Law. Assaults were almost always com- 
 mitted under the influence of drink, and already that class of 
 crime has nearly ceased. Legal and moral agencies should be 
 combined. They are like the soul and body, and cannot act 
 well separately/ Mr. Morton, Police Justice, says : ' The law 
 has not yet had a fair trial with us. It is a fact that the city is 
 muck more quiet than it used to be. The police books will 
 give no correct information at present in regard to drunkenness, 
 because persons now seen intoxicated are arrested, which was 
 not the case before, and persons now sell in violation of the law. 
 In this way the criminal business appears to have increased, but 
 as the other class of offences, which formerly constituted the 
 chief business of the Police Court, has almost entirely dis- 
 appeared, THIS NEW CLASS WILL SOON BE WORKED OUT. It is a 
 certain fact, that nearly all the 45 cases brought before me 
 during the past month, January, 1855, have been under the 
 new law.' 
 
 ' In January, 1856, an address of the Temperance State Con- 
 vention announced that ' the law has evidently driven the open 
 liquor trade out of three-fourths of the State. There has been 
 a decrease of 50 criminals in the State Prison/ 
 
 ' In Worcester, the number of commitments for drunken- 
 ness, from June to September, was 64 less than in the same 
 months in 1852 ; 106 less than the same in 1850. 
 
 ' The Marshal of Salem reports of the law : ( There is a 
 decided improvement in the moral condition of the poorer 
 classes of the community, as the reduced number in the Alms- 
 houses would indicate. There are fewer persons in the Salem 
 Almshouses now, than there have been for eight or ten years 
 past/ 
 
 { In various parts of the State there have been held musters, 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 429 
 
 cattle-shows, public celebrations, at which the peace and order 
 have surprised all spectators, and opened a new era in the 
 history of such assemblages. The diminution of arrests for 
 drunkenness was 77 per cent. If there has since been a relapse, 
 it is from no defect in the law ; it was enforced long enough to 
 show its power. 
 
 ' In the city of LOWELL, according to the Hon. Mr. Hunting- 
 don, the Mayor, for the two months ending September 22nd, 
 
 1851, there were committed to the watch-house no in a state 
 of drunkenness : there were, besides, reported as being seen 
 drunk, not arrested, 390; total, 500. In the corresponding 
 period of the next year, when the law came in force, there were 
 committed to the watch-house for drunkenness, 70 ; reported as 
 seen drunk, but not arrested, no; total, 180; diminution, 320. 
 The amount of drunkenness for the month ending October 22nd, 
 
 1852, was 67 per cent, less than the corresponding months of 
 
 the previous year. 
 
 * * # # * * 
 
 f 151. Proceed we next to CONNECTICUT. First, of Hartford, 
 Mr.H.Y. Phelps says (February, 1855) : ' The fighting and riot- 
 ing, before so common, have entirely disappeared. Open drink- 
 ing is stopped/ Rev. Dr. Clarke says : ' The general effects of 
 the law are good : very apparent in connexion with our City 
 Mission/ Chief Justice Williams says : ' There are more 
 prosecutions for drunkenness. [The fact is,] under the old law, 
 persons drunk were paid no notice to. The practice was 
 growing very bad. Since the ist of August, 1854, I have not 
 seen more than one or two instances of intemperance in the 
 streets. Several parties have formed clubs, and get their 
 liquors from New York. Judge Bulkeley says : ' There is 
 much less drunkenness, much less liquor sold now. It is not 
 sold openly at all, but is driven into secret places. The number 
 of misdemeanours is far less/ Mr. B. Mann, Counsellor-at-Law, 
 says : ' I have been Police Justice here for 20 years, and / 
 knoiu a very great difference since the law went into effect. 
 The parties brought before the Court will average 8 out of 10 
 Irish/ Mr. L. S. Cowles says : ' I have seen ten men drunk 
 before this law passed, for one seen since. It was only when a 
 drunken man was making some assault, that he was taken up 
 formerly/ Mr. D. Hawley, City Missionary, says : 1 1 have a 
 
430 Sequel to Charge of January, 1 855. 
 
 Mission Sabbath School. Since the ist of August it has 
 increased one-third. I have seen in my rounds, wives, mothers, 
 even young women, the worse for liquor but all that has 
 changed ; and in my conversations with the poor, many of them 
 say that the law must have come from heaven it is too good 
 to have been framed by man/ Mr. J. W. Bull says ' Property- 
 holders take a deep interest in maintaining the law/ 
 
 ' Of Hartford, containing 20,000 people, a resident says, he 
 has not seen a single intoxicated person during the year ! 
 
 "The Hartford Courant of December 2ist, 1854, has the 
 following : 
 
 ' July, 1853, Committals to Workhouse . . . . . .16 
 
 July, 1854, ditto . .... 20 
 
 August, 1854, ditto 8 
 
 August to December, Discharged from the House . . .23 
 
 On September 9th, there was not a single male person in the 
 workhouse which except for two females would have been 
 tenantless. There has not been a parallel to this at any season, 
 for eight years at least how much longer we do not know; 
 but we presume there never was. Is there a sane person who 
 doubts for an instant what has caused this result ?' 
 
 * In Middleton, police expense was reduced by j 200 dollars. 
 For year ending October, 1854, cost of paupers, 2218 dol- 
 lars; for 1855, 1644 dollars. Vagrancy lessened. 
 
 ' Rev. J. C. Dickerson, of Plainville, says :- ( No open sale. 
 Expenses of town poor considerably diminished/ 
 
 ' Mr. Freeman, of Haddam village, says : ' Paupers reduced 
 from 10 to 4. Quite an improvement in the sale of necessary 
 articles of life/ Mr. Day, of East Haddam, says : ' Drunken- 
 ness diminished decidedly. Persons in almshouse, previously, 
 24; now, 1 6. No person sent to gaol since the law enacted/ 
 six months before. 
 
 ' Dr. F. Farnsworth, of Norwich, under date of January, 
 1856, says : ' The amount of disease in poor families is not one- 
 tenth what it was ; casualties are largely diminished/ 
 
 The Norwich Examiner gives the following statistics : 
 
 (August i to July 31.) 1853-4. 1854-5. Decrease. 
 
 Sent to Norwich Almshouse 61 40 21 
 
 Sent to New London County Gaol . . 220 127 93 
 
 Of the 220 cases, 73 were for drunkenness, and four for 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 431 
 
 selling; of the 127 cases, 35 were for drunkenness, 2 for getting 
 liquor under false pretences, and 16 for selling : and these cases 
 must obviously, under the continued operation of the law, 
 grow 
 
 1 Small by degrees, and beautifully less.' 
 
 'Number in gaol, August ist, 1855, 16. Four times as many 
 sellers have been committed the past year as during the previous 
 year ; but only half as many drunkards. 
 
 ' The Home Journal , of July 7th, 1 855, says : { The Maine 
 Liquor Law has ruined the gaol business completely. The gaol 
 at Wyndham is to be let for a boarding-house.' 
 
 ' Mayor Brooks, of Bridgport, gives emphatic testimony in 
 favour of the law, in his report to the Common Council. He 
 says that when Mayor, three years ago, he was called up three 
 nights out of five, throughout the entire year, to disperse brawl- 
 ing and noisy mobs. ' During the past year, I have not been 
 called upon in a single instance, by the watch at night, to suppress 
 or disperse any assemblage of riotous persons. All this change 
 I attribute to the working of the new Liquor Law. It is a 
 rare sight to see a person drunk in our streets/ 
 
 1 Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, January 20, 1855, cites as 
 follows : 
 
 ' ' On the ist of August, 1854, the law came into operation 
 in Connecticut, and was carried out in a very stringent manner. 
 A great change was visible immediately after, in Newhaven, 
 the capital. The noisy gangs of rowdies disappeared, and their 
 midnight brawls ceased ; our streets were quiet night and day ; 
 and the most violent opponents of the law said: f lf such are 
 the effects of the ]aw, we will oppose it no longer/ A few 
 persons got intoxicated upon liquor from New York, and were 
 promptly arrested, and fined twenty dollars and costs, which 
 they paid or went to gaol. As to the prisons and almshouses 
 in the various parts of the State, they are getting empty. A 
 large number of our most desperate villains, who formerly kept 
 grog-shops and gambling-houses, have emigrated, finding busi- 
 ness so bad. Several who kept gambling saloons and disorderly 
 houses in defiance of law, declared that neither one nor the 
 other can be supported without liquor, and have moved to New 
 York, where they can continue their infamous business advan- 
 tageously/ 
 
433 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 ' The Puritan Recorder, in the spring of 1 856, contained a 
 letter, from which we transcribe the following paragraph, 
 showing how the law cherishes charitable feeling and fore- 
 thought : 
 
 1 ' Another characteristic has marked the past winter. There 
 was less complaint than usual on the part of the poor. The 
 attention was more awake on the subject ; more had been con- 
 tributed and done to secure the relief needed. The poor more 
 economically husbanded their own resources. The operation 
 of the Maine Law had sensibly counteracted the sources of want. 
 These beneficial effects have been perceived to be increasing 
 ever since the law began to take effect. Another fact tells 
 with emphasis. It is the marked diminution of fires. Since 
 August i, 1854, the loss of property from this cause has been 
 fully one-half less.' 
 
 1 The testimony of the Rev. Leonard Bacon, D.D., Newhaven, 
 will also be read with interest : 
 
 ' ' The operation of the law for one year is a matter of obser- 
 vation to the inhabitants. Its effect in promoting peace, order, 
 quiet, and general prosperity, no man can deny. Never for 
 twenty years has our city been so quiet and peaceful as under 
 its action. It is no longer simply a question of temperance, 
 but a Governmental question one of Legislative foresight and 
 morality/ 
 
 ' Kev. Dr. Kennady says : ' The law has produced the hap- 
 piest result. A great improvement in Sabbath School attend- 
 ance. 3 
 
 ' His Excellency Governor Button says : c At the late State 
 Agricultural Fair it was estimated that, on one day, from 
 20,000 to 30,000 persons of every condition of life were assem- 
 bled, and not a solitary drunkard was seen and not the slightest 
 disturbance made. Criminal prosecutions are rapidly diminish- 
 ing. The home of the peaceful citizen was never before so 
 secure' 
 
 ( RHODE ISLAND comes next : where, however, various ob- 
 stacles have been placed in the way of the enactment. Mr. 
 Barstow, the mayor of Providence, says : ' After the law had 
 been in operation three months, I published statistics, showing 
 that the law, in that short time, had made a reduction of 
 nearly sixty per cent, in our monthly committals, while the 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 433 
 
 number of insane paupers in Butler's Hospital, was reduced 
 one-fifth/ 
 
 1851. 1852. Decrease. 
 Committals to Watch-house for drunkenness 
 
 and assaults ...... 282 177 105 
 
 Committals to County Gaol . . . 161 99 62 
 
 ' The Hon. W. R. Watson, Secretary of State, says : 
 
 ' ' Its effects, I cannot doubt, have been greatly to diminish 
 crime, pauperism, misery, and that large and dark catalogue of 
 moral, social, and physical evils which result from intem- 
 perance. The Sabbath is better observed the attendance at 
 public worship increased and individual comfort and public 
 prosperity promoted. It has had to work its way through all 
 the technicalities of the imported English Common Law, and 
 all the delays, quibbles, and subtleties of those whose business 
 it is to interpose between violated laws and merited punishment/ 
 
 f 153. In VERMONT the law has been still more successful. 
 
 f lri July, 1853, Mr. L. Underwood, States' Attorney of 
 Chittenden County, wrote from Burlington : ' The law has put 
 an end to drunkenness and crime almost entirely. Within this 
 town, from December ist, 1852, until March 8th, 1853, com- 
 plaints were made to me, almost daily, for breaches of the 
 peace ; and, on investigation, I was satisfied that nine-tenths of 
 the crimes committed during that time were caused by drunken- 
 ness. Since the 8th of March, two complaints only have been 
 made for such offences, and only one was caused by drunken- 
 ness. The law is more popular now than when first enacted/ 
 
 'Mr. M. L. Church says (February, 1855): 'I am very 
 much pleased with the law. You might stay here for a month, 
 and you would not see a drunken man in the city/ 
 
 1 ' The Grand Jury/ says Mr. J. L. Adams, the County 
 Clerk, ' not composed of friends of the law, in their last report 
 say: f We feel highly gratified to find the gaol destitute of in- 
 mates a circumstance attributable, in a very great measure, 
 we believe, to the suppression of the sale of intoxicating 
 liquors/ Everywhere the law is popular, in proportion as it is 
 carried out/ 
 
 1 Professor Pease, of Burlington University, says : ' There is 
 a very great diminution in the use of liquors by the students. 
 We have not had, for a year past, any rowdyism/ 
 
 F F 
 
434 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 ' 154. Nor must we forget the last of the New England 
 States that has adopted the Prohibitory Law NEW HAMPSHIRE 
 which has been so long the ' grog-shop' for the ' thirsty 
 souls' of the bordering States. 
 
 ' In March, 1856, the Journal announces that 'the Law 
 works admirably in all parts of the State. Pauperism and 
 crime are almost unknown. 9 
 
 1 In June, Rev. E. W. Jackson writes : ' The Law is accom- 
 plishing all that the most sanguine of us expected/ 
 
 ' R. R. Brown, hotel-keeper at Carthage, NEW YORK, says that 
 by abolishing the liquor bar } he is brought in contact with a 
 better class of customers, and all the duties and associations of 
 his business are improved to a degree which affords him a four- 
 fold compensation for the ' unprofitable profits' which arose from 
 vending f the drink of the drunkard/ 
 
 ' The Tribune, INDIANA, publishes the following, in April, 
 1856. Committed to Penitentiary, five months preceding June, 
 1855, when the law went into effect, 83. Committed during 
 seven months after, 51 a reduction of 50 per cent. Since the 
 law was annulled by the Court, drinking and gambling have 
 held carnival. The annual Report of the Indiana Hospital for 
 the Insane, out of 910 cases, assigns 59 cases as follows: 
 Intemperance, 28 ; dissipation, 9 ; abuse from drunken hus- 
 bands, 15; mania a potu, 7. Each inmate, says the Indiano- 
 polis Gazette, costs 125 dols. a year; so that, for the storage 
 and care of this one item of the rumsellers' harvest, we pay 
 6 1 25 dollars annually. 
 
 ' IOWA. From this young, but rapidly rising State, a letter 
 from the States' Attorney, says : ' The Prohibitory Law in 
 this State is doing considerable good. It works well. If 
 vigorously carried out it will effect more than all the moral- 
 reform lectures that can be mustered into the service/ 
 
 ' Under a knowledge of such facts as we have detailed, can 
 we wonder at the recent expression of the Rev. John D. 
 Lawyer, Chaplain to the New York State Prison, at Auburn ? 
 ' Give us the Maine Law, and in five years Auburn Prison is 
 no more/ 
 
 1 How striking is the remark of the Canadian Commission, 
 Messrs. Ure and Farewell, after their tour through New England 
 and New York : ' We saw more drinking in the City Hotel, 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 435 
 
 in Hamilton, iu the space of seven minutes, one morning before 
 eight o'clock, than we had seen in all our perambulations 
 through the seven States/ ' 
 
 I may aptly conclude this subject by an extract, showing the 
 effect in Edinburgh of Forbes Mackenzie's Act, prohibiting the 
 sale in Scotland of intoxicating liquors on the Sunday. 
 
 From the 'Edinburgh News' of January loth, 1857. 
 
 ' As drink is the fountain of nearly all crime in Edinburgh, 
 we must show that as drunkenness decreases so crime diminishes. 
 The Forbes Mackenzie Act, and its effects, will no doubt be 
 ridiculed by the publicans and their organs ; but if we can show 
 that crime diminishes along with drunkenness, it will be for 
 doubters to show any more reasonable cause for the remarkable 
 amendment. In Sunday cases, the number is slightly increased 
 last year over 1855, and this is accounted for by the notorious 
 relaxation of the Act in certain localities. 
 
 ' Number of Cases on Sundays. 
 
 1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856. 
 
 Cases taken to the Police-office and 
 
 Station-houses for protection . . 729 641 455 3^9 446 
 
 Cases of parties Drunk when appre- 
 hended for offences 623 664 423 379 333 
 
 Total . . . .1352 1305 878 768 779 
 
 ' Number of Cases from Eight o'clock on the Sunday mornings 
 till Eight o'clock on the Monday mornings. 
 
 1852. 1853. l8 54- 1855. 1856, 
 
 Cases taken to the Police-office and 
 
 Station-houses for protection . . 401 333 176 82 119 
 
 Cases of parties Drunk when appre- 
 hended for offences 308 315 165 61 66 
 
 Total .... 709 648 341 143 185 
 
 ' But even with the relaxation, which will now be at an end, 
 the number of 185 persons, drunk in 1856 under the Act, com- 
 pares most favourably with the 709 Sunday drunkards found by 
 the police before the Act was brought into operation. But that 
 general crime follows the ratio of general drunkenness is demon- 
 strated by the more general tables. The number of persons 
 
43 6 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855 
 
 found drunk, whether charged with special crimes or not, 
 
 were 
 
 1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856. 
 
 9767 9730 8749 8095 7736 
 
 And about one-half of these were charged with crimes, the 
 other taken to the police-office for protection. Contrast these 
 figures with the number of persons brought under the cogni- 
 zance of the police, and it will be seen that just as drunkenness 
 declines, so those brought under the notice* of the police are 
 diminished. The gross number of persons taken cognizance of 
 by the police were 
 
 1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856. 
 
 18,932 18,300 15,749 15,320 14,353 
 
 So that, in 1852, while there were 7962 drunkards, there were 
 18,932 required to be looked after by the police; so, when in 
 1856, the public drunkards had diminished to 7736, the persons 
 to be looked after fell to 14,353 & fact which goes to show 
 that drunkards not only require looking after themselves, but 
 that every two drunkards increases by four those whom the 
 police require to watch or apprehend. This shows, beyond all 
 doubt, the effect of drink in the production of crime, and ought 
 to convince all unblinded by interest or love of intoxicants, that 
 the temperance reformer is a true regenerator of his country. 
 
 { After the passing of the Forbes Mackenzie Act, it was often 
 asserted that, although the working classes were prevented 
 drinking on Sunday, they would make up for that by increased 
 drunkenness on Saturday and Monday; and we know individual 
 cases where workmen have been open to this charge. But that 
 these cases are exceptional, while the general rule is in favour 
 of increased Saturday and Monday sobriety, the following 
 figures abundantly demonstrate. On Saturdays the numbers 
 were 
 
 1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856. 
 
 1933 l8 79 l8 53 1783 1744 
 
 On Monday, however, the figures are even more encouraging, 
 showing what we, and all who have any knowledge of the 
 habits of working men, always declared, that the most dangerous 
 temptation to a debauch was the Monday morning dram ; and 
 since the public-houses have not opened till eight o'clock, the 
 
Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 437 
 
 effects are most conspicuous on Monday sobriety, the numbers 
 of Monday drunkards being 
 
 1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856. 
 
 1169 1236 1164 1038 852 
 
 This is most encouraging progress in the right direction; and 
 we shall conclude our review of the diminishing drunkenness 
 and crime of last year, as compared with former years, by 
 asking the earnest attention of all parties to the facts thus 
 given. These are worth volumes of arguments, and any amount 
 of interested abuse or distorted ingenuities ; and an Act that 
 exists under such favourable coincidences, if you will, but we say 
 which produces such favourable results as these, will not be 
 easily blotted from the statute-book/ 
 
 [Communicated by Mr. Duncan M'Laren, who guarantees 
 its accuracy.] 
 
 MARCH, 1857. The Journal of the Statistical Society for this 
 month contains a paper by Professor Walsh, of Dublin Univer- 
 sity, the eminent Political Economist, opposed to the views or 
 what he considers the views propounded by Mr. Clay. f A 
 theory has lately grown up/ says the Doctor, 'that when the 
 people suffer privation they refrain from crime, but fall into 
 excesses when prosperity returns. This notion, opposed to the 
 malesuada fames of the poet, is based on some criminal statis- 
 tics, principally composed of the records of summary convictions 
 in a few localities/ * 
 
 I am not aware that this general proposition has been laid 
 down by any writer: certainly not by Mr. Clay, who, though 
 not mentioned, is obviously pointed at by Dr. Walsh. Neither 
 has Mr. Clay fallen into the error of depending simply upon 
 summary convictions for petty offences, as the reader has 
 already seen. The apparent difference of opinion between these 
 two able writers, may perhaps be adjusted by taking into account 
 that, as regards crime, opposite causes will sometimes produce 
 identical effects. Hard times create forced idleness and desti- 
 tution j my experience, however, leads me to the opinion that 
 the latter, taken as a motive to crime, is greatly overrated. I 
 
 * Journal of the Statistical Society of London, Vol. xx., Part i., p. 77. March, 
 1857- 
 
438 Sequel to Charge of January, 1855. 
 
 could almost count on my fingers all the cases which have 
 fallen under my observation, either at the Bar or on the Bench, 
 of crimes originating in the pressure of want. Still the idle- 
 ness and destitution which are the natural offspring of adversity, 
 are undoubted incentives to crime. But these incentives may 
 also have their origin in sudden prosperity loosening the bands 
 of self-control, and inveigling the population enjoying it, or 
 suffering from it whichever expression best accords with the 
 truth into extravagance, and impatience of labour impatience 
 of labour leading to idleness, and, when combined with extra- 
 vagance, to destitution. But as great prosperity is rarely 
 diffused on the sudden among the lower classes, except in 
 the seats of a few manufactures, it is to be expected taking 
 the whole nation as the basis of comparison that prosperity 
 will be less productive of crime than its opposite; and the 
 Professor is supported by the tables in drawing this conclusion. 
 
A 
 
 439 
 
 CHAEGE OF APEIL, 1855. 
 From the 'Midland Counties Herald,' April ]2, 1855. 
 
 T a Sessions held on the 9th of April, the Recorder thus 
 addressed the Grand Jury : 
 
 GENTLEMEN 
 
 It is characteristic of the present age that no insti- 
 tution of the country is held to be so hallowed by time as to be 
 exempt from scrutiny; for although it may have been sufficient 
 for its purpose at the date of its origin, changes in the structure 
 of society and in other portions of our state machinery, may 
 have rendered its continuance inexpedient. Or, if its retention be 
 desirable at all, it may only be desirable after great modifications 
 shall have been made, to bring the old institution into harmony 
 with the new arrangements with which it has become associated. 
 Recent events, which are so deeply impressed on our minds that 
 the slightest allusion brings them before us with painful vivid- 
 ness, must have a strong tendency to aggravate that desire for 
 changes which had, perhaps, become sufficiently intense without 
 the aid of such a stimulus. Gentlemen, I should belie the 
 tenor of my whole life, if I were to undervalue the advan- 
 tage of adapting our institutions to the progress of human 
 affairs, or to doubt the necessity for such adjustments. If, from 
 a superstitious fear of innovation we do not advance, we must 
 for all practical purposes fall back. Of the arguments against 
 novelties, Lord Bacon says, ' All this is true, if time stood still ; 
 which, contrariwise, moveth so round, that a fro ward retention 
 of custom is as turbulent a thing as an innovation; and they 
 that reverence too much old times are but a scorn to the new/ 
 But then he calls upon us ' to beware that it be the reforma- 
 tion that draweth on the change ; and not the desire of change 
 that pretendeth the reformation/ These, Gentlemen, are golden 
 words ; and in the present excited state of the nation cannot be 
 read too often, or pondered with too much care. Changes are 
 inevitable, but let them be made cautiously, I might almost say 
 
44 Charge of April, 1855. 
 
 tenderly, and with anxious discrimination. In what belongs to 
 this world, the maxim that ' whatever is, is right/ must always 
 be a pernicious error; but the public mind, when inflamed, 
 sometimes acts upon a worse ; and if not in terms, yet in 
 deeds, pronounces that ' whatever is, is wrong/ 
 
 Gentlemen, we should read the signs of the times with but 
 little attention, if we did not perceive that the venerable insti- 
 tution of the Grand Jury, of which you are to-day the living 
 representatives, is about to take its trial ; and that charges are 
 made against it which may lead rather to its destruction than to 
 its improvement. It has not infrequently happened in London, 
 that gentlemen filling the position which you here occupy, have 
 denounced Grand Juries, and called for their abolition; and Bills 
 have from time to time been introduced into Parliament, under 
 high sanction, framed in the same spirit; which, although 
 they were limited to the metropolis, could hardly have re- 
 mained so restricted in their application, for any great length 
 of time. Being of opinion myself that much alteration in the 
 functions of the Grand Jury is imperatively called for, arid 
 being also very strongly of opinion that these functions ought to 
 be reformed, and not swept away, I proceed at once to treat in 
 their order both branches of this proposition. 
 
 It will probably suffice to raise in your minds a presumption 
 that modifications must be required, when I state that the duties 
 of the Grand Jury, as prescribed by the law, are at the present 
 day precisely what they were many centuries ago. It would, 
 however, be rash to innovate on merely presumptive arguments. I 
 must, therefore, ask your permission to go somewhat into detail. 
 
 In early times, Gentlemen, an injured party did not apply 
 to a Justice of the Peace, for the best of all reasons there was 
 no such minister of the law in existence. He waited until the 
 time came round for assembling a Grand Jury ; made his com- 
 plaint to that body, who, if he established his case to their satis- 
 faction, presented to the Court to which they were attached an 
 indictment against the party accused ; and this indictment, so 
 found, became an authority by which the Court was empowered 
 to issue its warrant for apprehending the defendant. At first 
 sight, it would appear difficult to comprehend how society could 
 hold together, when criminals had so great a privilege as im- 
 punity from restraint until a bill was found against them by a 
 
Charge of April, 1855. 441 
 
 Grand Jury ; and, certainly, if no better provision had since 
 come into existence for ensuring the attendance of the accused 
 at the hour of trial, than that which satisfied our ancestors in 
 the primitive times of which I am speaking, we should find the 
 number of absentees very considerable. Circumstances, Gentle- 
 men, arising out of habits, manners, laws, and indeed the 
 composition of society itself, mitigated, to our early forefathers, 
 an evil which we should find intolerable. To lay these before 
 you at length would demand a volume. Suffice it, therefore, 
 to state, in general terms, that every member of the community 
 was retained in his position in life, and for the most part in the 
 district in which he was born, by motives, many of which have 
 ceased to operate; and that to be an exile or outlaw was a 
 calamity far greater with them than it is with us. Moreover, 
 the juries of numerous local courts exercised the right of finding 
 bills of indictment against criminals ; so that the intervals 
 between the offence and its prosecution, were shorter than we 
 should find them, if deprived of our recourse to the Justice of 
 the Peace. 
 
 The jurisdiction of this valuable and important magistrate 
 has grown up slow r ly. It has been partly derived from statutes 
 which have been accumulating on this branch of our jurispru- 
 dence for at least five centuries ; but at first it owed its prin- 
 cipal increase to usurpations, tolerated from the necessity of the 
 case, and from the weakness of the class chiefly obnoxious to 
 the exercise of this vigour beyond the law; until they had 
 ceased to be novelties, and had become too well established by 
 usage to be successfully opposed. 
 
 Thus, Gentlemen, by slow degrees, a tribunal gathered 
 strength which, taking cognizance of offenders immediately oil 
 their detection, and by such promptitude guarding against their 
 flight from justice, could not fail of being brought into exten- 
 sive operation. But, as I have said, its rise was slow. Hence, 
 probably, it was, that the stages of its progress were unmarked 
 by the public and the Legislature. Otherwise, it is difficult to 
 account for the curious fact, that the onerous duties of that 
 preliminary investigation which has for its object to determine 
 whether or not there is sufficient evidence against the accused to 
 put him upon his trial, should have continued for ages to be per- 
 formed twice over ; first by the Justice of the Peace, and again 
 
442 Charge of April, 1 855. 
 
 by the Grand Jury. Some weight must, no doubt, be given to 
 the wholesome attachment of Englishmen to their ancient con- 
 stitutional courts ; and to their reliance on the protection of 
 Grand Juries against false and oppressive accusations. But, 
 making all reasonable allowance for these motives, they will 
 scarcely account for the burthen having been so long and so 
 patiently endured. 
 
 In our own times I may say, without the slightest disparage- 
 ment of the gentlemen on whom the duty is cast, that Grand 
 Juries are called upon to repeat the inquiry already made before 
 the committing magistrate, under almost every conceivable dis- 
 advantage. They hear the witnesses in secret, who may, there- 
 fore, in comparative safety, withhold or pervert the truth ; and 
 thus, in the metropolis, it is found that whenever evidence is 
 bought off, the scene of perjury is neither the police-office nor 
 the sessions court, where the witnesses must speak under the 
 check of publicity, it is laid in the chamber of the Grand Jury, 
 Hence, this body is called ' the first hope of the London thief/ 
 Another source of miscarriage is that the Grand Jury is led into 
 errors of law, for want of legal advice. The Judge of the Court 
 to which they are attached is, no doubt, ready, at every moment, 
 to render his aid in cases of difficulty; but it is, I presume, 
 felt that frequent reference to him would inconveniently arrest 
 proceedings, and, consequently, it is not often made. Let me, 
 Gentlemen, avail myself of this opportunity to assure you that 
 I shall always be ready to give you my best assistance; and shall 
 think little of any interruption so fully justified by its cause. 
 Another difficulty arises from the Grand Jury being left 
 without instructions as to what facts the witnesses are coming 
 to prove. How, Gentlemen, you make your way among these 
 various impediments, and perform your task with so little 
 damage to the interests of justice, I am not quite able to 
 explain ; but most assuredly, the praise of doing less harm than 
 might reasonably be expected, is the only compliment which exist- 
 ing arrangements permit me to offer for your acceptance. 
 
 Perhaps it will enable me to place the defects of the present 
 system in a clear light, if we imagine Grand Juries to have 
 been instituted after, instead of before, Justices of the Peace. 
 Suppose it had been alleged that the inquiry before the 
 magistrate, which precedes a commitment, was insufficient for 
 
Charge of April, 1855. 443 
 
 the due protection of the accused; arid that the second inquiry 
 by you, conducted as it now is, had been suggested as an addi- 
 tional safeguard. Is it possible, Gentlemen, that the Legislature 
 could adopt such an expedient? Is it not obvious that the 
 main injury resulting from a commitment which ought not 
 to have been made, is the imprisonment before trial to which 
 the accused is thereby subjected. Surely, when this injury has 
 been consummated, it is a poor and equivocal benefit to an 
 innocent prisoner, to discharge him without that public investi- 
 gation by which alone his innocence can be manifested to 
 the world ; exposing him by such a course to all the doubts and 
 misgivings incident to every decision arrived at in secret, but 
 attaching itself, in an especial manner, to one, subject to so 
 many liabilities to error, as you have seen belong to inquiries 
 before a Grand Jury. Nor must I omit to remark, that this 
 relief to the prisoner, if such it is to be called, is attained by 
 overruling the conclusion arrived at after a public inquiry. 
 Gentlemen, I feel certain that if you or I were unjustly charged 
 with a crime, upon evidence which had induced a magistrate to 
 send us to the bar evidence which, according to modern usage, 
 is printed in the newspapers we should desire a trial as public 
 as that preliminary examination; so that all men might not 
 only know that we were acquitted, but be in possession of 
 the grounds on which we had met and defeated the charge. 
 We should also desire that the proofs of our innocence 
 should be as widely diffused as the allegations of our guilt. 
 
 Second to the considerations to which I have called your 
 attention, but still of no mean importance in itself, is the tax 
 on the time of witnesses, caused by the additional inquiry before 
 the Grand Jury. In every case prosecuted, three attendances 
 are necessary ; and it may so happen that each one involves the 
 witness in loss or inconvenience, but poorly compensated by his 
 pecuniary allowance ; which allowance, indeed, will remind you 
 that each attendance is not only a private inconvenience, but a 
 burthen on the public fund out of which the costs are defrayed. 
 Again, the greater the number of attendances required, the 
 greater the chance cf absence; and, by consequence, of miscar- 
 riage in the conviction of offenders. 
 
 In these happy times, Gentlemen, when we can repose with 
 confidence on the desire of the administrators of our laws to 
 
444 Charge of April, 1855. 
 
 do justice, I am utterly unaware of any valid benefits to be 
 weighed in the balance, against the various mischiefs which I 
 have pointed out to you, as resulting from the employment of 
 Grand Juries to revise the decisions of committing magistrates ; 
 and consequently I am prepared to see your jurisdiction over 
 cases sent to trial by Justices of the Peace, ancient as it is, 
 brought at once and for ever to an end. 
 
 But, Gentlemen, let me call your attention to another 
 grievance. There is no legal necessity that a case should be 
 carried before a Justice of the Peace at all. The prosecutor 
 may wait until the Grand Jury is assembled ; and then, without 
 notice to the accused, he may present a bill against him, support 
 it by secret evidence, and when it is found by the Grand Jury, 
 he may sue out a Bench warrant, apprehend the defendant, and 
 put him under the necessity of either going to prison until the 
 time of trial shall arrive, or of finding sufficient bail to ensure 
 his appearance at the bar. And it not seldom occurs that, 
 when the prosecutor has a sinister object in view in preferring 
 a charge against his neighbour, he takes this mode of gratifying 
 his malice ; thus placing the accused under the cloud of 
 suspicion which must hang over every man against whom 
 a bill of indictment has been found, during the whole interval 
 which precedes his opportunity of clearing himself, by the 
 publicity of a trial before the Petit Jury; where, for the first 
 time, his witnesses will be heard. Again, it has sometimes 
 happened that the prosecutor has presumed upon what he knew 
 to be the prejudices of a Grand Jury, secure that their prepos- 
 sessions would not be removed by the arguments of counsel, or 
 dissipated by the summing-up of the Judge. A notable instance 
 in point will be found in a recent speech in the House of Lords 
 by our great leader in law reform, the revered Lord Brougham; 
 who calls for various changes in our Criminal Procedure ; and, 
 among others, for several in the jurisdiction of Grand Juries. 
 ' I recollect/ says he, ( being Counsel, one of the last times I 
 ever attended the Criminal Court, for a gentleman of great 
 property and high respectability, a man of io,ooo/. or I2,ooo/. 
 a-year, who stood in the dock, and was arraigned for wilful 
 murder, because the Grand Jury sagaciously deemed him crimi- 
 nally accountable for the neglect of one of his bailiffs, who had 
 thrown a rope across a road that was under repair, and forgot 
 
Charge of April, 1855. 445 
 
 to put a lantern upon it; so that, unfortunately, a woman 
 coming from market was thrown from her cart, and broke her 
 neck. The instant that Mr. Baron Wood heard the case 
 opened he directed an acquittal, of course ; and desired the 
 officer of the Court to summon the Grand Jury into his presence. 
 They were discharged, and his lordship said, ' I am extremely 
 sorry for it ; this is a most shameful case/ The Jury were not, 
 however, rebuked; but had they been so, the censure would 
 have fallen exceedingly light, because no one could possibly tell 
 which of them had agreed in finding the bill. Here, however, 
 was this respectable man, who had held up an arraigned hand 
 in the dock with felons, and who went down to the grave with 
 the stigma which any spiteful neighbour or adversary at an 
 election or in the heat of religious controversy for he was a 
 Roman Catholic could fling in his teeth, that he had once 
 stood his trial for murder/ In this case, Gentlemen, it is 
 evident that the Grand Jury, uiicorrected in their view of the 
 law, and stimulated perhaps by religious animosity, perpetrated 
 a wrong so monstrous as not to be credible, except on such 
 high testimony as that by which it is proved. 
 
 Now, Gentlemen, while I would not prevent a complainant 
 who had brought his accusation before a magistrate, and had 
 failed in obtaining a commitment of the accused, from again 
 preferring his complaint before a Grand Jury, I would assimilate 
 the proceedings in their chamber to those in the police-court. 
 Let the investigation be public ; let the accused have the benefit 
 of legal assistance, and let him have the right of adducing evi- 
 dence in his defence. If, after thus hearing the whole case, a 
 Grand Jury should be of opinion that it ought to be sent to trial, 
 the accused would have no just ground for dissatisfaction ; and 
 as the trial might quickly be had, the hardship upon him if the 
 ultimate result should be an acquittal, would be reduced to the 
 smallest possible amount. Gentlemen, it must be obvious to all 
 who have had much experience in criminal courts, that the class 
 of cases to which I have just called your attention would be 
 extremely rare ; and if the changes which I propose were 
 adopted, your functions, as they are at present exercised, would 
 be all but annihilated. The question, then, would arise as to 
 whether what would still remain, would justify our calling you 
 from your homes and affairs, to give your attendance in our 
 
446" Charge of April, 
 
 courts. Certainly, if I had enumerated all your duties, you 
 ought not to be summoned, except where notice had been given 
 that a case would be presented to you, which a Justice of the 
 Peace had refused to send to trial. But, Gentlemen, I would 
 release you from labours, in the performance of which you can 
 scarcely be useful to your country, while you may be the cause 
 of much injury, not with a view of dispensing with your 
 valuable assistance, but to employ you upon inquiries in 
 which your aid and sanction might confer signal benefits on 
 the public. 
 
 It will not be supposed that one who, like myself, belongs 
 to the official class of the community, would undervalue the 
 merits of the order of which he is a member. Still I cannot 
 but feel, that although in so advanced a stage of civilization as 
 that at which we have now arrived, the labours of persons 
 unskilled by training must in many departments of the public 
 service be little better than useless, nevertheless the official 
 mind is liable to certain disqualifications, which do not attach 
 themselves to citizens who, like you, are selected at the moment 
 from a wide circle ; and who return again into the society from 
 which you came, without having had time to acquire official 
 habits. There is a keenness and freshness of perception about 
 you, which with us is often worn out. Let me give an instance 
 which occurred in this Court some years ago. A prison then 
 existed not far from the place at which we are assembled, for 
 the detention of debtors sent there by the Court of Requests ; 
 and inasmuch as the jurisdiction of that Court did not extend 
 beyond 5/., it is easy to see that this was a prison for the poor 
 and for the poor alone which perhaps may account for its 
 escaping the observation of the classes who would have had 
 sufficient influence to prevent the scandal to which I am about 
 to direct your attention. It so happened that a riot broke out 
 within the walls of the prison, in which the turnkey was roughly 
 handled; and the offenders were indicted in this Court for 
 assaulting him. Their trial led to a disclosure, which showed 
 into what a miserable and disgraceful state the gaol had been 
 permitted to fall. This disclosure filled the jury, and indeed 
 all who heard the case, with disgust and indignation. The 
 sentiments of the auditory spread through the town, and quickly 
 reached the Commissioners of the Court, in which body the 
 
Charge of April, 1855. 447 
 
 management of the prison was vested; and with great prompti- 
 tude they commenced alterations at a large expense, by which 
 the evil and the opprobrium were both removed. Gentlemen, 
 I knew that the prison must have been visited by the Inspector, 
 and I was curious to ascertain what had been his report. I 
 found it in print ; and it was such as most assuredly ought to 
 have engaged the attention of those whose duty it was to turn 
 the labours of the Inspectors and the contents of their blue 
 books, to account. Overwhelmed, however, with business, and 
 their minds jaded, and made to a certain extent indifferent by 
 the multitude of claims upon their attention, they had suffered 
 the evil to continue untouched ; and, but for the circumstances 
 just narrated, it probably would have remained utterly neglected 
 and unredressed until the extinction of the Court, which after- 
 wards took place. Again, a few months ago, a case was brought 
 before this Court, in which it was proved that, during a very 
 long period, a yard in this town, used for the slaughtering of 
 horses, had been suffered to exist in a most revolting state of 
 filth; diffusing its poisonous exhalations through the neighbour- 
 hood, and carrying sickness and death into many a family 
 effects which had been made the subject of complaint to official 
 persons, whose motions, however, were so sluggish that years 
 elapsed before any step was taken to protect the unhappy suf- 
 ferers against the continuance of their wrongs. Now, Gentle- 
 men, it occurs to me that if men like yourselves, who, col- 
 lected from all parts of the town, must, some or other of you, 
 be cognizant of whatever occurs among us, were relieved from 
 the drudgery to which I have adverted a drudgery, like that 
 of the treadmill, at once monotonous, toilsome, and useless, 
 engrossing your time and exhausting your strength so that you 
 might have leisure for inquiries like those to which I point ; 
 if, I say, you were relieved from this irksome duty, we might 
 have, through your means, a flood of light thrown upon all the 
 dark spots in the Borough ; and might bring the force of general 
 opinion to act with us in removing whatever is injurious or dis- 
 creditable, in the town in which we perform our respective duties. 
 Nor would your attention, Gentlemen, be confined to painful 
 or invidious tasks. It would be your privilege to suggest 
 various useful undertakings ; as wants may arise in our con- 
 stantly advancing progress. Gentlemen, I hold in my hand a 
 
448 Charge of April, 
 
 report of the presentment of a Grand Jury in the city of Phila- 
 delphia ; the capital, as you know, of the important State of 
 Pennsylvania. It relates to their House of Refuge; a noble 
 institution, which has now been for many years very successful 
 in reforming youthful offenders of both sexes. Their language 
 is as follows : ' Few charities, as the Grand Inquest believe, 
 have higher claims on the public, and few, perhaps, will be more 
 permanently useful, than the House of Refuge. Here the mis- 
 guided and neglected, rather than guilty child, will find an abode 
 where religious and moral principles and industrious habits will 
 be inculcated; where virtue will be cherished, and vice repressed. 
 When the pupil leaves the institution, it is to be hoped he will 
 go forth into the world, with such a character for honesty and 
 integrity, as may lead the virtuous portion of society to receive 
 him among them. Instead of being a weight upon the com- 
 munity, supported either in our gaols or almshouses, he will be 
 enabled to bear his part of the public burthens/ These senti- 
 ments, Gentlemen, are admirable ; and I trust you will agree 
 with me, that your time and attention would be far better em- 
 ployed, on the inquiries and discussions which must have pre- 
 ceded such a presentment as that of the Grand Jury of 
 Philadelphia, than in revising (and revising, as it were, in the 
 dark) decisions which the justices have arrived at, aided by 
 means for discovering the truth, from the employment of which 
 you are shut out. You cannot but feel, Gentlemen, that it 
 would be a privilege, and not a burthen, to be called upon to 
 exercise your minds upon the many important questions, which 
 would suggest themselves as proper to engage your delibera- 
 tions. And the conclusions at which, after careful investiga- 
 tion of the facts and the reasons which led to them, you should 
 arrive, would have great weight with your fellow-townsmen, and 
 lead to many a valuable result. 
 
 In my first address from this Bench to a Grand Jury of 
 Birmingham, I used these words : ' Although the original 
 utility of the Grand Jury may have decreased, or even 
 passed away, it is nevertheless an institution of great impor- 
 tance ; it is of the genius of our constitution to interest and 
 employ all ranks and conditions of men, in the administration of 
 justice. By this provision courts are made really public; not 
 only as they are open to all to become auditors, but inasmuch 
 
Charge of April, 1855. 449 
 
 as the representatives of the various classes are called upon to 
 give their attendance. In an assembly so collected, you have a 
 right to be heard. You have a right to address to the Bench any 
 matter connected with the administration of the law, which in 
 your opinion requires public animadversion; and your sugges- 
 tions will be in this Court, as they are in all others, received 
 with respect. It is through you, also, that the Bench addresses 
 the public at large ; knowing' that what you consider worthy of 
 your attention, will be treated with deference by all those whose 
 duties or interests are involved in what is laid before you/ 
 Gentlemen, sixteen years of experience have not shaken my 
 belief in the truth of this representation. The advantage of 
 intercommunication between the men of office and those who 
 are chosen for the moment, and for the moment only, from 
 among their fellow-citizens, may be followed by profitable results ; 
 while, on the other hand, they can scarcely lead to any abuse. 
 The suggestions thrown out on either side have no power of 
 themselves ; but if they are adopted by those who become 
 acquainted with them, they affect more or less the public opinion 
 of the nation ; and if they will bear the test of scrutiny, they 
 will at length find entrance into the statutes of the realm. But 
 if they should turn out to be unfounded in fact, or untenable in 
 argument, they die away and are forgotten. In this latter 
 instance, we may be employing to little purpose a portion of 
 our time ; but that appears to be the limit of any inconvenience 
 which the intercourse between Courts and Grand Juries is likely 
 to produce. Thus there is nothing to put into the balance, 
 against the weighty benefits which may arise from these reci- 
 procal communications. 
 
 The Foreman of the Grand Jury, on the conclusion of their 
 duties, read the following observations : ' Before we retire, sir, 
 permit us to express the pleasure we felt in listening to your 
 opening address an address characterised by the same clear- 
 ness and distinctness, the same large and expansive views, the 
 same benevolence and philanthropic feeling, which have been 
 embodied in all that we have heard or read of yours, and which 
 have been so nobly illustrated by you in practice. With regard 
 to the observations made relative to the inutility of Grand 
 Juries, we perfectly agree that there may have been a time when 
 
 G G 
 
45 Charge of April, 18 55. 
 
 Grand Juries were thought necessary, and indeed were so ; when 
 party spirit, bigotry, and intolerance ran so high that ignorance 
 and unqualified presumption were elevated most unworthily to 
 the bench ; but that day is past, and the selection of magis- 
 trates is at the present time generally the preference of ability 
 and intelligence, which would scorn to lend themselves to the 
 abuse of power for the advantage of any sect or clique ; in addi- 
 tion to which, the influence of the press, and the diffusion of 
 information, is so general, as to exercise a salutary restraint 
 against the abuse of power. The office of the Grand Jury 
 appears to us to be to judge more of the wisdom and prudence 
 of the magistrate in committing, than of the merits of the case ; 
 and to be useless as regards the relief afforded to the prisoner. 
 The bill of indictment is not brought before the Grand Jury 
 until a few hours, perhaps minutes, before the prisoner is called 
 upon to take his public trial ; therefore, as stated by you, sir, 
 if the bill is ignored, relief is not afforded until the injury has 
 been inflicted. Under these circumstances, we consider the 
 institution useless and effete, occasioning to gentlemen called 
 upon to undertake duties (merely futile) a loss of valuable time, 
 which should be, either privately or publicly, more profitably 
 employed. 
 
 ' The Jury regret to observe the number of cases brought 
 before them in consequence of the injudicious exposure of goods 
 outside the shop-fronts; being a temptation to crime, and a 
 pernicious practice, which they most strongly condemn/ 
 
 The Recorder thanked the gentlemen for their kind appre- 
 ciation of his Charge ; telling them at the same time that he 
 understood their disapprobation of the employment of Grand 
 Juries to apply only to their revision of cases sent to trial by the 
 magistrates, and that it did not extend to the institution itself; 
 to which qualification they assented. 
 
 f Recent events' * * * 'must have a strong tendency 
 to aggravate that desire for changes, which had, perhaps, become 
 sufficiently intense without the aid of such a stimulus/ 
 
 Allusion is here made to the eager demand for changes in 
 the administration of military affairs, which the sufferings of 
 our Army in the Crimea, during the winter of 1 854-5, had called 
 
Charge of April, 1855. 451 
 
 forth. This has now happily subsided into a calm but earnest 
 desire for gradual and well-considered ameliorations in a 
 department, the importance of which to the safety and honour 
 of the country can scarcely be over-estimated. May, 1856. 
 
 The following brief tract, from the pen of Mr. Oakley, the 
 Governor of the Somerset Gaol, was circulated among the 
 Magistrates of the County, in the year 1853. As embodying 
 the suggestions of an intelligent person, of much experience, I 
 have thought it advisable to insert it in this place. 
 
 ' Observations on the Grand Jury System ; with Suggestions for 
 Simplifying Proceedings on Criminal Trials. 
 
 ' Although desirous of speaking with all due respect of the 
 gentlemen composing Grand Juries, both at Assizes and Quarter 
 Sessions, there are many instances of justice having been per- 
 verted by the evidence taken before them. True bills have been 
 returned in cases that had not been previously investigated 
 before a magistrate; and at the trials, the judges have been 
 known to declare that the accusations were entirely unsubstan- 
 tiated. Bills in other cases have been ignored in consequence 
 of witnesses having, either from ignorance or deficiency of 
 memory, omitted important facts. The same result has fol- 
 lowed f where witnesses, from collusion with the friends of 
 prisoners, have wilfully misstated their evidence. 
 
 ' In one case, where a tradesman was charged at the sessions 
 with receiving stolen goods, some members of the Grand Jury 
 were so much interested, that the bill was ignored, although the 
 clearest evidence was offered against him; and, immediately 
 they came to a decision, the foreman rushed from the room and 
 congratulated the prisoner. 
 
 ' The most serious evil, however, under the present Grand 
 Jury system is the inducement held out to prosecutors, wit- 
 nesses, and constables (particularly the latter), to strain or 
 exceed the true evidence, in order to obtain the committal of a 
 prisoner, and thus to secure payment of their own expenses. 
 The constable, besides the sum granted for attending the magis- 
 trates, and for pursuing and apprehending the prisoner, has a 
 liberal allowance for conveying to gaol. 
 
 ' In London, an officer of the Court attends with the deposi- 
 
 G G 2 
 
452 Charge of April, 1855. 
 
 tions before the Grand Jury, and thus false evidence is, to some 
 extent, prevented. But in the country, particularly in counties, 
 where only one witness at a time is called before the Grand 
 Jury, there are no means of testing the evidence of a witness, 
 and no protection for persons against whom indictments are im- 
 properly and unjustly preferred. Notes of the evidence are 
 not systematically or regularly taken, and therefore false wit- 
 nesses escape the punishment they deserve, and the valuable 
 time of gentlemen, selected from the higher grades of society, is 
 uselessly wasted, and often injuriously employed. 
 
 < It it 
 
 ' That it should be considered by Parliament whether, with 
 the improvements effected by the Administration of Justice Act, 
 and the publicity and care with which examinations before 
 magistrates are now conducted, any tribunal is necessary between 
 the committing magistrate and the trial. 
 
 ' Should it be determined that an intermediate tribunal is to 
 exist, then, as the attendance of the magistrates at assizes will 
 always be necessary for performance of duties unconnected with 
 bills of indictment, a board of five or seven magistrates might 
 inspect such depositions returned by the committing magistrate, 
 as may be referred to the board by the judge, without the attend- 
 ance of those witnesses whose depositions have been taken ; and 
 might examine, in presence of the prisoner, any additional wit- 
 nesses called for the prosecution, and thereupon report to the 
 Court the names of the prisoners who should be put on their 
 trial. This would obviously be a less expensive course than 
 the present, and would obviate most of the evils already pointed 
 out, and Grand Juries at Sessions might be entirely abolished. 
 
 ' The excellent Act for the Administration of Justice, com- 
 monly called Jervis' Act (n & 12 Vic., cap. 42), has supplied 
 nearly every requirement up to the committal of prisoners for 
 trial; but after that proceeding great improvement is required, 
 and might be easily effected, 
 
 ' The law now permits almost any alteration in indictments 
 with the sanction of the Judge in Court ; and indictments, there- 
 fore, might be altogether abolished. By the magistrates' clerks 
 being required to prepare the commitment in each case, so that 
 a proper statement of the charge against every prisoner may 
 
Charge of April, 1855. 453 
 
 appear in the gaol calendar, all the information necessary as to 
 the charge would be afforded. 
 
 ( The Clerk of the Court, having a record book before him in 
 Court, should enter the charge against each prisoner as he 
 comes up for trial ; the name of each witness as called ; the 
 verdict when given; and sentence when passed. This would be 
 much more simple, and ensure greater correctness than the 
 present bills of indictment. 
 
 ' The abolition of Grand Juries would dispose of the only 
 real obstacle to more frequent gaol deliveries, and would ensure 
 the attendance of more intelligent petty jurors, in fact, all but 
 magistrates and others legally exempt. If the jury, at the open- 
 ing of the Court each day, were sworn to ' well and truly try' all 
 the prisoners whom they may have in charge during the day, it 
 would save much valuable time; besides obviating the great 
 injustice and risk of contamination in herding together a number 
 of prisoners of all classes, male and female, old and young, 
 innocent and guilty, as now brought in a drove together to the 
 prisoner's dock. The effects of this evil system can only be 
 imagined by those who have watched its consequences. 
 
 ' In order to reserve to prisoners the right of challenging, a 
 list of the jurymen should be read over to them a certain time 
 before trial. 
 
 ' Instead of calling on a prisoner to plead, and, by requiring 
 him to utter the words ' Not guilty/ obliging him to add a lie to 
 his offence, the trial might be commenced by reading a certifi- 
 cate from the committing magistrate, stating the charge; and 
 that he had, in compliance with the ' Administration of Justice 
 Acts/ explained it to the prisoner, and asked him whether he 
 had anything to say in answer to it. 
 
 ' In all cases where a prisoner has confessed himself guilty 
 before the committing magistrate, the expense and inconvenience 
 of requiring the attendance of prosecutors and witnesses might 
 be dispensed with, by calling the person who apprehended the 
 prisoner to prove identity. The Judge having the depositions, 
 is in possession of every fact, and a prisoner who, after con- 
 fessing before the magistrates, desires to be tried, may be 
 remanded to the next assizes or sessions. 
 
 ' Employment should be provided, or a refuge established, 
 for prisoners who, on their discharge from gaol, are willing to 
 
454 Charge of April, 1855. 
 
 work. This seems to have been contemplated by 4 Geo. IV., 
 cap. 64, sec. 39, which states, { Prisoners discharged from 
 prison should be supplied with the means of returning to their 
 families, or to some place of employment, where they may be 
 engaged in a life of honest labour for their maintenance, and 
 prevented from pursuing evil courses/ In many instances 
 where employment has been obtained for prisoners on their 
 discharge from gaol, they have afterwards done well ; and at 
 least fifteen out of every twenty prisoners committed for 
 second offences, are believed to have been guilty of them, 
 because, having been once convicted, the hope of getting honest 
 employment for the future is gone. They have no opportunity 
 to regain their characters, or avoid starvation. There is no 
 provision for ordinary labour in union houses, and able-bodied 
 men, willing to work, will not go to them. 
 
 ' A very small contribution from county rates to an establish- 
 ment that would soon, probably, be self-supporting, might prevent 
 much crime, and save large sums now expended in prosecuting 
 and punishing offenders. 
 
 ' A certain portion of the population will exist by plunder ; 
 and these can only be thoroughly checked by an efficient and 
 uniform system of police. But the simple alterations herein 
 suggested, would effect great saving of expense in prosecutions ; 
 prevent the loss of much valuable time ; and the re-committal 
 of many prisoners who might, under more favourable circum- 
 stances, have become useful members of society. 
 
 ' The amendments proposed on the present mode of procedure 
 on criminal trials, may be thus summed up : 
 
 ( ist. A Board of five or seven magistrates, to inspect 
 depositions referred to them by the Judge at Assizes, or Chair- 
 man at Quarter Sessions ; to examine any additional witnesses 
 in presence of the prisoner; and to report to the Court if the 
 prisoner should be put on trial. 
 
 ' 2nd. More frequent gaol deliveries. 
 
 ' 3rd. Better gaol calendars, to supersede bills of indict- 
 ment; and a book of records, to be kept by the Clerk of the 
 Court, wherein to enter the charge against the prisoner; the 
 names of witnesses ; the verdict and sentence. 
 
 ( 4th. The Jury to be sworn only once ; the prisoner's right of 
 challenge to be preserved. 
 
Sequel to Charge of April, 1855. 455 
 
 f 5th. The prisoner not to be called on to plead. 
 ' 6th. Where prisoners have confessed, the expense of prosecu- 
 tors and witnesses to be saved. 
 
 ' 7th. Employment to be provided for discharged prisoners/ 
 
 The evils arising from the intermingling of prisoners brought 
 from the prison to the court, and awaiting their trial, are not 
 confined to Taunton. We suffer very much from the same cause 
 at Birmingham. It may be added, that if the commitment by 
 the magistrate stood in the place of a true bill found by a 
 Grand Jury, the time of witnesses attending trials would be 
 much economized, and their convenience very materially con- 
 sulted, by an arrangement which would naturally follow such a 
 change. The calendar would become a cause list, and the 
 order of trial of each prisoner would be known. The judge 
 would probably direct notice to be given of the number of 
 cases which would be considered as standing for trial on each 
 day; so that where the calendar was long, the witnesses in the 
 cases low down upon the list would not be required to attend 
 on the first or early days of the assizes or sessions. 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 DISGRACEFUL STATE OF THE PRISON ATTACHED TO THE COURT 
 OF REQUESTS. 
 
 T SUBJOIN the description of this gaol, given by the Inspector of 
 Prisons in his Report for the year 1841 : 
 
 'Birmingham Debtors' Gaol. 
 
 1 There is only one yard here for the use of the poor debtors, 
 of the insolvent debtors, and of the female debtors. The poor 
 debtors usually take exercise only once a-week in the yard, on 
 account of its being occupied at other times by the insolvent 
 debtors. The poor debtors may walk there, however, for an 
 hour or so at other times, if they make application. I found 
 three female debtors sitting in the day-room of the insolvent 
 debtors, in company with the male insolvent debtors. There 
 
456 Sequel to Charge of April, 1855. 
 
 appears to be no separation of the sexes, except at night. Most 
 of the prisoners sleep two in a bed ; but this practice might be 
 obviated by providing several small light iron bedsteads suited 
 for one occupant only. In one large room there are two rows 
 of wooden bedsteads, each row composed of one continuous 
 wood-work, and these bedsteads were covered with straw. Only 
 one prisoner of the whole number stated to me that he was 
 unwell. The keeper has it not in his power to improve matters 
 much ; his salary is 6o/. a-year, and no assistance is provided 
 for him except at his own expense. The keeper would be glad 
 to receive a complete set of printed rules for his guidance ; but 
 as the prison is at present constituted so scanty in its accom- 
 modation, and with only one officer even the best set of rules 
 would prove unavailing, and would be set at defiance. In fact, 
 no means exist here of enforcing them. In September, 1840, 
 I found here twenty-two inmates, of whom four were women. 
 The average number is twenty ; the greatest number since my 
 visit at one time has been twenty-four or twenty-five. All the 
 prisoners are sent from the Court of Requests. There has been 
 no escape, no death, and no case of severe illness, during the 
 last two years. On the whole, the building is dilapidated and 
 neglected, and nothing can be said in commendation of its order 
 or cleanliness/* 
 
 This report, though printed for the use of both Houses of 
 Parliament and the public, seems to have attracted no attention. 
 The following letter will show the condition of the gaol in the 
 month of January, 1 844 : 
 
 '44, Chan eery- lane, January 12, 1844. 
 
 1 SIR, On the trial of an indictment against two prisoners 
 for debt, in the gaol of the Court of Requests for the town of 
 Birmingham, which took place before me at the late sessions 
 for the Borough, and on which they were convicted of assaulting 
 a peace-officer sent into the gaol to quell a riot it appeared in 
 evidence that the prison was in a most unsatisfactory state, both 
 with regard to the morals and to the comforts of the prisoners ; 
 and I verified the statements of the witnesses by a visit I made 
 to the gaol the day but one following the trial. The day-rooms 
 
 * Sixth Report of Inspectors of Prisons. III. /Southern and Western District, 
 pp. 231-2. 
 
Sequel to Charge of April, 1855. 457 
 
 of the prisoners consist of the under- kitchen and cellars of a 
 building formerly a dwelling-house; the poor prisoners (at 
 present amounting to more than twenty) are confined in the 
 cellars, from which they have no means of exit, except into a 
 very small yard (sixteen feet by thirteen and a half). Of these 
 cellars, two in number, one only is habitable. This is eighteen 
 feet nine inches, by thirteen feet eight inches ; its height being 
 only seven feet. The other is used as a general dressing-room. 
 It has a grated window at the top communicating with a public 
 passage, and at this window a prisoner is stationed to beg alms 
 from the passengers. The under- kitchen is appropriated to 
 debtors who are about to take the benefit of the Insolvent 
 Debtors' Act. In this place, women prisoners are also confined, 
 to whichever class they may belong. I saw one. She associates 
 with the men during the day, but sleeps in a room by herself; 
 some of the male prisoners, however, sleeping in an inner room, 
 the communication to which is cut off during the night by 
 placing a padlock on the door; to the great danger, as it 
 appeared to me, of the lives of the men if a fire should break 
 out. Such of the male prisoners as will not, or cannot, pay zs. 
 per week each for a bed, sleep together upon straw in two large 
 bays, both in the same room. Each bay is calculated to hold 
 thirteen prisoners, and, when full, the allowance per man is only 
 a width of ten inches. The prisoners complained that their 
 straw was infested with lice. The keeper, on the other hand, 
 said the prisoners' straw was changed as often as they required 
 it. The prisoners also complained that they were supplied 
 with impure water. This was denied by the keeper, and I had 
 no means of ascertaining the truth; but, having observed a spirit 
 of exaggeration regarding some other matters, I do not place 
 implicit reliance on the statement. The keeper admitted that 
 the day-rooms were infested with rats. There seems no pro- 
 vision in the Acts establishing the court and the prison, for 
 supplying the debtors with food. They are permitted, however, 
 to receive such as is brought to them by their friends ; and that 
 source failing, an allowance of bread (but of bread alone) has 
 been made for some years to them by the guardians of the poor. 
 There is a large and somewhat airy yard, on one side of 
 the cellar, used as a day-room; and into this yard the 
 keeper sometimes permits the prisoners to walk ; but, he says. 
 
45 8 Sequel to Charge of April, 1855. 
 
 he has been obliged to withhold this privilege lately, on account 
 of the turbulent conduct of his inmates, which had put him not 
 seldom in fear of his life. The prisoners exact a contri- 
 bution of half-a- crown towards fire and candle from every new- 
 comer ; and the process by which they obtain it is as follows : 
 They arm themselves with old swords, which the keeper stated 
 had, to his knowledge, been kept six-and-twenty years for this 
 purpose. They surround the new prisoner, terrifying him with 
 their swords, and insulting him in various ways, sometimes using 
 considerable violence. When he has gone through this cere- 
 mony, which is called f chumming/ the contribution is demanded; 
 and if not instantly paid, the new-comer is stripped of his coat 
 and waistcoat, which are detained from him until the money is 
 raised. I asked for a sight of their swords, but the keeper said 
 he had sent them away on the evening of the trial, which was 
 on Saturday; and although my visit was made early on the 
 morning of Monday following, he had procured workmen, who 
 were already in the day-rooms preparing to whitewash them. 
 The exposure consequent on the trial will, therefore, probably 
 do some good at least for a time; but it does not appear to me 
 that, by any improvements short of extensive alteration in the 
 building itself, the prison can be put on a proper footing. I 
 was informed by the Mayor, that he had written to you upon 
 the subject; and he showed me an answer from Mr. Phillips, 
 stating that it was your intention to take the matter into con- 
 sideration. It has occurred to me, however, that the evidence 
 on the trial the material part of which I have now given 
 together with the information I obtained on my visit, might, 
 perhaps, furnish some facts in addition to those of which you 
 are already in possession. 
 
 ' I have the honour to be, Sir, &c., 
 
 'M. D. HILL. 
 
 "The Right Hon. Sir J. Graham, Bart., &c. &c.' 
 
 To this letter the following answer was received : 
 
 < Whitehall, 6th April, 1844. 
 
 f SIR, I am directed by Secretary Sir James Graham to 
 inform you, with reference to your letter of the 1 2th of January 
 last, that he has pointed out to the Commissioners of the Court 
 of Bequests at Birmingham the necessity of their taking irnme- 
 
Sequel to Charge of April, 1855. 459 
 
 diate measures to provide a suitable prison, and of abstaining 
 from committing persons until they have provided one. 
 ' I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 < S. M. PHILLIPS. 
 
 'M. D. Hill, Esq., Kecorder of Birmingham.' 
 
 The Commissioners expended five hundred pounds in im- 
 provements ; but on the establishment of County Courts, which 
 followed shortly afterwards, the prison was abandoned as a place 
 of confinement. 
 
 The vitality of an abuse will be strikingly illustrated by 
 comparing the foregoing account of the Birmingham prison 
 with the description of the usages prevailing in a metropolitan 
 gaol in the year 1751, as described by the pen of Fielding in 
 the second chapter of Amelia. 
 
 ' Mr. Booth was no sooner arrived in the prison, than a 
 number of persons gathered round him all demanding garnish ; 
 to which Mr. Booth not making a ready answer, as indeed he 
 did not understand the word, some were going to lay hold of 
 him, when a person of apparent dignity came up, and insisted 
 that no one should affront the gentleman. This person, then, 
 who was no less than the master or keeper of the prison, turning 
 towards Mr. Booth, acquainted him that it was the custom of 
 the place for every prisoner, upon his first arrival there, to give 
 something to the former prisoners to make them drink. This, 
 he said, was what they called garnish; and concluded with 
 advising his new customer to draw his purse upon the present 
 occasion. Mr. Booth answered, that he would very readily com- 
 ply with this laudable custom was it in his power, but that, in 
 reality, he had not a shilling in his pocket, and, what was worse, 
 he had not a shilling in the world. f Oho ! if that be the case/ 
 cries the keeper, ' it is another matter, and I have nothing to 
 say V Upon which, he immediately departed, and left poor 
 Booth to the mercy of his companions, who, without loss of 
 time, applied themselves to uncasing, as they termed it, and 
 with such dexterity, that his coat was not only stript off, but 
 out of sight in a minute. 
 
 ' Mr. Booth was too weak to resist, and too wise to complain 
 of this usage. As soon, therefore, as he was at liberty and 
 
460 Sequel to Charge of April, 1855. 
 
 declared free of the place, he summoned his philosophy, of 
 which he had no inconsiderable share, to his assistance, and 
 resolved to make himself as easy as possible under his present 
 circumstances/ 
 
 He had been committed on a charge destitute of foundation, 
 because he had not half-a-crown to buy it off. The justice is 
 thus depicted : 
 
 ' Mr. Thrasher, however, the justice before whom the 
 prisoners above mentioned were now brought, had some few 
 imperfections in his magistratical capacity. I own, I have been 
 sometimes inclined to think, that this office of a Justice of Peace 
 requires some knowledge of the law ; for this simple reason, 
 because, in every case which comes before him, he is to judge 
 and act according to law. Again, as these laws are contained 
 in a great variety of books ; the statutes which relate to the 
 office of a Justice of Peace making of themselves at least two 
 large volumes in folio ; and that part of his jurisdiction, which 
 is founded on the common law, being dispersed in above a 
 hundred volumes, I cannot conceive how this knowledge should 
 be acquired without reading ; and yet, certain it is, Mr. Thrasher 
 never read one syllable of the matter. 
 
 c This, perhaps, was a defect ; but this was not all ; for where 
 mere ignorance is to decide a point between two litigants, it 
 will always be an even chance whether it decides right or 
 wrong ; but, sorry arn I to say, right was often in a much worse 
 situation than this, arid wrong hath often had five hundred to 
 one on his side before that magistrate ; who, if he was ignorant 
 of the laws of England, was yet well versed in the laws of 
 nature. He perfectly well understood that fundamental prin- 
 ciple so strongly laid down in the institutes of the learned 
 Rochefoucault, by which the duty of self-love is so strongly 
 enforced, and every man is taught to consider himself as the 
 centre of gravity, and to attract all things thither. To speak 
 the truth plainly, the Justice was never indifferent in a cause, 
 but when he could get nothing on either side/ 
 
 The Trading Justice, notwithstanding the stinging satire of 
 Fielding, and his own high-minded example as a magistrate, 
 survived in some parts of the country until a period within my 
 own memory at the Bar. The race is now, I believe, like that of 
 the Dodo, extinct. The halitat of the last specimen I ever heard 
 
Sequel to Charge of April, 1855. 461 
 
 of, was at Warwick. He had the reputation of making orders on 
 any matter within his jurisdiction, on receiving instructions and 
 half-a-crown, which had used to be not infrequently brought to 
 him (said report), by village-carriers and market-women ; so that 
 on such occasions he neither saw witnesses nor parties. Shortly 
 before his death he had made an order of affiliation. On appeal 
 to the Quarter Sessions, his brother magistrates quashed the 
 order in furore, the case completely breaking down; on 
 which, being counsel for the appellant, I applied for costs 
 against the respondents, the parish officers ; on the ground that 
 they went a journey of twenty miles from their own parish, 
 to find the only magistrate in the county who would have 
 made such an order. The Court awarded the costs, a 
 most unusual occurrence. It was said, at the time, that the 
 old magistrate took the reproof which his brethren had thus 
 administered to heart; and that he never left his house after 
 that day. Certain it is that he died within a fortnight. 
 
 Additional information on the subject of this Charge will be 
 found in a pamphlet on the Inutility of Grand Juries ;* which, 
 in addition to valuable matter supplied by the author, contains 
 well-chosen extracts from the Eighth Report of the Commis- 
 sioners on Criminal Law, 1845. In answer to a question pro- 
 posed by the Commissioners, Lord Den man says ' I can see no 
 benefit produced by Grand Juries, but the co-operation of the 
 higher and middle classes in the administration of justice. But 
 this I estimate very highly, and hope it may be preserved 
 through all changes by some means or other.' 
 
 * Observations on the Inutility of Grand Juries ; and Suggestions for their 
 Abolition. 2nd edition. 1857. London: Benning and Co. 
 
462 
 
 CHAEGE OF OCTOBER, 1855. 
 
 GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND JURY 
 
 I HAVE chosen for the subject of my present Charge, that 
 mode of treating criminals which has been called { the 
 Ticket-of-leave System/ 
 
 Of late, this plan has attracted much attention in Parlia- 
 ment, in courts of justice, and in the public journals. The 
 general impression seems to be that it does not work well. For 
 myself, I am disposed to think that the effect of its operation, 
 so far as it has hitherto been tried, has been exaggerated, both 
 for evil and for good. But I should be grieved to find the 
 system condemned in its theory, even supposing its practice has 
 hitherto been open to animadversion, because it embodies what 
 I hold to be two most salutary principles : First, that the 
 criminal should have the opportunity of working his way out of 
 gaol ; and second, that he should, for a limited period, be liable 
 to be deprived of his liberty so regained, if his course of life 
 should be such as to give reasonable ground for belief that he 
 had relapsed into criminal habits. 
 
 To understand the true bearings of the questions which I 
 intend to raise for your consideration, it will be necessary to 
 take a comprehensive view of that general treatment of 
 criminals, which results from the operation of a public opinion 
 making itself felt in the Legislature and the Executive Govern- 
 ment ; and often, unconsciously to the agents, dictating the 
 verdicts of juries, and qualifying the sentences of our courts ; 
 such opinion acting in combination with other circumstances 
 over which none of these authorities have any effective control. 
 Time was and the era is not so long past, but that many of 
 us have a vivid remembrance of its horrors when our penal 
 code was the most sanguinary of the civilized world. The 
 list of offences punishable with death presented a fearful 
 catalogue, descending from wilful murder down to privately 
 stealing in a shop to the amount of 55. Nor were the terrors 
 
Charge of October, 1855. 463 
 
 of the law permitted to sleep; so that when the feelings of 
 the people at last awoke to the cruelty of these inflictions, 
 they were outraged at every turn with appalling scenes of legal 
 vengeance. 
 
 As might have been expected by reflecting minds conversant 
 with history, and learning from its pages the vicissitudes of 
 public sentiment, an overwhelming force of opinion became 
 directed against the ferocious policy which had so long pre- 
 vailed,; and, as you know, the list of capital offences was not 
 only promptly reduced to the narrowest limits, but, the disposi- 
 tion towards lenity outstripping the course of legislation, we are 
 at length arrived at the point when, even in deliberate murder, 
 it is not an inflexible rule that conviction shall be followed by 
 execution. 
 
 Gentlemen, during the period while so many offences were 
 punished with death, the commutation of the capital sentence 
 to one of transportation being an act of mercy, the minor, 
 though still heavy penalty, was not regarded as severe ; but 
 when capital punishment became applicable only to a small 
 class of crimes, transportation began to be looked upon in a 
 different light ; and now that, by the refusal of all our colonies, 
 except one, to admit convicts among them, transportation has 
 been in great part abolished, a similar feeling begins to pre- 
 vail against long terms of imprisonment; which makes way 
 all the more quickly, because long imprisonments, not having 
 been imposed by sentence during the period that capital punish- 
 ment and transportation were freely resorted to, present an 
 aspect of novelty greatly deceptive, since a large proportion of 
 convicts sentenced to transportation, were at all times left in the 
 hulks to be punished by confinement, extending by law through 
 the whole period for which they were adjudged to be sent 
 abroad ; although it was usual to discharge them after a deten- 
 tion of much inferior length. 
 
 How far this disposition gradually to lessen the amount of 
 punishment will be carried, it is impossible to predict. All I can 
 say is, that its progress is very rapid, and that it shows no sign 
 of having approached its termination. We might suppose, at 
 first sight, that shortening terms of confinement would furnish a 
 means of relieving the pressure on the capacity of our prisons ; 
 and would enable us to provide for the surplus numbers 
 
464 Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 caused by the stoppage of transportation. But those who are 
 practically acquainted with the subject, know that a short im- 
 prisonment is likely to be followed by a speedy relapse; and that 
 the prisoner often returns to captivity, bringing with him 
 companions whom, in the interval of enlargement, he had seduced 
 into crime. 
 
 Recollecting these difficulties, Gentlemen, you will not per- 
 haps be surprised that the Government has not yet discovered 
 a perfect solution of the hard problem What are we to do with 
 our criminals ? In this state of perplexity it resolved on 
 adopting, to a limited extent, the first principle to which I 
 have adverted that of making the duration of the imprison- 
 ment dependent on the conduct of the prisoner. It did riot 
 apply the principle universally, perhaps because it was not pre- 
 pared to contend with the strong, although, I must think 
 morbid feeling in favour of slight imprisonments ; under which 
 the culprit remains too short a time to benefit much by any 
 reformatory system, however potent. Thus it restricted the 
 experiment to the cases of such convicts as had incurred the 
 penalty of transportation, or that of penal servitude. Gentle- 
 men, I speak upon conjecture, but I must presume the existence 
 of some cogent reason which induces the Government to deny 
 to the lesser offender the privilege of earning his discharge by 
 his own exertions, while it concedes it to the greater criminal 
 who has incurred heavier punishment ; and I am not aware of 
 any other reason than the one which I have pointed out. If, 
 however, the reason suggested should be that on which the 
 Government is really acting, I trust it will be remembered that 
 many convicts, not liable to transportation or penal servitude, 
 are sentenced to imprisonment for as long a period as two, and, 
 in some cases, three and even four years; and that many instances 
 may be found in the returns made to the House of Lords, in 
 which a much less time has been held to furnish a sufficient length 
 of probation to justify the grant of tickets-of-leave. But, 
 Gentlemen, if you desire, as I most earnestly do, to see this 
 principle universally adopted, you must be prepared to strengthen 
 the hands of Government, by advocating such a change in the 
 law as will enable those who administer the criminal justice of 
 the country to retain in custody all such as are convicted of 
 crime, until they have, by reliable tests, demonstrated that they 
 
Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 have the will and the power to gain an honest livelihood when at 
 large. You must be content that they shall be retained until 
 habits of industry are formed until moderate skill in some 
 useful occupation is acquired until the great lesson of self- 
 control is mastered in short, until the convict ceases to be a 
 criminal, resolves to fulfil his duties both to God and to man, and 
 has surmounted all obstacles against carrying such resolutions into 
 successful action. But as no training, however enlightened and 
 vigilant, will produce its intended effects on every individual 
 subjected to its discipline, what are we to do with the incurable ? 
 Gentlemen, we must face this question : we must not flinch 
 from answering, that we propose to detain them in prison until 
 they are released by death. You keep the maniac in a prison 
 (which you call an asylum) under similar conditions; you 
 guard against his escape until he is taken from you, either 
 because he is restored to sanity, or has departed to another 
 world. If, Gentlemen, innocent misfortune may and must be 
 so treated, why not thus deal with incorrigible depravity ? 
 This is a question which I have asked times out of number, 
 without ever being so fortunate as to extract a reply. It is 
 always tacitly assumed that imprisonment must not be perpetual; 
 but whether that assumption is founded on any reason supposed 
 to arise out of the nature of things, or whether it only rests on 
 the present state of public feeling, I know not. If the former 
 ground is taken, I would give much to learn what the argument 
 is ; when disclosed, I must either answer it or yield to it ; but 
 while I am kept in the dark, each alternative is barred against 
 me. If, however, this assumed inadmissibility of perpetual im- 
 prisonment is rested on the present state of public sentiment, I 
 have seen too often the change from wrong to right in that 
 mighty power, to despair of its becoming an ally instead of an 
 opponent. It is my belief that if long terms of imprisonment, 
 even to perpetuity, were placed before the public mind as indis- 
 solubly connected with the privilege to the convict of working 
 out his own redemption from thraldom, by proving himself fit 
 for liberty, it would require no great lapse of time to produce 
 the change in opinion which I contemplate. 
 
 Alarm on the score of expense ought not to be entertained, 
 for two reasons. First, because no unreformed inmates of a 
 prison, however extravagant its expenditure may be, cost the 
 
 H H 
 
4<56 Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 community so much as they would do if at large. This fact 
 has been so often proved that I must be allowed to assume it 
 as undeniable. But the second reason is, that prisons may be 
 be made either altogether, or to a very great extent, self-sup- 
 porting. In some of the Western States of the North American 
 Republic this important object has been more than accom- 
 plished, as the labour of the prisoners yields a revenue greater 
 than is required for their food, lodging, and clothing, their 
 government, and their instruction ; in short, for all the various 
 items which form the total expenditure of a gaol. It is quite 
 true that labour is more valuable, and that food is cheaper in those 
 States than it is with us. But, notwithstanding these facts, 
 it was shown by the evidence which Mr. Charles Pearson 
 adduced before the Committee of the House of Commons 
 appointed to investigate this subject in 1850, to be in the 
 highest degree probable that similar results might be obtained 
 here. Whoever shall read that valuable testimony will, I 
 cannot but think, even if not perfectly convinced, arrive at the 
 conclusion that sufficient proof has been given to justify, if not 
 to demand, such an experiment as would set the controversy 
 at rest. 
 
 Let me now, Gentlemen, call your attention more specifically 
 to the ticket-of-leave men. By a statute passed in the year 
 1853, a new penalty was created under the name of ' penal 
 servitude/ This penalty only differs from that of imprisonment 
 with hard labour by the provision for restoring the prisoner to 
 liberty without waiting for the expiration of his sentence 
 namely, by a licence from the Secretary of State, the instrument 
 certifying that such indulgence has been granted being called 
 the ticket-of-leave. Until, however, the expiration of the term 
 of penal servitude to which the convict has been adjudged by 
 the sentence of the Court, the licence is liable to be revoked at 
 the discretion of the Minister, and, when so revoked, the 
 prisoner is recommitted in execution of his original sentence. 
 This new penalty must now be substituted by the Courts in all 
 cases formerly punished by transportation, except where his 
 offence renders the convict liable to transportation for a period 
 not less than fourteen years, while it may be substituted even 
 for the longest terms. 
 
 It was also provided that convicts under sentence of trans- 
 
Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 portation at the passing of the Act, or subsequently sentenced 
 to that punishment, should be made capable of benefiting by 
 the licence of the Secretary of State on the same conditions 
 as to revocation with those sentenced to penal servitude. 
 
 Gentlemen, it is the provision for a conditional discharge 
 from prison which has attracted public attention, and has given 
 to the system its name. That both provisions are founded on 
 sound principles is my firm belief, as I have already stated. It 
 is obvious, however, that it is the first upon which the greatest 
 stress ought to be laid, for this plain reason, that, in proportion 
 as the means of reformation are furnished to the prisoner, and 
 the tests of reformation are well chosen, and faithfully applied, 
 in exactly that same proportion will the necessity for the second 
 provision viz., the power of recalling the ticket-of-leave be 
 diminished ; so that, if we would insure perfect tests, and a 
 perfect application of them, the enlargement . of the prisoner 
 might be made absolute in the first instance ; while, on the 
 other hand, a convict imperfectly reformed will not ^infrequently 
 be undeterred, by the power of revocation hung over him, 
 from yielding eventually to the temptations to which, when at 
 liberty, he is certain to be exposed. As a protection to society 
 it is also, as it now stands, imperfect in this further particular, 
 that the power of revocation terminates with the period fixed 
 by the original sentence, which, at the time the licence is 
 granted, may be nearly expired. This defect, however, might 
 readily be amended ; the power of recall might remain in 
 force until a certain fixed period after liberation, to be further 
 extended if, during that same period, the recall should be 
 made. 
 
 And this brings me to what I consider the most serious 
 defect in the statute. The condition which is set forth on the 
 ticket-of-leave is as follows : 
 
 ' The power of revoking or altering the licence of a convict 
 will most certainly be exercised in case of his misconduct. If, 
 therefore, he wishes to retain the privilege which, by his good 
 behaviour under penal discipline, he has obtained, he must 
 prove by his subsequent conduct that he is really worthy of 
 her Majesty's clemency. To produce a forfeiture of the licence 
 it is by no means necessary that the holder should be convicted 
 of any new offence. If he associates with notoriously bad 
 
 H II 2, 
 
468 Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 characters, leads an idle and dissolute life, or has no visible 
 means of obtaining an honest livelihood, &c., it will be assumed 
 that he is about to relapse into crime, and he will be at once 
 apprehended and re-committed to prison under his original 
 sentence/ 
 
 It is not, Gentlemen, that I disapprove of placing these men 
 again under restraint without evidence of their having com- 
 mitted a new crime. I must have greatly changed my opinions 
 before I could raise any objection of that kind. Possibly it 
 may be remembered by some of those whom I have now the 
 honour to address, that, in the year 1850, and again in the year 
 1851, I ventured to advise that all persons who had been con- 
 victed of acts of dishonesty should be liable, when, in the belief 
 of competent witnesses, they were leading a life of crime, to be 
 called on for proof that they were in the enjoyment of the 
 means of subsistence, drawn from lawful sources; that, in 
 default of such proof, they should be held to bail for a limited 
 period, and, in default of bail, should be committed to prison. 
 
 The principle on which my proposed measure was founded 
 has now been adopted by the Legislature, but without the safe- 
 guard of a trial. According to the Act, the prisoner is deprived 
 of his liberty by the mere stroke of the Minister's pen. The 
 Legislature probably proceeded upon the ground that, as it is 
 the confidence placed in his reformation which gains him his 
 liberty, so if that confidence be lost, his privilege ought to be 
 withdrawn. Nor am I, for one, much afraid that a power of 
 this kind, however arbitrary, will be often abused. On the 
 contrary, I believe the danger lies on the other side. It is so 
 repugnant to the spirit of our laws to condemn without a trial, 
 that an English Minister is under a much stronger temptation 
 to withhold the exercise of such a power in cases where it is 
 justly demanded, than to use it oppressively ; and, accordingly, 
 symptoms of such forbearance are not wanting. Mr. Jardine, 
 the London magistrate, lately complained that forty ticket-of- 
 leave men infested the neighbourhood of his court ; meaning, 
 doubtless, to intimate by that statement, that he had in his 
 vicinity forty of such convicts, who had incurred the forfeiture 
 of their licences by disappointing the expectations on which 
 they were granted. If this be so, it would seem but reasonable 
 that in each of these instances the ticket-of-leave should be 
 
Charge of October, 1855. 469 
 
 recalled, unless, indeed, the sentences have expired, when it 
 would be incorrect to denominate these convicts ticket-of-leave 
 men, since they stand only in the same position with all other 
 prisoners who have received their absolute discharge. But, 
 Gentlemen, it appears by a return made at the end of March 
 last, that the practice is not to withdraw the licence until the 
 convict stands charged with a new offence a deviation from 
 the terms of the warning written upon the ticket-of-leave, 
 which I am unable to explain except by the conjecture which I 
 have offered to your notice. 
 
 Gentlemen, I have said that the working of the system has 
 been, as I think, exaggerated, both by its opponents and its ad- 
 mirers, for evil and for good. For evil, because I feel certain that 
 convicts who have now tickets-of-leave would have been released 
 unconditionally after a detention not very much greater than 
 that to which they have been subjected under the new system. 
 And I ground this opinion on three important facts First, on 
 the growing impatience of severe punishments evinced by the 
 public; second, on the usage of liberating transports, not sent 
 abroad, long before their terms of transportation have expired. 
 To these two facts I have already adverted. The third is, that 
 the Legislature, when it substituted penal servitude for trans- 
 portation, very much abridged the duration of the punishment. 
 
 Gentlemen, the real evil with which we have to contend stands 
 thus : So long as we could impose our criminals on other 
 communities we did not care to cultivate the science of reforma- 
 tion ; arid now that this lazy and selfish resource has failed us, 
 we, in the stress of our difficulties, are compelled suddenly to 
 call upon the functionaries of our gaols to perform a task 
 demanding qualifications with which, without a long previous 
 training, it is unreasonable to expect them to be endowed, in that 
 full measure which can alone insure success. Revolving these 
 circumstances in your minds, you may, perhaps, Gentlemen, 
 arrive at the conclusion that no small portion of the unpopularity 
 which has fallen upon the new system is produced by its 
 having come into existence just at the time when the country 
 was beginning to suffer from the augmented number of convicts 
 which the stoppage of transportation had liberated at home, 
 instead of their being thrown into our colonial population as 
 heretofore. The disease, if I may so illustrate my meaning, 
 
470 Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 results from the obstruction of the accustomed vent namely, 
 transportation; but the remedy the ticket-of-leave system 
 failing to work a perfect cure, has been censured as if it were 
 the cause of the malady. 
 
 Gentlemen, the reason why I think the system has been over- 
 estimated for good as well as for evil is, because it applies only 
 to a comparatively small class, and because the evidence of 
 reformation still remains doubtful, although, I must admit, 
 much more cogent, and applying to a larger proportion of the 
 licences than I had expected to find it. And I make this 
 admission without forgetting that large subtractions may be 
 required from the estimated results. The estimate is, that from 
 eighty to ninety per cent, of convicts discharged with tickets-of- 
 \eave are permanently reformed. 
 
 Gentlemen, there is, as you well know, an establishment at 
 Mettray, in France, for the reformation of juvenile offenders, 
 which stands at the head of all reformatory institutions. Met- 
 tray enjoys every possible advantage. Its Founder and chief 
 Director, M. Demetz, who, by his visit here last week, may be 
 personally known to you, is a man of unrivalled ability, long 
 Experience, and unexampled devotion to his great enterprise. 
 His institution has gradually attained its present eminence by 
 sixteen years of enlightened administration, conducted with 
 sedulous care and assiduity; and yet even Mettray does not 
 reclaim a greater proportion of its inmates than ninety per cent. 
 Nevertheless, Gentlemen, ninety per cent, is, to my mind, a 
 result so wonderful that nothing short of the very searching 
 investigation which I have had the opportunity of making, could 
 induce me to accept it as worthy of confidence ; and, that being 
 so, I must be permitted to receive the estimate of reformations 
 effected among the ticket-of-leave men with some doubt and 
 misgiving, though with implicit reliance on the good faith with 
 which it is promulgated. The truth is, that permanent re- 
 formation demands years to test its reality, and the system has 
 not been in operation for a sufficient length of time to furnish 
 the required proof. The probabilities certainly look the other 
 way. Mettray deals with young and plastic minds and bodies. 
 It retains its wards a long time often for many years. None 
 of them leave Mettray until employment is procured for them. 
 Each is placed under the superintendence of some benevolent 
 
Charge of October, 1855. 471 
 
 person residing in the neighbourhood of his master, who 
 watches over the youth with the care of a guardian. Mettray 
 is looked upon by those who have been its inmates as a home. 
 It is a high gratification to them to visit their ' Colonie,' as 
 they are taught to call it. If they have not failed in their 
 duties they are always kindly welcomed, and should they, 
 through sickness or other misfortune, be thrown out of work, 
 they find hospitable reception at Mettray. 
 
 Gentlemen, I shall be most agreeably surprised if experience 
 shall justify those who superintend our ticket-of-leave system in 
 placing their estimate so nearly on a par with the proved 
 results of Mettray. It must, however, be remembered that we 
 have all much to learn on the subject ; and I do not forget that, 
 in the opinion of Captain Maconochie, it is easier to reform 
 adult than juvenile offenders. I will own that I have always 
 regarded this view as paradoxical. Still it may be confirmed 
 by experience, and may explain away the difficulty which now 
 prevents my yielding a complete assent to the estimate on 
 which I have been commenting. 
 
 It has been surmised, Gentlemen, that the tests on which the 
 authorities rely for the reformation of the candidate for a licence, 
 are of an unsatisfactory nature. It is said I know not on what 
 authority that too much weight is given to the opinion which 
 may be entertained of a convict by the chaplain. It is assumed 
 that the chaplain will be very much guided by what he may 
 suppose to be the depth and sincerity of religious impressions 
 made upon the heart of the prisoner ; and, reasoning on such 
 presumption, it is argued that the life of a prisoner, subjected, as 
 his actions are, to minute regulation and constant supervision, 
 affords no tests by which it could be ascertained how far such 
 impressions are genuine, and of a permanent character. 
 
 If, Gentlemen, the premises are well-founded, I shall be com- 
 pelled to adopt the conclusion at which the objectors have 
 arrived, at least until more freedom of action is allowed to 
 prisoners than they at present enjoy. But it is my good for- 
 tune to know several of the able and exemplary men who fill 
 the office of gaol chaplain ; and judging of the body by those 
 of its members with whom I am acquainted, I hold them as 
 little disposed to depend on such fallacious tests as the most 
 jealous objector can himself be. It is so obvious that the fate 
 
472 Charge of October 3 1855. 
 
 of the prisoner should not depend upon a vague general opinion, 
 but should be founded on an accumulation of facts, day by day 
 recorded, that I should require strong evidence against the 
 authorities of any prison before I could be led to believe that 
 they had fallen into an error so glaring. Doubtless, a punctual 
 attention to religious observances, where the prisoner has an 
 option to fulfil or neglect them, must not be omitted in the 
 account. But there is danger in giving any very great weight 
 to manifestations of this kind, inasmuch as, even when they are 
 based in sincerity, the prisoner is tempted to exaggeration in 
 their display ; so that what is pure in its inception becomes 
 corrupt through the hope of temporal advantage. This danger 
 is felt so strongly at Mettray that a provision is made against it, 
 which perhaps will startle those to whom the treatment of 
 prisoners and its difficulties is a novel study. The conductors, 
 when they have confidence in the individual, are well pleased to 
 see him begin to join in the sacrament of the Lord j s Supper, 
 having found by experience that after this event an improve- 
 ment is generally visible in his moral conduct. But as such an 
 effect can only be produced when the communicant is acting 
 from pure motives and on settled resolutions, not only is it 
 provided that no secular benefit shall accrue to him from taking 
 part in this communion, but, as an admonition not to approach 
 the table in a rash or presumptuous spirit, every fault he may 
 commit for the week following receives punishment of double 
 severity. 
 
 Yet, Gentlemen, although it has not been given us to 
 search the heart of the prisoner, and to distinguish by any sure 
 criterion between those manifestations of his spiritual condition 
 which are sincere, and those which are merely specious, still we 
 are not left without tests on which we may safely rely. < By 
 their fruits ye shall know them 5 is one, the value of which the 
 highest authority has taught us to prize. We may rejoice that 
 it is of easy application to that quality which, of all others, it is 
 most essential should be acquired by the prisoner to insure him 
 against relapse I mean industry. We can measure the 
 quantity of labour and estimate its value, especially if it be of 
 the simpler kinds, with some approach to accuracy. Let, then, 
 an account be opened with each prisoner, placing to his credit 
 the value of his labour the real value, if productive labour can 
 
Charge of October, 1855. 473 
 
 be found ; an assumed value, or rather a value upon an assumed 
 scale, if his labour be not of a productive kind. Let him 
 clearly understand that each day's labour will tell upon his 
 liberation. If large in quantity and good in quality, it will 
 materially advance him on his way. On the other hand, if 
 deficient in either of these attributes, his progress will be 
 retarded. 
 
 But a distant future, however bright and no brighter 
 prospect can open to the eyes of a prisoner than that of liberty 
 will not suffice without some hope of benefit nearer at hand. 
 Let the prisoner, then, be allowed to expend a part of his earn- 
 ings in the improvement of his diet. By acting on these 
 principles we shall have provided for training him in habits of 
 industry. But, although industry will, when he leaves his 
 prison, furnish him with the means of honest maintenance, yet, 
 unless he has learnt the art of self-government, he will not be 
 effectually protected against the temptations to fall back into 
 evil courses by which he will be assailed. Let him, then, be 
 informed that every subtraction from the fund created by his 
 labour for the indulgence of his palate will, like indolence, 
 retard the hour of freedom ; thus he will be taught economy. 
 Gentlemen, other habits are very desirable, but these are 
 essential ; and, having explained how they may be induced, I 
 must not dwell on the means of reformation at greater length. 
 
 Those among you who desire to give full scope to your 
 inquiries upon this interesting subject, to learn into how many 
 ramifications reformatory science of necessity runs how its dif- 
 ficulties are to be overcome, and how contending claims are to 
 be adjusted must consult the works of Captain Maconochie. The 
 principle that the convict should be detained, until by industry 
 and good conduct lie has earned his right to be free, was first 
 enunciated by Archbishop Whately ; but it was developed into a 
 system, and thus rendered capable of practical application, by 
 Captain Maconochie. May his services, even yet, late though it 
 be, obtain for him some recognition from his country, before the 
 day shall arrive when earthly recompence will avail him 
 nothing ! 
 
474 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY. 
 
 ' WITH respect to every sentence of confinement to hard 
 labour, whether at the tread-wheel, or of any other kind, we 
 would venture to suggest what we cannot but consider as a 
 most important improvement, viz., that instead of a certain 
 period of time, a convict should be sentenced to go through a 
 certain quantity of work. We mean that a computation should 
 be made of the average number of miles for instance which a 
 man sentenced to the tread-wheel would be expected to walk 
 in a week and that then, a sentence of so many weeks' labour 
 should be interpreted to mean, so many miles ; the convict to be 
 released when, and not before, he had ' dreed his weird ;' 
 whether he chose to protract or to shorten the time of his 
 penance. In the same manner he might be sentenced to beat 
 so many hundred-weight of hemp ; dig a ditch of such and such 
 dimensions, &c. ; always exacting some labour of all prisoners, 
 and fixing a minimum sufficiently high to keep up the notion 
 of hard labour, but leaving them at liberty as to the amount of 
 it above the fixed daily task. The great advantage resulting 
 would be, that criminals, whose habits probably had previously 
 been idle, would thus be habituated not only to labour, but to 
 form some agreeable association with the idea of labour. Every 
 step a man took in the tread- wheel, he would be walking out of 
 prison; every stroke of the spade would be cutting a passage 
 for restoration to society/* 
 
 Since the publication of this Charge, Captain Maconochie 
 has stated to me that he has been misapprehended as regards 
 the facility of reforming adult, compared with that of reforming 
 juvenile offenders. His opinion, he says, is, not that the 
 aspirations of adults, and their habits, are more easily changed 
 
 * Whatelys Lectures on Political Economy : with Remarks on Tithes, Poor-laws, 
 and Penal Colonies. Fourth Edition. 1855. London : J. W. Parker and Son. 
 p. 251. 
 
 [This article first appeared in 1829, in a periodical work, long defunct, entitled 
 the London Review.] 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 475 
 
 than those of the young, but that, when changed, the reformation 
 is more likely to be permanent. 
 
 Penal servitude is not accurately denned in this Charge. A 
 sentence to penal servitude empowers the Crown to remove the 
 convict from the prison to which he is sent in execution of the 
 judgment against him to the hulks, or to the Convict Prisons, as 
 they are called, which have been established with the view of 
 superseding the hulks. It is, however, to be lamented that the 
 change has proceeded so tardily. 
 
 So long ago as the year 1801, Jeremy Bentham denounced, 
 in correspondence with the Ministers of the day, the dire abo- 
 minations inseparable, as it would appear, from confinement on 
 board these vessels. And yet, so late as the Session of 1856, 
 a Committee of the House of Commons had still to advise f that 
 the hulk system, which appears, by the evidence, to be already 
 in a great measure relinquished, should be finally abandoned, 
 with as little delay as possible/* That evidence proving the 
 accursed system, to which the attention of the Government had 
 been called more than half a century before the Committee sat, 
 to be still at its work of pollution. 
 
 Whoever desires to verify the statement that atrocious crimes 
 are the inevitable concomitants of the detention of convicts on 
 board the hulks, may read Bentham's Letter to Sir Charles 
 Bunbury, written in the year j.8oi.f It appears that the atten- 
 tion of the Government had even then been called to the sub- 
 ject, not merely to the fact that such things were, but to the 
 impossibility of preventing their recurrence. Private informa- 
 tion, from a source of undoubted authority, assures me that, 
 neither at home nor abroad, have efficient means been discovered, 
 up to this day, for extinguishing these horrors. It would be 
 monstrous to suppose that any effort has been spared to 
 obliterate this foul stain, and yet if the impossibility of accom- 
 plishing this object has been established, how can we continue 
 the practice of transportation ? What are the vessels which 
 convey the convicts to their destination but hulks in motion? 
 What are hulks but transport vessels at rest ? 
 
 * Committee on Transportation, House of Commons. Third Report. Session 
 1856. f Benthani's Works, edited by Bowring. Vol. xi., p. 120. 
 
476 Sequel to Charge of October, 1 855. 
 
 In the evening of a long life devoted to tlie improvement of 
 his country and mankind, and, in an especial manner, to the 
 reformation of our criminal laws, Lord Brougham has to avow, 
 with grief and indignation, that still ' the utterly execrable, the 
 altogether abominable hulk, lies moored in the face of the day 
 which it darkens, within sight of the land which it insults, 
 riding on the waters which it stains with every unnatural excess 
 of infernal pollution, triumphant over all morals P* 
 
 When this Charge was delivered, the distinction made by 
 the Home Office between convicts adjudged to transportation 
 and those adjudged to penal servitude, by which the privilege 
 of tickets-of-leave is withheld from the latter class, had not 
 been drawn. This fact appears from the evidence of Colonel 
 Jebb before the Transportation Committee already referred to. 
 
 ' 1324. Sir John Pakington Has any rule been laid down 
 by the Secretary of State, restricting the Act of Parliament, in 
 the way I now advert to ; namely, by prescribing that tickets- 
 of-leave should be granted to persons under sentence of trans- 
 portation, but not to persons under sentence of penal servitude ? 
 The Secretary of State has issued a rule by which convicts 
 are made aware that sentences of penal servitude have been 
 substituted in some cases for sentences of transportation, and 
 that those sentences, being of much shorter duration than the 
 sentences of transportation, are to be taken in place of them, 
 and that the convict shall not, therefore, as a general rule, look 
 forward to a remission; but the Secretary of State has also 
 said that he will be prepared to take into consideration any 
 special cases which may be brought before him. 
 
 ' 1325. What is the date of that rule ? That rule was issued 
 in November, 1855. 
 
 f 1326. Chairman Was the date at which the notice referred 
 to in Question 980 was issued, the month of November, 1855 ? 
 Yes, it was ; and in the interval between the passing of the 
 Act of 1853 and the issue of that notice, the men were in a 
 state of uncertainty as to what would happen to them. 
 
 ' 1327. Sir J. Pakington Can you tell this Committee 
 
 * Lord Brougham's Paper read at the First Provincial Meeting of the National 
 Reformatory Union, held at Bristol, August, 1856. Authorized Report, p. 63. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 477 
 
 whether, during that period (namely, from the passing of the 
 Act in 1853 to November, 1855), any intention had been 
 announced by the Secretary of State upon that subject ? No. 
 
 ' 1328. Did you yourself know, from the passing of the Act 
 in 1853 to November, 1855, whether the ticket-of-leave system 
 was to be extended to penal servitude convicts or not? I was 
 not aware ; / was in hopes it might, in consequence of its being 
 left open in the Act, and knowing the extreme importance of 
 placing before prisoners that strong inducement ; but I was not 
 fully aware whether it would be done. It was under considera- 
 tion for a long time. 
 
 ' 1329. It was left open, in fact, for two years? It was left 
 open for nearly two years/* 
 
 The discussions in the public journals which followed the 
 publication of my Charge produced a letter to the Times by 
 Colonel Jebb, from which I learnt what were the intentions 
 of the Secretary of State. The sentences to penal servitude 
 during the two years and a- quarter which had elapsed since the 
 passing of the Ticket-of-Leave Act amounted, at Birmingham, 
 to 159. As the Act had drawii no distinction between the two 
 classes as regards the privilege in question, convicts had been 
 adjudged to longer terms of penal servitude than would have 
 been fixed upon, had it been known to the Court that such 
 distinction would be made, and the prisoner was generally 
 informed that he had it in his power, by industry arid good 
 conduct, to shorten very materially his term of confinement. 
 Under these painful circumstances, I felt it my duty strongly to 
 urge upon the executive Government the justice and expediency 
 of refraining from a retro-active operation of its rule, but 
 without effect. The Home Secretary, however, kindly informed 
 me of his willingness to mitigate sentences delivered under the 
 impression which had been announced to the convicts, and the 
 result was, that they have been shortened to one-third of their 
 length.f 
 
 The reception of this Charge by the press showed, in the 
 
 * First Eeport of Committee on Transportation, House of Commons. 1856. 
 p. 126. 
 
 f See my Evidence, Transportation Committee. Second Eeport, Question 
 18651874. App. Second Eeport, p. 175. 
 
478 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 great number of contradictory opinions which its discussion 
 brought to light, how various and unsettled are the notions as 
 to the treatment of criminals afloat in society. 
 
 In the Times of October nth appeared the following leading 
 article : 
 
 ' Mr. M. D. Hill, the Recorder of Birmingham, has just 
 delivered a very important Charge to the Grand Jury at the 
 opening of the Quarter Sessions in that town. The subject the 
 learned gentleman chose for his address was the ticket-of-leave 
 system as at present practised in this country. As a social 
 question, this is one of the most important points which he could 
 have brought under public notice. The system, as at present 
 administered, is a social nuisance of the worst kind. Mr. M. D. 
 Hill appears as its advocate, and, consequently, from much that 
 he has said we are compelled, with great reluctance, to differ. It 
 is impossible to take up a police report, or any other record of 
 criminal proceedings, and not to see that the ticket-of-leave 
 men are among the most prominent malefactors in the country. 
 Now we find them figuring in the annals of English Thuggee ; 
 now they are supplying their ripe necessities by a series of the 
 most desperate burglaries in the northern portion of the island ; 
 now they are the chief actors in some brutal assault. The other 
 day, a metropolitan magistrate complained that the neighbour- 
 hood of his Court was infested by a gang of these ruffians, who 
 occasioned him the greatest annoyance. The police could but 
 remain silent ; they were well enough acquainted with the men 
 and with their character. Mr. Hill says they could have arrested 
 them ; Mr. Jardine and the police thought otherwise. Now, with 
 these facts before us for they are facts, and strong facts it 
 follows either that the theory upon which the system rests is 
 radically wrong, or that it is badly administered. Mr. M. D. 
 Hill denies both positions that is to say, he steps forward as 
 a most energetic advocate of the theory, and he tells us that the 
 estimate is, that from 80 to 90 per cent, of convicts discharged 
 with tickets-of-leave are permanently reformed. Furthermore 
 he states it as his opinion that the general impression with regard 
 to the comparative facility with which gaol chaplains are duped 
 by the prisoners into favourable reports, which result in tickets- 
 of-leave, is founded upon error. ' It is my good fortune/ he 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 479 
 
 said, ( to know several of the able and exemplary men who fill 
 the office of gaol chaplain, and, judging of the body by those of 
 its members with whom I am acquainted, I hold them as little 
 disposed to depend on such fallacious tests as the most jealous ob- 
 jector can himself be/ Of course our argument fails if Mr. Hill 
 could prove a suggestion which he throws out in the course of 
 his address. This is, that the so-called ticket-of-leave men are 
 not ticket-of-leave men at all, but either discharged convicts or 
 ticket-of-leave men who have exhausted their sentences. In this 
 case, cadit qucestio ; there is an end of the matter. All that we 
 have to do is to acknowledge that we have been misled by the 
 judges, and magistrates, and police, and criminal reporters, and 
 to leave Mr. Hill in complete possession of the field, and of a 
 well-won triumph. Meanwhile, until better informed, we shall 
 assume the ordinary impression to be the correct one, and argue 
 as if it were so. The question of fact, of course, lies at the 
 threshold of the discussion, and our very strong belief is that it 
 must be decided against Mr. Hill. 
 
 ' The theory, we said, upon which the ticket-of-leave system 
 rests is wrong, or it is imperfectly and badly carried out. 
 If the last point can be proved, as we think it can, it would 
 be as yet premature to condemn the system which has not 
 had a fair chance. On the contrary, the theory of condi- 
 tional pardons recommends itself to the mind by every a priori 
 consideration. Let us, for a moment, discard nominal reference 
 to the present system, and surely it is obvious that the public 
 have an additional guarantee if a convict discharged from 
 imprisonment is for some time retained under the surveillance 
 of the police. The ministers of justice can remit him to con- 
 finement, not for the proved commission of any fresh crime, 
 but because his general conduct appears to warrant the 
 suspicion either that he is secretly a criminal, or that he will 
 soon fall into criminal ways again. This is very high preroga- 
 tive dealing; if the transaction be regarded in the light in 
 which we have put it, the ticket-of-leave system merely calls 
 facts by other names. Again, it is highly for the advantage of 
 the public that they should as soon as possible be liberated 
 from the expense of supporting a convict in gaol. The time 
 for his restoration is not, of course, when he has expiated a 
 sentence, arbitrarily pronounced in ignorance of the man's 
 
480 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 character, antecedents, and so forth; but when he gives fair 
 promise of reformation. Every hour that he is detained in 
 gaol after this is a dead loss to the public. The ticket-of-leave 
 system helps us to sound conclusions also in this respect. The 
 sentence may be pronounced by the judge, but it is adminis- 
 tered by the gaoler. On the other hand, it would be much to be 
 regretted if a convict should be let loose again upon society when 
 the probability nay, the certainty is that he will at once 
 relapse into his criminal courses. The ticket-of-leave system 
 guards us also from this inconvenience, for by the help of it the 
 judge can pronounce what is called a ' long sentence/ which 
 can be remitted or maintained precisely according to the 
 conduct of the convict. Fully conscious, as we are, of the 
 benefit resulting to the public from this arrangement, we are 
 yet compelled to admit that it has proved a failure; and we 
 believe the failure to have arisen from the method 'of adminis- 
 tration. Nor do we stand alone in this opinion. Upon such 
 a subject, we are glad to invoke the testimony of an intelligent 
 foreigner, whose eyes are not so liable to deception as our own 
 through over familiarity with details. We call M. Demetz, of 
 Mettray, to counsel the more readily as Mr. M. D. Hill has 
 invoked his testimony, and we are therefore, as it were, 
 examining his own witness. M. Demetz has been so obliging 
 as to forward us copies of various publications connected with 
 his Reformatory School at Mettray, for which we return him our 
 best thanks ; and in one of these, written by himself, we find a 
 discussion on the ticket-of-leave system. Few men in Europe 
 have bestowed more anxious or more successful attention upon 
 this subject ; and what is it that M. Demetz says of our 
 practice ? ' Deja TAngleterre & adopte cette mesure ; mais 
 nous avons des raisons de craindre que jusqu'a present Fappli- 
 cation n j en ait pas ete faite avec toutes les precautions 
 desirables/ This is just our opinion. The fault is not, as yet, 
 proved to reside in the theory. If Mr. M. D. Hill could prove 
 that we were not correct in our view that it is badly carried 
 out, the natural conclusion would seem to be that the theory 
 must be set aside altogether, and that we must look elsewhere, 
 if we would reform our criminals and guard the public from 
 harm. 
 
 1 As yet, and until the theory has a fair trial, it would be prema- 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 481 
 
 ture to arrive at such a conclusion. A degree of rigour must 
 be infused into the administration of the system such as has 
 not yet been known. We do not, of course, mean that the 
 convicts are to be subjected to any additional hardships ; but 
 that the reality of their reformation must be tested in a far 
 more stringent manner than heretofore. It must also be 
 remembered that convict nature is human nature after all. 
 What is to become of the old offender when he has been 
 remitted to the town of his choice by the agency of the police, 
 with his ticket-of-leave in his pocket* Suppose that matters 
 go wrong with him the neighbours, for example, look askance 
 on him the police discharge their duty of surveillance so 
 clumsily or so inhumanly as to bring him under suspicion ; 
 what is he to do ? We know, practically, what he does. He 
 joins a company of men like himself, and levies war against 
 society. We are only beginning to deal with this great ques- 
 tion of the criminal population of the country, and years must 
 pass before we have arrived at the right solution. Now that 
 the colonies are closed against our crime, every criminal in the 
 country will make the public responsible for him from his 
 cradle to his grave, so we may as well consider what is the 
 most effectual way of dealing with the difficulty. We had 
 rather leave the question upon this plain, practical basis, than 
 speak of charity, or philanthropy, for really the public have 
 been so sickened with maudlin sentimentality and failures that 
 any appeal to such feelings is, for the moment, likely to do 
 more harm than good. We can't hang all the criminals. We 
 can't transport them. If we did hit upon some new place for 
 deportation, twenty years hence the same difficulty would meet 
 us again in an exaggerated form. We must take the evil as it 
 is, and we believe it will be found the cheapest and most politic 
 course, as well as the most humane, to leave no stone unturned 
 to bring about the reformation of the criminals, and not to 
 discharge them upon society until they are reformed. In des- 
 perate cases, we must even acquiesce in the conclusion of 
 imprisonment for life as a necessity. What can be done in 
 the way of self-supporting prisons, as in the United States ? The 
 difficulty must be met; but, meanwhile, we protest, in the 
 name of the British public, against this system of turning out 
 criminals upon society, under the name of ' ticket-of-leave-men/ 
 
 i i 
 
482 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 to rob us in the public streets by clay, to break into our houses 
 at night, to assault and throttle unoffending persons in a word, 
 to keep the country in a state of constant alarm/ 
 
 The reasoning of the Times is thus combated in the Birming- 
 ham Journal of October I3th : 
 
 ' The subject of Mr. Hill's Charge, delivered on Monday, 
 and reported in our Wednesday's edition, is the lately-adopted 
 system of a remission of terms of imprisonment conditional on 
 good conduct. Briefly, he maintains that the apprehensions 
 felt by many, from Lord St. Leonards downwards, of the effects 
 of the ticket-of-leave system upon society generally, and espe- 
 cially upon crime, are exaggerated, as its salutary influences are 
 also over-estimated ; that the principle of conditional discharge 
 from prison is sound, supposing the tests of reformation are any- 
 thing like perfect, but that the law is administered neither in 
 the letter nor the spirit of the legislative enactment, and 
 not in accordance with the principle upon which it is founded ; 
 that no small portion of the unpopularity of the system is due 
 to its commencement when the country was beginning to 
 suffer from the stoppage of transportation, and the ticket-of- 
 leave plan, failing to work a perfect cure, has been censured as 
 if it were the cause of the disease itself. 
 
 f It appears to us that in the main it is impossible to gainsay 
 the reasoning upon which these statements are founded, as it 
 is to dissent from the conclusions themselves, if it is once 
 admitted that punishments are not merely the revenge of 
 society, but have in view the reformation of the offender ; not 
 merely his temporary abstraction from society, but a process of 
 restoration and moral training which will fit him for returning 
 to it. The theory of the learned Recorder is either right or 
 wrong accordingly as this is admitted or denied. Grant that 
 the lex talionis is no longer defensible, and it follows that the 
 duration of the punishment of a criminal should be regulated 
 by his abandonment of that condition of mind which prompted 
 his offence, rather than by the expiry of the term of imprison- 
 ment which has been fixed according to an arbitrary estimate 
 of the gravity of the crime. If this be so, the principle of the 
 ticket-of-leave system is correct, and if the tests of reformation 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 483 
 
 were reliable; its practice would be attended by the best results 
 to the erring criminal and to society also. But here the diffi- 
 culty arises, for the temptation to deceit is great, and we must 
 add that the mawkish sentimentality of the age fosters that 
 credulity which a clever rogue knows how to turn to account. 
 Undoubtedly if the law, as it stands, was enforced, the tempta- 
 tion to hypocrisy would be greatly lessened, for the condition 
 set forth on the ticket-of-leave itself states that the mere asso- 
 ciation with bad characters will be sufficient to endanger the 
 liberty of the holder. But the law is not enforced ; no evidence 
 of misconduct short of actual crime is considered to justify a 
 revocation of the licence ; the condition of freedom is therefore 
 lost sight of. Practically, a ticket-of-leave is a free pardon, 
 altogether independent of the conduct of the holder, if he stops 
 short of actual crime, and then indeed he is amenable to the 
 law, in common with criminals generally. How far the 
 enforcement of the condition upon which the licence is granted 
 would tend to make the system less dangerous to society, we are 
 not prepared to say; but it is obvious that the law, as it stands, 
 must be enforced before it can be said to have had a fair trial. 
 As administered, we fear that the plan is not calculated to 
 improve the tone of society, or conduce to the safety of life or 
 property ; that a more thorough administration of the law, and 
 a more perfect system of checks upon hypocrisy, would remove 
 the chief causes of danger, is obvious ; but until that is tried, 
 the balance of good or evil is a mere speculation. 
 
 ' Before leaving this subject, it may be well to notice the 
 extraordinary manner in which the Charge is discussed by the 
 leading journal. With the best intention, no doubt, the Times 
 submits Mr. HnTs arguments to the process of editorial analysis, 
 but the writer, with the Charge before him, manages, with 
 extraordinary infelicity, to misstate nearly every argument of 
 the Recorder ; assuming that he has defended that which he 
 specifically condemns, and using almost the same arguments 
 to combat his imaginary antagonist which Mr. Hill employs to 
 show why he does not believe that which the writer assumes he 
 advocates. Independently of these misapprehensions, the whole 
 article is a jumble of self-evident truisms and contradictions. 
 Take this passage as an illustration : ' The other day a metro- 
 politan magistrate complained that the neighbourhood of his 
 
 i i 2 
 
484 Sequel to Charge of October, 1 855. 
 
 Court was infested by a gang of these ruffians, who occasioned 
 him the greatest annoyance. The police could but remain 
 silent ; they were well enough acquainted with the men and 
 with their character. Mr. Hill says they could have arrested 
 them ; Mr. Jardine and the police thought otherwise. Now, 
 with these facts before us, for they are facts, and strong facts 
 it follows either that the theory upon which the system rests is 
 radically wrong, or that it is badly administered. Mr. M. D. 
 Hill denies both positions that is to say, he steps forward as 
 a most energetic advocate of the theory, and he tells us that 
 the estimate is, that from 80 to 90 per cent, of convicts discharged 
 with tickets-of-leave are permanently reformed/ 
 
 1 Did anybody ever read a more flagrant specimen of self- 
 contradiction ? The writer, in reference to the complaint of 
 Mr. Jardine, that a gang of forty ticket-of-leave men infested 
 the neighbourhood of the Police Court, states that Mr. Hill 
 says the police might have arrested them (and the Recorder 
 proves it from the very conditions set forth in the ticket-of- 
 leave) ; and in six lines below he asserts, what that fact itself 
 and the whole tenor of Mr. Hill's Charge controverts, that not 
 only the system, but its administration, has Mr. Hill for an 
 advocate. The whole article is full of these misstatements and 
 obvious absurdities, and is probably the worst specimen of 
 writing, and the most unfair and pretentious abuse and use of 
 argument which we ever remember to have seen in the generally 
 able, but sometimes unequal leading columns of the Times ; for 
 the writer, not content with misrepresenting the opinions of the 
 Recorder, coolly appropriates his arguments, and in some 
 instances his very language, to demolish the unsound ethics 
 which the writer has been pleased to ascribe to him. The 
 whole article is a mistake ; its admission into the columns of 
 the Times the worst part of the blunder/ 
 
 The Globe thus treats the questions in controversy : 
 ' 'Globe, 9 October 13, 1855. 
 
 ' The ticket-of-leave system is undergoing a discussion which 
 must be extremely useful in sifting facts and forming opinion, 
 before the subject shall be taken up again in Parliament. A 
 correspondent of the Times } this morning, correctly says, that 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 485 
 
 f the ticket-of-leave system is the only mode, at present, open to 
 the Government to relieve themselves of the incubus daily 
 increasing/ the accumulation of prisoners. And he makes 
 several suggestions for improving the system, so as to correct 
 the bad results of its present imperfect condition. ' Amicus' 
 observes, that out-of-door occupations combine physical exer- 
 tion with exercise of the mind, and have a more healthy 
 influence than confinement within doors ; and he proposes that 
 the convicts, before earning their freedom, should be subjected 
 to a more rigorous test of their reform, and particularly to a 
 longer trial under labour, in such hard works as the construc- 
 tion of harbours of refuge around our coasts, roads through 
 districts of difficult character, and similar enterprises, where 
 ordinary labour cannot be employed without loss. These sug- 
 gestions are excellent, and such provisions have always been 
 comprised in the plans contemplated by the present reformers. 
 An eminent practical philosopher, whose improvements have been 
 useful in many a household, can never explain his latest inven- 
 tion without going back to the first principles of mechanics ; 
 and when a discussion is removed from a particular set to the 
 public at large, we always have to begin from the commence- 
 ment. Our surprise is, not that there should be some mistakes in 
 taking up the point, but that the public, as may be inferred 
 from the indications above cited, should have already got so far 
 towards sound conclusions. 
 
 ' As usual, however, those who learn the truth somewhat late 
 in the day are apt to imagine that those who have taught them 
 are sadly mistaken in the matter ; and, accordingly, we find a 
 writer in a morning contemporary lecturing Mr. M. D. Hill, 
 one of the most earnest, as he was one of the earliest, advocates 
 of reformatory imprisonment upon the fallacies under which 
 he labours. ' The ticket-of-leave system/ says our contempo- 
 rary, ( is a social nuisance of the worst kind ; but Mr. M. D. 
 Hill appears as its advocate/ On the contrary, Mr. M. D. Hill 
 appears as its critic, and he explains why the system is, at 
 present, a nuisance of the worst kind. It has, he says, ' been 
 over-estimated for good as well as for evil' both its advocates 
 and its opponents exaggerating the evidence that they have. 
 It is impossible/ says our contemporary, ' to take up a 
 police report, or any other record of criminal proceedings, and 
 
486 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 not to see that the ticket-of-leave men are among the most 
 prominent malefactors in the country. Now, we find them 
 figuring in the annals of English Thuggee ; now they are sup- 
 plying their ripe necessities by a series of the most desperate 
 burglaries in the northern portion of the island ; now they are 
 the chief actors in some brutal assault. The other day a metro- 
 politan magistrate complained that the neighbourhood of his 
 Court was infested by a gang of these ruffians, who occasioned 
 him the greatest annoyance. The police could but remain 
 silent ; they were well enough acquainted with the men and with 
 their character. Mr. Hill says they could have arrested them ; 
 Mr. Jardine and the police thought otherwise/ 
 
 f Mr. Hill could not have supposed that the police could 
 have arrested them; what he says is, that the Secretary of State 
 could issue an order to revoke the tickets if the men really had 
 tickets-of-leave, and to return the men to prison. But, says 
 Mr. Hill, since there is no provision for a proper examination or 
 trial of the man on his being recommitted to prison, the Secretary 
 of State hesitates to use a power so like a lettre de cachet, and the 
 revocation of the ticket-of-leave is already almost in desuetude. 
 Mr. Hill pointed to this very case as showing the imperfection 
 of the present system. There are some other inaccuracies in 
 the remarks of our contemporary. ' Mr. Hill/ he says, c tells 
 us that the estimate of permanent reforms is from 80 to 90 per 
 cent. ;' Mr. Hill mentions the estimate with an expression of 
 his own opinion that it must be inaccurate, and says that 
 ' nothing will induce him to accept it as worthy of confidence' 
 without searching investigation. He is represented to say that 
 gaol chaplains are not duped by the prisoners into favourable 
 reports ; what he really observes is, that chaplains are not more 
 likely to be misled than other men of the world by certain 
 fallacious tests, such as great pretence of piety ; and we believe 
 he is quite right. A clergyman in fact is as much more likely 
 than a layman to discriminate the simulation of piety, as a mad 
 doctor is to distinguish between real madness and feigned, a 
 military surgeon between real disease and malingering. 
 
 'The fact is, that the ' ticket-of-leave system' is a name 
 applied to a present arrangement, which has been adopted to a 
 certain extent experimentally. The principles upon which it is 
 grounded were entirely new to our jurisprudence. They are 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 487 
 
 stated by Mr. Hill to be ' First, that the criminal should 
 have the opportunity of working his way out of gaol; and 
 second, that he should, for a limited period, be liable to be 
 deprived of his liberty so regained, if his course of life should 
 be such as to give reasonable ground for belief that he has 
 relapsed into criminal habits/ When transportation to the 
 principal Australian colonies was unavoidably abandoned, it 
 became necessary to find some mode of disposing of criminals 
 convicted of the graver classes of offence. Already Captain 
 Maconochie had laid down the lines, if we may call it so, on 
 which the system of the principles just expressed could be 
 carried out, but the idea was entirely novel. The principles 
 have hitherto been supported only by a comparatively limited 
 class of persons, peculiarly studious on the subject. The public 
 did not interfere in the matter, and did not lend its support, 
 and Government naturally hesitated to commit itself too far at 
 first. Hence the principles of the proposed system of penal 
 servitude were carried out with great restrictions. In the 
 present ticket-of-leave system the sentences of imprisonment 
 are too short, the power over the criminals is too limited, and 
 his release is too freely and unconditionally granted. Hence 
 the criminal is returned to society unreformed, and the ticket- 
 of-leave man is often as formidable as the unconvicted ruffian/ 
 
 ' ( Few men in Europe have bestowed more anxious or more 
 successful attention upon this subject, than M. Demetz/ says 
 the Times ; ' and what is it that M. Demetz says of our prac- 
 tice ? ' Deja I'Angleterre a adopt e cette mesure, mais nous 
 avons des raisons de craindre que jusqu' a present ^application 
 n } en ait pas ete faite avec toutes les precautions desirables.' This 
 is just our opinion/ 
 
 1 With this powerful support there is no doubt that we shall 
 be able to procure a further reform, which shall place the prac- 
 tice in harmony with the theory/ 
 
 The ' Spectator, 3 of the same date, contains the two following 
 articles : 
 
 'CRIMINAL TREATMENT OF CRIMINALS. 
 
 ' Laziness is the great vice which obstructs the improvement 
 of society. We do not mean the laziness of the disreputable 
 
488 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 classes, but the vice as it shows itself in the most respectable, 
 and even in those who would consider themselves the teachers 
 and leaders of their kind. It is little less than laziness which 
 makes the impatient class of reformers hasten to seize con- 
 clusions without developing the necessary means to work out 
 those conclusions, as though you could snatch loaves of bread 
 out of the corn-field. And it is equally laziness which makes 
 men assume that results cannot be attained, or even refuse to 
 inquire into the means of attaining them. At this moment 
 there is a great mass of experience, sound reasoning, and positive 
 knowledge, which tell us what we should do with our criminals ; 
 but the Legislature, and those who move the Legislature, are 
 content to compromise with a great duty rather than go through 
 a very moderate amount of proper labour in order to work out 
 the question thoroughly. There are several interests at stake, 
 all of them important. The object is to protect the innocent 
 part of society if in this view such a part can be said to exist 
 against the lawless irregularity of the criminal part. It may 
 be conceded on a very simple principle of philosophy, that the 
 shortest and cheapest mode to preserve society in a state of 
 purity would be to kill off all criminals, and so to save the 
 expense of their maintenance, and render the contamination of 
 other classes absolutely impossible. There are two considerations 
 that preclude this Draconian plan. One is, that a cruel law 
 contaminates those who enforce it, and in extirpating a minority 
 of criminals we should create a majority of criminals. The 
 second, yet more important, has its root in the finite nature of 
 human insight, and the slowness of human experience to work 
 out its own best conclusions. Some of the most important 
 truths to which we have attained have at an early stage of their 
 development been regarded as heresies which it was criminal to 
 admit or even to discuss ; arid if we were to adopt the plan of 
 extirpating our criminals, we should, in our blundering fore- 
 sight, confound the reformers with the criminals, and place 
 extinction upon the progress of society without cutting out the 
 cancer. 
 
 f As we cannot send our criminals to Hades, we must bestow 
 them somewhere else. We cannot follow Punch's plan of 
 driving them 'to the world's edge and pitching them over/ 
 They must abide with us in some way; and the question is, 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 489 
 
 since they must exist, bow they can be lodged so as to inflict 
 no wanton suffering upon themselves, and yet inflict a minimum 
 of contamination upon society. The plan of transportation 
 seemed, in a geographical sense, to be a substitute for dismissal 
 to Hades ; but we cannot find any place in the world so little 
 eligible for the ordinary purposes of life that emigrants not of 
 the criminal class will fail to seek it ; and hence we established 
 in the Australian Colonies, not a pure prison for criminal pur- 
 poses, but a community with an enormous percentage of criminal 
 element in it. When we tried to isolate the criminal element in 
 Norfolk Island, we found ourselves manufacturing a concentra- 
 tion of crime which it became an impiety to perpetuate. We 
 discontinued the Norfolk Island forthwith, and followed it up 
 with discontinuing Australia as the site for transportation. All 
 these were rough and ready modes of getting rid of our criminals, 
 without really considering what to do with them. We have 
 put off that question to the present day, and still try to put it 
 off; and, as usual, we are paid for our laziness with an increase 
 of trouble and expense. 
 
 ' Transportation was discontinued years ago : long before 
 that time, those who had taken the trouble to inquire into the 
 subject, like M. Demetz in France, Mr. M. D. Hill, Captain 
 M aconochie, and Mr. Adderley in this country, had shown with 
 more or less exactness of reasoning, and with great accuracy 
 for practical purposes, the true manner of dealing with our 
 criminals. It is possible to diminish the amount of the criminal 
 class at the source, by cutting off the supply, and converting 
 a large proportion of our youth into honest citizens. With 
 great numbers the casualities of an excessively poor home, life 
 in the streets, total neglect of education, contamination by 
 associating with depraved relatives, and other incidents, render 
 it almost impossible to find the path to an honest livelihood ; 
 and a dishonest course therefore became the only natural means 
 of subsistence. In order to block out this great recruitment of 
 the criminal forces, a plan of reformatory discipline would be 
 required for children who have actually fallen into bad courses, 
 and a system of education accessible to all for those who have 
 not yet lapsed; but we have deferred the system of public 
 education until we can settle certain squabbles upon abstract 
 sectarian questions ; each sect preferring to keep our youth in a 
 
49 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 state of ignorance which exposes it to crime, rather than permit 
 the risk that one sect or other will have a better chance of 
 getting hold of the rising generation. The plan of reformatory 
 institutions has been adopted ; we have Parkhurst, Redhill, and 
 other such schools : but if the principle upon which these institu- 
 tions are founded is sound if there is any virtue in the success 
 there attained it is certain that the same course ought to 
 be pursued with all the criminal youth, and not confined to a 
 simple percentage of that class. It would be of little service to 
 vaccinate one in ten of the population ; if we intend to prevent 
 the prevalence of small-pox, our only course is to enforce 
 vaccination for all. But because we are too lazy thoroughly to 
 investigate the working of our present system, and the necessary 
 working of an improved system, we compromise the question 
 by boasting of Redhill arid Parkhurst, and leave nine-tenths 
 of the population unvaccinated against a disease worse than 
 small-pox. 
 
 ' So likewise with regard to the adult criminals. There is 
 great reason to suppose that the circumstances which determine 
 the adoption of an honest or criminal course of life, in most 
 cases, are very trivial. Upon the whole, the understandings of 
 this class are low ; they lapse more from ignorance than malig- 
 nity. A modicum of well-supplied assistance would prevent 
 crime in all but those few whose deformed nature places them 
 in the order of lusus natures, and who in respect of criminal 
 discipline may be regarded as practically insane. Their detention 
 would be justified upon the same grounds that justify the 
 detention of the insane. With regard to the other class, they 
 are in the same condition so long as they are criminally dis- 
 posed, that is, they are insane, and should be in safe custody. 
 As soon as they have ceased to be criminally disposed, and 
 become disposed, like ordinary people to earn their livelihood 
 in an honest way, they are cured of their insanity, and may 
 safely go at large. Speaking generally, this cure can, in most 
 cases, be well tested. If the criminal have cheerfully com- 
 pleted for a lengthened period a fair amount of task-work, he 
 will have shown that he has acquired that frame of mind and 
 those habits of hand which indicate social health. If, in the 
 course of that discipline, he has found his condition, generally 
 speaking, correspond with his own diligence in industry, there 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 491 
 
 is the greater probability that the species of blind logic thus 
 taught to his sensations will direct him out in the world. But 
 our legislators at large will not take the trouble of examining 
 the rule so soundly laid down by Mr. M. D. Hill, in addressing 
 the Birmingham Grand Jury 
 
 1 ' If they desired, as he did, to see that principle adopted, they 
 must be prepared to strengthen the hands of Government by 
 advocating such a change in the law as would enable those who 
 administered it to retain in custody all such as were convicted 
 of crime until they had, by sure and unequivocal tests, proved 
 that they had the will and the power to gain an honest liveli- 
 hood when at large. They must face that question. They 
 must keep the maniac in prison, under restraint, unless he is 
 satisfactorily proved to be fit to return to society/ 
 
 ' The conclusions which we are enforcing have been conceded, 
 weighed, set aside for after- thought, re-examined, sifted, reduced 
 to their best working form, and at last consistently advocated 
 by some of the most influential men of all parties in this 
 country as well as in France. We have had meetings on the 
 Continent and in England; and within the last fortnight, 
 besides the Conference of the friends of reformatory discipline at 
 Birmingham, we have had M. Demetz, of Mettray, addressing 
 friends at Bristol on the subject, and an admirable address by 
 Mr. M. D. Hill to the Grand Jury at Birmingham. By 
 degrees, no doubt, these earnest, consistent, and laborious 
 reformers are gaining ground ; they have established their case 
 clearly on the grounds of logic and of practical experience; 
 they are obstructed by nothing but that inherent laziness which 
 continues the influence of bad laws in keeping up the numbers 
 and force of the criminal part of the population. It is thus 
 shown as clearly as it is possible to establish any social fact, 
 that, monsters and accidents excepted, we might cut off the 
 larger part of the supply of criminals, and remove the larger 
 portion of the permanent criminals from society: but society, 
 too lazy to go into the detail, unwilling to take the responsibility 
 which a conviction thus worked out could alone justify, again 
 compromises the question with adult as well as juvenile offenders, 
 and in lieu of detaining the culprit until he has proved his cure, 
 determines that he shall be sentenced to an imprisonment for 
 a definite period, as if we said to a man labouring under 
 
493 Sequel to Charge of October, 
 
 insanity, or under any infectious disease, you shall go to the 
 doctor's for two months, then to be driven forth upon society, 
 cured or uncured/ 
 
 ' THE ADHESION OF THE ' TIMES. 
 
 f The adhesion of the Times to the principle which we have just 
 been enforcing is a distinct event in itself. When that powerful 
 organ adopts a principle, we infer that the principle is no longer 
 militant in an order of devoted adherents, but triumphant in 
 popular acceptance. Tt was a consciousness of the stamp of 
 currency which the leading journal can give, that made Sir 
 Robert Peel convey to the office in Printing-house Square the 
 special thanks for support, which Mr. Carlyle first brought 
 before the public in his Memoir of Mr. John Sterling. If the 
 Times, faithful to its own title, strives to reflect the prevailing 
 opinion of the day, it has only the more largely identified itself 
 with such opinion, and acquired a larger power to distinguish 
 opinion as being received. We may sometimes smile at the 
 facility with which our great contemporary can take up a 
 neglected cause just at the happy moment when the coming 
 success of a principle may assist the success of a journal; but 
 when it adopts propositions which we have at heart, we all of 
 us congratulate ourselves on the event, and believe that we 
 have success because the Times aids us. For several years, 
 with little help from contemporary journalism, we had held the 
 faith which we have just been preaching with renewed hope, 
 that no convicted and imprisoned criminal should be restored to 
 liberty until he shall have earned it by labour and conduct : 
 the Times now adopts the same creed, and we infer that society 
 at large is on the point of adopting it. 
 
 ' Somewhat new to the cause, our contemporary, indeed, 
 slightly misconceives the representations of its oldest advo- 
 cates. For example, Mr. Hill, defending the principles on 
 which the ticket-of-leave system is based, insists that the prin- 
 ciples are sound, although they are exposed to serious miscon- 
 ception by their imperfect application in the existing system : 
 the Times seems to regard Mr. Hill as being in some way a 
 defender of the system as it is. Again, Mr. Hill mentions the 
 alleged effect of the ticket-of-leave system upon the adult 
 
Sequel to Charge of October , 1855. 493 
 
 criminals, as resulting in the reform of 90 per cent. figures 
 which he mentioned in order to express his strong doubt of 
 their accuracy; and yet the figures are cited against him as 
 his own. These, however, are minor errors, and since they 
 must get corrected in the progress of discussion now likely to 
 become practical, they will do no serious harm. Certain we 
 are, that Mr. Hill, like Archbishop Whately, Captain Macono- 
 chie, and the other labourers in the same field, will take little um- 
 brage at small mistakes, while they can congratulate themselves 
 upon so fortunate an adherence as that of the great journal. 
 It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Times may do 
 more in a single article than any other or all other educators 
 of opinion in long years of toil. All we ask is, that the leading 
 journal, having reached the top of the hill, will put a ' scotched 
 behind its wheels, and not run back to the bottom ; a mishap 
 at which it would be easy to scold, but which scolding would 
 not mend/ 
 
 The c Examiner' of the same date writes as follows : 
 
 1 THE TICKET-OF-LEAVE SYSTEM. 
 
 ' Mr. M. D. Hill has made the ticket-of-leave system the text 
 of his Charge at the Birmingham Quarter Sessions. The conclu- 
 sion he has arrived at, and to which he endeavours to conduct 
 the public, is, that the effects of the system have been exagge- 
 rated both for good and evil. This is always a safe judgment ; 
 as there is nothing in the world of which the precise truth is 
 thought and said, our language being shaped to a magnifying 
 medium alike in praise and blame. But Mr. Hill's reasoning 
 has more positive results than the discovery of opposite excesses. 
 He succeeds in vindicating the principle of the ticket-of-leave 
 system, but he does not strengthen confidence in the machinery 
 for carrying it into effect. It is politic and humane, wise and 
 good, to give the convict the opportunity of redeeming himself. 
 So far we thoroughly go with Mr. Hill ; but we cannot share 
 in his reliance on the authorities who have to decide in every 
 particular case, whether there be or not the evidences of refor- 
 mation. The power rests with the Secretary of State for the 
 Home Department, who exercises it upon reports from the 
 prisons, which reports will differ in value with all the differing 
 
494 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 intellectual capacities employed in the management of gaols. 
 The convict is generally not unskilled in dissimulation, often a 
 consummate master of the art, while the chaplain -who has to 
 judge of him is rarely a man of any experience in the crooked 
 ways of the world. The reverend gentleman is appointed to 
 the prison because he is a kind, good man, and perhaps specially 
 recommended by the very simplicity which makes him the easy 
 dupe of a clever rogue. The candidate for a ticket-of-leave 
 would have cheated his reverence in a horse-market, imposed on 
 him in any of the most hacknied modes of sharping and swind- 
 ling ; and is he less an overmatch for him when hypocrisy is 
 to be played off against the disposition to believe the best ? The 
 chaplain is naturally prone to think that his ministrations and 
 lessons have not been fruitless, and every knave knows how to 
 flatter this predisposition. As it is the clergyman's business to 
 work the reformation, it should not be in his province to pro- 
 nounce upon the performance of his work. The proving process 
 should be in other hands, with no self-love interested in the 
 conclusion. We do not mean to say that the chaplain's report 
 should not be received for as much as it may be fairly worth, 
 but we contend that it should not be decisive, but weighed with 
 or against other evidences. 
 
 'Mr. Hill touches upon the inconsistency of limiting the 
 ticket-of-leave system to the class of offences punishable with 
 transportation, thus refusing the opportunity and grace of 
 reformation to the less grave offences. A direct bounty is thus 
 offered to the more serious offences ; for many a convict falling 
 within the latter class obtains his ticket-of-leave within two 
 years, while the lighter offender, condemned to two years' im- 
 prisonment, has to undergo the full term of his punishment. 
 The limitation evinces either a distrust of the reformatory prin- 
 ciple, or of the machinery for working it. The principle was 
 distrusted, if it was thought most prudent and safe to try it 
 upon a part, riot the whole body of offenders. The machinery 
 was distrusted, if it was apprehended that to extend the system 
 to all would be to let loose on the public a vast number of 
 misdoers, undeserving the grace shown to them. But the fact 
 is that the change in the law had nothing to do with principle, 
 and therefore had no principle in it. It was a shift of neces- 
 sity. The Colonies would not consent to have the spawn of 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 495 
 
 crime flung upon them, and therefore transportation was 
 retrenched, or turned into something else ; for which a scheme 
 was patched up to fit the exigency, without a thought or care 
 of conformity or accord with the rest of the penal system. 
 Punishment is subordinate to reformation with one class of 
 prisoners in our gaols, but not with the others. Is it not, 
 then, thought worth while to reform small offenders? What, 
 then, is the object ? Deterring example. And is deterring 
 example good only for them, and not for the greater offenders ? 
 Or is reformation, on the other hand, more to be expected, and 
 to be courted from the great offenders, and utterly neglected 
 with the smaller culprits ? 
 
 1 Mr. Hill has not shrunk from the startling question What 
 is to be done with incorrigible criminals? a problem which must 
 follow the success of reformatory discipline. It is, unhappily, 
 still far off in the order of things, but yet it is not amiss to 
 contemplate it. 
 
 ' ' As no training, however enlightened and vigilant/ said the 
 Recorder of Birmingham, ' will produce its intended effects on 
 every individual subjected to its discipline, what are we to do 
 with the incurable ? Gentlemen, we must face this question : 
 we must not flinch from answering, that we propose to detain 
 them in prison until they are released by death. You keep 
 the maniac in a prison (which you call an asylum) under similar 
 conditions; you guard against his escape until he is taken 
 from you, either because he is restored to sanity, or has 
 departed to another world. If, Gentlemen, innocent misfortune 
 may and must be so treated, why not thus deal with incorri- 
 gible depravity ? This is a question which I have asked times 
 out of number, without ever being so fortunate as to extract a 
 reply. It is always tacitly assumed that imprisonment must 
 not be perpetual ; but whether that assumption is founded on 
 any reason supposed to arise out of the nature of things, or 
 whether it only rests on the present state of public feeling, I 
 know not. If the former ground is taken, I would give much to 
 learn what the argument is; when disclosed, I must either 
 answer it or yield to it; but while I am kept in the dark, 
 each alternative is barred against me. If, however, this assumed 
 inadmissibility of perpetual imprisonment is rested on the pre- 
 sent state of public sentiment, I have seen too often the change 
 
496" Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 from wrong to right in that mighty power, to despair of its 
 becoming an ally instead of an opponent. It is my belief that 
 if long terms of imprisonment, even to perpetuity, were placed 
 before the public mind as indissolubly connected with the privi- 
 lege to the convict of working out his own redemption from 
 thraldom, by proving himself fit for liberty, it would require no 
 great lapse of time to produce the change in opinion which I 
 contemplate. Alarm on the score of expense ought not to be 
 entertained, for two reasons. First, because no unreformed 
 inmates of a prison, however extravagant its expenditure may be, 
 cost the community so much as they would do if at large. This 
 fact has been so often proved, that I must be allowed to assume 
 it as undeniable. But the second reason is, that prisons may 
 be made either altogether, or to a very great extent, self- 
 supporting/ 
 
 1 If the alternative be^that the incorrigible rogue is to live at 
 large at the heaviest cost to the public in the shape of pillage, 
 or at a lighter cost in gaol to the end of his days, there can be 
 no question about the rational and just choice. But long before 
 the debate of this proposition for practical purposes, there must 
 have been adopted some better system of testing the corrigible 
 than at present exists. We are now in the very rudest and 
 most imperfect winnowing process, and before we can pretend 
 to put aside the chaff as worthless, we must have some better 
 security that none of it passes for wholesome grain/ 
 
 The following article on the ' Science of Reformation/ is 
 from the ' Inquirer' of the same date : 
 
 ' The Recorder of Birmingham has been developing some of 
 his views on the ' Science of Reformation/ Perhaps it would 
 rather come under what Professor Ferrier grandly terms ' Agnoio- 
 logy, or the Science of Ignorance/ Anyhow it is obvious enough 
 that what Mr. M. D. Hill knows best on the subject is, first, 
 the greatness of our present failure at least as regards 
 grown-up criminals and next, the theoretic views which he 
 himself holds, but which, not having yet sustained any trial, 
 are only the preliminary questions addressed to nature, which 
 may as well result in extending that very wide branch of science 
 before alluded to as in rescuing the ' Science Reformation ' out 
 of the Agnoiological domains. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 497 
 
 ' One reason why it is so difficult for ordinary human beings 
 to take the interest that it is their duty to take in educational 
 and philanthropic questions is, that the class of beings they are 
 providing for are generally so imperfectly and unreally conceived. 
 So much more belief is habitually placed in the system than 
 any system will bear ; so little room is allowed for the expan- 
 sive power of individual and personal elements of character. 
 In works of education, for instance, children are apt to be 
 regarded, en masse, as the subjects for a species of moral and 
 intellectual tailoring, transacted by teachers and patrons, and 
 intended to provide them with a good suit of respectable moral 
 habits (a Sunday suit, and an everyday suit). Educational 
 systems are drawn up without any adequate perception how very 
 little any system, even the best, can effect. There is no pro* 
 portionate appreciation of the smallness of the machinery pro- 
 vided. The self-importance of the teaching class makes them 
 take to their own credit very much that grows up under, or in 
 spite of, their system, and which would equally grow up without 
 it. The rules and the methods have a quite exaggerated value 
 assigned to them. The personal and unmethodical contact of 
 mind with mind, from which almost all the educational results 
 spring, is quite passed over. And the case is usually still 
 worse when these educational systems are not rigid rules, 
 applying equally to all, but are the results of a theory of 
 personal character specially elaborated by didactic genius for 
 the treatment of given cases. In physicking of any sort there 
 is little safety. But when the physicking is moral, and is not 
 the unconscious result of the natural impressions mutually and 
 involuntarily produced, but is an elaborate course of ' treatment' 
 pursued by theoretic physicians of character, after due study of 
 ' symptoms/ there is a great deal more harm done by it, we 
 believe, than good. Methods of discipline, moral regulations, &c., 
 are dull and painful studies enough, and of but little use even 
 to the regular teaching profession ; but the most rigid set of 
 rules impartially applied are more beneficial, we believe, than 
 the professed special doctoring of children on a supposed know- 
 ledge of the characters and moral deficiencies of each. The 
 most hurtful sort of systematic treatment is that of the 
 doctrinaire who has distinct theories of therapeutics for every 
 distinct symptom, and rigidly moulds himself by force of will 
 
 K K 
 
498 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 into the appropriate moral attitude for every patient put under 
 his care. 
 
 ' These remarks have more bearing than may at first appear 
 on Mr. Hill's Charge to the Birmingham Grand Jury. In that 
 speech he advocates what we should call a distinct onesided 
 and doctrinaire method of dealing with convicted criminals under 
 sentence. Mr. Hill, as is well known, is one of the school who 
 regard a prison as a moral hospital, and advocate riot only for 
 juvenile criminals but for all criminals, a purely medical treat- 
 ment. Pain may and must be used medically like caustic, 
 but for no other purpose whatever than the distinct purpose of 
 cure. He notices the great difficulty introduced by the termina- 
 tion of transportation (without, however, taking notice of the real 
 loss of power caused by the inability to open out to our convicts 
 a quite new career), and then goes on to take into consideration 
 the system to be substituted. On the ticket-of-leave system, 
 by which those who conduct themselves well in prison are con- 
 ditionally pardoned and set at liberty, under the liability, however, 
 of being at any time recommitted to prison for the completion 
 of their sentence if their conduct out of prison is not satisfac- 
 tory, he makes some very good remarks ; properly, we believe, 
 ascribing much of its evil results to the weakness of the official 
 authorities, who are too easily induced to grant tickets-of-leave, 
 and far too reluctant to recall them. But Mr. Hill, in the 
 zeal of his heart for his Reformatory Science, proposes a system 
 of far more injurious tendency than the present. Speaking 
 of the ticket-of-leave system, he says : 
 
 ' ' Gentlemen, if you desire, as I most earnestly do, to see this 
 principle universally adopted, you must be prepared to strengthen 
 the hands of Government by advocating such a change in the 
 law as will enable those who administer the criminal justice of 
 the country to retain in custody all such as are convicted of 
 crime, until they have, by sure and unequivocal tests, demon- 
 strated that they have the will and the power to gain an honest 
 livelihood when at large. You must be content that they shall 
 be retained until habits of industry are formed until moderate 
 skill in some useful occupation is acquired until the hard lesson 
 of self-control is mastered in short, till the convict ceases 
 to be a criminal, resolves to fulfil his duties both to God and 
 to man, and has surmounted all obstacles against carrying such 
 resolutions into successful action. But .... what are 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 499 
 
 we to do with the incurable? Gentlemen, we must face this 
 question; we must not flinch from answering that we propose 
 to keep them in prison until they are released by death. You 
 keep the maniac in a prison (which you call an asylum) under 
 similar conditions; .... if, Gentlemen, innocent mis- 
 fortune may and must be so treated, why not thus deal with 
 incorrigible depravity ?' 
 
 ' The reformatory theory of punishment often runs almost 
 into the same false extremes as the utilitarian theory of Ben- 
 tham. It is well known that Bentham wanted to counteract 
 temptation; and, therefore, proposed to load with the most 
 heavy punishments those crimes to which there was most tempta- 
 tion, on the ground that some great after-pain was needed to 
 keep in check a great desire. The consequence was, that his 
 criminal legislation would have been an exact reversal of justice, 
 punishing most heavily the least guilt, and, of course, would 
 have brought about a revolution very quickly indeed. Now 
 Mr. Hill's reformatory theory quite losing sight of guilt and 
 justice threatens us with the same danger. We are to give 
 absolute power to a Secretary of State to keep the ' incurable' 
 in prison, at will till death, if he will. And who are to be 
 the judges of curability ? Who is to take the responsibility of 
 saying that a criminal patient has, or has not, ' mastered the 
 hard lesson of self-control ?' has, or has not, ' resolved to fulfil 
 his duties both to God and man' has, or has not, ' surmounted 
 all obstacles' against carrying his good resolutions ( into success- 
 ful action ?' There can be no criterion except the good or bad 
 guesses of persons who act on their own judgments (chaplains 
 of gaols will be chiefly, we presume, the guiding and suggesting 
 springs of this system), and who manufacture their own 
 ' unequivocal tests.' Now, how can this system be redeemed 
 from the fatal objection to Bentham's system that it will, in 
 very many cases, punish the most guilty least, and the least 
 guilty most ? The most guilty are by no means always the 
 most apparently incurable ; still less are they the most likely 
 to fall into new temptation ; indeed the reverse is very often 
 the case. Indolence, intemperance, extravagance, are the roots 
 of the commoner and least heinous, and yet often of the most 
 incurable offences. A really great crime committed by a culti- 
 vated man, from the depths of his evil heart, would generally give 
 
 K K 2 
 
5co Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 few symptoms of incurability. That gentleman (Mr. Garden), 
 who, in the south of Ireland, compassed with the most cold-blooded 
 and selfish violence one of the greatest of crimes, would not, 
 probably, if tried by Mr. HilFs tests, have needed detaining in 
 prison at all longer than the tender anxiety of the Government 
 for his health actually did detain 'him. What would be the 
 class of deficiencies and moral dangers which Mr. HilPs 
 doctrinaire system would discover the soonest, and detain the 
 longest 'for cure ? Just that superficial class which are, if the 
 most mischievous, yet, under all circumstances, also frequently 
 the least guilty, want of temper, perhaps even want of honesty, 
 and intemperate dispositions. The deep cruelty and profligacy 
 of heart which needs a very special environment of circumstance 
 to come out at all, and which, when most evil, is fully under 
 the control of a cold, self-possessed temperament, would be 
 dismissed ' cured/ in a tenth part of the time needed to reform 
 strong appetites for drink, or a quarrelsome nature. The 
 character of the ' unequivocal tests/ by reference to which Mr. 
 Hill proposes ^that official wisdom shall . exercise the immense 
 responsibility .with which : he entrusts it, may be gathered from 
 the suggestion . that the ' labour* voluntarily performed by a 
 prisoner should; hasten his, discharge, that he should be allowed, 
 however, if ke chooses, .to take this extra labour out in an 
 improved diet but that such improvement of diet should delay, 
 pro tanto, the period of liberty. Thus is the prisoner to be 
 taught self-command and economy. It is clear that the deeper 
 guilt, frpm which much crime results, could never be touched by 
 this kind of ' treatment/ The practical result of Mr. Hill's pro- 
 posed system would be to put an immense and irresponsible power 
 into the hands of those moral ' physicians' of our prisons, who 
 could only judge of cure by arbitrary and superficial symptoms, 
 and who would be most likely to see the incurability, chiefly in 
 cases of comparatively trifling guilt. The healing theory of punish- 
 ment is almost as one-sided and dangerous as the preventive 
 theory, unless strictly checked, and limited by regard to justice 
 and guilt. No system can long stand that does not take injustice, 
 that is, some bond fide retributive element for its central idea, 
 allowing ' prevention' and ' cure' only to be regarded as secon- 
 dary and modifying considerations. Good or bad conduct in 
 prison ought of course often to affect the duration of punish- 
 ment, but certainly ought not to be the principal element taken 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 501 
 
 into account. Let us not create a doctrinaire class of spiritual 
 physicians with such fearfully important results attached to their 
 diagnosis of the obscurest and deepest evil which can affect the 
 human soul/ 
 
 The following, article is from, the Weekly Dispatch, Oct. I4th: 
 
 ' It is not at all too much to say, that the people of this 
 country are justly indignant at that sense of insecurity and 
 that infliction of positive loss which are the results of what is 
 called, the ' Ticket-of-leave ' system. The jauntiness of our 
 present Premier, who has always been content to apply his 
 ability and industry to one or two great matters, and to leave 
 all the rest to shift for themselves, is in no small degree 
 answerable for this. We will own that it was no easy task for 
 a Home Secretary to devise a plan that would stand in place 
 of the relief of the population by the transportation of its worst, 
 elements what we principally complain of is,, that the system 
 devised has never been earnestly and thoroughly carried out 
 Men are sent back to their old haunts as the reward of 
 shamming penitence to a chaplain, without the slightest real 
 security for their not returning to their former course of life, 
 with the additional desperation of knowing that it is their only 
 one. As to the assertion that 80 or 90 per cent, of convicts 
 with tickets-of-leave are permanently reformed, we look upon it 
 as a gross imposition. Effects must have causes, and we can 
 see none in the present method of procedure that can give 
 anything like such results. The works of ' the ticket-of-leave' 
 men in Scotland and in England are before our eyes in the 
 police reports ; and if we could believe that the number of their 
 misdeeds is small, the ferocity of their doings is pre-eminent. 
 Burglary, robbery with violence and murder,, are among their 
 latest achievements. Nobody in his senses could suppose that 
 an acted religious penitence, exhibited before a prison chaplain, 
 could be, in the slightest degree, a test of reformation. Industry 
 and self-denial are the habits which distinguish honesty from 
 crime, and these are of slow development, and require long 
 time, indeed, for absolute proof, where they have to supplant 
 contrary principles. It must be at all times a process of 
 immense difficulty to replace a convicted man in a society where 
 labour is plentiful and character is indispensable. The chances 
 of reformation and renewed respectability were far greater where 
 
503 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 all help was valuable,, and where the temptation to work was 
 full as great as the temptation to steal, where comparative 
 solitude restored, in a degree, the natural inter -dependence of 
 individuals. So was it under the most favourable circumstances, 
 in our colonies. As it is, we must ourselves accept the task 
 and its cost, and, above all, we must not throw away our 
 money and our time by doing everything in a niggard and im- 
 perfect, and, therefore, hollow fashion. Mr. Hill, the Recorder 
 of Birmingham, has delivered a very able Charge upon the 
 subject to the Grand Jury there. He is a friend of the new 
 system, but of the system as it ought to be, not as it is, marred 
 and baffled by shortcomings. He enunciates principles, which, 
 from having been long laid aside or neglected for false ones, 
 have all the startling effect of novelty. Let us banish all 
 difference about the mere titles of system, and look at the 
 matter from these fundamental principles. Mr. Hill's main 
 proposition is, that if you let a man out of prison, when you 
 believe that he is thoroughly reformed, return him to society 
 because you believe that society may henceforth trust him, you 
 are bound, by the same rule, to keep him in prison until he 
 gives proof of being an honest man, though that should be for a 
 long or an indefinite period. We are departing certainly, by 
 any mitigation of a sentence, from the old ground of punish- 
 ment, that is of retributive vengeance, and of deterring the 
 criminals by the example of a certain fixed quantity of pain to 
 be endured. We have long ceased to hang out of the way 
 those who were supposed to be worthless, mere nuisances to 
 society, and irreclaimable professors of evil. And as we may 
 not now remove such parties to another land, any more than to 
 another world, we must deal with them as material that must 
 be made useful, or at least harmless. Mr. Hill justly observes, 
 that we shut up madmen, not because of the mischief they have 
 done, but because of the mischief they will do ; and society, if 
 it undertakes to give the chance of becoming better to those 
 who live only to offend against it and themselves, is, undoubtedly, 
 entitled to protect itself fully from their actions during the 
 process. The question of expense, at first glance, is a fearful 
 one ; but the fact is, that we are in the habit of submitting 
 supinely to an infinitely greater and far worse levied tax. It is 
 as plain as the surest figures can make it, that the thief out of 
 prison costs the community three or four times as much as he 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 503 
 
 possibly can when within the walls. Indeed, there is no great 
 computation necessary for the matter. Out of prison he lives, 
 and often very expensively, and it is a rare thing for him to sell 
 his plunder for a fourth of its value. He must, therefore, take 
 immensely more from society than his prison keep. And when 
 we recollect what the lottery of robbery is, how frequently it falls 
 upon those to whom it brings the deepest distress, if not absolute 
 ruin when we remember the anxieties and the costly machinery 
 of protection in the case of those who escape, we must perceive 
 the waste entailed by crime as an enormity in political economy 
 as monstrous as the offence is grievous against morals. Beyond 
 this, we will not admit that the work of prisoners might not, in 
 a great measure, be made sufficiently remunerative for their keep, 
 and even their encouragement. All the cheapness of associated 
 expense ought to be realized in the highest degree, and the 
 scale of accommodation and food certainly ought to be the very 
 simplest. The supplanting of honest labour by prison work is 
 an argument quite out of date, or it ought to be by this time. 
 If the contrary were the fact, the fault would not be in the 
 prison, but out of the prison; and the remedy to be applied 
 must be the general facilitation of industry, if not by positive 
 legislation, by the removal of all laws and customs, taxation and 
 policy, that thwart it. We feel, too, that the dealing with crime 
 as disease has the warrant of the highest of all philosophy. We 
 believe that this Christian principle is the only one that ever 
 will solve the problem of evil, and combat its effects. Else how 
 frequently must we punish the actions, which have their source, 
 not in the culprit before us, but in his education, in the tempta- 
 tion into which he has been led intentionally by his very parents ? 
 This principle of reformatory imprisonment, however, must be 
 kept quite distinct from another idea, started through another 
 channel, of making solitary incarceration, upon bread and water, 
 supersede public execution in the case of the murderer. This is 
 suggested in the Times by a ' Physiologist/ who wishes to get 
 rid of the debasing effect of capital punishment, and he adds 
 that the process will not last long ; that is, the criminal will 
 soon die. Such a proposal ought to be memorized among the 
 atrocities of science. Place brutal criminals in solitary cells, 
 and keep them on such diet as will give no physical relief to 
 the weariness of the mind, with the intention of humbling and 
 humanizing them. Make the ruffian that ill-uses a wife or a 
 
504 Sequel to Charge of October, 
 
 mistress thus pine for the sympathy of any human being. 
 Possibly the method may succeed better than the lash ; at all 
 events it might be first tried. We should have much faith in 
 it in many cases. But it is because we have this faith in its 
 subduing power, that we would never condemn the worst 
 criminal to die of it. He must have but a poor imagination 
 that cannot picture to himself this prolonged agony, worse than 
 that of the old monastic starvation for sins against chastity, 
 inasmuch as it must be so incomparably more lingering. 
 Conceive any human being merely fed, without seeing or hear- 
 ing his gaoler, left in one place without employment, or the 
 slightest hope of change. We believe that the Inquisition never 
 equalled this refinement of torture. Without debating the 
 question of capital punishment, if the criminal is to die, he has 
 a right to die at once. If pain unwitnessed will reform, it is 
 mercy ; if not, it is pure barbarity. And the unutterable suffer- 
 ing would be the most terrible to the criminal who had yet 
 some sensibilities undestroyed. The mere brute, perhaps, 
 would only become a thorough idiot. We need not pursue 
 the subject further; such a device will never be the law of 
 England, or of any civilized country, unless it should happen to 
 be tried in some wild frenzy of pseudo-philanthropy in the 
 United States. But if we once admit that we are to reform in 
 punishing that we are to reform the criminal for good, how 
 bitterly does the confession taunt all who withhold an industrial 
 education from the yet innocent ! Begin there, and you, at 
 once arid for ever, dispose of the question of doing an injustice 
 by making crime a qualification for being taught and cared for. 
 You must deal with the criminals you have suffered to grow up ; 
 but let the generation now being born begin anew. If industry 
 and self-denial are the bases of a true reformation, it is because 
 they are the foundations of an originally honest career. In the 
 name of all that is good and true, merciful and sacred, cannot 
 we agree to teach so much without sectarian squabbling? 
 Cannot we keep our children out of prison without violating the 
 claims of orthodoxy? Cannot we learn of that admirable 
 example, in Westminster, who teaches his ragged scholars 
 ' nothing particular' in the way of theology, and yet accom- 
 plishes the ends of all endurable theology, by making good men 
 of them, and that out of the most unpromising class? And, 
 almost beyond that, if we are, as indeed we must, to turn our 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 505 
 
 prisons into houses of reformation, or of perpetual detention, 
 when obstinacy baffles all cure, how are we bound to receive 
 the efforts of poor wretches who offer to reform themselves if 
 they be only allowed the opportunity ! Such are the thieves 
 who declared to the Earl of Shaftesbury that their only desire 
 was to leave their trade, but that no one gave them a chance of 
 bread out of it, and the candidates for admission into Refuges, 
 who are absolutely turned back for want of funds ! Here we 
 may deal with genuine cases at a tenth of the ordinary cost. 
 We are sure of the largest percentage of results for the least 
 outlay. No Old Bailey, no police, no magistrates, counsel, 
 judges, come in for the largest share of the expenditure. Pend- 
 ing a discussion, which the public need as well as the public anger 
 will force upon Parliament, private means may do much towards 
 this best and easiest part of the work, and so lend great help 
 towards that general solution of our difficulties, which it will 
 tax all, and more than all, the administrative genius, candour, 
 courage, and application of our home officials to provide/ 
 
 The Era contains an article entitled 
 
 ' MR. RECORDER HILL AND THE TICKET-OF-LEAVE SYSTEM. 
 
 ' At the late opening of the Birmingham Court of Quarter 
 Sessions, the Recorder, Mr. M. D. Hill, Q.C., well known for 
 his interest in the reformatory punishment of criminals, deli- 
 vered a long and able address, chiefly referring to the ticket-of- 
 leave system. Nevertheless, with all Mr. Hill's practical 
 knowledge of this subject, we confess that he has failed to 
 convey to our mind a definite impression that things are work- 
 ing well under the present system, or that he has solved the 
 great problem to his own satisfaction 'What is to be done 
 with our convicts ?' This most important question has been 
 forced on public attention by the fact that only one British 
 colony w r ill now admit on its soil our criminal outcasts. Until 
 lately, we shipped them without remorse or subsequent inquiry. 
 The harsh Colonial Governor, to whose custody they were con- 
 signed, kept them in order by the manacle and the triangle, 
 the armed sentry and the Cuban bloodhound. If, on the other 
 hand, he happened to be a philanthropist, like Captain Ma- 
 conochie, he remitted these torturing restraints, and main- 
 tained discipline by moral appeals. Norfolk Island was either 
 a perfect hell, or else an interesting society of fallen human 
 
5o6 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 beings, struggling, and not in vain, for a glimpse of a better 
 state, according to the management of the local magistrate. It 
 is because we can no longer shove these poor wretches out of 
 sight that we have of late become so patient and merciful 
 towards them. The repudiation of our colonies has compelled 
 us to take charge of our own criminals ; and the consequence 
 has been that we have jumped from hard-hearted indifference to 
 the possibility of their reformation, into the opposite extreme 
 of sentimental sympathy with their penal lot. 
 
 ' For example, Mr. Hill's moral sense does not seem to be 
 shocked by the inconsistency of passing judicial sentence on a 
 prisoner, which, except for his subsequent contumacy, is never 
 to be inflicted. Nay_, he would not only have the felon, who is 
 doomed to seven years' punishment, able to unloose his own 
 bonds at the expiration of a twelvemonth or more, but he would 
 make much lighter sentences equally dependent for their exe- 
 cution on the behaviour of the prisoner; and so altogether 
 neutralize the preventive check to crime, which has hitherto 
 existed in the knowledge that to particular crimes certain 
 punishments were attached. 
 
 ' Again, Mr. Hill thinks that the chaplain is best qualified 
 to judge of the repentance of the criminal. We are strongly 
 of opinion that lay judgment should be invoked more promi- 
 nently than it is in deciding on the sincerity of the prisoner's 
 penitence. Only recently we inspected one of the largest refor- 
 matory prisons in England, and the Ten Commandments over 
 the communion-table, which faced the sittings of the prisoners, 
 were painted in Old English characters, which would not be 
 legible to half the criminals who could read common print ; yet 
 in this establishment there w r ere two benevolent and worthy 
 chaplains, who ought to have corrected so obvious a mistake. 
 
 ' Mr. Hill advocates the principle of making our prisons self- 
 supporting, by the lucrative employment of those who are de- 
 tained in them. But there really seems to be another side to 
 this question, and the poor honest man may reasonably ask, 
 ' Why is the felon to be taught and encouraged in acquiring 
 some skilful handicraft, which will support him as soon as he 
 is released, to the detriment of those who have never erred, and 
 who can scarcely maintain themselves for lack of employment 
 at the same sort of work ?' 
 
 'The Recorder also alludes to estimates, which sanguinely 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 507 
 
 report that from 86 to 90 per cent, of convicts, discharged with 
 tickets -of-leave, have been permanently reformed. It is true 
 that he docs not believe that such a result has really taken 
 place, and in opposition to the statement, stands the recent 
 complaint of Mr. Jardine, the London magistrate, that forty 
 ticket- of-leave men infested the locality in which his Court was 
 situated, whose influence was demoralizing the neighbourhood. 
 On the whole, we gather from Mr. Hill's Address, that he wishes 
 well to the new system, and hopes that it will succeed ; but we 
 cannot draw much comfort from all which he brings forward in 
 its favour. 
 
 { In our judgment, there are several things inherently wrong 
 in the new system of conditional manumission. In the first 
 place, you should not treat and educate the felon better than 
 you do the pauper. You should not make the prison more 
 comfortable than the workhouse, to their respective inmates. 
 Yet, at the former, you are now trying to elevate the feeling, 
 before you dismiss the sojourner ; whilst, at the latter, you try 
 to drive him out, by making him ashamed of remaining, and 
 too uncomfortable to remain. Thus your endeavour is to stig- 
 matize poverty ; and yet, at the same time, you try to rub the 
 brand out of crime. Moreover, all the dignity and solemnity 
 of the Judge's office are sacrificed if the sentence delivered by 
 the venerable impersonation of moral rectitude be accompanied 
 by a sly wink to the prisoner, which knowingly informs him, 
 
 ' This means nothing at all/ 
 
 'What we would suggest is, that every judicial sentence should 
 be fully executed. Behaviour under restraint might modify 
 the weight of the punishment, and its manner of execution ; 
 but, only under most special circumstances, and in the rarest 
 instances, ought liberty be granted to one who has forfeited his 
 claim to citizenship. It should never be forgotten in this 
 matter that the recent mercifulness extended by the ticket-of- 
 leave is not the result of any higher motive than convenience. 
 We do not know what to do with our convicts, and therefore 
 we are releasing them prematurely from gaol. Employ them, 
 we repeat, in labour which is only not undertaken because it 
 will not pay. Make them hewers of wood and drawers of 
 water, in proportion to their strength, on public works which are 
 necessary to be done, but which remain dormant on account of 
 the expense. 
 
5o 8 Sequel to Charge of October, 
 
 ' No doubt free labour is most profitable ; but to this forced 
 labour we would annex both wages and penalties. The personal 
 comforts of the convict should improve with his docility and 
 exertions ; he should take rank amongst his fellows by his supe- 
 riority of conduct ; he should ultimately have a place in society 
 secured for him if he sustained his term of punishment well. 
 We English are sometimes too morbidly tender over punish- 
 ment, and the detention of prisoners. Our Russian captives, 
 making their pretty toys at Lewes, and selling them at absurd 
 prices, whilst their officers are feted and sport in the neighbour- 
 hood, find a different course of treatment at the hands of our 
 brisk and sensible allies. In France, the Russian prisoners 
 have been employed in the works going on in the harbour of 
 Toulon; and every one knows that the formats are employed to 
 good purpose in various public works of France. The sugges- 
 tions we have thrown out are slight and undigested; but we 
 cannot recognise any matured convictions, and permanently 
 tangible plan, in the well-considered and interesting speech of 
 the Recorder of Birmingham/ 
 
 From the ' Morning Chronicle ' of October i$th. 
 
 e Meetings have been recently held in different parts of the 
 country on the subject of Reformatory Institutions. It is a 
 characteristic of our age and country, that a benevolent move- 
 ment beginning in one corner, however remote or obscure, is 
 not long allowed to remain dormant; but, if there be good 
 therein, is taken up in other quarters, repeated and multiplied, 
 till their influence pervades the land. Not less remarkable is 
 it that all attempts to improve the social condition of the 
 country, beginning, it may be, upon the surface of society, 
 tend gradually to penetrate deeper and deeper among the 
 inferior classes, till, as now, the very outcasts and pariahs of 
 the community be reached. 
 
 ' It must be owned, however, that the experiments now so 
 generally in progress to arrest the career of crime among our 
 juvenile population, and to effect a reformation among those 
 who have been tainted with its pollution, have been stimulated 
 by other motives than those of purely disinterested benevolence. 
 The truth is, the subject has become the great social problem 
 of the day. On every side the question is asked What is to 
 be done with our criminals ? Our fathers were not under our 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 509 
 
 difficulties with regard to an answer. Their method had the 
 merit of being simple and summary they hanged them out of 
 hand ! One can scarcely cast a glance over the statute-book 
 as it stood about the beginning of this century without a shudder. 
 As luxury increased, and the distance between the richer arid 
 poorer classes widened, property was regarded with a more 
 jealous eye by those who held it, and a more envious one by 
 those who were not so fortunate. Hence the necessity for new 
 fences, and every one of those was smeared with blood. The 
 evil increased gradually, and though it adds to the immortal 
 credit of Goldsmith that, in his Vicar of Wakefield, he was 
 among the first to raise his voice against the ever-increasing 
 severity of our Draconian statute-book, yet his humane remon- 
 strance was unheeded. Death punishment was extended year 
 by year to smaller offences, till it reached a height which it is 
 perfectly frightful to look back upon. It is little more than a 
 quarter of a century since justice and more humane principles 
 began to inspire our legislators. When men did allow them- 
 selves time to reflect upon the results of this system, it was 
 found that it had failed utterly that, far from deterring from 
 crime, its only effect was to imbrute the lower classes of our 
 population, and to render them as callous to instruction as they 
 were superior to fear. 
 
 ' Another course was then tried, with which we of the present 
 generation are pretty familiar the plan of transportation for a 
 time. Great things were expected from such change. It had 
 this advantage, that, equally with the former barbarous system, 
 it removed the criminal population. A man once convicted, 
 was still dead to the country ; he was removed from offending 
 the eyes, or injuring property, or assaulting the person. How 
 they fared in the far-distant region to which they were removed, 
 under what surveillance they were placed, or what means were 
 adopted for their reformation, society at large took little heed. 
 Matters might have gone on in this state for a considerable 
 time the mother country, year by year, raising a new crop of 
 criminals which, year by year, was removed to regenerate or 
 to fester in their original corruption, as the case might be, at 
 the antipodes but for one awkward circumstance. The spirit 
 of colonization was awakened through the country, and multi- 
 tudes of freemen, untainted with crime, went forth to seek a 
 home in the land which had hitherto been devoted to the con-. 
 
510 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 vict. How much that process was precipitated by the discovery 
 of the gold fields, it is needless here to say ; but it soon became 
 evident that colonization and transportation could not go on 
 together. The colonists were too numerous to need the work 
 of the convicts they were too proud to associate with them, 
 and too wealthy to bear being plundered by them. The struggle 
 between the Colonies and Colonial Office upon this subject is 
 fresh in every one's recollection. It was sharp, but short and 
 decisive. The home authorities were forced to give way, and 
 the colonies were delivered from the spreading canker of being 
 convict settlements. 
 
 ' We have now, therefore, entered into a third phase of the 
 question a phase which promises to be as troublesome as any of 
 those preceding. We now suffer in our own property and persons 
 what we were disposed to treat so lightly when the colonists 
 complained. We have to use up our own criminals; and the 
 great question is how, after having suffered the punishment of 
 their offences, they are to be absorbed again into society with 
 the least possible injury. It is a problem which may well 
 engage the attention of the statesman as well as the philanthro- 
 pist; and at the threshold of the subject, as we now are, we 
 cannot doubt that great improvements are yet to be effected. 
 The present system, as our readers well know, is to hold out 
 to our criminals inducements to reform, in the shape of a short- 
 ened duration of punishment, after which they are liberated with 
 a ticket-of-leave ; the meaning of which is, that they are not 
 absolutely set free that their liberation is matter of sufferance 
 only and that if it shall appear to the police that they are not 
 making a good use of their liberty, they are liable to be 
 re-imprisoned, even though no offence be proved against them. 
 We need not say here that the system has not been found to 
 work well, for from all parts of the country complaints are 
 heard against it. The end thereof has been to let loose upon 
 society a band of fierce, determined ruffians, who hesitate at no 
 crime, and are appalled by no punishment. The weak part of 
 the system seems to lie in the test of repentance and reforma- 
 tion. As matters stand, we believe that is usually entrusted to 
 the chaplain, who, with the best intentions and the most 
 sagacious judgment, is continually apt to be deceived. Caged 
 up as these men are from all the ordinary motives either to 
 good or evil, there is no alternative but to trust to the profes- 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 511 
 
 sions of the lip ; and yet all experience suggests how such a test 
 must necessarily be fallacious. ^The greatest scoundrel is 
 usually the man who is the greatest adept in making a long 
 face, turning up the whites of his eye, and affecting religious 
 sentiment^ Having succeeded in thus accomplishing his libera- 
 tion, he will be the first to indulge in coarse ridicule of the 
 simple-minded trust reposed in him by his ghostly adviser. 
 
 c It is evident that some more stringent test than this must 
 be applied. Two sets of operations must be adopted, working 
 from different points, but both converging to the same end 
 the one to cut off the supply of criminals, by taking up those 
 who are in danger of lapsing into crime, and training them to 
 be honest and useful members of society. This seems to be 
 accomplished with considerable success by the different reforma- 
 tory institutions throughout the country. But the other and 
 that with which we are at present most interested is, how best 
 to re-absorb into the industrious population our adult criminals 
 who have grown mature in crime, but who are not, therefore, 
 past hope of reformation. The present plan, we have seen, fails 
 to secure that end. It must be obvious that the best plan can 
 only be arrived at by a tentative process ; and we confess we 
 are disposed to look with some favour on a scheme suggested the 
 other day by Mr. Hill, the Recorder of Birmingham, in his 
 Address at the Quarter Sessions in that town. Mr. Hill's plan, 
 as we understand it, is to estimate the amount of punishment 
 of every offence by a money fine, which the prisoner must pay 
 out of his own labour in gaol, and from no other source. 
 
 ' A day's labour in the gaol being estimated at a fixed 
 amount, the prisoner is to be given to understand that he may, 
 if he chooses, have a certain portion of his earnings to spend 
 upon his personal comforts in prison ; but that if he does so, 
 it will be at the cost of lengthening his imprisonment, as the 
 fine will be so much the longer in being paid. In this way 
 the prisoner will be stimulated, by the hope of a more rapid 
 release, to control his appetites, to master his desire for personal 
 indulgences, and so to obtain that amount of self-restraint 
 which lies at the foundation of all the moral virtues. Such a 
 measure of practical self-command carried through a course of 
 months it may be of years would afford a test of reformation 
 as stringent, perhaps, as any that could be applied within the 
 precincts of a gaol. It might be safely inferred that if a man 
 
512 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 refused to indulge his appetite when he might, within the walls 
 of a gaol, he would be likely to continue the same course 
 outside. Other tests will no doubt be suggested by the practical 
 experience of those conversant with our prisons ; and we are not 
 without the hope that by their application and beneficial effect, 
 the alarm which has overspread society, from the letting loose 
 of so many ticket- of-leave men without due security being had 
 for their good conduct, may speedily pass away/ 
 
 From the ' Daily News' October iqth. 
 
 { What is this ticket -of -leave system, on the merits and 
 demerits of which the doctors of the criminal law are just now 
 differing so widely, and whose operation for good or evil seems 
 in a fair way of becoming one of the most important social 
 problems of our day ? For the benefit of those amongst our 
 readers who feel themselves called on to take a part in the 
 argument for or against the system, we propose to state, as 
 briefly and clearly as we can, the principles on which it rests 
 the circumstances of its first introduction amongst us what it 
 is as established and introduced into the penal legislation of the 
 United Kingdom by the Act of 1853 and what it is as actually 
 carried out in practice since that statute became the law of 
 the land. 
 
 { The principles on which the system rests as we find them 
 well and clearly stated by Mr. Matthew Davenport Hill, in that 
 Address of his to the Birmingham Grand Jury, which has 
 already excited so considerable an amount of attention and 
 comment are these : ' First, that the criminal should have 
 the opportunity of working his way out of gaol ; and, second, 
 that he should, for a limited period, be liable to be deprived of 
 his liberty so regained, if his course of life should give reason- 
 able ground for the belief that he had relapsed into criminal 
 habits/ Such are the two principles on which the whole 
 system proceeds principles themselves based on the notion 
 that punishment is to be reformatory, not vindictive, and that no 
 mode of reformation can be so satisfactory as that which the 
 criminal works out for himself when sensible that he is under 
 a moral government where not only will increased severity be 
 the penalty of misdoing, but remission of a portion of his 
 sentence will be the reward of doing well. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 513 
 
 ' This system of moral government by rewards as well as by 
 punishments, applied to the management of our criminals, was 
 in extensive operation in our Australian colonies for some years 
 previous to the period at which transportation, as a general mode 
 of punishment, had to be abandoned. The time, however, 
 arrived, when the colonists refused, by large majorities, to 
 tolerate any further influx of convict population. For some 
 few years immediately preceding 1 853, it had become practically 
 impossible to carry out sentences of transportation, except on a 
 small percentage of aggravated cases, and then only in those 
 few districts which, in the same class of cases, still remain 
 available, and are still employed for the purposes of penal 
 settlements. In 1853 the Act passed (16 & 17 Vic., cap. 99), 
 which now regulates the law on this subject, and first intro- 
 duced the ticket-of-leave system into the penal jurisprudence, 
 not of the British empire (for, as we have seen, it had already 
 existed in Australia), but of the United Kingdom. 
 
 ' Now, what is the ticket-of-leave system, as established by 
 this Act ? an Act, be it observed, the object of which is not 
 to abolish transportation altogether, but, as its title cautiously 
 and correctly expresses it, ' to substitute in certain cases other 
 punishments in lieu of transportation/ The substance of the 
 Act is this : All convicted persons who would have been liable, 
 before the Act passed, to transportation for life, or for any 
 period beyond fourteen years are liable to be (but need not 
 necessarily be) transported still. No person who, before the 
 Act passed, would have been liable to a sentence of less than 
 fourteen years' transportation, can, since that time, be transported 
 at all ; but, instead of transportation, he is to be sentenced to 
 what the Act terms Penal Servitude for terms of imprisonment 
 varying in duration according to the different periods of time 
 for which he might, under the former system, have been trans- 
 ported, but in no case equalling those periods in length. Penal 
 servitude, as established by the Act, is imprisonment, with as 
 in ordinary cases an important addition, which makes the 
 peculiar feature of the new Act, and constitutes the ticket-of- 
 leave system, as far as it is defined by the Legislature. The 
 clauses introducing this system the ninth, tenth, and eleventh 
 of the Act respectively empower her Majesty, by ' writing, 
 under the hand and seal of one of her principal Secretaries of 
 
 L L 
 
514 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 State/ in all cases where a convict shall be under sentence, 
 either of penal servitude or of transportation, whether the 
 latter sentence shall have been passed before or since the Act, 
 to grant such convict ' a licence to be at large in any part of 
 the United Kingdom/ on such conditions and for such portions 
 of his term of transportation or imprisonment as to her Majesty 
 may seem fit. The tenth clause declares that the convict, after 
 the licence is so granted to him, shall be at liberty to remain 
 at large till it is revoked. The eleventh section provides, that 
 ' if it shall please her Majesty ' to revoke any such licence, the 
 Secretary of State, by warrant under his hand and seal, shall 
 signify to one of the police magistrates of the metropolis that 
 the licence is revoked, and the magistrate is then to issue a 
 second warrant for the apprehension of the convict, who, on 
 being brought before him, is by virtue of a third warrant to be 
 re-committed to the prison from which he was released by the 
 licence, there to undergo the remainder of his sentence. It is 
 only necessary to add that the certificate on which the licence 
 is printed is called the ticket -of -leave, and we are in a position 
 to give an answer to the question, what is the ticket-of-leave 
 system, as far as it depends on positive enactment ? Shortly 
 this : in all cases where a convict is sentenced, either to trans- 
 portation or penal servitude, the Crown, for any reasons it deems 
 sufficient, may grant the convict a licence to be at large or, in 
 popular language, a ticket-of-leave ; and that licence the Crown 
 may revoke at its own will and pleasure, and, without the com- 
 mission of any fresh offence, or the necessity of any legal 
 investigation, may cause the re-commitment of the ticket-of- 
 leave man on the warrants of the police magistrate. 
 
 1 Such, then, is the ticket-of-leave system as established by 
 law : what is it as carried out in practice ? It will be observed 
 that the Act empowers her Majesty to grant the licence to be 
 at large, or, as we had better at once call it, the ticket-of-leave, 
 without attempting to define or limit the conditions under 
 which such power is to be exercised. The Legislature has not 
 attempted to lay down any definite test by which to ascertain 
 the fitness of the convict to receive a ticket-of-leave ; and the 
 practice in this respect is somewhat unfixed and indefinite. 
 Propriety and general good conduct are broad terms, within 
 whose convenient latitude much mistaken lenity may find scope 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 515 
 
 for its exercise on the one side much plausible knavery, on the 
 other. The test of industry is surer; and the method of open- 
 ing an account with each prisoner, and placing to his credit the 
 real or assumed value of his labour, so as to provide a fund for 
 him on his liberation, appears to be probably as free from 
 objection as any that has yet been suggested. The degree of 
 relative importance given to the respective tests of good conduct 
 and of industry will of course vary considerably with the 
 management of each separate establishment. Nor would it on 
 this head be possible to give any other general account of the 
 practical working of the ticket-of-leave system than by stating 
 that both the one and the other test are professedly taken into 
 consideration before granting a ticket-of-leave. In one very 
 material respect the ticket-of-leave system, as carried out in 
 practice, varies from that established by the Act. By the Act, 
 as we have seen, the licence may be revoked, and the ticket-of- 
 leave man be recommitted at the mere pleasure of the Crown, 
 and on the simple warrant of the magistrate, without the neces- 
 sity of any fresh investigation or the proof of any fresh substan- 
 tive offence. To the same purpose the condition set forth on 
 the printed ticket-of-leave itself expressly states : ' To produce 
 a forfeiture of the licence, it is by no means necessary that the 
 holder should be convicted of any new offence. If he associates 
 with notoriously bad characters, leads an idle and dissolute life, 
 or has no visible means of obtaining an honest livelihood, &c., 
 it will be assumed that he is about to relapse into crime, and he 
 will be at once apprehended, and re-committed to prison under 
 his original sentence/ Yet notwithstanding this, whether, as Mr. 
 Hill suggests, ( because it is repugnant to the spirit of our laws 
 to condemn without a trial/ or whether, as Mr. Jardine very 
 plausibly suggests, in consequence of the cumbrous and costly 
 machinery of the three warrants so absurdly rendered necessary 
 by one of the clauses already referred to from whatever cause 
 it may arise, the fact is that the practice and the law in this 
 respect differ, and the instances are very rare in which a ticket- 
 of-leave man is re-committed, except upon legal proof before the 
 ordinary tribunals of seme fresh substantive offence. Such are 
 the principal points to be noticed as to the working of the system 
 in every-day practice. 
 
 ' How many of our readers have followed us through this 
 
 L L 2, 
 
51 6 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 detail? Possibly very few. Those who have done so with 
 attention will at all events be better able to exercise their own 
 ludgment on the views we may hereafter be called upon to lay 
 before them when dealing with the vexed question of the real 
 nature and extent of those merits and demerits which it is the 
 fashion of the day to ascribe to the ticket- of-leave system/ 
 
 From the ' Spectator* of October loth. 
 
 ' PENAL SERVITUDE REFORM. 
 
 ' The secondary discussion on the subject of penal servitude 
 has already made such progress since its very recent commence- 
 ment, that we are not surprised when we hear of proceedings 
 which render it probable that the subject may be raised in 
 Parliament next session, and perhaps even settled then. As 
 we observed last week, there are always two stages in discussions 
 of the kind, one limited to those who take the initiative, and 
 perform the preliminary work of supplying intelligence and 
 argument for leading minds; the other, when the public at 
 large seizes the main ideas, and assists at a legislative settle- 
 ment. It is scarcely three months since the most widely 
 circulated exponent of public opinion in this country, the 
 Times, condemned the conclusion of Lord St. Leonards that 
 the ticket-of-leave system was a failure, and remarked that, 
 ' before his general conclusion can be established, we ought, at 
 any rate, to be shown the way to something better/ The way 
 to something better has, by this time, been indicated, through 
 those who have assisted in defending the principles of the ticket- 
 of-leave system, and establishing the indefensible character of its 
 arrangement. The judgment upon the system delivered by Mr. 
 Jardine, the Recorder of Bath, is a further evidence that 
 practical men see how impossible it will be to continue un- 
 amended an arrangement which does not provide permanently 
 for relieving society from hardened criminals, but actually 
 supplies them with licence to perambulate the country and 
 repeat their crimes, or perhaps to carry on the more mischievous 
 trade of teaching others how-to perform crime for them. Mr. 
 Jardine pronounced the ticket-of-leave system exceedingly 
 'dangerous/ and f the system of discharging prisoners merely 
 because the gaols are full/ with an ill-considered selection of 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 517 
 
 those to be freed, ' pregnant with difficulties, and dangerous to 
 the society in which it is practised/ At the same time, the 
 failure of the attempt to establish a reformatory institution in 
 Worcestershire proves that ' society/ organized as it is, under 
 our present lax county system, is not competent to take the 
 matter into its own hands. It remains, therefore, with Govern- 
 ment ; but the case is so pressing, and so distinct, that we ought 
 not to be at the mercy of the ordinary official inertia. 
 
 ' Even within the three months some progress has been made 
 in sketching out an ulterior system. It was in July that the 
 Times discussed the Duke of Cambridge's objection to admitting 
 the convicts into the army, deprecating any course which would 
 finally condemn the men. 
 
 ' If the services of these men, presumed to be either 
 reformed, or in fair way of reformation, and who, in many cases, 
 might be very eager to obliterate former stains by extraordinary 
 good conduct, are sweepingly rejected in that very calling where 
 men are wanted, where discipline is most continuous, and where 
 the greatest chances of personal distinction are offered, is it not 
 reasonable to suppose that private employers might adopt a 
 similar rule, and that there might thus be an end to the very 
 opportunities which we are labouring to provide?' 
 
 ' It was in the same paper that our contemporary agreed with 
 Lord St. Leonards in desiring a more complete surveillance over 
 the liberated convicts, and a more accurate insight into the 
 results of the system. We still keenly feel both these require- 
 ments, but with a fairer prospect of attaining them. Even then 
 it was perceived that a full chance must be retained for the men, 
 but that their labour must not be wasted, nor their depravity 
 return uncorrected into society. The three months that have 
 passed have only confirmed these conclusions, and we find a 
 general tendency in opinion to agree that some mode should be 
 arranged, by which the discipline of military life should be 
 combined with industrial discipline, and by which rude material 
 for the labour of the men should be provided without injury to 
 the market of ordinary labour. We have only to state these 
 requirements in order to arrive at something like a sketch of the 
 plan which may be easily pursued. It has always been found 
 that a system of strict abnegation is quite sufficient to secure 
 the voluntary enlistment of men or boys in industrial avocations. 
 
518 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 Solitary confinement, without anything to do, is enough. Place 
 any class of men in that condition, and they desire labour as a 
 relief; let their condition for the time, and their liberation 
 ultimately, depend upon their labour, and they labour with zeal 
 as well as with willingness. Practical experience has confirmed 
 what must be the conclusion of a priori calculations. Now it 
 is not difficult to find fields in which men, under custody, could 
 be employed without trenching upon the production of the free 
 labourer. We have many kinds of hard work to be performed 
 in this country, which might very well constitute travaux forces, 
 and our imprisoned convicts could readily be converted into 
 formats without repeating the horrible atrocities that have 
 resulted from a bad system of travaux forces in France. Here 
 are the elements for any system which should combine, the 
 present principles of penal servitude with a protracted detention 
 of the men, but without an increase to the nett expense. 
 
 ' Colonel Jebb has published a letter which upholds the pre- 
 sent system as having worked wonders, and at the same time 
 he announces that Government intends to modify the system in 
 practice, so as to suspend one of its most characteristic incidents 
 the tickets-of-leave ! Colonel Jebb, therefore, gives his official 
 authority to the opinion, that so far as the principles of the 
 system have been really applied, they have worked beneficially; 
 but in announcing that Government intends to suspend the 
 operation of the law so far, he supplies us with an official con- 
 fession that there is something seriously defective in the prac- 
 tice. Of course, we can regard the modification that he an- 
 nounces as nothing but a temporary rule it is in fact suspend- 
 ing the subject until it can be considered by Parliament. . . . 
 It cannot be for a moment imagined that because Government 
 partially suspend the working of a defective measure, it is in- 
 tended to stultify the principles which their own officer finds 
 so much reason to defend; or that they intend to go back to 
 some very absurd and barbarous system which prevailed before 
 recent reforms. We are well aware, that at the present time 
 leading members of the Administration cannot find leisure of 
 mind for the whole of a difficult, large, and time-consuming 
 subject like this : as well expect the Secretary of State for 
 Foreign Affairs to prepare a scheme of law-reform. The ques- 
 tion is precisely in that state which would justify the appoint- 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 519 
 
 ment of a Commission. It so happens that there are pub- 
 lic men whose antecedents have qualified them to deal with 
 this subject, and who possess the confidence of all parties in 
 the country ; and Government might, without the slightest 
 delay or difficulty, frame such a Commission, that the mere state- 
 ment of the names would secure to it the perfect trust of public 
 and of Parliament/ 
 
 The cry which prevailed against convicts being discharged 
 on the good report of the chaplain, was founded on a mistake 
 as to the fact. It clearly appears from the evidence before the 
 Transportation Committee, that the conduct of the prisoners 
 is recorded from time to time by the officers who have charge 
 of them; and that the opinion of the chaplain, although it 
 may be taken into account in connexion with the record, has 
 no undue preponderance, if indeed it has quite the influence to 
 which it is entitled. There may be defects in the mode of 
 keeping the account, for aught I know to the contrary ; the 
 main defect, however, is one pointed out in the next Charge, 
 viz. that passing a certain length of time under probation, 
 earns the privilege of discharge on ticket-of-leave; and not the 
 active and strenuous endeavours of the prisoner to do right. 
 True it is, that very reprehensible conduct on the part of the 
 prisoner delays for some period in practice not a long one the 
 grant of his licence. But although demerit may act as a dis- 
 qualification, the rule which makes time the chief element, must 
 necessarily have a soporific tendency, under circumstances in 
 which the sharpest stimulus is required, to urge the prisoner to 
 the task of self-improvement. 
 
 The reference in the Charge, to the Committee of the House 
 of Commons obtained in the year 1850,* by Mr. Charles Pearson, 
 Solicitor to the city of London, and at that time representing 
 the borough of Lambeth, is one which calls for a remark or two. 
 
 The object of that inquiry was mainly to consider the very 
 important evidence, adduced by Mr. Pearson, to prove that pri- 
 sons where the site was properly chosen, and the construction 
 adapted to the end proposed, might be made self-supporting. 
 
 It is difficult to account for the oblivion into which this 
 
 * Select Committee on Prison Discipline, House of Commons, 1850. 
 
52O Sequel to Charge of October, 
 
 project has fallen, notwithstanding its practicability was abun- 
 dantly proved by witnesses, each conversant with the depart- 
 ment on which he gave his evidence. 
 
 The adhesion to the scheme of such a witness as Mr. Ches- 
 terton, who, for twenty-five years, was the governor of Coldbath 
 Fields Prison, said to be the largest in the world, ought of 
 itself to ensure the project a fair trial. ' Already/ says Mr. 
 Chesterton, ' has another plan been propounded, with a view to 
 meet the general exigencies of the State, since transportation 
 has become no longer available. The plan of Mr. Charles 
 Pearson, which was thoroughly sifted in the Session of 1850, 
 by the Committee of the House of Commons, of which Mr. E. 
 Denison was chairman, is worthy of the most attentive conside- 
 ration. As a measure of universal application, it appears to me 
 to suit the entire subject, and would relieve the Government 
 from all the difficulties which arise from the adoption of diffe- 
 rent modes, and temporary expedients. 
 
 ' A thousand acres for a thousand prisoners, constitutes the 
 main feature of the design, and with such an area Mr. Pearson 
 proved, step by step, the practicability of furnishing all that 
 the entire establishment would require to consume, defray the 
 totality of the expense, and yield a good profit to the State. I 
 was examined at great length to show how the discipline 
 might, in such circumstances, be maintained; and there was 
 not a proposition in the scheme which was not sustained by 
 the testimony of competent witnesses. Nor did it exhibit 
 any niggardly spirit in the allotment of officers. The proposed 
 staff was ample ; and, in deducing results, every part of the 
 estimate appeared to be computed on a liberal scale, so as to 
 guard against ulterior disappointment/* 
 
 The proposition that criminals ought to be detained in cus- 
 tody until they are cured, seems to follow as a natural corollary 
 from the doctrine that they ought to be allowed and urged to 
 make their way out of prison by their own merits. 
 
 If the opportunity be afforded to the convict to prove that 
 the necessity manifested by his crime for secluding him from 
 
 * Revelations of Prison Life. By George Laval Chesterton. Hurst and 
 Blackett, London, 1856. Vol. ii. p. 6. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 society, and thereby incapacitating him from repeating his 
 offence, is at an end, why not retain him until he has esta- 
 blished his right to liberty by such proof that is to say, by 
 proof that his discharge will not militate against the public 
 security? In 1839 this view of the subject was propounded by 
 Mr. Frederic Hill, who, in his Fourth Report on Scotch Pri- 
 sons, says, f As regards the question, how are convicts to be 
 disposed of after their release from prison, supposing transpor- 
 tation to be abolished, I would humbly suggest that it is 
 desirable that those whom, from the nature and circumstances 
 of their offences, as shown upon their trial, there can be no 
 reasonable hope of reforming, should be kept in confinement 
 through the remainder of their lives ; the severity of their dis- 
 cipline, however, being relaxed in various ways, which would 
 not be safe were it intended that they should return again to 
 society/ * 
 
 This opinion is maintained in succeeding Reports. In that 
 of 1 843, there are persons, he says, ' who are wholly unfit for 
 self-government, and who should be placed permanently under 
 control. Some striking instances of this will be found in the 
 Report on the Prison of Newcastle, and in that of Perth /t 
 
 The passages referred to are as follows : ( There was a young 
 woman in the prison who had been there several times, and 
 who was described as industrious and well-behaved when in 
 prison, but as unable to resist the temptation to drink when 
 out, and who, to gratify this passion, and to procure food, 
 frequently stole/J * * * * * 
 
 ' There is a woman now in prison for the eleventh time, who, 
 when in confinement, is hard-working and well-conducted, but 
 who soon gets into trouble when at large ; and there is another 
 woman who has the same character for good conduct in prison, 
 arid bad conduct out of it, who is in for the twenty-fourth 
 time ; and another (who happens, however, to be at present out 
 of prison) who has been in thirty-one times. I saw, also, a 
 man who was described as civil, obliging, and hard-working 
 when in prison (and consequently sober), but who was said to 
 
 * Fourth Report of the Inspector of Prisons for Scotland, p. v. 
 
 f Eighth Report of the Inspector of Scotch Prisons, p. 15. 
 
 J Ibid, p. 58. 
 
523 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 be quite mad when drunk, who has been in thirty-seven times, 
 thirty-one of which were for assaults/ * 
 
 In 1846 the doctrine was submitted to the Society for the 
 Amendment of the Law, in a Draft Report on the Princi- 
 ples of Punishment. ' The right to isolate an individual from 
 society is founded on its being repugnant to the welfare of the 
 one or the other of the parties, or of both, that they should be 
 together until a change is wrought in the individual. If, how- 
 ever, he is so constituted as to resist this beneficial change, the 
 reasons for retaining him in a state of separation, instead of 
 being removed, gather strength. There is oftentimes, however, 
 a wide interval judiciously left between theory and practice. 
 It is by no means necessary to the practical adoption of the 
 reformatory principle, that it should be carried into extremes. 
 Every sentence might still be for a term of imprisonment 
 measured by time, if that term were always made of sufficient 
 length to enable every prisoner to work his way out of gaol by 
 conduct arid industry before its expiration. The consequence 
 of this arrangement would be, that resistance to reformation 
 would only postpone the liberation of the prisoner for a time 
 certain, and not for an indefinite period. We have no doubt 
 that in the end the public would be startled with the absurdity 
 of sending forth persons who, having been withdrawn from 
 society by reason of their unfitness for it, are restored upon 
 proof that such unfitness is permanent, and cannot be re- 
 moved/ f 
 
 I will quote Mr. Chesterton on this subject: 
 
 ' England, deprived of an outlet for her convicts, must devise 
 the means for even perpetual imprisonment, and I know how 
 inadequate is the system of separation to meet the requirement; 
 nor is the silent discipline, in its hitherto restricted organiza- 
 tion, a whit more applicable to the altered circumstances in 
 which the country is placed/{ 
 
 The principle is essentially involved in the system of Captain 
 
 * Eighth Report of the Inspector of Scotch Prisons, p. 91. 
 t Draft Report on the Principles of Punishment. By Matthew Davenport Hill. 
 1847. p. 13. 
 
 i Revelations of Prison life, Vol. ii., p. 50. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 523 
 
 Maconochie. The reader has seen that the Spectator has 
 advocated it for many years ; and that it has now the concur- 
 rence of the Times, and other journals. Mr. Stuart Wortley, 
 the present Solicitor-General,* may be ranked among its sup- 
 porters, as appears by the questions which he proposed to me 
 in the Transportation Committee so often mentioned. 
 
 f 1878. Mr. Wortley In answer to the Chairman, you stated 
 that you thought the principle of holding out hope to a criminal 
 in a prison was in all cases essential; have you considered 
 whether there is not a class (a small one, I hope) to whom that 
 measure cannot really and effectually be applied at all, and 
 whether it is not the fact that there is a class who for the safety 
 of society might justly be retained in safe keeping, like lunatics 
 and others, for the rest of their lives ? I would hold out hope 
 to them ; but if they did not avail themselves of that hope, and 
 amend their conduct, I have already stated, but I think it was 
 before the right honourable member arrived, that I am prepared 
 to face the question of confining them for the whole of their 
 lives like lunatics. 
 
 '1879. Now that it is likely, or at all events possible, that 
 we may be deprived of the means of employing transportation 
 as a punishment, and removing criminals altogether from the 
 country for their lives, have you contemplated the possibility of 
 some establishment, either in this country, or on the coasts of 
 this country, within reach of frequent inspection, where per- 
 sons of that hopeless character might be detained, and kept in 
 safe custody for the rest of their lives ? I am entirely of that 
 opinion; and I think that such custody need not be made 
 very painful ; that they may have all such indulgences as their 
 unhappy state permits, short of turning them out again upon 
 society. 
 
 ( 1880. It would be necessary that their confinement should 
 not be made painful, nor even very close, would it not, with a 
 view to their health? I should say so. I know that there 
 are many persons who are not considered by medical men 
 lunatics, who are entirely destitute of the power of self-govern- 
 ment; they are happier, or at least less unhappy, when in con- 
 finement than when at large; and I have known several 
 
 December, 1856. 
 
524 Sequel to (Jfiarge of October, 1855. 
 
 instances of persons who seem to have an instinctive knowledge 
 of their infirmity, and the moment they get out of prison they 
 take means to go back. Mr, Frederic Hill, the late Inspector 
 of Prisons for Scotland, my brother, details the case of a woman 
 who had been committed, I think, ninety times ; she certainly 
 was sent to prison for very small offences, and, when discharged, 
 she rarely, according to my recollection of what he says, went 
 a street's length but she broke a window, or committed some 
 act for the purpose of being sent back ; with the avowed inten- 
 tion of being sent back. 
 
 ' 1 88 1. I referred rather to criminals of the higher class, who 
 had committed so many offences as to render them incapable 
 of reform, inasmuch as, even if they tried, their circumstances 
 would prevent it ? I quite adopt the suggestion of the right 
 honourable member; there is such a class; and having ex- 
 hausted all the means of reform upon them, and found that 
 those means produced no good effect, I am prepared, for one, 
 to see the Legislature empower the Executive to detain them 
 for their lives. 
 
 '1882. I know that you have studied these matters very 
 much ; have you, in the course of that study, met with any 
 information as to the practical application of that principle in 
 any country of Europe or America ? I think not, directly; 
 but I find by the return from Munich, that there is a class of 
 prisoners in Bavaria who receive a sentence for an uncertain 
 period ; it is not a sentence of imprisonment for life, for there 
 is another class who are expressly sentenced to imprisonment 
 for life. 
 
 '1883. Chairman What is the form of the sentence for an 
 uncertain period? That I cannot tell you; but I will read, if 
 you will allow me, what is said upon it ; he is called, in the 
 paper which I have handed in, ' The criminal sentenced to 
 penal servitude for an unfixed period/ I should mention that 
 the translator was a German gentleman, and he took ' penal 
 servitude' as the nearest English equivalent which he could find. 
 This paper also says : ' The criminal laws of Bavaria include 
 the following punishments of personal restraint: i. The sen- 
 tence of the chain, which can only be awarded for life. The 
 criminal sentenced to this punishment is fettered on both his 
 feet by a long chain, to which a heavy iron ball is attached. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 525 
 
 2. The punishment of penal servitude, which is never awarded 
 for life, but either for a fixed number of years or for an unfixed 
 period. The criminal sentenced to penal servitude for a time 
 not specified, may, after sixteen years' imprisonment, expect his 
 liberation on the conditions named under section 7.' Section 
 7 is : ' According to the laws of Bavaria, industry and good 
 conduct shorten the terms of imprisonment, according to the 
 following rule. The criminal sentenced to penal servitude for 
 an unfixed period may expect his pardon after sixteen years' 
 imprisonment, if, during his incarceration, or at any rate for 
 ten years, he have shown continually extreme industry, not 
 have incurred punishment for malice or insubordination, and 
 otherwise have given evident proofs of his reformation. Offenders 
 sentenced to fixed terms of penal servitude, or to the House of 
 Correction, can, under the same conditions, shorten their terms 
 of punishment, and may expect that mercy will be extended to 
 them after having been imprisoned three-fourths of their 
 time/ ' * 
 
 The foregoing extract shows that the proposal to confine 
 criminals once convicted, until they have proved their fitness 
 for liberty, is not an untried speculation ; but that the principle 
 is already in action. 
 
 The following answers by Mr. Under- Secretary Waddington 
 present the only objections to the plan which could be adduced 
 by a gentleman of great ability and long experience : 
 
 '173. Mr. Wortley From your experience, are you of 
 opinion that there is a large class of confirmed criminals in 
 whom all hope of reformation is delusive ? I am afraid that 
 there is such a class ; I hope it is not very large, but it exists 
 beyond all doubt. 
 
 ' 174. Under the severer code which existed in this country 
 formerly, a large number of those persons were withdrawn 
 from society by the punishment of death? Certainly that 
 was so. 
 
 ' 175. Has it ever been a matter of consideration with the 
 Government, whether it would not be possible to devise at 
 home, or in the immediate neighbourhood of home, in some of 
 
 * Transportation Committee, House of Commons, 1 856. Second .Report, pp. 18-19. 
 
526 Sequel to Charge of October, 
 
 the islands, a place of detention where, consistently with the 
 preservation of health, that class might be confined for life ? 
 The question has been undoubtedly mooted, and more than 
 once; but I do not think it has been very seriously brought 
 under the consideration of the Government. I have never been 
 a party to any discussions or deliberations upon that subject. 
 
 ( 176. Is it not found that, under the strict discipline of our 
 prisons, the human frame and understanding will not bear con- 
 finement beyond a certain period? It will not bear solitary 
 confinement beyond a certain period, certainly. 
 
 ' 177. Nor strict confinement? Nor strict confinement. I 
 suppose that the period of associated labour in the open air 
 might be prolonged to any length. 
 
 ' 178. Is it not, on the other hand, found that many crimi- 
 nals who have been confined as lunatics, are to a great extent 
 cured of their lunacy, and become in good bodily health, and 
 live to a very old age, in confinement ? There are many such 
 cases, no doubt. There is a certain character of mind in which 
 confinement produces a depression, \vhich very often leads to 
 delusions, and ultimately to confirmed lunacy. 
 
 '179. Do you see any reason why, with respect to that class 
 to which I refer, it should not be attempted to subject them, in 
 the first instance, to the severe punishment of penal servitude, 
 and then, during the remainder of their lives, that they should 
 only be subject to such control, in some place of seclusion and 
 healthy confinement, as would insure their not escaping? It 
 would be a very benevolent arrangement, if it could be done ; 
 how far it is exactly practicable I do not know r . The French, 
 we know, have had a totally different system : they have made 
 their confinements for life as severely penal as they possibly 
 could. 
 
 ' 180. The great alarm, whether w r ell founded or not, which 
 has been raised by the present system of tickets-of-leave, arises 
 from the fear of that class of persons being turned upon society, 
 does it not ? That is so, no doubt. 
 
 ' j8i. They being turned upon society necessarily within 
 the limits of this country, whereas in former times there was 
 the chance of their remaining abroad ? Certainly ; the impres- 
 sion is, that there are a very large number of them who are in 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 527 
 
 no way reclaimed by discipline, and that those persons are 
 again taking to crime, and joining with their old associates; 
 thus ultimately forming an immense number of criminals, whom 
 it will be impossible to keep under any control. 
 
 ' 182. On the other hand, with those classes of criminals 
 who are not hopeless, transportation affords the best hope of 
 redeeming their character and reclaiming their mind ? By far 
 the best. 
 
 ' 183. That if the worst characters were retained here for 
 life, instead of being, as they are under the present system, 
 transported for a period of ten or fifteen years, it would be 
 possible, even with the present outlets which we have, to send 
 those persons abroad in whom there is a hope of reformation, 
 would it not ? It might be done, certainly ; but that is 
 regarding transportation in a view which has not been generally 
 taken of it. The great object of transportation, no doubt, has 
 been to relieve this country of the worst offenders ; no doubt it 
 is also extremely beneficial to all offenders, whether the worst 
 or the least depraved; but I should think that the plan of 
 keeping the worst offenders here, and imprisoning them for life, 
 would not be one which would be likely to meet with the 
 approbation of the public. I think there would be a great 
 feeling against long imprisonment. 
 
 1 184. It is done in almost all other countries, I believe? 
 It is, I know; we have generally looked upon it with very 
 great dislike. 
 
 ' 185. Has not that feeling arisen very much from the belief 
 that you cannot inflict close confinement without injury to the 
 health ? Yes, I dare say that is so. 
 
 ' 1 86. Then if confinement after a certain period were of a 
 mitigated character, only sufficient for security, might not that 
 feeling be also mitigated to some extent ? Still it is a very 
 frightful punishment under any circumstances, inflicting civil 
 death upon a man without the slightest hope : it seems to be 
 the great objection to that sort of punishment, that it does not 
 give the slightest hope to a man; it destroys every feeling 
 which can render life in any respect desirable, or even tole- 
 rable. 
 
 '187. Then if I collect your opinion, it is rather that public 
 
528 Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 
 
 opinion would not bear a punishment of that sort ? I confess 
 it is rather so/* 
 
 f To inflict civil death upon a man without the slightest hope/ 
 would be, no doubt, ' a very frightful punishment f but my 
 proposal by no means deprives any prisoner of hope, because 
 his power of liberating himself by industry and good conduct 
 is never taken away from him ; and until his death actually 
 occurs, none can say that his imprisonment will extend to the 
 close of his life. If, therefore, the public shrink from the 
 infliction of such imprisonments, the sooner it ceases to com- 
 plain of the outrages which fill the newspapers, so much the 
 better will it evince its consistency. 
 
 First Report of Committee on Transportation, House of Commons, 1 856. p. 1 7. 
 
CHAKGE OF OCTOBER, 1856. 
 
 ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON TRANS- 
 PORTATION, APPOINTED BY THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN 
 THE PRECEDING SESSION.* 
 
 GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND JURY, 
 
 AT the Michaelmas Sessions of the last year, I submitted to 
 your predecessors observations on the working of a very 
 important statute, passed in 1853, which is usually called the 
 Ticket-of-leave Act ; its characteristic feature being the autho- 
 rity which it vests in the Crown to grant to convicts under 
 sentence of transportation, or penal servitude, a revocable ticket, 
 permitting them to go at large prior to the expiration of their 
 sentences. At the date of my Charge, notwithstanding returns 
 had been laid before Parliament, setting forth that from eighty 
 to ninety per cent, of prisoners thus liberated had so conducted 
 themselves, since they became their own masters, as not to fall 
 again under the censure of a criminal court, the public mind 
 was far from satisfied with the results of the measure ; not that 
 the reclamation of from eighty to ninety per cent, of our 
 criminal population would not have been hailed as triumphant 
 success, but, unfortunately, proof by figures of arithmetic, when 
 applied to subjects of this nature, is not much more readily 
 accepted by the English mind than proof by figures of rhetoric. 
 Adverse opinions had become so widely spread that a cry was 
 raised for a repeal of the Act j and certainly, Gentlemen, if the 
 merits of the question had turned upon the accuracy of these 
 figures, it will become tolerably evident, before I cease to address 
 you, that the public had but too much reason for its hardness 
 of belief. But I shall also show you that the repudiation of 
 these statistics ought by no means to draw after it a condemna- 
 tion of the measure. I will confess to you that I watched the 
 growing unpopularity of the Act, not merely with anxiety, but 
 with alarm. However imperfectly the law is framed, and how- 
 
 * First, Second, and Third Eeports of the Transportation Committee, House of 
 Commons, Session 1856. 
 
 M M 
 
53 Charge of October } 1856. 
 
 ever open to animadversion the manner in which it has been 
 carried into effect, it nevertheless embodies two principles, each 
 founded, as I must think, on just and enlightened views of juris- 
 prudence. The first is to enable the criminal to work out his 
 freedom for himself, by exhibiting proof that he is an altered 
 man, and that he has become imbued with qualities, the absence 
 of which led to his fall. The second to make the discharge 
 only a conditional restoration to liberty. He is not, for the 
 remainder of the term to which his sentence extends, to be 
 placed on a footing with his fellow-citizens. The theory of 
 the law is, that he has been set at large because his conduct in 
 prison has induced the belief that he is reformed. But if his 
 course of life should be such as to destroy that confidence, he is 
 again to be returned to his probation in the gaol. 
 
 An additional year of experience in the operation of this law, and 
 a careful consideration of the various facts and arguments which 
 have been elicited in the debates in Parliament, the examinations 
 of witnesses, and the discussions in the public press, have con- 
 firmed the opinion which I then held. This result will indeed 
 be a matter of little moment to any one except myself; but, 
 Gentlemen, I am able to support the conclusions at which I 
 myself had arrived, by no less an authority than that of the 
 Committee, appointed by the House of Commons during the last 
 session, to investigate the working of the Act. That body, com- 
 posed as it was of men who had made the administration of the 
 criminal law a careful study for many years, came to the follow- 
 ing resolution : ' That the system [of granting tickets-of-leave] 
 appears to be founded upon a principle wise and just in itself, 
 viz., that of enabling a convict to obtain, by continued good 
 conduct while undergoing his punishment, the remission of a 
 portion of his sentence ; upon the express condition, however, 
 that in case of subsequent misconduct, his liability to punish- 
 ment shall revive for the residue of the term specified in the 
 original sentence.' 
 
 The Committee, Gentlemen, recommended not only the 
 continuance, but the expansion, of the system. The statute 
 embraced all convicts adjudged to transportation, or to the 
 milder punishment of penal servitude, usually applied in cases 
 not sufficiently aggravated to call for the higher infliction ; but 
 it excluded all minor offenders. The Executive Government, 
 
Charge of October, 1856. 531 
 
 however, still further narrowed the limits of the privilege ; and 
 instead of pursuing the line adopted by the statute, stretched 
 the exclusion to the class of convicts adjudged to penal ser- 
 vitude. The ground, Gentlemen, on which the framers of the 
 Act had submitted it for adoption by the Legislature was the 
 efficiency of encouragement in stimulating the convict to industry 
 and good conduct. That being so, the Committee suffered, as 
 I had suffered before them, under the inability to understand 
 the justice of withholding from the lesser criminal the incentive 
 to reformation held out to his more guilty fellow-prisoners, or 
 to divine the policy of advertising our criminal population, that 
 no member of it must indulge the hope of obtaining his liberty 
 by a course of well-doing, unless he would first earn the right 
 to such an encouragement by the enormity of his transgressions. 
 And from the evidence, Gentlemen, of the Directors of Convict 
 Prisons, it appeared that the men sentenced to penal servitude 
 participated in that lack of penetration to which I have adverted ; 
 so that, when they learnt that they were excluded from a boon 
 granted to those who had sunk deeper into crime than them- 
 selves, they became morose, disobedient, and at length mutinous. 
 It is needless to say, that in this frame of mind the progress of 
 reformation came to a pause, and that retrogression began. 
 
 Perhaps, Gentlemen, you yourselves may be as much in 
 the dark on the subject as others have been; and may ask 
 whence was this extraordinary doctrine imported into England. 
 To such an inquiry I could give no satisfactory answer; I am 
 not acquainted with the jurisprudence of any nation, civilized or 
 barbarous, which is deformed by such an inversion of the order 
 dictated by natural justice. Nor do I know of any country, 
 save two, which, having admitted the principle of encouragement 
 into the treatment of their criminals, has ever abandoned it, or 
 narrowed its application. The value of this principle is now recog- 
 nised in many nations of Europe, and in many States of the great 
 Republic across the Atlantic, and I feel confident that it is 
 destined to make its way into the criminal code of every well- 
 governed country in the world. 
 
 France and Spain are the states which have made a retrograde 
 movement. France, to a small extent only ; and the error 
 having been pointed out, and condemned by an eminent writer, 
 who holds a very high, if not the highest position in the French 
 
 M M 2, 
 
53 ^ Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 Judicature, it will probably be quickly amended. Convicts, 
 who, with us, would be sentenced to transportation, are kept in 
 France to hard labour for long terms of years. It has been the 
 usage, however, of the Sovereign to issue, from time to time, 
 pardons to the most deserving of these forcats, as they are 
 called. Of late years, says M. de Beranger, the Judge to whom 
 I have referred, these pardons have been more and more sparingly 
 granted. Mark, Gentlemen, the consequence. The formats are 
 discouraged, and lose their energy. Their labour is become far 
 less profitable, and their attempts to escape far more numerous. 
 The other country which I have excepted is Spain. Let me 
 ask your attention to the good eflects of encouragement in the 
 Spanish prisons while it was in operation, and the evil conse- 
 quences of withdrawing it. In the city of Valencia there has 
 long been a penitentiary gaol, under the government of Colonel 
 Montesinos, a gentleman who has made for himself a European 
 reputation by his skill in the treatment of his prisoners. He 
 acted upon them by urging them to self-reformation. He 
 excited them to industry by allowing them a small portion of 
 their earnings for their own immediate expenditure, under due 
 regulations to prevent abuse. He enabled them to raise their 
 position, stage after stage, by their perseverance in good conduct. 
 When they had acquired his confidence, he entrusted them with 
 commissions which carried them beyond the walls of their 
 prison ; relying on the moral influence which he had acquired 
 over them to prevent their desertion. And, finally, he dis- 
 charged them before the expiration of their sentences, when he 
 had satisfied himself that they desired to do well, had acquired 
 habits of patient labour, so much of skill in some useful occupa- 
 tion as would ensure employment, the inestimable faculty of 
 self-denial the power of saying f no j to the tempter and, in 
 short, such a general control over the infirmities of their minds 
 and their hearts, as should enable them to deserve and maintain 
 the liberty which they had earned. His success was answer- 
 able to the wisdom and zeal of his administration. Instances 
 of relapse but rarely occurred, and the Spanish Government, 
 rightly judging that talent like his ought to have the widest 
 scope, appointed him Inspector- General of all the prisons in 
 Spain. It so happened, however, that the Legislature of that 
 country was minded to establish a new criminal code ; and (for 
 what reason I know not) held it advisable to convert sentences 
 
Charge of October, 1856. 533 
 
 of imprisonment for long terms of years, which prevail on the 
 Continent, into incarceration for life. This was done. But, 
 unhappily, this was not the only, nor the most pernicious 
 change. In the chapters of the new code which relate to the 
 management of prisons, governors are prohibited from offering 
 those encouragements to the prisoners which had raised them 
 step by step until they were fitted for the enjoyment of liberty ; 
 and they also make it imperative that every sentence of imprison- 
 ment shall be fulfilled to the last hour. The combined effects 
 of these innovations teem with instruction. Prisons which had 
 been models of order and cleanliness, of cheerful industry, and 
 of praiseworthy demeanour in general, now exhibit a painful 
 contrast to that happy state of things ; they have become the 
 scenes of indolence, disorder, and filth ; and the prisoners are 
 either reduced to despair, or urged upon plots for escape, which, 
 in a multitude of instances, are followed by success. Gentle- 
 men, it will not be the fault of the Committee, if we fail to 
 profit by this most instructive lesson. Let me read to you the 
 conclusions at which they have arrived on this part of our sub- 
 ject. Their fifth resolution is : 
 
 ( 5. That every punishment by penal servitude should include, 
 first, a certain fixed period of imprisonment and hard labour on 
 public works to be undergone at all events ; secondly, a further 
 period, which should be capable of being abridged by the good 
 conduct of the convict himself. 
 
 ' 6. That it appears from the evidence before the Committee 
 that bad effects upon the discipline of convicts on the public 
 works, have already been caused by the regulations under which 
 it has been made known that no tickets-of-leave or other remis- 
 sion of sentence would in any case be granted to men sentenced 
 to penal servitude. 
 
 1 7. That with a view to give full effect to the principle indi- 
 cated in Resolution 5, the sentences of penal servitude prescribed 
 by that Act should be changed and lengthened, so as to be 
 identical with the terms of transportation for which they are 
 respectively substituted. 
 
 ' 8. That the sentences of penal servitude now in force might 
 be adopted. with some few changes, as the fixed periods recom- 
 mended in Resolution 5. 
 
 ' 9. That the scale of secondary punishment would be more 
 complete, if a shorter period of penal servitude than any now 
 
534 Charge of October, n 856. 
 
 in force were enacted, as an intermediate sentence between the 
 present term of ordinary imprisonment now usually inflicted, 
 and the former sentence of seven years' transportation or its 
 equivalent.' 
 
 These resolutions may perhaps requie some further explana- 
 tion to enable their full bearing to be seen. You must know, 
 Gentlemen, that the Bill of 1853, on its introduction into Par- 
 liament by the Lord Chancellor, was a measure which had for 
 its object simply to enable the Courts to convert the punish- 
 ment of transportation, which, owing to the opposition of our 
 colonies, could only be acted upon to a limited extent, into 
 imprisonment in our convict gaols and hulks, and labour on 
 our public works, with the view of reserving transportation for 
 heinous offences deserving a punishment all but capital ; and 
 rightly believing that the substituted punishment which was 
 denominated penal servitude, is for equal periods of time an 
 infliction much more grievous than transportation, when it con- 
 verted the latter punishment into the former, it greatly dimi- 
 nished its duration. But while the Bill was passing through 
 the House of Lords, it so happened that Earl Grey, who, when 
 Colonial Minister, had had experience of the beneficial effect 
 produced by tickets- of-leave in the Island of Barbadoes, sug- 
 gested the expediency of trying a similar experiment in England. 
 He spoke highly of the principle of encouragement, from his 
 own observation ; and he agreed with all who have a practical 
 knowledge of prisoners, that no incitement can be held out to 
 them which will bear any comparison for efficiency in stimulating 
 them to good deeds, with that derived from the expectation of 
 being restored to freedom. Listen, I pray you, to the opinion 
 of the Rev. "William Holderness, the chaplain of the Portland 
 Prison, and a member of that exemplary body of men, whose 
 labours and sacrifices, if they do not obtain for them 
 their well-earned promotion in the church, will at all events 
 ensure them respectful attention from every one competent to 
 estimate the insight which their professional duties give them, 
 into the characters of those who enjoy the advantage of their 
 ministrations. ' As a general rule, 5 he says, ' the men sentenced 
 to penal servitude have no hope of shortening their confinement, 
 consequently a powerful incentive to good conduct is lost. It is 
 to be feared that no adequate substitute for the hope of liberty 
 can be devised. It is the love of liberty which lies nearest to 
 
Charge of October, 1856. 535 
 
 a prisoner's heart, and which will ever be the cheapest and the 
 best reward for exemplary conduct/ The opinion here expressed 
 derives additional weight from its being in conformity with that 
 of Colonel Jebb, Captain Crofton, and Captain Whitty, Directors 
 of the Convict Prisons; appointments of high importance, offering 
 a wide scope for observation on the habits, manners, and ways 
 of thinking, common to the criminal class. 
 
 These views, Gentlemen, prevailed, and the principle of the 
 Bill was changed. But by this time the Session was rapidly 
 drawing to an end ; and the requisite alteration in the clauses 
 to bring them into harmony with the principle of encourage- 
 ment, now become the characteristic of the proposed law, was 
 but partially made. Probably it will be obvious to you, as it 
 certainly was to the Committee, that when a power was given 
 to the prisoner himself to shorten his term of confinement, the 
 ground for reducing the length of his original sentence was 
 gone ; nay, that inasmuch as the period of probation after dis- 
 charge ought to be protracted until it becomes manifest that 
 the training of the prison has secured, as completely as it can 
 be secured, the permanent well-doing of the liberated prisoner, 
 so far from shortening sentences, reason would rather seem to 
 dictate the propriety of making them longer than ever. The 
 Committee, then, by recommending that convicts sentenced to 
 penal servitude should be brought, in practice, within that 
 privilege of tickets-of-leave to which they are so clearly entitled 
 by law, and by further recommending that the present inade- 
 quate terms of penal servitude should be lengthened, have done 
 what in them lies towards repairing the errors both of the 
 statute itself and of its administration. But their advice goes 
 further. They desire that new terms of penal servitude should 
 be created suitable to a class of slighter offences than those now 
 visited with that punishment, in order to give to minor offenders 
 the benefits of the ticket-of-leave. Let us hope, Gentlemen, 
 that the progress of opinion will not be permanently stayed 
 even at this point. Let us hope that no inmate of a prison 
 will be left without incentives to do right. If the imprisonment 
 to which he is adjudged is so short as not to admit of his being 
 made the better by reformatory treatment, may not such a 
 consequence furnish a more cogent reason for lengthening the 
 period of his detention, than for depriving him of the moral 
 advantages conceded to those who are worse than himself? 
 
Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 The remaining resolutions of the Committee,, to which I 
 would crave your attention, are as follows : 
 
 ' 13. That there has been much of misapprehension and ex- 
 aggeration with regard to the conduct of persons released upon 
 tickets-of-leave who have been frequently confounded (even by 
 several of the witnesses on this inquiry) under one common 
 designation of ' ticket-of-leave men/ with convicts whose sen- 
 tences had fully and absolutely expired. 
 
 ' 14. That there is reason to believe that the conduct of a 
 large portion of the whole number of persons discharged upon 
 tickets-of-leave has hitherto been good, and in other cases per- 
 sons so discharged have relapsed into crime from the difficulty, 
 arising from their former characters becoming known, of pro- 
 curing or retaining honest employment in this country, a diffi- 
 culty, however, which obviously applies to all persons once 
 convicted, whether discharged upon tickets-of-leave, or abso- 
 lutely at the expiration of their sentences. 
 
 ' 15. That to render this system of tickets-of-leave adapted 
 both for the reformation of offenders and the interests of the 
 public, the conditions endorsed upon the tickets-of-leave ought 
 to be enforced more strictly than appears to have been hitherto 
 the case. 
 
 ' 1 6. That every convict, on his release with a ticket-of-leave, 
 ought to be reported to the police of the town or district to 
 which he is sent/ 
 
 Gentlemen, it was to that confusion between convicts dis- 
 charged on tickets-of-leave, the period of whose sentences had 
 not terminated, and convicts who had been freed absolutely, or, 
 if liberated with tickets-of-leave, had been out of prison so long 
 that their sentences had expired it was the confounding, I 
 say, of these three descriptions of convicts, and considering 
 them all as ticket-of-leave men, which produced what I may 
 fairly call the panic of the last winter ; throwing the good people 
 of England into a state of mind which placed in extreme danger 
 the permanency of a measure, having most assuredly the soundest 
 foundation whatever defects might weaken its superstructure. 
 Happily, the misapprehensions and the fears to which the Com- 
 mittee advert have been dispelled. Our advance towards the 
 rational treatment of criminals has been secured ; and a peril has 
 been averted, the magnitude of which we can scarcely over- 
 estimate. Nevertheless it cannot be denied, that the public 
 
Charge of October, 1855. 537 
 
 had very reasonable grounds for complaint and misgiving. The 
 responsibility of the convict discharged on ticket-of-leave, has 
 been in practice little more than nominal. The rule was to 
 send him to the town or district in which his offence had been 
 committed; but no intimation of his return was conveyed to 
 the police, and consequently they had no means of ascertaining 
 whether he had come out of prison on a ticket-of-leave, or whe- 
 ther he had received an unconditional discharge. In the latter 
 event he was subject to no control until he had committed a 
 fresh offence. In the former, his ticket was liable to recall at 
 the discretion of the Secretary of State, and by an endorse- 
 ment on the ticket-of-leave itself he was informed that 'the 
 power of revoking or altering the licence of a convict will most 
 certainly be exercised in case of his misconduct. If, there- 
 fore, he wishes to retain the privilege, which, by his good 
 behaviour under penal discipline, he has obtained, he must prove 
 by his subsequent conduct that he is really worthy of her 
 Majesty's clemency/ 
 
 Thus it appears that due notice is given to every ticket-of- 
 leave man, that any clear manifestation that he does not mean 
 to follow a sober, honest, and industrious course of life, will 
 consign him again to prison; such manifestation being taken as 
 proof that when he left the gaol he was not in a fit state to be 
 discharged. 
 
 This omission of notice to the police, it is recommended by 
 the Committee, as you will have observed, should henceforth 
 be supplied; and doubtless much will be done by acting on their 
 advice. Yet much will still remain to be accomplished. Since 
 the establishment of railways, individuals of the predatory class 
 have gained a very great and pernicious facility for extending 
 the circle of their depredations, by moving quickly from place 
 to place. This renders it necessary to devise some means by 
 which the police may be able to recognise and identify convicts, 
 whatever towns they may choose to visit. Practical difficulties 
 will no doubt arise in framing such a plan. But I speak from 
 good authority when I say that they may be overcome. I 
 should encroach most unreasonably upon your time if I were 
 to enter into details on this part of the subject. Its impor- 
 tance, however, cannot be denied; since, without the means of 
 identifying ticket-of-leave men, it is obviously impossible to 
 hold any control over them, or to ascertain what proportion 
 
538 Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 relapse again into crime. Let me present to you, as an example 
 of how difficult it is now to ascertain who are and who are not at 
 large under tickets- of-leave, the state of things in this town. At 
 the beginning of the present year, judging from data which I 
 laid before the Committee in my evidence, and which have 
 never been impugned, there must have been, as I calculated, 
 eighty ticket-of-leave men, at the least, resident- in Birmingham. 
 I asked your Chief Superintendent for a list of all that could 
 be found. He and his subordinate officers exerted themselves 
 to comply with my request. After six weeks of inquiry and 
 observation, they presented me with the names of nineteen 
 persons only, stating that there were many others whom they 
 suspected to belong to this class, but of whom they had no 
 specific knowledge. Of the nineteen, further information dis- 
 closed an error as to five. These had never held tickets-of- 
 leave, but had left their prisons upon unconditional discharges. 
 I subsequently found that the police of Bristol were in a like 
 state of doubt, with regard to the criminal population of that 
 city. Hence it follows that relapsed ticket-of-leave men, as 
 well as other convicts, often succeed in imposing themselves on 
 Courts as appearing at the bar for the first time; and thus it 
 becomes impossible to distinguish, with any degree of accuracy, 
 between the numbers of those on whom training has been 
 effectual, and those on whom it has failed. But although I am 
 compelled to withhold my confidence from all the estimates 
 which have appeared as to the relative proportions of those 
 ticket-of-leave men who stand fast, as compared with those who 
 again relapse into criminal courses, nevertheless I rejoice to be 
 able to add, as I do from a variety of facts which have come 
 to my knowledge, that I believe the committee was fully justi- 
 fied in stating that the conduct of a large number of this class 
 has been good. I believe, too, that the fall of many of those 
 who have relapsed, is rightly attributed to the reluctance which 
 employers feel to engage the services of these unhappy persons. 
 That reluctance, however, it may be fairly hoped will be greatly 
 diminished, when the master has a reasonable assurance 
 that the reformation of the convict, which has gained for him 
 his ticket-of-leave, is genuine and permanent. But before such 
 a result can be conscientiously predicated of the class, however 
 it may be true as regards individuals, much improvement will 
 be required in our system of training prisoners. 
 
Charge of October, 1856. 539 
 
 I have spoken. Gentlemen, of the necessity for passing the 
 criminal, or rather for enabling him to pass himself, through 
 progressive stages of imprisonment. The soundness of this 
 principle, indeed, is recognised, and, to a certain limited extent, 
 is now in action; and so far as the gaol authorities have brought 
 it into use, it is highly beneficial. But the stages are not 
 sufficiently numerous; and, what is a much greater defect, the 
 convict does not win his way through them by dint of exertion. 
 The right to pass onwards is gained by his remaining in each 
 a given time ; such period, it is true, may be lengthened by 
 signal misconduct on his part, but that is little to the purpose. 
 Gentlemen, what I desire to see is that the convict should 
 never be able to pass through a stage, merely by conformity to 
 rules for a certain number of months, weeks, or days; but that 
 lie should be held to proof that he has made a substantial ad- 
 vance towards reformation. Apply the proper test to his con- 
 duct, and then let him pass as quickly as he can. Give him 
 plenty of work, and reward him according to the measure of 
 his labour. Let him have the right to lay out some portion 
 of his earnings in bettering his diet; but give him a strong 
 motive to use this right sparingly, by making his economy tell 
 upon his progress towards freedom. Finally, let his faults, 
 whether of omission or commission, retard his advancement; 
 and, when of sufficient magnitude, let them thrust him back into 
 a stage already passed. 
 
 It is easy, Gentlemen, to raise theoretic objections against 
 this proposal. All I shall say is, that the obstacles against 
 success, be they few or many, have been grappled with, 
 and overcome ; not in one gaol or one country, but in 
 prisons separated by hundreds and thousands of miles from 
 each other ; and by governors acting on plans which each 
 had framed for himself, without being able to profit by the 
 experience of his fellows. One fact, Gentlemen, even if it stood 
 alone, would suffice to show that the theory of the law is, with 
 us, most imperfectly reduced to practice. It is this. Discharge, 
 on ticket-of-leave, as I have said, is given when the convict has 
 endured a certain fraction of his punishment, as measured by 
 time, unless in excepted cases of flagrant misconduct, when he 
 is detained for a somewhat longer period. Now it was proved 
 before the Committee, that the number of such excepted cases 
 is very small, and that the extra detention is very short. 13 ut 
 
54 Charge of October, 1 856. 
 
 I put it to your common sense, Gentlemen, whether such could 
 be the operation of the measure, if the convicts did in truth 
 work themselves out of prison. Is it not self-evident that 
 convicts commencing their imprisonment together, would, on 
 that supposition, no more depart on the same day from the 
 prison gates, than that the horses starting together at a race, 
 will all at the same moment reach the winning-post? Here 
 there is a need for improvement which demands the anxious 
 attention of all who have the fate of the criminal class under 
 their control. For if it be manifestly unjust to the public to 
 permit criminals, whose sentences have not expired, to return 
 into society unreformed, I hold it to be no less mischievous to 
 the criminals themselves. Surely, Gentlemen, liberty to 
 him who will only use it to plunge himself deeper into guilt, 
 is no blessing, but a curse ; whether we regard his welfare here 
 or hereafter. Gentlemen, I attribute the present very imper- 
 fect state of our prison discipline to no want of zeal arid anxiety 
 for good results in those to whom it is entrusted. I attribute 
 it to their want of confidence in the possibility of thoroughly 
 reforming a convict, by any treatment of which he is susceptible 
 while confined in prison. ' The reason/ said the present 
 Secretary of State for the Home Department, in the House of 
 Commons, ' why a ticket-of-leave cannot fairly be regarded as 
 a proof of reclamation, is obvious. So long as a man is im- 
 mured in a prison, where he is denied the opportunity of 
 getting drunk, and of associating with those who might lead 
 him into temptation, he is evidently so circumstanced, that it 
 is impossible for him to afford us the means of arriving at a 
 satisfactory conclusion as to whether his repentance is genuine 
 or affected/ 
 
 Gentlemen, the proposition thus enunciated by the Right 
 Honourable Secretary is as undeniably true as it is clearly and 
 forcibly expressed. Yet I am not prepared to accept the 
 Minister's practical conclusion in favour of discharging unre- 
 formed criminals; because, with the information derived from 
 the evidence taken by the Committee, of the excellent results 
 which have followed a judicious relaxation in the restraints 
 upon convicts during the latter stages of reformatory discipline, 
 I cannot admit it to be a necessary condition of prison life, that 
 the will of the convict should be kept in that state of slavish 
 repression which is here assumed. Gentlemen, the question 
 
Charge of October, 1856. 541 
 
 Mr 
 
 which I am now examining underlies the whole theory of 
 reformatory discipline. Even that amendment, imperfect as it 
 is, which the stimulus afforded by the ticket-of-leave system has 
 effected, is wrought out by a certain small measure of free 
 action conceded to the prisoner. The punishment which is 
 inflicted upon him for gross misconduct in gaol, shows that he 
 is held to have had it in his power to choose between right and 
 wrong ; and it is merely a careful and well -graduated enforce- 
 ment of this principle which is required to accomplish all at 
 which we aim. Personal reformation, as the term implies, is 
 the acquisition of some faculty of action or endurance, not 
 possessed before. But every one of our acquirements is made 
 by the repetition of efforts, the large majority of which are often 
 unsuccessful. To learn to swim we cast ourselves on the water, 
 and are apt scholars indeed if we are not obliged to repeat the 
 process times out of number, before we can overcome our ten- 
 dency to sink to the bottom. At last, however, we plunge and 
 struggle ourselves into the capacity for keeping our heads above 
 the surface. A story is told of a man who fondly hoped to 
 acquire the art in comfort and safety, by placing himself on his 
 dining-table, face downwards, and then vigorously striking out 
 his arms and legs. But he discovered in the end, that swim- 
 ming could only be learned by running the chance of sinking ; 
 and, Gentlemen, as certain as it is that a swimmer taught on dry 
 land will straightway go to the bottom the moment he ventures 
 into the water, so sure it also is that the prisoner who returns 
 into the world before he is in some sort inured to its dangers 
 and its combats, will yield to the first temptation. He may, it 
 is true, and not infrequently does, rise again ; renews the fight, 
 and in the end is victorious. But how many, alas ! become at 
 once hopeless of their own capacity for resistance, and fall to 
 rise no more. 
 
 Gentlemen, we naturally shrink from exposing a fellow- 
 creature, who has shown his weakness by the fact of his becoming 
 a convict, to any temptation while he remains under our pro- 
 tection and control. But this disposition, however laudable, 
 must be overcome. We must reflect that it is not in our 
 power, except by imprisoning him for life, to guard him against 
 the host of temptations which will throng upon him, the moment 
 he sets foot beyond the prison walls. Is it not, then, more 
 than permissible is it not our duty to train him to bear the 
 
54 2 Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 
 
 shock of those temptations, while we are able ? And at once to 
 subject him to a renewed course of preparation, if upon experi- 
 ment he is found incapable of encountering his danger in the 
 mitigated form in which we can present it to him ? But, 
 Gentlemen, I need not detain you with speculations. By 
 Montesinos, at Valencia; by Obermaier, at Munich; by the 
 Governors of many prisons in the United States ; and last, not 
 least, by Captain Crofton, the Chairman of the Board of 
 Directors of Convict Prisons in Ireland, has this difficulty, 
 formidable as it is justly deemed, been met and surmounted. 
 Gentlemen, it is the deep impression produced on my mind by 
 reflecting on this difficulty, which has led me to appreciate so 
 highly the value of that additional responsibility under which 
 the prisoner is placed, when his discharge is revocable, in the 
 event of his forfeiting the pledge which his good conduct had 
 given, of his permanent reclamation. It is the opinion of some 
 for whose knowledge and ability I entertain the highest respect, 
 that a prisoner once dismissed should be restored, so far as the 
 law can restore him, to the position of those who have never 
 offended. And assuredly, if any infallible test could be disco- 
 vered by which to try the genuineness and the sufficiency of the 
 change wrought in the moral state of the prisoner who has 
 passed through all the stages of prison discipline, to keep any 
 further hold on such an individual would be useless; and there- 
 fore could not be justified. But having regard to the hopeless- 
 ness of discovering such a test, and to the well-known fact that 
 the early days of restored liberty are those when his temptations 
 to take the wrong course are most difficult to resist, I cannot 
 but agree most cordially with the Committee, in believing that 
 the prisoner's discharge ought to be revocable; and I cannot but 
 think that the term of his original sentence forms the shortest 
 period at which he should be wholly relieved from the conse- 
 quences of his offence. 
 
 Let me, Gentlemen, now relieve you, who, although you have 
 not offended, have been long detained. But not before I ask 
 you to accept my sincere congratulations on the different aspect 
 which the reformatory question has now assumed, to that which 
 it presented twelve months ago. The Committee has performed 
 a great service, and has the first title to our thanks. Yet we 
 must not undervalue the support to the principles which they 
 have laid down, afforded by the Societies for instituting Refor- 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 543 
 
 matory Schools, which are springing up all around us. True 
 it is, they confine their labours to the young ; but the benefits 
 which they confer on juvenile criminals can only be successfully 
 defended when attacked, as attacked they often are, upon 
 grounds which, for the most part, are common to all reformatory 
 systems, whether for the young or for the old. Nor, Gentlemen, 
 ought we to pass by the assistance which we may hope to derive 
 from the Association, lately founded in Birmingham, for the Aid 
 of Discharged Prisoners. It has already, even in its infant state, 
 shown its ability to guide, protect, and succour the objects of 
 its care, at their perilous entrance on their new course of life, 
 when the offices of Christian philanthropy, at all times precious, 
 are more than ever needful. Gentlemen, I know you will join 
 with me in fervent wishes that its members may hold fast to 
 this noble work of charity ; and that they may obtain the only 
 reward they seek, by finding its utility commensurate with their 
 labours, and their benefactions. 
 
 To M. D. Hill, Esq., Q.C., Recorder of Birmingham. 
 
 ' The Grand Jury, before being dismissed from their duties, 
 desire to express to the Recorder their high sense of the impor- 
 tance of the subject brought under their notice in his Charge, 
 and to express a hope that such enlightened views upon the 
 treatment of the Criminal Classes may receive that consideration 
 from the Legislature which they demand. 
 
 ' Signed on behalf, and at the request of the Grand Jury, 
 
 1 J. P. SALT, Foreman. 
 
 'October 21, 1856.' 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 PRISONS OF MUNICH AND VALENCIA. 
 
 ' Letter from M. D. Hill, to the Right Honourable M. T. 
 Baines, M.P., Chairman of the Transportation Committee, 
 House of Commons, 1856 :* 
 
 * Transportation Committee, House of Commons, 1856. Second Report, App., 
 p. 160. 
 
544 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 ' Heath House, Stapleton. cth June, iS;6. 
 
 ' SIR, A few days ago I received from Spain a communi- 
 cation which I desire to lay before the Committee. It consists 
 of answers furnished by Colonel Don Manuel Mcmtesinos. 
 Governor of the Prison of Valencia, to questions similar to those 
 which I transmitted to Munich for the purpose of obtaining 
 information regarding the present condition of the State Prison 
 in that city ; which questions, with their answers, as translated 
 by Mr. Leipner, of Clifton, you have already decided to print 
 in your Appendix. The contribution from Valencia, which I 
 have obtained through the kindness of the eminent house of 
 Christobal de Murrietta and Co., will, I think, be found equally 
 important with that from Munich. But the value of each will 
 so obviously depend on the confidence which the Comn 
 may be induced to place on the facts to be found in these com- 
 munications, that I venture to hope you will allow me to lay 
 before you, as briefly as I can, such corroboration of the ri 
 ments to be found in each paper, as I have been able to meet 
 with. 
 
 f The attention of the English public was first called to the 
 system of discipline practised in the State Prison of Munich by 
 Mr. Alexander Baillie Cochrane, formerly a member of your 
 House of Parliament, in a pamphlet published in the year 1853, 
 the title of which will be found below.* 
 
 ( { "While I was residing last year at Munich, my attention was 
 particularly invited to the system of prison discipline practised 
 in the State Prison, under the intelligent superintendence of M. 
 Obermaier a system, as explained to me, so opposed to all my 
 preconceived notions, and apparently founded on such Utc 
 ideas of the perfectibility of human nature, that it required the 
 most minute investigation to satisfy me of the accuracy of my 
 informants. 
 
 ' ' Some twenty years have elapsed since M. Obermaier first 
 denounced the prison system which prevailed in Germany. 
 Unlike many reformers of the age, he did not rest contented 
 with pointing out existing evils, but he lost no time in urging 
 
 * Prison Discipline. "By C. M. Obennaier, Governor of the Munich E 
 Prison. Translated by M. Rehbann, with a Prefa: by Ale* 
 
 Baillie Cochrane, London : James Ridgvray, 169, Piccadilly. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 545 
 
 upon the attention of the Government all those reforms "which 
 have since been carried out in different districts, and for the 
 full development of which the State Prison of Munich afforded 
 the widest scope ; it is not surprising if, in the first instance, 
 his suggestions were received as the aberrations of an amiable 
 visionary, for he started a theory which many years since was 
 received, even in this country, with doubt and mistrust 
 namely, that the worst of criminals will commonly be found 
 possessed of some one good quality, and that a system of prison 
 discipline, based rather on pity than harshness, and appealing 
 to the nobler and not the brutal instincts of human nature, 
 would tend to raise men's self-respect, and thus gradually work 
 upon their moral qualities ; that it was at once a wiser and a 
 more humane policy to sympathize with the force of the temp- 
 tation to which the criminal had yielded, than to visit with 
 undue severity its guilty consequences. 
 
 e ' By slow degrees, and through that earnestness and sincerity 
 which cannot fail ultimately to win conviction, M. Obermaier 
 gained adherents to his opinions, and opportunities for testing 
 their value; after some years' experience at the prison of 
 Kaiserslautern, where a system unusually harsh was replaced 
 by one based on commiseration and pity, M. Obermaier was 
 appointed governor of the Munich State Prison, which situation 
 he now holds. 
 
 f ' When M. Obermaier first arrived at Munich, he found from 
 600 to 700 prisoners in the gaol, in the worst state of insub- 
 ordination, and whose excesses, he was told, defied the harshest 
 and most stringent discipline ; the prisoners were all chained 
 together, and attached to each chain was an iron weight, which 
 the strongest found difficulty in dragging along ; the guard con- 
 sisted of about i oo soldiers, who did duty not only at the gates 
 and around the walls, but also in the passages, and even in the 
 workshops and dormitories ; and, strangest of all protections 
 against the possibility of an outbreak or individual evasion, 
 twenty to thirty large savage dogs, of the bloodhound breed, 
 were let loose at night in the passages and courts, to keep their 
 watch and ward. According to his account, the place was a 
 perfect Pandemonium, comprising within the limits of a few 
 acres the worst passions, the most slavish vices, and the most 
 heartless tyranny. 
 
 N N 
 
546 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 ' ' It was his work to purify this den of corruption, and he set 
 gallantly to it. His first object, he told me, was to enlist the 
 sympathies, and to win the confidence of some of the best of the 
 men; afterwards to bring those men together, and subse- 
 quently, so far as they were concerned, to relax the severity of 
 the prison rules. These men in their turn exercised a very 
 gradual, but a very marked influence over others, until they 
 formed a body willing to co-operate with him in his schemes of 
 improvement. As the characters of these men became im- 
 proved, their cheerfulness seemed to increase ; as he lightened 
 the weight of the chains on their limbs, so did the weight on 
 their hearts appear to be removed. M. Obermaier admitted 
 that the process was a long and painful one; but that the 
 result is most satisfactory must be admitted by all those who 
 have taken the trouble of visiting this remarkable establish- 
 ment. 
 
 ' ' Although all I had been told led me to anticipate a great 
 relaxation of ordinary prison precautions, I certainly scarcely 
 expected to see the prison gates wide open, without any sentinel 
 at the door, and a guard of only twenty men idling away their 
 time in a guard-room off the entrance hall ; from this hall two 
 long corridors led right and left to the various offices and work- 
 shops ; the apartments of the governor were on the first floor, 
 and immediately adjoining them, and in the same passage, were 
 the dormitories and workshops. These workshops were of 
 various dimensions, capable of holding from twenty to sixty 
 men ; none of the doors were provided with bolts and bars, the 
 only security was an ordinary lock, and, as in most of the 
 rooms the key was not turned, there was no obstacle to the 
 men walking into the passage, and I have already observed that 
 there were only twenty soldiers to prevent them stepping from 
 the passages into the road. Over each workshop some of the 
 prisoners with the best characters were appointed overseers, and 
 M. Obermaier assured me, that if a prisoner ever transgressed 
 a regulation, his companions generally told him, ' Es ist ver- 
 boten/ (it is forbidden,) and it rarely happened that he did not 
 yield to the opinion of his fellow-prisoners. Few of the men 
 wore chains, and the chains, when worn, were so light that they 
 produced no practical inconvenience. M. Obermaier explained 
 that he objected even to this remnant of the old system, but 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 547 
 
 that the authorities insisted on certain forms of restraint being 
 maintained. 
 
 ( ' Within the prison walls every description of work is carried 
 on ; the prisoners, divided into different gangs, and supplied 
 with instruments and tools, make their own clothes, repair their 
 own prison walls, and forge their own chains, producing various 
 specimens of manufacture which are turned to most excellent 
 account : the result being, that each prisoner, by occupation arid 
 industry, maintains himself; the surplus of his earnings being 
 given to him on his emancipation, avoids his being parted with 
 in a state of destitution, a very necessary and important con- 
 sideration, as, from having something to fall back upon, he may 
 be prevented resorting to those pernicious habits and propen- 
 sities which had brought him within the sphere of the criminal 
 code. 
 
 e ' The articles manufactured by the prisoners are all exported, 
 that the sale of such produce might not injure, or in any way 
 interfere with the home manufactures. The return enables the 
 Government to uphold the institution at a comparatively tri- 
 fling expense.* On entering each room > it was impossible not 
 to have remarked the deportment of the prisoners towards the 
 governor ; for the kind and friendly manner in which he ad- 
 dressed them was responded to by a civility of manner rarely, 
 under any circumstances, exhibited by men of that class, and 
 still more rarely by such men when placed in that position. 
 Neither in the passages, within the prison walls, nor in the 
 courts without, was any guard to be seen ; the governor walked 
 about with a walking-stick, and his sole escort was a pet dog of 
 enormous size, of the Pomeranian breed ; altogether the effect 
 produced upon myself, and those who accompanied me on this 
 visit, was one of great astonishment, while, even after being an 
 eye-witness of the system pursued, and listening to M. Ober- 
 maier's explanation, it was very difficult to uproot all our pre- 
 viously-formed opinions, or, as M. Obermaier might have 
 termed them, prejudices. 
 
 ' One of the party was disposed to explain this social pheno- 
 menon by the phlegmatic habits of the Germans, whom it is 
 
 The answers of the Bavarian Minister of the Interior do not support this 
 statement. M. D. II, 
 
 N N 2 
 
548 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 difficult to stimulate to active exertion if their daily wants are 
 duly attended to ; this explanation might suffice, if this system 
 had been universally and originally adopted throughout Ger- 
 many, by those who were most competent to appreciate the 
 national character ; but it fails to satisfy us, when it is remem- 
 bered that the discipline which M. Obermaier found carried on 
 in the Munich Prison, and which still prevails in Germany, 
 was so severe that it proved very little confidence on the part of 
 the Government in the apathy and sluggish indifference of those 
 subjected to it. Another suggested that the prisoners were 
 supplied with greater comforts than under the old system, in 
 fact, that the life was so agreeable, they might have no desire 
 to exchange it for another ; but M. Obermaier pointed out that 
 the changes he had made were only in those details which 
 tended to develop the moral qualities, that the diet, the work- 
 ing hours remained the same ; and he added, with force and 
 justice, that the very men whom the lightening the weights of 
 the chains, and the removal of bolts and bars, could affect in so 
 remarkable a manner, were precisely those to whom the loss of 
 liberty would appear most appalling. Besides, freedom is, after 
 all, the first affection of the human mind, and no amount of 
 comfort could compensate for a life of monotony and imprison- 
 ment. Then it was remarked, that even a guard of twenty 
 men, with loaded arms, is a sufficient protection, and that, 
 though the men were to escape, it would riot be possible for 
 them long to avoid re- capture. This may be true, but, at the 
 same time, so great a number of men, with working tools in 
 their hands, would be a formidable body to resist. But the 
 question this idea suggests is, is the protection such as a 
 governor, placed in so responsible a situation, could feel justified 
 in trusting to, if he only relied on such physical aid for the 
 security of the prison ? 
 
 f ' The whole matter is to me a problem which, even after 
 visiting the prison and reading M. Obermaier's explanation, I 
 find it difficult to understand ; whenever I have mentioned the 
 subject I have found the idea of treating such men with confi- 
 dence, and the hope of ever humanizing a set of ruffians, 
 scouted as impracticable and Utopian. Still, so many grave 
 considerations are involved in this question of prison discipline, 
 and it being universally recognised of such permanent impor- 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 549 
 
 tance, I have thought a translation of the most important parts 
 of the Obermaier pamphlet may not be without interest; I 
 have, therefore, taken the liberty of prefacing these extracts by 
 these few remarks. I have not published M. Obermaier' s work 
 in extenso, because it is very long, and much of it is irrelevant 
 to the subject, consisting in the greater part of a description of 
 Pentonville Prison, and in remarks on the system of solitary 
 imprisonment/ 
 
 ' Then follows a precis of Governor Obermaier's work,* which 
 brings the history of the prison to the year 1846. The results 
 of his plans he states thus : 
 
 ' ' I undertook the direction of the prison of Kaiserslautern in, 
 1830, and my task was fulfilled in the year 1836. 
 
 ' ' In 1 842 I was appointed governor of the Munich Prison, 
 and in 1845 tne whole scheme was in full operation, such as it 
 may be seen at the present time. 
 
 f ' I discharged from Kaiserslautern, between the years J 830 
 and 1836, 132 criminals, who had been sentenced for different 
 crimes, for periods from five to twenty years; of these 132, 123 
 have since their discharge been admirably conducted, and nine, 
 that is, seven men and two women, have been recommitted. 
 This statement is founded on the testimony of the authorities 
 in the different places to which the men returned, and it is a 
 well-attested fact ; this proportion between the reformed and 
 the relapsed remained nearly the same until 1842. 
 
 1 ' The results of my management were equally successful in 
 the prison of Munich. Although it was carried out within the 
 walls of an old convent, ill adapted for the purposes of a prison, 
 I was the more confirmed in my impressions at finding that a 
 similar treatment carried out in two different German provinces 
 was attended with equally satisfactory results ; the official returns 
 give the following results of the Munich treatment : 
 
 ( ' There were discharged between the years 1843 and 1845, 
 298 prisoners sentenced for various periods of from one to twenty 
 years. 
 
 ' ' Of these, 246 have been restored improved to society. 
 
 * Die Verhandlungen liber Gefangnissreform in Frankfurt am Main im September, 
 1846 oder Die Einzelhaft mit ihren Folgen von G. M. Obermaier k.b. Regierungsrath 
 und Vorstand der Strafiirbeits-Anstalt in Miinchen. Munchen, 1848, Job. Palm's 
 HofbucbLandlung. 
 
550 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 Those whose characters are doubtful,, but have not been re- 
 manded for any criminal act, twenty-six. Again, under exami- 
 nation, four. Punished by the police, six. Remanded, eight. 
 Died, eight. 
 
 ' ' Now this statement is based on irrefutable evidence j it 
 cannot be contradicted. It must either be that the great 
 majority of the prisoners who quit the prison of Munich do so 
 improved, or that those who are discharged, when they are set 
 at liberty, improve themselves. I may add, that of the 246 
 who were discharged, 189 had been sentenced for murder, 
 homicide, highway robbery, or theft/ 
 
 ' A very interesting narrative of a visit to the Munich State 
 Prison, the date of which is not mentioned, will be found in the 
 Zoist* for January last. The author is the Rev. Chauncy 
 Hare Townshend, A.M. This gentleman speaks in terms of 
 high commendation of all he witnessed during what' appears to 
 have been a minute examination of the prison, and, although 
 he does not seem to be acquainted with Mr. Baillie Cochrane's 
 pamphlet, he confirms all the statements of that gentleman. I 
 can only venture upon a short extract. 
 
 ' f We now proceeded to various other apartments, in one of 
 which the prisoners were making shoes ^ in another, plaiting list 
 slippers ; in another, turning boxes, candlesticks, napkin rings, 
 c. I was told that in choosing the occupation for the man, 
 regard was had to his comparative health and strength, as well 
 as to his particular turn for the handicraft, and also to his con- 
 duct ; thus to be drafted on to the lighter and more amusing 
 work was considered to be a reward. Every one was anxious 
 to be a baker, and no wonder, for I never saw a more animated 
 scene than the bakehouse presented. In this portion of the 
 reformatory Erebus there was bustling and laughter and joking 
 going on. My attendant told me that none but the better sort 
 of criminals, who had either been condemned for only small 
 offences, or who had worked their way up to confidence by long 
 good conduct,, were allowed to form part of the baking establish- 
 ment. So it was with the cooking department, over which, 
 besides, presided servants belonging to the institution itself. 
 Of course, I must taste a loaf, and some soup. That is de 
 
 * The Zoist. Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co. 25, Paternoster-row, 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 551 
 
 rigueur in such cases. Botli were excellent. I wish that all the 
 Oliver Twists in the world might have as good in their work- 
 houses ! ' Was meat allowed every day ?'* 
 
 ' ' No, three times a week/ 
 
 ' ' One of the most interesting sights was the prisoners 7 library, 
 by no means an uncheerful room either. Being in the centre 
 nearly, and looking into a court, it had not the obligatory bars 
 and wooden vents or boxes (like hencoops turned topsy-turvy), 
 that made you feel you were in a prison, when you were in the 
 apartments looking upon the street. So knowledge was made 
 attractive every way. A few mild-looking prisoners, chiefly 
 invalids I was told, were reading in this book-room as intently 
 and silently as the studious in the British Museum. I looked 
 at some of the books. They consisted chiefly of popularly 
 instructive works. Sketches of astronomy or geography, history, 
 travels, and the like. Not one mystically religious book did I 
 see amidst the well-chosen collection. A few straightforward 
 moral treatises or tales, inculcating love to God and man, that 
 was all ; and this in a Catholic country too ! But Bavaria has 
 many Protestant subjects, and, at the time I speak of, had a 
 Protestant queen. 
 
 ' ' The cloth manufactory, in itself a vast establishment, had 
 very little of the prison in its appearance. The better class of 
 criminals only were admitted here. Tidy-looking men they 
 were \ in full activity ; running bustling about, carding, weaving, 
 dyeing, till the cloth came forth, all of that whinstone blue, 
 which is familiar to so many eyes that have gazed upon the 
 Bavarian soldiery. No hive of bees could be in fuller hum and 
 ferment than was this part of the prison. This was one of the last 
 sights of the establishment ; but I must not forget to say that I 
 had previously been shown the man of the double murder ; the 
 twenty years' prisoner, who still had to end his life in captivity. 
 He was in a. large room where (I think) they were cleaning 
 flax, or following some such quiet occupation, and he was one 
 of the monitors (I was told) of the apartment. Of course I 
 looked at him with interest. He had by no means an ill-formed 
 head or countenance. He looked mild and pale ; yet one could 
 see, in looking at his face, that the passions had walked over 
 that exhausted land. They had passed ; there was no fear of 
 their return. One saw also that. 
 
553 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 ' * Generally, I must observe, I was struck by the evidently 
 bettered physiognomies of the criminals who had been longest 
 in the prison. Two or three in fetters (for I saw some such) 
 had, methought, hang-dog faces (perhaps the fetters partly 
 made me think so), and some of the men in the working rooms 
 had that shuffling, uneasy look which indicates the criminal ; but 
 in the majority of cases, T could see in its various stages the 
 retrieval of the degraded physiognomy. The prisoners, many of 
 them, decidedly had begun to look honest men in the face, and 
 to abjure themselves the character of wild beasts in a cage. 
 ****** 
 
 ' ( About what I saw in the Munich prison I have little more 
 to tell. The dormitories, not too large nor containing too 
 many occupants, presided over by servants of the prison as well 
 as by monitors from amongst the prisoners themselves ; the neat 
 light iron bedsteads that could be turned up against the wall ; the 
 clean beds made every morning by their occupants ; the well- 
 ventilated infirmary (which had as little smell of burnt blankets 
 and prisoner as possible), all was excellent and in good order/ 
 
 ' The attention of English readers was called to the treat- 
 ment of criminals at the prison of Valencia, by Mr. Hoskins, in 
 his work, entitled, Spain as it Is } published in the year 1851.* 
 The statements of Mr. Hoskins attracted the attention of 
 Captain Maconochie, who, in the year 1852, published a 
 pamphlet,f in which may be found all the information contained 
 in Mr. Hoskins' book, together with copious extracts from a 
 little work by Colonel Montesinos himself. 
 
 ' ' In a work recently published (Spain as it Is, by G. A. 
 Hoskins, Esq., i., pp. 104-10), an interesting account is given of 
 the public prison at Valencia, in which the average number of 
 prisoners is about 1000, but 3500 have been at one time 
 received into it. They chiefly belong to the neighbouring 
 districts of Albacete and Valencia. The accommodation pro- 
 vided in the prison is very imperfect, and there is little classi- 
 
 * Spain as it Is. G. A. Hoskins. Colburn and Co. 1851. 
 
 t Account of the Public Prison of Valencia, calculated to receive 1500 prisoners, 
 averaging i ooo ; yet in which during the last three years there has not been even 
 one recommittal, and for the previous ten years the average was only one per cent. 
 With Observations, by Captain Maconochie, R.N., K.H. London: Charles Gilpin 
 [now Cash], 5, Bishopsgate-street Without, 1852. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 553 
 
 fication observed, the boys not being even separated from the 
 men. In 1 835, accordingly, when the present governor, Colonel 
 Don Manuel Montesinos, was appointed to it, the average of 
 recommittals was from thirty to thirty-five per cent, per annum ; 
 nearly the same that is found in England and other countries in 
 Europe ; but such has been the success of his method, that, for 
 the last three years, there has not been even one recommittal 
 to it, and for the ten previous years they did not, on an average, 
 exceed one per cent.* The following, with a few unimportant 
 omissions, is Mr. Hoskins' printed statement concerning what 
 he himself saw of it, the additional details here annexed having 
 been obtained from his personal testimony, and a pamphlet now 
 in my possession, published by Colonel Montesinos, in 1846. 
 The plan, at first, was much disliked in the city of Valencia, on 
 account of its lenity, but is now universally approved of; crime 
 is said to have diminished in the district since it was matured ; 
 and its author has been since appointed, and now is, Visitor- 
 General of Spanish Prisons ( Visit ador- General de los Presidios 
 del Reino). 
 
 ' ' If the vices and passions of a southern people prevail in a 
 place where, until the last few years, a strong government has 
 not been enjoyed, it is greatly to the credit of the city of 
 Valencia that it can boast of one of the best conducted prisons 
 in Europe. This being one of the great social questions of the 
 day, I made particular inquiries about it. There are a thousand 
 prisoners, and, in the whole establishment, I did not see above 
 three or four guardians to keep them in order. They say there 
 are only a dozen old soldiers, and not a bar or bolt that might 
 not easily be broken; apparently not more fastenings than in 
 any private house. 
 
 ( ' The governor, a colonel in the army, has established 
 military discipline, and the prisoners are divided into companies. 
 The officers stand as stiff when you pass, as soldiers presenting 
 arms. The sergeants and inferior officers are all convicts, who, 
 
 * By reference to the communication which I have received from Colonel Monte- 
 sinos, it will be seen that he now gives the proportion of recommittals at two per 
 cent. All statistics are open to fallacies, but those of prisons are obnoxious to 
 error from a great variety of sources. Without the slightest disrespect to Colonel 
 M., I must be permitted to accept this very high rate of reformation with con- 
 siderable reserve. M. D. II. 
 
554 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 of course, are acquainted with the temper and disposition of 
 their companions, and best able to manage them; and the 
 prospect of advancement to higher grades is an inducement to 
 all to behave well. When a convict enters, he is asked what 
 trade or employment he will work at or learn, and above forty 
 are open to him, so that he has the means of devoting his time 
 to any he knows, or, if ignorant of all, to one he feels an 
 inclination for, or which he is aware will be useful to him when 
 he is liberated. Many a man may wish to return to his native 
 village with what he has earned here, and he knows best what 
 trade or employment will there not only be of advantage, but 
 even a fortune to him. If he declines to work at any, he is sent 
 to the public works, or employed in carrying wood ; but the 
 out-door convicts are by far the worst conducted in the esta- 
 blishment, and are therefore kept distinct from the others, who, 
 by their selecting a trade, have shown a disposition to be indus- 
 trious and improve themselves. 
 
 ' ' When first the convict enters the establishment he wears 
 chains, but on his application to the commander they are taken 
 off, unless he has not conducted himself well. Among some 
 hundreds I only saw three or four with irons on their legs. 
 There seemed to be the most perfect discipline. They work in 
 rows ; rose in rank as we passed, and seemed obedient to a 
 word. They are not allowed to talk to each other during their 
 work, but this rule does not seem to be very strictly enforced, 
 and they may speak to their instructor, who is often one of 
 themselves, and ask each other for tools or anything requisite 
 for their work, and every night after prayers they are allowed 
 to converse with each other for an hour. There are weavers 
 and spinners of every description, manufacturing all qualities, 
 from the coarsest linen cloths to the most beautiful damasks, 
 rich silks and velvets one a crimson, apparently equal to the 
 Utrecht velvet. There were blacksmiths, shoemakers, basket- 
 makers, rope-makers, joiners, cabinet-makers, making handsome 
 mahogany drawers ; and they had also a printing machine hard 
 at work. 
 
 ' The labour of every description for the repair, rebuilding, 
 and cleaning the establishment is supplied by the convicts. 
 They were all most respectful in their demeanour, and certainly 
 I never saw such a good-looking set of prisoners ; useful occupa- 
 
Sequel to Charge of October , 1 856. 555 
 
 tion (and other considerate treatment) having apparently 
 improved their countenances. The greatest cleanliness pre- 
 vailed in every part of the establishment ; the dormitories were 
 well ventilated, the beds neatly packed up, and water, the great 
 requisite in a sultry climate, within reach of all. On the 
 walls, in large letters, were inscriptions in rhyme, directed to 
 inculcate good maxims. There was a neat chapel for their 
 devotions, and a garden for exercise, planted with orange trees. 
 There was also a poultry-yard for their amusement, with phea- 
 sants and various other kinds of birds; washing-houses, where 
 they wash their clothes, and a shop where they can purchase, if 
 they wish, tobacco, and other little comforts, out of one-fourth 
 of the profits of their labour, which is given to them. Another 
 fourth they are entitled to when they leave ; the other half 
 goes to the establishment, and often this is sufficient for all 
 expenses without any assistance from the Government. 
 
 ' ' The governor found it was impossible to induce the 
 prisoners to work heartily without giving them an interest in 
 their gains; but when once he had by this encouragement 
 established industrious habits, it was more easy to correct their 
 principles. Honour among thieves is really found here, the 
 prisoners keeping the accounts, and no attempts made to deceive/ 
 
 ( In a pamphlet* published by Mr. Hoskins in 1 853, he 
 relates the following anecdote : 
 
 ' ' A visitor expressing his doubts as to such feelings of honour 
 existing among convicts, the governor asked the worst class in 
 the prison men sentenced to ten years to select a messenger, 
 and he gave him an onza to change in the city, which is such 
 a labyrinth of narrow streets, escape was most easy. Great 
 was his astonishment when the man returned with 3/. 6s. in 
 small money/f 
 
 { f It is doubtless the same feeling of honour which prevents 
 their rebelling and leaving the asylum whenever they feel dis- 
 
 * What shall we do with our Criminals? with an Account of the Prison of 
 Valencia and the Penitentiary of Mettray. By G. A. Hoskins, Esq. London : 
 Ridgway, 1853. p. 10. 
 
 t It will perhaps be remembered that Mr. Henry Mayhew, having assembled a 
 meeting of juvenile criminals, tried a similar experiment with equal success. Vide 
 London Labour and the London Poor. M. D. II. 
 
556 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 posed.* It is surprising that the establishment requires so 
 little assistance from the Government, as the expense of the 
 officers and instructors is very considerable, and the governor 
 has invariably made the teaching and moral improvement of the 
 convicts his chief consideration, without any regard to the profits 
 to be derived from them. 
 
 ' ' All were cleanly dressed in woollen clothes of the same 
 colour, which is requisite in case of any attempt to escape. In 
 summer they have lighter clothes. Their food is excellent, and 
 consists of large brown loaves, about the colour of our best 
 London brown bread, but finer in quality, and quite as good ; 
 rations of olla, rice, potatoes, and meat on fete days, which in 
 Spain are numerous. Instruction is open to all in a large 
 school, which the boys under twenty are obliged to attend for 
 one hour daily, and any prisoner above that age who wishes 
 may join the classes. I saw numerous instances of excellent 
 writing (in the Spanish style) by lads and adults who could 
 not write a line when they entered ; and many have qualified 
 themselves for clerks' places, which they have obtained on 
 leaving the prison. There is a good hospital, with a dispensary, 
 all as clean and comfortable as could be desired, but the average 
 number in the hospitals never, they say, exceeds two per cent. 
 This system may be thought too indulgent ; but what is the 
 result ? During the last three years not one prisoner has been 
 returned to it. In the ten previous years the average was not 
 more than one per cent., though before that period the number 
 of recommittals was 30 to 35 per cent. From January, 1837, 
 to 1846, the first nine years of the establishment, when the 
 shops were not all open, and the institution in many respects 
 was incomplete, 3127 convicts confined there were liberated, 
 and of these 2355 na( ^ learnt some trade or received instruction, 
 so that only 792 were without instruction, from their age or 
 disinclination to receive any. 
 
 * Under good treatment the vast majority of convicts might be retained in 
 prisons of inexpensive construction. Doubtless there is a small class who require 
 strong walls, bolts, bars, and watchful guardians, but every individual of this class 
 is well known to the police and to prison officers. Consequently there would be no 
 difficulty in selecting them, and transferring them to some one gaol so constructed 
 and guarded as that escape should be impossible. The first stage of their probation 
 would be to work themselves out of this very strict confinement, and entitle them- 
 selves to retura to ordinary prisons. M. D. H. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 557 
 
 ' ' It may be said that the stabbings, which are frequent in 
 Valencia, would not be so common if severer punishments were 
 inflicted ; but they say that the use of the knife was much more 
 frequent before this system was established. The great principle 
 here is to afford an inducement to the criminals to work, to 
 teach industrious habits, to inculcate honourable and virtuous 
 principles, and to send them into the world better men, educated, 
 and able to work at some trade, and with money in their pockets 
 to start with, instead of being obliged to have recourse to their 
 old habits for subsistence. * * * * 
 
 ' ' The success attending the reformation of the prisoners in 
 this establishment is really a miracle, and England ought to 
 
 make an attempt to do the same/ 
 
 # * * # # # 
 
 ' On several of these points/ says Captain Maconochie, 
 'Colonel Montesinos' words in his pamphlet are striking: 
 
 ' ' According to the views to which I was thus led, and never 
 forgetting that the double object of punishment is to reform 
 those subjected to it, and to give a salutary warning to others, 
 I sought by every means, and at any cost, to extirpate in my 
 prisoners the lamentable germ of idleness, and to inspire them 
 instead with a love of labour, seeking to impress this beneficial 
 sentiment ever more and more in their hearts. But as unpro- 
 ductive work in the prison could by no means effect this, I made 
 it a rule, whenever any one showed a disposition to labour, but 
 had no occupation which could contribute after his discharge to 
 maintain him honestly, to endeavour to procure him such, and 
 for this purpose I sought to bring within the prison as many 
 different workshops as possible, allowing him to choose among 
 them which w r as likely to be most advantageous to him; and 
 now there are above 40 of these all in full operation, and all 
 originally organized and still maintained by the knowledge and 
 capacity of the prisoners themselves. Neither for their intro- 
 duction, nor for the rebuilding or repair of the prison, have I 
 ever asked the Government for a single farthing (un solo mara- 
 vedi), nor called in the assistance of any mechanics from without. 
 It is true that the progress of many of these workshops has 
 been thus very slow and troublesome ; for, not having had funds 
 at my disposal for the first purchase even of the necessary tools 
 and machines for them, I have been compelled to proceed only 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 step by step in them. But on the one hand, I could not help the 
 want of money ; and on the other, I have always thought a 
 frequent and intimate correspondence between the prisoners 
 and persons of a different description outside objectionable, and 
 I have thus had no choice. 
 
 ' ' The establishment of one workshop, and the difficulties 
 experienced in managing it, showed me both how to introduce 
 more and to enlarge those already in operation, and I thus 
 further gradually acquired the intimate conviction that, without 
 the stimulus of some personal advantage accruing to themselves 
 from their labour, it is difficult to obtain work even from the 
 already skilled, and almost impossible to get the unskilled to 
 learn. Repeated experiments convinced me of the practical 
 lesson involved in this maxim of social economy, and that what 
 neither severity of punishments, nor constancy in inflicting them, 
 could exact, the slightest personal interest will readily obtain. 
 In different ways, therefore, during my command, I have 
 applied this powerful stimulant, and the excellent results it has 
 always yielded, and the powerful germs of reform which are 
 constantly developed under its influence (desarollanse a su im- 
 pulso], have at length fully convinced me that the most ineffi- 
 cacious of all methods in a prison the most pernicious and 
 fatal to every chance of reform, are punishments carried the 
 length of harshness. The maxim should be constant, and of 
 universal application in such places, not to degrade further 
 those who come to them already degraded by their crimes. 
 Self-respect is one of the most powerful sentiments of the 
 human mind, for this reason, that it is the most personal (el 
 mas egoista] ; and he who will not condescend, in some degree, 
 according to circumstances, to flatter it, will never attain his 
 object by any series of chastisements (ningun linage de castigos), 
 the effect of ill-treatment being to irritate rather than correct, 
 and thus turn from reform instead of attracting to it. 
 
 ' ' Moreover, the love of labour cannot be communicated by 
 violent means (vejamenes), but rather by persuasion and encou- 
 ragement ; and although it is quite possible to obtain a specific 
 amount of work from prisoners by the aid of the stick (as is 
 sometimes recommended by high functionaries in this depart- 
 ment), yet the consequence is necessarily aversion for an em- 
 ployment which involves so many penalties, and of which such 
 a bitter recollection must always be preserved. And the moral 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 559 
 
 object of penal establishments is thus also, in fact, defeated 
 which should be not so much to inflict pain as to correct ; to 
 receive men idle and ill-intentioned, and return them to 
 society, if possible, honest and industrious citizens. 
 
 ( ' It was not till after making many experiments of severity 
 that I came firmly to this conclusion ; but ultimately I made 
 it the base of all my operations on the minds of my prisoners, 
 and the extraordinarily small number of recommittals to my 
 prison, and the excellent health and perfect state of submission 
 in which those confined in it have always been kept, seem to 
 me to leave no doubt of its soundness/* 
 
 ( Mr. Hoskins was not the first, however, to call the attention 
 of our countrymen to the prison at Valencia. It was visited 
 by Mr. S. T. Wallis, an American traveller, in the year 1849, 
 whose book was published in London in iS^o.f I insert his 
 description : 
 
 ' ' Near the Puerta San Vicente, after a long walk and 
 tedious search, we found an institution of which we had heard 
 a good deal from our Spanish fellow-travellers. It was the 
 Presidio, or Penitentiary. It is a large and well-distributed 
 edifice, once a convent of Augustine monks, and its complete, 
 extensive, and admirable arrangement would do no discredit to 
 any nation. I confess that I had no expectation of seeing any 
 such thing in Spain. The Guide-book (Murray's) omits it 
 altogether, though there is certainly nothing half so interesting, 
 as indicative of national progress, within the limits of Valencia. 
 
 ( ' The Augustine Convent was applied to its present uses in 
 1838. It now contains about 900 prisoners; and we were told 
 that about 400, confined for minor violations of the law, had 
 been released on the occasion of the Queen's marriage. They 
 are distributed in different chambers, and dedicated to various 
 branches of industry. Nearly all the trades are represented. 
 Their fabrics of coarse cotton are admirable, and they work 
 successfully in silks, velvets, and fine cutlery. There is a 
 printing-press, at which work is done, by contract, for publishers 
 in the city. We went through it, and found the devils numerous 
 and busy. Hard by was the bindery, which seemed to be in 
 
 * Account of the Public Prison at Valencia. By Captain Maconochie. p. 13. 
 t Glimpses of Spain ; or, Notes of an Unfinished Tour. By S. T. Wallis. London: 
 Sampson Low, 1850. p. 57. 
 
560 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 considerable demand. The infirmary was in capital order, 
 clean, airy, and well-distributed ; the apothecary 's shop and 
 laboratory as nice and complete as conld be desired. The 
 dormitories were clean to a degree ; each man's mat, mattress, 
 and bed-clothing hanging over the spot on which he was to 
 spread them at night. Kitchen, bakery, garden, every depart- 
 ment we visited, was as thoroughly in order as the most vigilant 
 system could make it. The discipline is mild but strict. There 
 is not an armed man about the establishment, and the keepers, 
 notwithstanding, are very few. The most trustworthy of the 
 convicts have the immediate superintendence of their fellows. 
 A lazy rascal is put to scrubbing, and such menial work. A 
 riot or quarrel is punished with a severe trouncing obstinate 
 and malicious conduct with solitude, the cell, bread and water. 
 Few cases, however, occur requiring punishment, although cer- 
 tainly a set of more unmitigated rascals, physiognomically con- 
 sidered, never went unhung.* The dread of being removed to 
 the galleys or the chain-gang, no doubt keeps them in order. 
 They seemed all of them to be well fed. I saw their bread, 
 which is coarse, but light and sound. Meat is not allowed 
 them every day. They are regularly tasked, day by day, and are 
 paid for over- work. All under 18 are compelled, and the whole 
 of them are encouraged, to go to school, where they are taught 
 reading, writing, accounts, drawing, and geography. I went 
 into the school-room, which is a fine, spacious apartment, and 
 obviously not gotten up for show, for it had all the marks of 
 being constantly in use, and I saw some excellent specimens of 
 writing and drawing where the scholars had left them. There 
 
 * The opposite impressions, as to the countenances of the prisoners produced on 
 the minds of Mr. Hoskins and Mr. Wallis, would seem to show that much reliance 
 cannot be placed on physiognomical estimates made by casual visitors ; yet it is 
 beyond a doubt that a great improvement in the expression of the face is often very 
 quickly caused by good training. At the Outcast Boys' Home in Belvidere-crescent, 
 Hungerford Bridge, photographs are taken of the lads from time to time, which 
 exhibit this amelioration in a very striking manner. ' Mr. Driver showed me the 
 entire system of works, but his specimens are capital, and his management of the 
 boys wonderful ; he is the Arnold of the Ragged School Managers ; and I had 
 rather see his photographs of pupils in different phases of reformation, from the 
 ' raw material ' to the six months' boy, than anything in the Royal Academy. Tell 
 all our friends of all religions to call on Mr. Driver, and iioone, with heart, or head, or 
 faith, can leave the Refuge without feeling possibly smaller, but certainly wiser.' 
 Quarterly Record, p. xlii. ; Irish Quarterly Review, June, 1856. M. D. H. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 561 
 
 is a post-office regularly kept in the establishment, and all who 
 conduct themselves well are permitted to write occasionally to 
 their friends, and to receive their replies. Indeed, the villains 
 seemed very happy, for they were at work in the courts, and 
 even outside the walls, some of them, apparently, at their own 
 sweet will, but without attempt or visible inclination to escape. 
 Valencia, to be sure, is very well guarded, and it would not be 
 easy for a fugitive to avoid detection long. A knowledge of 
 this, and of the fact that the eye of the keeper is always upon 
 them from some certain but unknown point, must have a very 
 sedative effect upon their locomotive propensities. When at 
 work they are permitted to converse in a low tone ; this is an 
 extremely rational concession to the social tendencies of human 
 nature, which will always gratify themselves in some way, let 
 the prohibition be as stringent and the penalty as severe as it 
 may. A distinguished foreigner, who had dedicated great 
 intelligence and powers of acute observation to the examination 
 of prisons and their discipline, informed me lately, that he had 
 never seen any contrivance for the prevention of inter-commu- 
 nication which the ingenuity of the convicts had not been able 
 to evade. Questionable, then, as is the policy of perfect isola- 
 tion, at the best, how idle is the attempt to realize it when 
 failure is certain. The sensible guide who went with us through 
 the Presidio, attributed a great deal of the docility of its inmates, 
 and the frequent cases of moral improvement, to the humane 
 indulgences which, within strict limits, were permitted by its 
 discipline. I persuaded myself, how justly I know not, that to 
 this moderate treatment was due the refreshing absence of a 
 characteristic so painfully visible in our silent model prisons ; 
 I mean the pale, attenuated faces, whose whole expression 
 glares on you through the bright, anxious eyes, condemned to 
 fulfil the duties of sight, speech, and hearing. As we passed 
 through the apartments, all the convicts rose, and stood unco- 
 vered. One of them, a comb-maker, had a tame rat upon his 
 shoulder. He had made a collar for it, with little bells, which 
 the creature wore; another had a pet bird fluttering around 
 him. The manner of them all to the keepers was exceedingly 
 respectful, that of the keepers considerate and kind. Our 
 cicerone, who seemed to have both pride and pleasure in our 
 approbation of what we saw, conducted us finally to a show- 
 
 o o 
 
$62, Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 house, connected with a large shop at the gate, where there 
 were exhibited, in glass cases, some specimens of elegant work- 
 manship by the convicts, such as knives, pistols, embroidery, 
 and fancy hardware. My companions and myself made our 
 little purchases, and went away well pleased to have some 
 memorials of an institution so excellent, humane, and useful. 
 As the gate closed on us, the last object that we saw was the 
 old garden of the cloisters, with its orange and lemon trees, as 
 fair and fragrant in the den of thieves as once within the house 
 of prayer. A lesson there may be in this impartial bounty of 
 our mother earth, to those whom men reverence, and those 
 whom they despise. It teaches us, does it not, that with a 
 common nature, there are none too pure and virtuous to spurn 
 the claims of the wretched and the outcast ? Claims to be held 
 as fellow-creatures ; claims to be brought back from sin and 
 sorrow, if it may be; claims, that ignorance and want and 
 temptation be remembered and considered and removed ; claims, 
 not to be cast off for ever, while charity can nurse the hope of 
 their return/ 
 
 1 It will be remembered that several of your witnesses have 
 spoken to the unfavourable effect produced on criminals sen- 
 tenced to penal servitude, by their being deprived of the privi- 
 lege of earning tickets- of-leave. The evidence of Capt. Whitty, 
 First Report, pp. 82-3, is worthy of great attention, pointing 
 as it does most forcibly to the results of the policy which has 
 been adopted as regards such convicts. These results have 
 been settled discontent, breaking forth on one occasion into 
 mutiny ; a serious depreciation in the amount and value of 
 convict labour, and a permanent relaxation in the endeavours 
 of the men to gain the good opinion of the authorities. The 
 testimony of Captain Whitty, speaking to facts so thoroughly 
 within his own knowledge, requires no corroboration. But as 
 a further and more complete illustration of the principles which 
 gave rise to these facts, let me ask your attention to the state- 
 ment of Colonel Montesinos, as to the disastrous consequences 
 which have followed the more complete adoption of a similar 
 policy in the treatment of convicts, in the prisons of Spain. 
 Up to a late period, criminals enjoyed the privilege of improving 
 their position while in gaol, and of shortening their terms of 
 confinement, by the exercise of industry and self-control. But 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 563 
 
 now, by the new criminal code, these powerful stimulants are 
 withdrawn, and that rapid deterioration in the conduct of the 
 men has ensued, which might have been predicted by any per- 
 son who had taken the trouble to master the rudiments of pri- 
 son discipline. 
 
 c Let me indulge the hope that the experience of Munich 
 and Valencia, under Obermaier and Montesinos, will encourage 
 all who have the requisite authority so to act, to pursue a similar 
 course, or, at all events, a course founded on similar principles, 
 to that which I learn from the evidence of Captain Crofton, he 
 has inaugurated in Ireland. In particular I refer to the treat- 
 ment of such convicts as ' by prison -character and length of 
 servitude are thought eligible for tickets of licence, and who 
 are removed either to Smithfield or Fort Camden, according to 
 their class, to be there detained until they can procure satisfac- 
 tory offers of employment, or give some sufficient guarantee 
 that they have the means of earning an honest livelihood (for 
 which purpose every reasonable assistance and facility is afforded 
 to them) when they are released on licence. During their de- 
 tention their reformation and good intentions are further tested 
 by giving them increased liberty of action, and by employing 
 them as far as possible like free labourers/ p. 142. By such 
 treatment I entertain a confident expectation that the doubt 
 which has pressed on the mind of Sir George Grey, as to the 
 possibility of ensuring reformation by the discipline of a prison, 
 will be removed. ( The reason/ he says, ' why a ticket-of-leave 
 cannot fairly be regarded as a proof of reclamation is obvious. 
 As long as a man is immured in a prison, where he is denied 
 the opportunity of getting drunk, and of associating with those 
 who might lead him into temptation, he is evidently so circum- 
 stanced that it is impossible for him to afford us the means of 
 arriving at a satisfactory conclusion as to whether his repen- 
 tance is genuine or affected/ * The position of the Right 
 Honourable Secretary is impregnable. So long as a man is 
 denied all freedom of action, it is impossible he should acquire 
 the habit of self-control. And even if he could acquire it, he 
 would have no means of manifesting the possession of this 
 great faculty. The course, then, which reason seems to point 
 
 * Times, April 4, 1856. 
 O O 2 
 
564 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 out is, from time to time, as rapidly as his progress will permit, 
 to relax the coercion which is exercised over him ; to confer 
 upon him by degrees the guidance of his own actions, to cast 
 upon him the consequences of his failures in the art of self- 
 government; and on the other hand to permit him to enjoy 
 the fruits of success whensoever he achieves it. Convicts whose 
 training has been so adjusted as best to fit them for the 
 enjoyment of liberty, will find the change from the last stage of 
 restraint to perfect freedom so slight as to diminish almost to 
 nothing the danger of relapse. And in the frame of mind in 
 which the prisoner will then be found, it will be by no means 
 difficult (if it should be thought desirable) to induce him to 
 stay under the friendly employment of the prison authorities, 
 until he has earned a certificate of good conduct subsequent to 
 the termination of all control over his person. 
 
 ' In conclusion, permit me to avail myself of this opportu- 
 nity of thanking you and the Committee, for the indulgence 
 with which you listened to that part of my evidence which 
 consists merely of opinion. And if it should be found that the 
 language which I have sometimes used, savours of over-confi- 
 dence in the conclusions at which I have arrived, I ask for 
 your favourable interpretation of my words ; assuring you that 
 no man feels more deeply convinced than I do myself, that 
 much remains to be learnt and unlearnt by every student of 
 the science which the Committee has been with so much labour, 
 and, I trust, with corresponding success, endeavouring to pro- 
 mote. I have, &c. 
 
 (Signed) <M. D. HILL. 
 
 'To the Eight Hon. M. T. Baines, M.P., 
 
 Chairman of the Transportation Committee. ' 
 
 ' Questions concerning the State Prison at Munich. 
 
 ' i . Is Governor Obermaier still at the head of the Munich 
 State Prison? 
 
 ' 2. Can any statistics be procured which will show the num- 
 bers or proportions permanently reclaimed, and those relapsed 
 or re-committed ? 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 565 
 
 ' 3. Is the prison of Kaiser slant era still conducted on the 
 principles established by Governor Obermaier ? 
 
 ' 4. If there have been any change, either there or at Munich, 
 please to state both the cause and the consequences of such 
 change ? 
 
 ' 5. Have the principles and plans of Governor Obermaier 
 obtained imitators in Germany, or elsewhere? 
 
 ' 6. Please to specify the places, and state whether they have 
 been successful? 
 
 ' 7. Have industry and good conduct any operation in short- 
 ening imprisonment? 
 
 ' 8. What are the average annual earnings of each prisoner? 
 
 1 9. What is the cost of each prisoner for food, clothing, 
 together with his quota for rent and repairs, and for salaries, &c. ? 
 
 f 10. What is the proportion between prisoners and officers, 
 including under the term officers all who are engaged on ac- 
 count of the prisoners in and about the prison ? 
 
 ' n. Are the sentences for long terms, as compared with the 
 sentences in England ? 
 
 f 12. Is the system approved by those who are considered to 
 understand the subject ? 
 
 ' 13. What is the provision for instruction, religious and 
 secular ? 
 
 '14. Is the discharge in all cases absolute, or sometimes 
 conditional, like our tickets-of-leave ? 
 
 '15. Is there any system of patronage or guardianship after 
 liberation ? 
 
 ' 16. Are there Societes de Patronage in Bavaria, similar to 
 those in France and other Continental countries, whose mem- 
 bers undertake to watch over discharged prisoners, and young 
 persons leaving reformatory schools ? 
 
 '17. If so, how are they organized ? 
 
 ' STATE PRISON AT MUNICH. 
 
 ' Answers to Questions put April, 1856. 
 
 ' i. The Councillor of State, M. Obermaier, is still at the 
 head of the State Prison at Munich. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 ' 2. Every year a return is made by the authorities, indicat- 
 ing individually such of the liberated prisoners as are, after a 
 period of one year from the time of their discharge, to be con- 
 sidered as reformed, such as are still of doubtful character, and 
 those that have relapsed into crime. 
 
 ' From the Penitentiary at Munich were discharged 
 
 ' In the year 1850, 132 prisoners : 88 of these were reformed, 
 26 still doubtful, 1 1 relapsed. 
 
 ' In the year 1851, 70 prisoners : 52 of these were reformed, 
 7 still doubtful, 6 relapsed. 
 
 ' In the year 1852, 36 prisoners : 23 of which were reformed, 
 9 still doubtful, i relapsed. 
 
 ' In the year 1853, 28 prisoners : j8 of which were reformed, 
 4 still doubtful, 4 relapsed. 
 
 ' In the year 1854, 32 prisoners : 25 of which were reformed, 
 2 doubtful, 4 relapsed. 
 
 ' The rest of the discharged prisoners were either in foreign 
 parts at the time the returns were made, or had emigrated, 
 or had died, or their places of abode could not be found 
 out. 
 
 '3. The Central Prison at Kaiserslautern is still managed 
 and governed according to M. Obermaier's principles, in the 
 way which he himself established there. 
 
 ' 4. The answer to this point has been given in the answer 
 to the preceding question, as neither at Munich nor at Kaisers- 
 lautern has any change taken place. 
 
 ( 5. M. Obermaier's principles have been carried out in 
 Bavaria in all the prisons for male offenders; and have also 
 more or less been adopted in other German States, as well as 
 in foreign countries. 
 
 ' 6. Modena is here especially to be mentioned ; but how 
 M. Obermaier's principles have answered in other countries is 
 not known here. 
 
 ' 7. According to the laws of Bavaria, industry and good 
 conduct shorten the terms of imprisonment, according to the 
 following rule : 
 
 'The criminal sentenced to ' penal servitude for an unfixed 
 period/ see the answer to the nth question, may expect his 
 pardon after 16 years' imprisonment, if, during his incarceration, 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 567 
 
 or at any rate for 10 years, he have shown continually extreme 
 industry, not have incurred punishment for malice or insubor- 
 dination, and otherwise have given evident proof of his refor- 
 mation. 
 
 ' Offenders sentenced to ' fixed terms of penal servitude/ or 
 to 'the house of correction/ can, under the same conditions, 
 shorten their terms of punishment, and may expect that mercy 
 will be extended to them after having been imprisoned three- 
 fourths of their time. 
 
 ' 8. In the Penitentiary of Munich every prisoner has earned 
 in the six years from 1850 to 1855, an average of i8fl. 50,27*. 
 (i /. i2s. n^d.) per annum, deducting all expenses connected 
 with and arising from his employment. 
 
 ' It has to be stated here that this average account includes 
 the sick, as well as those which are either unable to do any 
 w^ork, or whose capability for work is but limited ; and that the 
 work about and connected with the establishment, such as 
 sweeping, washing, cooking, cutting the wood, mending, cleaning 
 the house and yards, &c., which is entirely done by the prisoners, 
 has not been taken into account. 
 
 ( 9. In the prison at Munich the average yearly expenses 
 during the above-mentioned six years were, for every pri- 
 soner, 
 
 fl. xr. s. d. 
 
 For maintenance 68 18 . 5 19 6-g$ 
 
 For dress and bed J 3 3 
 
 For heating and lighting 6 30 
 
 For salaries of every description 1616 
 
 The entire expenses per prisoner amounted to . . 115 53 
 
 I 2 
 
 on 44 
 
 10 
 
 ' But in reference to the above estimate three points must be 
 remembered : 
 
 ' ist. In the years 1853, 1854, 1855, the prices of provisions 
 were exceedingly high. 
 
 ' sndly. The prison at Munich is an old Government building, 
 and was handed over to the prison authorities without charge ; 
 no notice can therefore be taken of the amount of rent, and of 
 the annual interest on the capital laid out in the arrangements 
 of the building, and its adaptation to its present use. 
 
 ' 3rdly. The expenses of keeping the prison in repair are not 
 borne by the institution, but are provided from other sources. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 ' 10. The officers appointed at the Penitentiary at Munich 
 are, 
 
 One director. 
 One treasurer. 
 One legal officer. 
 One clerk. 
 One book-keeper. 
 One clergyman. 
 One teacher. 
 
 One physician. 
 
 One surgeon. 
 
 One bailiff or master of the house. 
 
 Two workmasters. 
 
 One gardener. 
 
 Twenty gaolers. 
 
 A picket of twenty soldiers. 
 
 ' The number of prisoners amounts continually to 550 600. 
 
 ' n. The criminal laws of Bavaria include the following 
 punishments of personal restraint : 
 
 ' i st. The sentence to the chain, which can only be awarded 
 for life. The criminal sentenced to this punishment is fettered 
 on both his feet by a long chain, to which a heavy iron ball is 
 attached. 
 
 ' 2nd. The punishment of penal servitude, which is never 
 awarded for life, but either for a fixed number of years, or for 
 an unfixed period. 
 
 ' The criminal sentenced to penal servitude for a time not 
 specified may, after sixteen years' imprisonment, expect his 
 liberation on the conditions named under s. 7. 
 
 1 The sentence of penal servitude for a definite period may 
 not be awarded for more than twenty, nor for less than eight, 
 years. 
 
 ' The criminal sentenced to penal servitude carries a lighter 
 chain. 
 
 ' 3rd. The sentence to the house of correction, which cannot 
 be awarded for more than eight, nor for less than one year. 
 
 ' 4th. Common imprisonment, which can be given for any 
 period not exceeding two years. 
 
 1 It is not know r n here if these punishments of personal 
 restraint can be compared to those given in England. 
 
 ' The prison at Munich confines only offenders sentenced 
 either to the chain or to penal servitude, or to the house of 
 correction for more than four years. 
 
 ' 12. In Bavaria, as in the whole of Germany, there are two 
 parties, which hold opposite opinions on the subject of prison 
 discipline ; the one advocating the method that allows inter- 
 communion among the prisoners, and the other adopting the 
 principle of solitary confinement. M. Obermaier's plan is 
 approved of by the former, and disputed by the latter, 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 '13. At the prison of Munich, in which only Roman Catholic 
 offenders are confined, a special clergyman is appointed, who 
 officiates at regular divine services, gives religious instruction 
 and the holy sacraments to the prisoners, and who otherwise, 
 in concert with the director, labours for their moral improve- 
 ment and reformation. 
 
 ' The prisoners not too far advanced in age receive elemen- 
 tary instruction, to which end a special teacher is appointed. 
 
 ' There are also books on religious and generally useful sub- 
 jects belonging to the establishment, in the reading of which 
 the prisoners can fill their spare time in an appropriate and 
 useful manner. 
 
 ' The instruction in the different branches of work introduced 
 into the establishment is given by the appointed masters of 
 the work, and, under their direction, by the more clever 
 prisoners. 
 
 ' 14. The discharge of the prisoners is in all cases absolute, 
 except under very particular circumstances; for example, in 
 cases of illness or urgent family affairs, where the special mercy 
 of the King permits, though but for a short time, the liberation 
 of a prisoner. 
 
 ' Arrangements which can be compared to the tickets-of- 
 leave do not exist in Bavaria. 
 
 '15. Relative to the care of the liberated prisoners, and to 
 the watch over them, the laws of Bavaria determine that 
 
 ' ist. The parish in whose district a prisoner has his home is 
 obliged to care for his maintenance and his employment after 
 he has left the prison, and six weeks previous to his discharge 
 is made acquainted with it. 
 
 ' 2nd. The prisoner, after his discharge, is put under the 
 especial surveillance of the police. 
 
 ' In the case of those who had been punished with confine- 
 ment in the house of correction, or with minor punishments of 
 personal restraint, this surveillance is exercised only in those 
 cases where the prisoner, by his mode of life, or by his character 
 or conduct, has created the impression of being especially 
 dangerous to society. 
 
 ' 1 6. Bavaria has societies of this character. 
 
 ' 17. The organization of these societies is generally the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
57 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 c Every province has one of these societies, with a managing 
 committee in its capital, called the Provincial Committee. 
 
 ( As a general rule, every district in the province has another 
 committee, termed the District Committee. 
 
 ' The members of the society resident in the district elect 
 the district committee, and the district committees elect the 
 provincial committee. 
 
 ' The committees are chosen for three years. 
 
 ' From among their own number the members of the com- 
 mittees elect a president, a secretary, and a treasurer. 
 
 1 The business of the district committee is to accept the offers 
 for membership to the society, to manage the finances of the 
 society in the district, and to do everything that may be neces- 
 sary for the reformation of the discharged prisoners of their 
 district, and for the assistance to be rendered to them. 
 
 f Six weeks before a prisoner is discharged, the governor or 
 director of the prison gives a notice thereof to the district com- 
 mittee in question, accompanied by full particulars as regards 
 person, religious profession, education, and trade of the prisoner, 
 as well as regards the hopes which may be entertained of his 
 reformation, and the sum of money he brings from prison, and 
 the reasons which make the assistance of the society desirable. 
 
 ' The district committee then undertakes the support or 
 employment of those discharged prisoners, whom it deems 
 proper objects for the exercise of its benevolent intentions, and 
 does so with special regard to all the particular circumstances 
 connected with each case, and exercises, at the same time, a 
 perpetual personal supervision over all the persons it may have 
 taken under its care. 
 
 The district committee is, by its labours, in constant com- 
 munication with the police authorities and other district com- 
 mittees, with a view to mutual assistance. 
 
 ' Every quarter the district committee sends an account of 
 the state and the activity of the society in the district to the 
 provincial committee. 
 
 ' The provincial committee annually compiles a financial and 
 general statement of the position of the society in the province. 
 
 ' Every district committee gives a certain share of its income 
 to be disposed of by the provincial committee. 
 
 'The provincial committee divides these contributions, and 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 571 
 
 any other income it may enjoy, amongst those district com- 
 mittees which require assistance, or amongst other kindred 
 institutions. 
 
 ' Of late, the attention of these societies has chiefly been 
 directed to the establishment of asylums intended to receive 
 those discharged prisoners who, at the time of their discharge, 
 do not appear to be fully reformed, or are unable to find else- 
 where immediate proper employment and a home/ 
 
 ( THE PRISON AT VALENCIA. Questions and their Answers. 
 
 ' Q. i. Is Colonel Montesinos still at the head of the prison 
 at Valencia ? 
 
 c A. i. Colonel Montesinos is not now at the head of the 
 prison of Valencia, having relinquished his office. By the 
 system which he established, the prisoner was made aware that 
 by behaving well, by applying himself to the acquisition of some 
 art or trade, and by good moral conduct, he would ameliorate 
 his present treatment, and improve his future position ; and the 
 desired result had been obtained of diminishing to two per cent, 
 the annual recommitments, which had formerly amounted to 
 35 per cent. The publication of the new penal code, which 
 converted sentences of imprisonment for a long period of years 
 into imprisonment for life, and which deprived the governor of 
 the prison of all power of alleviating the condition of the con- 
 vict, however much he might deserve it, or however desirable it 
 might be as a stimulus to the others, took from the unhappy 
 prisoner all hope that his industry or good conduct would avail 
 him anything. Unconsoled by the hope of improving their lot, 
 Colonel Montesinos observed that the convicts lost their energy, 
 a feeling of despair spread among them, and their ardour in 
 acquiring a trade abated ; indeed, that they continued to work 
 at all was the result of discipline and consequent subordination, 
 but they laboured without zeal, without any love of work, and 
 without the hearty good-will they had exhibited before the 
 introduction of the new penal code. Finding no means by 
 which he could counteract this terrible evil, which utterly 
 destroyed his system, Colonel Montesinos resigned his appoint- 
 ment. 
 
573 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 f He had, moreover, another reason namely, that the pro- 
 mulgation of the said code was followed by the appointment of 
 incompetent persons as officers, who, faulty in character, and 
 having other unfavourable qualities, could not produce good 
 results. 
 
 f In such an enterprise as this, those who are in command 
 must have received a regular education, be of correct behaviour, 
 and they must be irreproachable in conduct and morals ; for 
 those who come under their care having sinned through lack of 
 these very qualities, and it being the object of the law to 
 reform, while it punishes, he whose duty it is to foster them 
 must himself possess the principles whose practice he has to 
 enforce, for if he be ignorant of them he will be unable to pro- 
 cure their adoption. It is worthy of remark here, that, accord- 
 ing to the observation of Colonel Montesinos, there are but few 
 persons in Spain who are criminal from natural depravity, but 
 the greater number fall into crime through want of education 
 and good principles. 
 
 ' He has reclaimed many convicts who had received very 
 severe sentences, who are now settled in their homes, working 
 at their trades learnt in the prison of Valencia; they are excel- 
 lent in their domestic relations, and have become examples of 
 good conduct. 
 
 ' Q. 2. Can any statistics be procured which will show the 
 number or proportion permanently reclaimed, and those relapsed 
 or recommitted ? 
 
 'A. 2. This question is partly answered in the former reply. 
 As the data for preparing the desired statistics are in the 
 archives of the prison, and are not at hand, they cannot be 
 given here. The reduction in the recommittals of those who 
 had undergone their sentences in the prison of Valencia was so 
 striking, that it was remarked by the tribunals of the province, 
 who brought it under the notice of Government. 
 
 ' Q. 3. Is the prison of Valencia still conducted on the prin- 
 ciples established by Colonel Montesinos ? 
 
 f A. 3. The same material organization remains, but the 
 spirit of his internal arrangements has disappeared since the 
 Colonel departed, to such a degree that in the workshops scarcely 
 any work is done, and what is accomplished is badly per- 
 formed ; the remarkable cleanliness and order which was for- 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 573 
 
 merly observed lias disappeared ; desertions, then so exceedingly 
 rare even of those who worked outside the walls, now amount 
 to a most disgraceful number, so that there have been as many 
 as 43 convicts at once under heavy punishment for attempts to 
 escape. 
 
 ' Q. 4. If there have been any change, please to state both 
 the cause and the consequences of such change ? 
 
 ' A. 4. This question is answered in the preceding replies. 
 ' Q. 5 and 6. Have the principles and plans of Colonel 
 Montesinos obtained imitators in Spain ? Please to specify the 
 places, and state whether they have been successful ? 
 
 ' A. 5 and 6. There have been no imitators in Spain of the 
 penal system of Colonel Montesinos, but as Inspector- General of 
 all prisons in the kingdom, he established therein his system, 
 which produced more or less favourable results, according to 
 the character and disposition of their respective governors. 
 Some improvement, however, was visible in all ; workshops 
 were introduced which were profitable to the treasury, and, 
 above all, the moral benefit to the convicts was very apparent. 
 That the good results were not more universal was owing to an 
 impediment, which, in spite of his utmost efforts, the Colonel 
 was never able wholly to overcome. It arose thus : when re- 
 organizing any establishment, he laid down a plan in accordance 
 with his penal system, and himself put it in execution ; during 
 his stay there, all went on well, and everything got into its 
 proper place, but as soon as he went away, the imperfect regu- 
 lations which the General Board of Prisons did not care to 
 reform, were brought back into force, and confusion again pre- 
 vailed. Nevertheless, the doctrines of Colonel Montesinos 
 remained, and gradually, with much labour on his part, regained 
 their former ascendancy. The effects they produced were 
 always good in a greater or less degree, and brought some 
 revenue to the Treasury. 
 
 ' Q. 7. Have industry and good conduct any operation in 
 shortening imprisonment ? 
 
 ' A. 7. Before the promulgation of the new penal code, the 
 industry and good conduct of the prisoner did operate to 
 diminish his imprisonment; the maximum of the remission 
 which they could gradually effect being a third part of the 
 sentence, and no more. Guided by the strictest principles of 
 
574 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 justice and indubitable information, the good produced by this 
 regulation was immense. The public, already avenged, was 
 uninjured by it ; it afforded a stimulus to other convicts, who 
 strove to win the same reward : and, besides these obvious 
 advantages, the Treasury saved the cost of supporting the pri- 
 soners who had gained their freedom under that wise provision. 
 
 ' Q. 8. What are the annual average earnings of each pri- 
 soner ? 
 
 f A. 8. This depends on his greater or less disposition to 
 labour, and upon the nature of the occupation which he may 
 adopt, as some are more profitable than others. There have 
 been prisoners who had earned as much as 2000 reals,* or more, 
 at the termination of their imprisonment. 
 
 ' Although it is not asked, I will explain the mode of pay- 
 ment pursued by Colonel Montesinos. He never paid by the 
 day, but by the piece, when it had been examined and approved. 
 Every trade had its tariff for the number of pieces into which 
 its work could be divided; these were credited every week to 
 the respective accounts of each workman, being entered in a 
 little book, which he kept himself, and a similar entry was 
 made in the general book. The half of what they earned went 
 to the State, the other half was divided into two parts ; one, 
 or the fourth part of the whole, was placed in the savings bank, 
 in order that, at the end of his imprisonment, the convict, to 
 whom it was punctually paid, might have it for the expenses of 
 his journey, (another source of economy to the State), and 
 for establishing himself in any place where he might decide 
 to live; the remaining fourth part was paid into his own 
 hands, that he might obtain tobacco, the only indulgence in 
 which he was permitted to spend his wages ; or purchase food, 
 as the establishment supplies only two meals a day; or that he 
 might transmit it to his family, if in want. 
 
 ' Q. 9. What is the cost of each prisoner for food, cloth- 
 ing, together with his quota for rent and repairs, and for sala- 
 ries, &c. 
 
 ' A. 9. For food, clothing, light, fuel, and medical attendance, 
 the cost is 60 maravedis (46?.) per diem ; two reals (4|c?.) per 
 diem cover the whole expense of each prisoner, including the 
 
 * iol. A real is worth z^d.; 100 reals may be reckoned as equal to il. Tr. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 items already enumerated, besides repair of clothes, washing 
 (which they do themselves), shaving, furniture, entrance, and the 
 elemental school. 
 
 ' Repairs done to the building cost very little, for as there are 
 always masons, smiths, carpenters, and stonecutters among the 
 convicts, the sum that has to be divided among them is the 
 price of materials alone, and even of these, lime, plaster, tiles, 
 and bricks may be made by the prisoners ; this depends upon 
 the will and zeal of the governors of the different prisons. 
 
 ' Q. 10. What is the proportion between prisoners and 
 officers, including under the term officers all who are engaged 
 on account of the prisoners in and about the prison ? 
 
 'A. 10. For each hundred prisoners are required one capa- 
 taz (overseer), chosen from among retired sergeants in the army, 
 four cabos primeros, and four cabos segundos, selected from the 
 prisoners. When there are 200 convicts, the superintendent is 
 a subaltern officer, having under him capataces and cabos, and 
 these are called a detachment. When the above number is 
 exceeded, and amounts to 400 prisoners, the establishment is 
 denominated a prison of the second class, having a comandante, 
 chosen from officers of high rank (Gefes del Egercito) ;* a 
 mayor, from captains in the army, who takes charge of the 
 accounts ; an ayudente, from the subaltern officers ; and for each 
 hundred men, the capataz and cabos already mentioned. There 
 are besides, in some provinces, where the number of prisoners 
 is greater, prisons of the first class, with the same staff of 
 officers ; and in these two classes of establishments there is also 
 a warder (furriel), a chaplain (capellan), and a surgeon (medico- 
 cirujano). It will cause surprise that the criminals themselves 
 should be employed as cabos, and should be permitted to exer- 
 cise authority, but the experience of many years has proved 
 the utility and economy of the arrangement; its utility is 
 shown in this, that (selected with due discretion) the men are 
 thoroughly acquainted with their companions, with whom they 
 live in constant intercourse ; they understand their predilections 
 and desires, are aware of their propensities, and foresee their 
 actions, and thus are frequently able to avert the necessity for 
 
 * Officers of a certain rank in the army claim the appointment of comandante as 
 of right. Tr. 
 
576 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 punishment. As they obtain consideration, besides deriving 
 benefit in other ways, from their office, they endeavour to retain 
 it by performing its duties well. Moreover, this arrangement 
 affords a stimulus to the rest to behave well, that they may in 
 their turn be promoted. From among these latter are chosen 
 the cabos segundos ; and from these, according to the proofs of 
 reformation and of repentance they give, and provided they are 
 under light sentences for only slight offences, are selected indivi - 
 duals to replace the vacancies which may occur among the cabos 
 primeros. 
 
 ' These details are necessary that the advantage and economy 
 of employing the convicts as inferior officers may be thoroughly 
 understood. Colonel Montesinos, in his written Memoirs says, 
 when explaining and advocating this measure, 'the comman- 
 dant who knew how to choose his officers would have no un- 
 toward events to lament in his prison/ which is proved by the 
 fact that during the twenty years of his governorship of the 
 prison of Valencia he never needed an armed force for the 
 guard within the walls, nor even for that which accompanied 
 the gangs of prisoners who worked outside, amounting in num- 
 ber often to 400 men, for whom the convict officers were quite 
 sufficient, and among whom there were never either plots* nor 
 desertions. 
 
 ' The salaries of the officers which were overlooked in a former 
 answer are here stated : 
 
 Eeals. s. d. 
 
 Comandante 16,000 or 160 o o 
 
 Mayor 10,000 100 o o 
 
 Ayudente 6,<poo 
 
 Furriel 4,000 
 
 Capellan 3, 300 
 
 Medico Cirujano 4j4 
 
 Capataz 3,ooo 
 
 60 o o 
 
 40 o o 
 
 33 o o 
 
 44 o o 
 
 30 o o 
 
 Cabo i 182 about i 16 5 
 
 ' In prisons of the second class, the salary of the 
 
 Reals. 
 
 Comandante is 12,000 
 
 Mayor 10,000 
 
 Ayudente 5,ooo 
 
 and 2000 reals are allowed in addition, to the Comandante and 
 mayor, for counting-house and printing expenses, &c., &c. 
 
 * The word here used in the Spanish MS. may possibly mean 'complaints.' Tr. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 577 
 
 ' Q. ii. Are the sentences for long terms,* as compared 
 with those in England ? 
 
 ' A. ii. Not knowing whence these questions have been 
 sent, the comparison cannot be made. The heaviest sentences 
 are for twenty years, or perpetual imprisonment in chains 
 (cadena perpetua) ; but there are criminals who have received 
 two or three sentences to cadena perpetua, besides several years 
 of imprisonment, for different offences committed by the same 
 person. 
 
 ' Q. 12. Is the system of Colonel Montesinos approved by 
 those who are considered to understand the subject? 
 
 'A. 12. It is not only approved by those who understand 
 the subject, but praised for its simplicity, for its proved advan- 
 tages, ascertained results, and marked economy. Among the 
 many documents which record and corroborate this statement, 
 are twenty-two foreign publications which regard it as the best 
 system of prison discipline. Of these, one only is English 
 (notwithstanding the infinite number of English persons who 
 have visited the prison at Valencia), written by Captain Maco- 
 nochie, R.N., K.H., who describes it, and its internal organiza- 
 tion, with great care, minuteness, and accuracy. 
 
 ' Q. 13. What is the provision for instruction, religious and 
 secular ? 
 
 'A. 13. Instruction is given in the Apostolic Roman-catholic 
 religion, the sole faith of the country, in reading, waiting, arith- 
 metic, and in the trade which the convict voluntarily selects 
 among those established in the prison, of which there were 
 forty-one when Colonel Montesinos was governor. In his 
 time, too, there was an evening school for linear drawing, ap- 
 plicable to trades. 
 
 ' Q. 14. Is the discharge in all cases absolute, or sometimes 
 conditional, like our ticket- of-leave ? 
 
 ' A. '14. On liberation the convict is still subject (if the sen- 
 tence was so expressed) to the surveillance of the authorities in 
 the place where he may fix his residence, for a certain number 
 of years appointed by the tribunal by whom he was sen- 
 tenced. 
 
 * The translator of the questions into Spanish put this sentence in another form, 
 omitting, by an oversight, to mention England. TV. 
 
 P P 
 
57 8 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 1 Q. 15. Is there any system of patronage or guardianship 
 after liberation? 
 
 1 A. 15. There is no other system of patronage or surveil- 
 lance for those who have been under punishment than what is 
 stated in the preceding answer. 
 
 ' Q. 1 6. Are there Societes de Patronage in Spain similar to 
 those in France and other Continental countries, whose members 
 undertake to watch over discharged prisoners and young persons 
 leaving Reformatory Schools ? 
 
 ' A. 1 6. There are neither any such societies in Spain, nor are 
 there Reformatory Schools for young persons. 
 
 ' Q. 17. If so, how are they organized? 
 
 ' A. 17. This question is answered in the preceding reply/* 
 
 f PRISON DISCIPLINE. 
 
 ' To the Editor of the ' Illustrated London News.' 
 
 ' Munich, 25th July, 1854. 
 
 ' I have found here an unexpected illustration of the power 
 of the moral sentiments and intellect to govern and reform 
 criminals, without using the lash or any severe punishments, 
 and also irrespective of all theory or system. Herr Regier- 
 ungsrath Obermaier is the Governor of the Criminal Prison of 
 this city, and has under his charge above 600 of the worst male 
 convicts, collected from all the districts of Bavaria. Their 
 sentences extend from eight to twelve years' imprisonment, and 
 some of them for life. Their crimes have generally been 
 attempts to murder, murder with extenuating circumstances, or 
 highway robbery. A more unpromising collection of convicts 
 could scarcely be imagined ; and yet here there are no separate 
 cells, no severe discipline, no paid superintendents, except a 
 turnkey to each ward, whose station is outside the door, and 
 who does not see into the apartment* The prisoners are 
 collected in workshops, to the number of ten, twenty, or thirty, 
 
 * Transportation Committee, House of Commons, 1856. Appendix to Second 
 Report, p. 1 60. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 579 
 
 according to the size of the room ; for the prison is merely an 
 old cloister, and they labour each in a trade, under the super- 
 intendence of one of themselves. They sleep in similar groups, 
 and have each a separate bed, a straw mattress, two very clean 
 white sheets, a pillow, and a white blanket.* In winter there 
 is a large stove in each sleeping-room, and also in each work- 
 shop. They eat in common, take exercise in the yards in 
 common; and, in short, are under no perceptible restraint, 
 except the prison bars and walls ; and look much more like 
 men working quietly in different branches of production, in 
 a great manufactory, than a collection of desperate criminals 
 undergoing penal sentences. They card wool and flax, spin 
 both, dye the wool, weave both, and dress both the linen and 
 woollen cloth, so as to complete them for use. There are 
 tailors, carpenters, shoemakers, and blacksmiths' workshops; 
 and in none of them is any intelligence, except that of the con- 
 victs themselves, employed either to teach or superintend. The 
 bars on the window are so slight, and so many tools are 
 entrusted to the convicts, that escape could be easily accom- 
 plished, for outside there is only one soldier, and he cannot see 
 a fourth of the windows ; yet the culprits do not break the 
 prison ; they obey cheerfully, they work diligently ; and there 
 is an air of mental calmness about them that is truly extra- 
 ordinary. Of course they differ in mental condition, and moral 
 expression, as their brains and training vary ; but I mean to say 
 that there is a moral calmness even in individuals with the 
 worst brains, and a soft moral and intellectual expression in 
 those who have the best brains, and been longest in prison, that 
 speaks unequivocally of the success of their treatment. 
 
 ' How has all this been accomplished ? By the genius of one 
 man, Herr von? Obermaier ; I say genius, because it appears to 
 me that he, and such men as Mr. Nash, in London, and 
 Candidat Wichern, at Hamburg, who are able, by the mere 
 influence of their moral and intellectual faculties, to tame, 
 guide, and instruct the rudest and most brutal of their country- 
 men, indicate a mental power, original, effective, and beneficent, 
 which works independently of rules, and cannot be communicated, 
 
 * The sleeping-rooms are overcrowded, and there is no provision for proper 
 ventilation ; the consequence is, great sickness and mortality. 
 
 P P 2 
 
580 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 and which may, therefore, be regarded as genius for the moral 
 government of men. Be this as it may, I proceed to explain 
 his method of treatment. 
 
 ' f How do you/ said I, ' deal with a rough, passionate, proud, 
 determined character, who spurns your authority, and means to 
 defy you if he can ?' ' Every prisoner/ he replied, ' is brought 
 before me on his entrance, and I converse with him. I ask him 
 if his father or mother be alive ; if he has a wife and children, 
 brothers or sisters ? And how they must feel degraded by his 
 crime and sentence. I appeal to him through them; I tell 
 him that I am his friend and not his enemy. That I regard 
 him as sent to me to be reformed, and not merely to be 
 punished. I explain to him the rules of the house, and tell 
 him that they are all calculated for the improvement of the 
 prisoners ; that if he will be my friend I shall be his : and that 
 suffering and misery will overtake him here only in consequence 
 of his own fault. The rudest natures/ he continued, f cau 
 rarely resist such an appeal. The big tears often roll down 
 cheeks that were never wet with weeping before, and I soon make 
 them feel that my words are not speeches, but the expression of 
 actual things. I give the new-comer into the charge of the 
 superintendent of the department for which he is most fitted, 
 and recommend him to his care as his friend and adviser ; and 
 I appeal to the other men in his behalf. Should the new con- 
 vict, as frequently happens, not believing in the reality of the 
 law of kindness, begin to behave ill to his fellow- convicts, they 
 soon check him and set him right. The public spirit among 
 them is in favour of obedience and steady conduct, and they say 
 to him, ' That conduct will not do here : Herr von Obermaier is 
 our friend, and we shall not allow you to act contrary to the 
 rules of the house/ ' 
 
 ' ' But/ said I, ' at night are not all abominations practised, or 
 how do you restrain them ?' ' You see/ said he, ' that there is 
 a space between each bed ; an overseer, one of themselves, 
 whom I can thoroughly trust, is on watch all night with a bright 
 light burning in every room, and every offence is observed and 
 reported to me. I use persuasion with the offender punish 
 him by withholding part of his food, or depriving him of some 
 other enjoyment and he generally gives up his misconduct. 
 When the general spirit of the men is directed towards virtue, 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 581 
 
 an individual finds it extremely difficult to persevere in vice in 
 the face of their condemnation/ 
 
 ' ' Have you any rewards for good conduct ?' ' Yes ; the 
 men are paid for their labour ; a certain sum is deducted for 
 their food, which is wholesome and nourishing, including meat 
 three times a week ; they are allowed to spend a certain sum in 
 extra comforts, if they please ; and a third portion is allowed to 
 accumulate as a means of support at their discharge/ 
 
 ' What percentage return to this or other prisons after 
 expiry of their sentences here ' Out of thirteen hundred, 
 eleven hundred have been reformed/ ' Have you any moral 
 staff to assist you ?' f Only a schoolmaster and a chaplain/ 
 From all I could learn, these perform only their official duties, 
 and he himself is the sole governor, guide, judge, and friend of 
 the prisoners. 
 
 ' ' I see/ said I, ' that this establishment is penetrated to the 
 core, and in every department, by your spirit. Are there any 
 young men sent to you by the Government, to imbibe it from 
 you, so as to be able to carry on the good work when age shall 
 have impaired your powers ?' ' No : foreigners come here and 
 inquire into my plan many such come but here I am nobody ; 
 the Ministers grudge the expense; and many persons complain 
 that I make the prisoners too happy. Nobody thinks it an 
 honourable thing to manage a prison ; and when I die' a shrug 
 of the shoulders finished the sentence. 
 
 1 1 told him of Pentonville and the English prisons. ' I know 
 all about them/ said he : ' I have considered their merits in a 
 pamphlet, ' Die Verhandlungen iiber Gefangnissreform, &c., 
 oder die Einzelhaft mit ihren Folgen/* Head it, and you will 
 understand my views/ 
 
 e I have read it, and find that he condemns the principle of 
 vengeance or punishment, the lash, the separate system, and all 
 inflictions calculated to embitter the prisoner's life. He main- 
 tains that criminals cannot be improved by severity, and that 
 an enlightened spirit of humanity, emanating from the governor, 
 and through every individual of the prison, will supply the 
 most perfect guarantee for obedience, diligence, and individual 
 morality that can be procured. ' If once/ says he, ' the prison 
 
 * Abstracted into English by M. Rehbann, See ante, p. 544, 
 
582 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 is pervaded by a sound public opinion, and the desire of 
 improvement has gained the ascendancy, then the reformed 
 penitents (Biisser, for he avoids the word convicts), become 
 such powerful instruments of further improvement that com- 
 plete security in every department, and for every individual, is 
 established ; a security so great that one cannot expect always 
 to find the like of it beyond the walls of the prison/ ' When/ 
 he adds, in large print, ' the whole system of a prison is founded 
 on humanity, the most unbounded confidence in the overseers 
 is the natural consequence ; loyalty to the general good, speedily 
 becomes the object of all ; and when this has once been esta- 
 blished, gross excesses, scandalous behaviour, and brutality are 
 no longer to be apprehended ; in general, they are no longer 
 possible, and become exceptions very rarely occurring/ 
 
 ' Here, then, we have a prison without classification of pri- 
 soners without a staff of moral superintendents without the 
 prospect of abridged confinement as a reward for good conduct 
 without the lash, the solitary cell, the treadmill, the craiik- 
 wheel, pious visitors, or any of the other appliances regarded as 
 indispensable elements of prison discipline in England, and the 
 place of them all is supplied by the enlightened humanity of 
 one man ! 
 
 ' Herr Obermaier is apparently between fifty and sixty years 
 of age, of military aspect, and quite a gentleman in manners 
 and station. He has been many years employed in the prison 
 department. He is of middle stature, well made, has a brain 
 of full average size, largely developed in the moral and intellec- 
 tual regions, with a moderate base. His temperament is 
 nervous, sanguine, bilious. He is distinguished by a soft, 
 kind, true, yet firm manner; a clear, active, penetrating intel- 
 lect; an unpretending earnestness; and, when he finds that he 
 is appreciated, his eye glistens with touching flashes of moral 
 enthusiasm that commend him to one's love and esteem. 
 
 'What conclusion, then, can be drawn from this example? 
 In my opinion only one : that the spirit of enlightened huma- 
 nity is the most effective instrument of prison discipline the 
 cheapest and the safest for the public, and the best adapted to 
 reform offenders. But I do not say that, in the hands of every 
 man, it is capable, without rules or assistance, of producing 
 such results as I have here described. Herr Obermaier is, in 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 583 
 
 his own department, what George Bidder was in calculation, 
 Arkwright and Stephenson in mechanical invention, what 
 Shakspeare was in poetry a man inspired hy nature to do 
 things which common men cannot accomplish, and to do them 
 by a kind of practical instinct, the exact operation of which he 
 cannot explain. But a man of an analytic and instructed 
 intellect may observe the great principles which such geniuses 
 are seen to follow, and the means by which they carry them 
 into practice ; and he may teach these to minds congenial to 
 theirs, although not so highly gifted in self-originating power. 
 We must observe and judge of the circumstances also under 
 which these moral phenomena appear. In Bavaria there are 
 no large manufacturing towns, and the self-determining action 
 engendered by free institutions is unknown. The Bavarian 
 criminals, therefore, differ considerably from the English in 
 character. Herr Obermaier told me that the great majority of 
 them have come to him grossly ignorant and very ill brought 
 up, and that they have become criminal under the influence of 
 drink, passion, or evil example. I saw great varieties in the 
 forms and sizes of their brains. Some are almost cretins, and, 
 to some extent, idiotic ; others have large animal and intellec- 
 tual, with deficient moral, organs; others have large animal, 
 with both the moral and intellectual organs deficient ; while a 
 very considerable number have the three regions animal, moral, 
 and intellectual equally and pretty fairly developed. These 
 constitute the elements by which the prison is ruled. Herr 
 Obermaier exerts an influence on these men of the most powerful 
 and beneficent character, and attaches them to himself and to 
 the cause of order and virtue by that moral charm and practical 
 administrative talent which he so largely possesses. The 
 reflecting intellect is higher in the German race than in the 
 English ; and in prisoners it is also distinguishable. They are 
 less impulsive, less opinionative, and calculate consequences 
 better. In temperament, also, they are more lymphatic, and 
 they have been accustomed to institutions in which the priest, 
 the King, and the law rule supreme, and subjects only obey. 
 Grumbling and resistance are not allowed to Bavarians at large, 
 and prisoners do not feel themselves so much aggrieved by com- 
 mand and restraint as an English thief and robber, accustomed 
 to a lawless and reckless life, naturally does. There were about 
 
584 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 a dozen of men working in chains, with iron balls at their feet. 
 They had very low brains ; but even they were quiet ; and the 
 chains were part of their sentences, and not imposed in prison. 
 On the contrary, Herr Obermaier had diminished the weight of 
 both chains and iron balls, so as still to comply with the law, 
 while he mitigated its severity. In the prison, also, the men 
 were carding wool, and spinning flax with the hand, not because 
 the governor was unacquainted with machinery, but because he 
 found it difficult to give employment to so many individuals, if 
 he substituted mechanism for manual labour, and he reckoned 
 useful employment an indispensable element of success. Finally, 
 the hours of labour, of meals, of exercise, and instruction were 
 so judiciously arranged as to combine continuity of application 
 with change of occupation, and thus to avoid at once dissipation 
 of interest, and ennui from monotony. 
 
 ' Without, therefore, supposing that the system here pursued 
 may be successfully transferred to England, and that it will 
 work equally well in the hands of English prison governors 
 and on English criminals, all that I should recommend would 
 be that its spirit should be adopted, and wrought out in good 
 faith, under modifications suited to English circumstances. 
 
 ' Knowing how deep an interest you take in this department 
 of human suffering, I trust to your excusing the great length of 
 this epistle, and 
 
 ' I remain, my dear Sir, very truly yours, 
 
 ' GEO. COMBE/ 
 
 Whatever fell under the immediate observation of a witness 
 so intelligent and so trustworthy as Mr. Combe, would have 
 great weight, even if not corroborated, as it is, by its agree- 
 ment with the impressions produced on other visitors. But 
 he is in error in stating that the prisoners at Munich are 
 ' without the prospect of abridged confinement as a reward for 
 good conduct/ This appears by the answer of the Bavarian 
 Minister of the Interior to my seventh question ; unless, indeed, 
 the law to which reference is there made was passed subsequent 
 to Mr. Combe's visit. 
 
 With regard, however, to the speculations of this writer as 
 to a difference of results likely to be produced by similar 
 treatment in Bavarian and English prisons, each reader will 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 judge for himself. The reasoning does not appear to me very 
 forcible. The absence of free institutions and other analogous 
 causes may produce a more submissive tone of behaviour, as 
 between inferiors and persons in authority, in Bavaria than in 
 England; but it is to be remembered that malefactors break 
 through these and all other restraints, and will probably be 
 driven by that circumstance into an opposite extreme. The 
 Spaniards have preserved a personal independence of character 
 very remarkable, and they are sufficiently impatient of restraint. 
 Yet, according to the experience of Colonel Montesinos, a course 
 of discipline closely resembling that practised by Obermaier, 
 has been followed by much the same results. 
 
 As to the importance of encouragement while the convict is 
 in confinement, this passage from Mr. Chesterton's book may 
 be read with advantage : 
 
 ' Here let me say, that the utmost care must be taken not 
 to drive criminals, adjudged to undergo the longest sentences, 
 into a state of desperation by the withdrawal of all hope of 
 alleviation. Perseverance in good conduct, unwearied industry, 
 and perfection in mechanical arts, useful to the establishment, 
 might be made to entitle convicts, thus distinguished, to an 
 improved condition, to more generous fare, and to privileges of 
 various kinds, graduated by a discreet consideration of what 
 may befit so exceptional a society. My experience has revealed 
 to me the impossibility of working exclusively by coercion. 
 You must not, by extremities, reduce to despair; you must 
 improve the disposition and elevate the mind by rational 
 encouragement, assured that kindliness and discriminating mercy 
 will beget suavity, and a grateful recognition evidenced by 
 behaviour/* 
 
 The following extract from Captain Crofton's pamphlet, 
 entitled A Few Remarks on the Convict Question, brings up the 
 results of his method of training to the commencement of the 
 present year. Not to speak too confidently of an experiment, 
 it may reasonably be hoped that he has overcome the difficulties 
 of the intermediate stage between prison life and freedom, the 
 
 * Revelations of Prison Life. By George Laval Chesterton. London : Hurst 
 aud Blackett. 1856. p. 52. 
 
586 Sequel to Charge of October, ] 856.. 
 
 interval during which physical restraints are greatly relaxed, 
 and the genuineness of the prisoner's reformation is tested 
 before the prison authorities have lost their hold upon him : 
 
 f The system pursued is this 
 
 ' ' Well-conducted convicts/ not guilty of heinous offences, 
 and eligible for tickets-of-licence by length of servitude, are 
 removed, if conversant with any trade, to 'the Smithfield 
 Penitentiary, Dublin / if labourers, to the forts at the mouth of 
 Cork Harbour, for the purpose of being tested by such a modi- 
 fied degree of liberty as shall in various ways prove their power 
 of self-denial and self-dependence, in a manner wholly incom- 
 patible with the rigid restraints of an ordinary prison. I will 
 confine myself to a description of the practice pursued and the 
 results obtained in Dublin, as being more matured than the 
 other establishments, as well as under more immediate obser- 
 vation ; but I may state generally that the results obtained at 
 the forts have been excessively satisfactory. 
 
 ' The average number confined at Smithfield at one time has 
 been about eighty. The average period of confinement is about 
 four months ; at the expiration of which time, if satisfactory 
 offers of employment are made, and if the prisoner has, in his 
 new stage of probation, shown his fitness to be trusted with con- 
 ditional liberty, he is discharged with a ticket- of-licence. The 
 tests alluded to are the employment of prisoners on messengers' 
 duties daily throughout the city, and also in special works re- 
 quired by the department outside the prison walls. The per- 
 formance of the duties of messengers entails their being out 
 until seven or eight in the evening, unaccompanied by an 
 officer ; and although a small portion of their earnings is allowed 
 them weekly, and they would have the power of compromising 
 themselves if so disposed, not one instance has as yet taken 
 place of the slightest irregularity, or even want of punctuality, 
 although careful checks have been contrived to detect either, 
 should it occur. 
 
 ( Lectures are delivered every evening, at which habits of 
 self-control are inculcated, as well as the desirableness of new 
 fields of labour for the discharged prisoners, whither they may 
 transfer themselves, by means of the proportion of their prison 
 earnings which is allotted to them, aided by their savings from 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1855. 587 
 
 subsequent employment. They are encouraged to deposit their 
 earnings in the savings bank on leaving prison, and to add to 
 these savings through after labour. Although this plan has 
 only recently been added, there are already many depositors, 
 and the amount of savings out of the earnings of convicts who 
 have been released, wholly or conditionally, accumulated under 
 circumstances which must have required great steadiness and 
 self-denial, must be gratifying to the lecturer (Mr. Organ), 
 through whose indefatigable energy mainly this has been 
 attained. The results have been these 
 
 ' In the Penitentiary the greatest possible order and regu- 
 larity, and an amount of willing industry performed that cannot 
 be obtained in the prisons ; an advanced stage of intelligence 
 and general information on subjects likely to be practically 
 useful to the men at home and in the colonies, rapidly acquired 
 by means of apt illustrations and the use of simple language on 
 the part of the lecturer. 
 
 'The tests adopted have been deemed so satisfactory, that 
 prisoners, who of themselves have no means of procuring 
 employment, have, through the instrumentality of the lecturer, 
 obtained employers, who have every facility placed at their dis- 
 posal for satisfying themselves as to the antecedents of the 
 convict, and who have on many occasions returned for others in 
 consequence of the good conduct of those at first engaged. 
 
 ' The officers attached to the Penitentiary are tradesmen, and 
 give the public the benefit of their labour. 
 
 'Within the last year 112 prisoners have been discharged 
 from the Penitentiary on licence, and fifty-five discharged abso- 
 lutely at the termination of their sentences. As yet only five 
 tickets-of-licence have been revoked, although directly it is 
 known that a convict is leading an irregular life, it is usual to 
 withdraw his licence according to its terms. It is possible and 
 probable, however, that others may have subjected themselves 
 to its revocation, though the fact as yet is not reported. A 
 system of registration has now been established, which will be 
 the means of procuring positive information of the conduct of a 
 convict on licence. 
 
 'The above statistics are only valuable in connexion with 
 others ; but it has been ascertained from positive information, 
 
588 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 that eighty -five are going on satisfactorily out of 1 1 2 ; nine 
 have been discharged too recently to be spoken of, and five 
 have had their licences revoked. As to the remaining thir- 
 teen, it has been found impossible to obtain accurate infor- 
 mation, but it is supposed that five have left the country and 
 three enlisted. 
 
 ' Of the eighty-five going on satisfactorily, thirty are within 
 weekly observation and report, and are serving their employers 
 faithfully ; and in many instances, the single men are depositors 
 in the savings bank, with a view to emigration when free. 
 Now, it is fair to assume that the proved conduct of thirty 
 men, trained under the same system as the remainder, may be 
 taken as a fair type of the class similarly discharged ; and not 
 too favourable a type, because they are surrounded by the 
 temptations of a city, and had antecedents so bad as to have 
 interfered with their procuring employment for themselves. 
 
 1 There are numerous phases in the treatment of prisoners in 
 the ' intermediate stage/ which it will be unnecessary to 
 detail ; it is sufficient to say generally, that nothing is neglected 
 which can possibly conduce to the object in view consistently 
 with the coarse fare every prisoner should receive, and the 
 amount of diligence he should be compelled to exercise. 
 
 ' Moveable iron huts have been constructed for the purpose 
 of carrying out public works by convicts in the same stage of 
 treatment. It is beyond question that the application of 
 selected convict labour, which can be so easily located where 
 required, will be a saving to the public service as well as a 
 means of reformation to the prisoners. The great difficulty at 
 first was in procuring suitable prison officers to give effect to 
 such a system. I do not now consider this by any means 
 insuperable ; the supply will soon follow the demand if we are 
 judicious in our requirements and cautious in our selection. As, 
 however, much depends on the qualification of the officer, it is 
 well that he should be trained for the purpose. 
 
 ( Prisoners in the intermediate stage who misconduct them- 
 selves, are at once re-consigned to more penal treatment, as 
 having failed in their probation. The Penitentiary thus operates 
 as a filter between the prisons and the community. 
 
 ' It has been deemed advisable to fix the gratuities very low 
 in the penal stages, and to increase them in the intermediate 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 589 
 
 stage ; the incentive to good conduct and the recompense of it 
 are thus both increased/* 
 
 It is much to be regretted that estimates of the reconvictions 
 of convicts discharged in England and Wales on tickets-of-leave, 
 placing the proportion as low as 10 per cent., should have 
 been laid before Parliament and the public. The data for such 
 calculations are non-existent, because of the want of means for 
 identifying any given prisoner as a convict ; unless when it so 
 happens that he is tried a second time at the same place. With 
 regard to prisoners coming from a distance, it not seldom 
 occurs, that even when they are known by the officers to have 
 been previously convicted, yet the trouble and expense of iden- 
 tifying them prevents the prior conviction from being given in 
 evidence; and thus they figure in the calendars and criminal 
 returns as only once convicted. 
 
 The following answers which I gave in ray evidence before 
 the Transportation Committee will throw light on this part of 
 the subject : 
 
 ( 1790. Mr. Baines, Chairman. You stated, just now, that 
 you considered that the good results of the system had been 
 erroneously magnified ; upon what ground do you make that 
 assertion ? I think they have been erroneously magnified, 
 because I think the statistics which have been given, that is to 
 say, the percentage of persons enjoying tickets-of-leave who 
 have been subsequently reconvicted, is a piece of statistics 
 likely to lead to very erroneous inferences. It is said that the 
 number of reconvictions does not amount to more than 8 per 
 cent, of the number of convicts discharged on tickets-of-leave. 
 Now, no doubt it is quite true that 8 per cent, of the convicts 
 discharged on tickets-of-leave have been reconvicted, but I am 
 by no means convinced that only 8 per cent, have been recon- 
 victed; and it is quite clear that before that inference can be 
 safely drawn, it must be known that ticket-of-leave men can 
 always be identified. But from the observations which I have 
 made, and the inquiries which I have made, I have come to a 
 very strong opinion that not only are they not always identified, 
 but that a vast number of them escape identification ; and the 
 
 * A Few Remarks on the Convict Question. By Captain Walter Crofton, 
 Chairman of Directors of Irish Convict Prisons. Dublin : Kelly. 1857. 
 
59 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 probability is, that a very considerable number of ticket-of-leave 
 men have been reconvicted who are not known to have been pre- 
 viously convicted, and who therefore stand in our tables as con- 
 victed for the first time. I will offer to the Committee, if they 
 will permit me, some facts in proof of that conclusion. I have 
 carefully questioned the heads of the police at Birmingham, as to 
 whether they have any means of identifying all the ticket-of-leave 
 men in Birmingham; they assure me that they have not, and they 
 have given me very strong proof that they have not. In the 
 month of November of last year I asked them to make out a list 
 of all the ticket-of-leave men in Birmingham, and to watch care- 
 fully their conduct for a certain time, and then to make to me a 
 report. They did so. They thought it fair and reasonable to 
 tell each person that his conduct would be watched; that he 
 would not be interfered with if he were doing well, but that his 
 conduct would be observed and noted down. At the end of six 
 weeks they sent me a schedule, which I have before me, and 
 by that schedule I found that there were 19 men whom they 
 considered as ticket-of-leave men. Within the last few days I 
 have received another report, in which they tell me they have 
 discovered that five of those men were not ticket-of-leave men. 
 Well, but 19 men for the town of Birmingham seems to be 
 a very small number of licences. I observe that Colonel Jebb 
 says that 198 ticket-of-leave men belong to Warwickshire; 
 they have been sent to Warwickshire. I do not know how the 
 assignment is made, but they are in his evidence assigned to 
 Warwickshire. Birmingham has very nearly half the popula- 
 tion of the whole county, and I have not only observed that 
 fact, but I have ascertained the proportion of prisoners con- 
 victed at the sessions in Birmingham on the one hand, and in 
 all the other parts of the county on the other; and without 
 taking the Committee through the details of the calculation, 
 which I can do if they wish, I find that there ought to be 80 
 ticket-of-leave men in Birmingham, whereas only 19 could be 
 found, and of those, five turned out eventually to be not ticket- 
 of-leave men. I then questioned the police upon that difference, 
 and they tell me that they have reason to believe that there are 
 at least 40 in Birmingham, but they cannot venture, with respect 
 to more than those of whom they have given me the names, to 
 state that they are ticket-of-leave men ; but 40 would be only 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 591 
 
 half the number, according to the basis given by Colonel Jebb. 
 Therefore, as far as the experience of Birmingham goes, I think 
 I am justified in saying that there is sufficient difficulty in detect- 
 ing a ticket-of-leave man, to make me pause before I accept the 8 
 per cent, as an accurate statement. I have also had the 
 advantage of conferring with the Chief Superintendent of Bristol, 
 and I find from him that there are 20 persons at Bristol who 
 have been known as ticket-of-leave men. I do not find that 
 they were all in Bristol at the same time, and therefore that 
 would give as residents at any one moment at Bristol a smaller 
 number; but I will suppose, for simplicity's sake, that they 
 were all resident at the same time. I have made a similar 
 calculation by a comparison of the population of Bristol and the 
 whole population of England and Wales, and I find that there 
 ought to be very nearly 40 ticket-of-leave men in Bristol, so 
 that a similar result would follow. 
 
 '1791. Is that calculation according to Colonel JebVs state- 
 ment? No, not according to Colonel Jebb's proportion, which 
 does not apply, because Bristol being a county of itself, I cannot 
 compare it as I can Birmingham and Warwickshire ; I therefore 
 take the proportion thus : there are no ticket-of-leave men 
 whose numbers come into the tables, but such as have tickets- 
 of- leave in England or Wales. Then I take the population of 
 England and Wales. I say, if the population of England and 
 Wales give a certain number of ticket-of-leave men, the popu- 
 lation of Bristol ought to give a certain other number, and that 
 other number is about 40. 
 
 ( 1792. Mr. B. Denison. Did you mean that the 80 whom 
 you thought ought to be in Birmingham were a portion of 
 Colonel JebVs 198, or your own calculation? A portion of 
 Colonel JebVs 198 : he allocates 198 to Warwickshire; then I 
 take the number of prisoners belonging to Birmingham, and 
 the number of prisoners belonging to Warwickshire ; and I say, 
 if Warwickshire have 198 belonging to it, then Warwickshire 
 having a certain number of prisoners, and Birmingham having a 
 certain number of prisoners, I get the terms of a proportion by 
 which I find how many there ought to be at Birmingham. 
 
 ' 1793. Mr. K. Seymer. Then you proceed on the assump- 
 tion that a ticket-of-leave man remains in the place to which 
 he is consigned on his discharge ? I proceed on the assump- 
 
593 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 tion that, if he is not there, some one from another part of the 
 country comes to supply his place : and I think that that is a 
 very fair presumption with regard to Birmingham and to 
 Bristol, because Birmingham and Bristol form two of not more 
 than 14 or 16 places in the United Kingdom of Great Britain 
 and Ireland, which are large enough to furnish harbourage for 
 bad characters ; and the probability is, therefore, that every 
 such town, instead of having less than its proportionate number, 
 would have a larger proportion than that which arithmetic 
 would give to it. 
 
 c 1794. Mr. Monckton Milnes. Would it seem to you pro- 
 bable that the police could trace out accurately the locality of 
 these ticket-of-leave men with the very limited amount of sur- 
 veillance which is at present exercised with regard to them ? I 
 think not ; but I hardly think that it is the want of surveillance 
 which is the great evil. I think T can explain how the difficulty 
 really arises, and it appears to me to be thus. For the purpose 
 of clearness, I will compare our country with France. The 
 criminal statistics of France, as the honourable member probably 
 well knows, are very full and accurate ; ours are anything but 
 full, and I fear anything but accurate. In France they have 
 had for many years a very perfect registration of births ; the 
 name of the new-born child is not only registered, but the 
 names of his father and mother. It is therefore practically 
 impossible to make any great use of aliases in France, and, in 
 point of fact, I learn from Monsieur Demetz, with whom I have 
 conversed very fully upon this subject, that there is no difficulty 
 in identifying any person in France. If he is apprehended, 
 they ask him who he is ; if they have any doubt of the truth 
 of his answer, they write to his place of birth; and if they 
 find that he deceives them, they keep him in confinement, but 
 do not put him upon his trial until they have ascertained who 
 he really is. Having ascertained who he really is, they then 
 write to Paris, where all the criminal statistics are drawn into 
 a focus, and they learn what the French call his antecedents ; 
 that is to say, they know how many times he has been con- 
 victed, and probably a great deal more about him than the dry 
 facts of his previous convictions. But in England, our system 
 of registration of births has not been in operation for a suffi- 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 593 
 
 cient time to enable us to do that ; and, if it were so, we do 
 not draw into a focus at present all the information respecting 
 criminals all over England, so that it would not be possible by 
 application at any one office, nor probably at any number of 
 offices, to obtain the information which is given in France. In 
 the absence of this power, which cannot be created all at once, 
 for the registers must have time to grow old, and Lord 
 Brougham's Bill to establish a system of collecting and classi- 
 fying judicial statistics must have time to be passed and worked 
 upon I have suggested, but the suggestion has not been 
 adopted, this expedient. Mr. Gardner, the ingenious and 
 excellent governor of the Bristol gaol, has possessed himself of 
 a photographic apparatus, with which he takes the likeness of 
 every one of his prisoners who he has reason to believe is a 
 person really embarked in crime as a calling. Now, he says 
 he can produce copies for 6d. each. It is believed by the police 
 that, with the exception of London, 14 copies would be all that 
 would be required, to send them to the great resorts of crimi- 
 nals, namely, to towns which are likely to be visited by old 
 offenders, who desire to hide themselves, and to go where they 
 are not known. Several would be required, no doubt, for 
 London ; say that 20 are required in all. Therefore, at an 
 expense of ios., not for every prisoner, but every one of a class 
 which is well known, and can be perfectly designated by the 
 police, you would have multiplied the portraits of all these men, 
 and thus you would baffle their alias, which is now very 
 powerful, and they would be recognised as old offenders. I may 
 add that I know, from cases which have come before me upon 
 the bench, sessions after sessions, that long before the ticket- of- 
 leave system came into operation, many veterans passed as 
 being convicted for the first time. It is a troublesome matter 
 to obtain the evidence of previous conviction when the offender 
 comes from a distance. You must not only have the certificate 
 of his previous conviction, but you must have a witness who 
 will swear to his identity ; that is to say, one of the police of a 
 distant town makes a long journey to come to swear that the 
 prisoner at the bar is the man to whom the certificate applies. 
 
 < 1795. But would that extremely dangerous class to which 
 you allude be a class likely to receive tickets-of-leave ? Yes, 
 
 Q Q 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 indeed ; and at all events, if they did not, the system would be 
 equally useful upon an absolute discharge/* 
 
 The following circular was largely distributed at the time it 
 bears date : 
 
 ( PHOTOGRAPHY AS AN AID TO THE ADMINISTRATION OF 
 CRIMINAL JUSTICE. 
 
 'Her Majesty's Gaol, Bristol, December, 1854. 
 
 ' SIR, The advantages which I have myself seen derived from 
 the use of photography, as an aid to the administration of 
 criminal justice, are such that I am induced to make an effort to 
 procure its general adoption throughout the kingdom. 
 
 ' The importance of being enabled, in the cases of all hardened 
 criminals, to prove previous convictions must be too self-evident 
 to dwell upon, neither does it require argument to show that the 
 difficulties hitherto in the way of such proofs have been always 
 numerous and often insurmountable. 
 
 ' When the convict has been sent back for a second time to 
 the same gaol, the required evidence has been easily procurable ; 
 but it is well known to all who have been concerned in criminal 
 administration, that the most cunning, the most skilled, and the 
 most daring offenders are migratory in their habits ; that they 
 do not locate themselves in a particular town or district, but 
 extend their ravages to wherever there is the most open field for 
 crime, or where the chances of plunder most present them- 
 selves. That this is the case will be attested by the police of 
 almost every large city, whose experience will have failed to 
 connect the most extensive and best planned robberies with their 
 resident known thieves. 
 
 1 A knowledge of the foregoing truths induced me, a few years 
 ago, to desiderate some mode by which descriptions of com- 
 mitted prisoners suspected of previous convictions might be cir- 
 culated among the governors of leading gaols, but numerous 
 difficulties at first presented themselves. Periodical visits of 
 inspection might be useful, but they would have two great 
 disadvantages : first, they would withdraw the governor or 
 
 * Transportation Committee, House of Commons, 1856. Second Eeport, 
 PP. 2, 3, 4 . 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 595 
 
 confidential officer too frequently from his gaol duties; and, 
 secondly, they would entail expenses which the counties could 
 not bear ; written descriptions in very marked cases might he 
 effective, but, as in the great majority of instances it would be 
 found impossible to make them sufficiently precise, they would 
 only tend, where parties were sent to identify, to frequent 
 disappointments and useless expense. 
 
 f Photography then suggested itself to my mind, and it 
 became at once apparent that if I could devise some means of 
 making the operation sufficiently sudden, I might, in scores of 
 cases, even without the knowledge of the prisoner, procure his 
 likeness, a very icon of himself, of which, being capable of 
 multiplication to any extent, I might transmit a copy to wher- 
 ever it might promise to lead to useful results. 
 
 c Twelve month s' continuous study of the system has enabled 
 me to perfect it ; I have now an apparatus in my gaol which I 
 use daily. I have rendered it most subservient to the object for 
 which it was designed, and through its use have brought to 
 justice several hardened offenders, who, being unknown in my 
 neighbourhood, would otherwise have escaped with inadequate 
 punishment. 
 
 ' J. H. came into the Bristol gaol upon commitment for 
 trial, a perfect stranger to me and my officers : he was well 
 attired, but very illiterate ; the state of his hands convinced me 
 that he had not done any hard work, whilst the superiority of 
 his apparel over his attainments led me to suspect that he was a 
 practised thief. I forwarded his likeness to several places, and 
 soon received information that he had been convicted in London 
 and Dublin. The London officer, who recognised him by his 
 portrait, was subpoenaed as a witness, picked him out from 
 amongst thirty or forty other prisoners, and gave evidence on 
 his trial in October last, which led the Recorder to sentence him 
 to six years' penal servitude. 
 
 1 J. D. came to the gaol wholly unknown : his person and 
 manners induced me to suspect that it was not his first appearance 
 in a place of confinement, and having made several copies of his 
 portrait, I sent them round to the governors of different prisons. 
 He was recognised as having been convicted at Wells; the 
 necessary witness was subpoenaed, his former conviction proved, 
 and he was sentenced to four years' penal servitude. 
 
 Q Q 3 
 
596 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 ' I could mention several instances in which some most 
 notorious thieves, strangers to this part, have been brought to 
 proper punishment. 
 
 ' Such having been my own experience, I now appeal to the 
 governors of other gaols to aid me in carrying out the system 
 upon a broad and a national scale : the cost of an apparatus 
 complete will not exceed ten pounds, and it may be worked at 
 an expense of about five pounds per annum. 
 
 ' I have only to add my wish that you should bring this 
 communication under the notice of your Visiting Justices, and 
 to say, should the authorities of any district consider that I can 
 help them by instructing their officers in the exercise of this 
 most useful art, I shall be happy to do so. 
 
 f I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 'JAMES ANTHONY GARDNER, Governor. 
 
 ' To the Governor, H. M. Gaol.' 
 
 The reasons for not putting the police in possession of the 
 names, descriptions, and portraits of discharged criminals is, 
 that such knowledge might prevent the latter from obtaining 
 employment. But there is no reason why the information 
 should be made general through all the members of the police 
 force. 
 
 Let it be confined, at least in the first instance, to the Chief 
 Superintendent in each large town, to be used for the purpose 
 of detecting any individual who, by his conduct, had drawn 
 suspicion upon himself. If the police are properly instructed 
 as to their duty of non-interference with individuals apparently 
 well-conducted and engaged in any lawful occupation, they will, 
 according to my experience, carry such instructions into effect 
 with fidelity and sound discretion. 
 
 The list of ticket-of-leave men in Birmingham, referred to in 
 my evidence, is as follows : 
 
 Jfames. 
 
 Report. 
 
 By whom made, 
 and when. 
 
 J. W. (good) 
 J. Y. (doubtful) 
 
 Is striving to gain an honest livelihood, 
 and is not known to associate with 
 bad characters. 
 On his return to Birmingham he was 
 seen in company with thieves ; but 
 
 Inspector Glossop, 
 23 January, 1856. 
 
 Sub-Inspector Tandy, 
 22 January, 1856. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 597 
 
 Names. 
 
 Report. 
 
 By whom made, 
 and when. 
 
 J. A. (good) 
 J. R. (bad) 
 
 T. W. (bad) 
 
 W. B. (bad) 
 
 F. H. (good) 
 
 J. W., alias B. 
 (bad) 
 
 T. M. (doubtful) 
 C. B. (good) 
 T. V. (good) 
 
 J. N. (good) 
 
 F. P. (good) 
 
 G. E. (good) 
 J. W. (bad) 
 
 upon being cautioned by the police, he 
 has since been endeavouring to get his 
 living by woi-k, and has not been seen 
 with his old associates. 
 
 Is gaining his livelihood by work, and 
 has not been seen in company of bad 
 characters. 
 
 Has been keeping company of thieves 
 since his return, although he goes to 
 work. He kept a low lodging-house, 
 which was the resort of bad characters, 
 which he has now given up. 
 
 Went to work at Nottingham. He 
 states that he came to Birmingham at 
 the suggestion of the Nottingham 
 police. He has always borne (since 
 known to the Birmingham police) a 
 bad character, and keeps company of 
 thieves, and has again taken to 
 thieving. 
 
 Has returned to his old practices, and 
 never goes to work. 
 
 Is getting his living honestly by exhibit- 
 ing a panorama. 
 
 Supposed to be employed as a bailiff; 
 is seen in company of thieves. 
 
 Has been cautioned by the police for 
 keeping company of thieves. His 
 parents are well off, and are support- 
 ing him. 
 
 Has been working for his living, and 
 has not been seen in company of 
 thieves since his return. He has now 
 enlisted into the army. 
 
 Went to work on his return, and has 
 not since been seen in company of bad 
 characters. He was a receiver of 
 stolen goods previous to his apprehen- 
 sion. 
 
 As in the case of T. V. (with the excep- 
 tion of being a known receiver). [Pro- 
 bably means that he is not a known 
 receiver, like V. M. D. H.] 
 
 He is getting an honest livelihood, and 
 has not been seen since his return in 
 the company of bad characters. 
 
 As in the case of F. P. 
 
 Has been in company of thieves since 
 his liberation. He is now in Worcester 
 Gaol for passing countei'feit coin. There 
 is a case of felony against him at Bir- 
 mingham, which will be gone into on 
 the expiration of his imprisonment. 
 
 P. S. Dutton, 
 
 23 January, 1856. 
 
 P. S. Manton, 
 P. C. Kelly, 
 
 5 January, 1856. 
 
 Inspector Glossop, 
 Sub-Inspector Tandy, 
 P. S. Manton, 
 
 1 6 January, 1856. 
 
 Sub- Inspector Tandy, 
 P. S. Dutton, 
 P. C. Palmer, 
 
 5 January, 1856. 
 P. S. Dutton, 
 
 23 January, 1856. 
 Sub-Inspector Tandy, 
 P. S. Manton, 
 
 23 January, 1856. 
 P. C. Palmer, 
 
 23 January, 1856. 
 
 P. C. Kelly, 
 
 23 January, 1856. 
 
 P. C. Palmer, 
 
 23 January, 1856. 
 
 P. C. Kelly, 
 
 23 January, 1856. 
 
 P. C. Palmer, 
 
 23 January, 1856. 
 P. S. Manton, 
 P. C. Kelly, 
 
 12 January, 1856. 
 
598 
 
 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 Names. 
 
 Keport. 
 
 By whom made, 
 and when. 
 
 Sub- Inspector Tandy, 
 P. S. Button, 
 
 5 January, 1856. 
 
 P. S. Button, 
 P. C. Palmer, 
 
 4 January, 1856. 
 
 Sub-Inspector Tandy, 
 P. S. Manton, 
 
 22 January, 1856. 
 
 P. C. Spokes, 
 P. C. Claxton, 
 
 14 January, 1856. 
 
 J. D. (bad) Returned to Birmingham about two 
 
 months. Has been since seen in com- 
 pany of thieves. He was cautioned 
 by the police on the 5th instant, and 
 has not been since seen. 
 
 R. S. (bad) Keeps company of thieves ; also a 
 
 brothel. Cautioned on the 4th instant, 
 when he gaid he did not care a damn 
 for the authorities. 
 
 J. H. (bad) Keeps company of thieves, and is fol- 
 
 lowing his old practices. Has been 
 since in custody for felony. He is now 
 card-sharping on the railway. He was 
 transported from Chester, and it is not 
 known whether he has a ticket-of-leave. 
 
 S. H. (bad) Came back October, 1854. He states 
 
 that he burnt his ticket-of-leave in 
 London. He was in custody on the 
 1 2th instant for felony, but was dis- 
 charged, the evidence being insuffi- 
 cient. He was again apprehended on 
 the 25th instant for having skeleton 
 keys in his possession in the night, and 
 committed to the next Borough Ses- 
 
 (Signed) <R. A. STEPHENS, Chief of Police.* 
 
 'Chief Office, Birmingham, 31 January, 1856.' 
 
 When I transmitted this list to the Home Office, I accom- 
 panied it with a letter to Sir George Grey, recommending him 
 to withdraw the tickets-of-leave from such of the convicts as 
 were marked 'Bad/ To this letter I received the following 
 answer : 
 
 'Whitehall, 26th February, 1856. 
 
 ' SIR, I am directed by Secretary Sir George Grey to 
 acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the i st instant, trans- 
 mitting a police report, as to the conduct of nineteen licence- 
 holders residing in Birmingham. In reply, I am to acquaint 
 you that Sir George Grey does not consider that there is 
 sufficient reason to revoke the licences of any of these convicts 
 at present; but he has desired the Inspector of Police at 
 Birmingham to warn those among them who are suspected of 
 having returned to dishonest practices, that their conduct will 
 
 " Transportation Committee, House of Commons, 1856. Second Report, 
 pp. 159-160. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, iSj6. 599 
 
 be carefully watched, and that on the first occasion of any 
 offence, however slight, being legally brought home to them, 
 their licences will be cancelled, and they will be sent back to 
 prison to undergo the remainder of their sentences. I am to 
 add, that Sir George Grey has recently adopted the practice, in, 
 certain cases, of restricting the licences, so as to prevent the 
 return of convicts to their former associates. 
 
 ' I have, &c., &c., 
 
 ' H. WADDINGTON.* 
 
 <M, D. Hill, Esq., Q.C.' 
 
 Events have shown that a warning to licensees that their 
 tickets should be withdrawn on proof of slight offences, although 
 it may make them careful not to come under the animadversion 
 of the law for trifles, is no safeguard against their committing 
 the most fearful outrages. 
 
 In my Charge I claim for adults the benefit of reformatory 
 treatment. This claim is making its way. A progress hopeful, 
 if not quite satisfactory, may be observed by those who care to 
 read the Reports of Inspectors of Prisons and the evidence 
 given before Parliamentary Committees, in the application of 
 reformatory discipline to adult as well as to juvenile prisoners ; 
 and much attention has been drawn to the necessity of not 
 abandoning the prisoner, whether old or young, at that critical 
 moment of his life his discharge from confinement when he 
 again becomes his own master. 
 
 At the meeting referred to in the conclusion of my Charge, 
 which was held on the J7th of October, 1856, I was called upon 
 to move the first Resolution, which I did in the following 
 Address : 
 
 ' I unite with you, my Lord Calthorpe, in regretting the 
 absence of Lord Stanley; indeed I have personal reasons for 
 my regret, because no man likes to become the subject of 
 unfavourable comparisons. All, however, must lament the 
 absence of a young nobleman who has already distinguished him- 
 self, not merely by the adoption of great social principles, but 
 by the labour he devotes to informing himself thoroughly as to 
 the facts and arguments bearing upon any cause which has the 
 
 * Transportation Committee, House of Commons. Second Report, p. n. 
 
6co Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 benefit of his advocacy. I trust that the indisposition which has 
 deprived us of the intellectual treat we anticipated, may be of 
 short duration ; and that the time may soon arrive when you 
 will see before you a young man of whose future eminence his 
 countrymen have not without reason formed the most sanguine 
 expectations. I am reassured, however, to some extent, by the 
 very admirable Report which we have just heard read a state- 
 ment which most materially abridges my task. In this Report 
 facts have been presented in clear detail, which must have 
 struck you all, first with the magnitude of the want to be sup- 
 plied, and next with the humble hope that we are at last dis- 
 covering the true way towards the diminution and repression 
 of crime. It is, indeed, humiliating to all who are concerned 
 in the administration of justice, that the labours of our judges, 
 our magistrates, our juries, and our police, all that machinery 
 by which so many of our fellow- creatures are brought every 
 month to the criminal bar should only result in this; that 
 after the convict has been found guilty, and punished accord- 
 ing to law after all that has been done for him by the 
 exhortations of the chaplain after all the lessons of the 
 schoolmaster, and the still more important lesson derived 
 from the pain which he endured from the consequences of 
 his crime, when the doors of the prison are open, a vast 
 proportion of those who have suffered for their crimes, 
 straightway offer themselves again to run the same miserable 
 course. How many thus fall back I cannot tell you. AYe 
 have ascertained by careful examination that at least thirty- 
 three per cent, of those who have been convicted once, come 
 again and again to the criminal bar. But although we know 
 that this thirty-three per cent, return to their criminal courses, 
 we must recollect that the self-interest of relapsed convicts 
 counselling them to suppress the fact of their previous convic- 
 tion, many are not discovered to be old offenders; and you may, 
 therefore, well believe that instead of this thirty-three per cent, 
 probabilities point to a still more lamentable proportion. 
 
 ' Well, then, what is to be done ? I do not wonder that the 
 masters and the manufacturers of this town express their astonish- 
 ment that no such society as the one we stand forth to advocate 
 has been before established in this place, because we are all aware, 
 who know anything of the class and who is there who knows 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 60 1 
 
 nothing ? that the moment of departure from the gaol is the 
 most dangerous crisis in their lives. It is then, if ever, that 
 the friendly hand should be stretched forth that the friendly 
 voice should be heard. The prisoner is then re-commencing his 
 career ; good and evil are before him. If the good be rendered 
 hopeless, and his only home be the gaol appointed for his punish- 
 ment if the only friends who are not dangerous to his future 
 prospects are the officers appointed to correct him ; if he re- 
 member that when his character was unstained he could not 
 keep his place in society, but forfeited his right to associate with 
 honest men, what despair^ must fall upon our poor wretched 
 fellow-being when the door closes after him of that abode, 
 which, gloomy as it is, was his sole refuge, and he finds himself 
 shut out from the only true friends he perhaps ever possessed 
 in the world ! Well, then, you must be there ; you have heard 
 that the tempter is at the gaol-door that the receiver of stolen, 
 goods dogs his steps that his old companions in crime wait to 
 carry him away to his former haunts, and to hurry him again 
 into the fearful course from which he has been for a short time 
 held back by the strong arm of the law. Do you disperse 
 that wretched crowd assembled around the doors of the gao], 
 and hold out to him the hand of encouragement. If you can 
 do nothing else, you can show him a friendly countenance. Let 
 him feel that when he has to encounter, as he must, the frowns 
 of the world, one human being at least will be his friend will 
 rejoice if he can resist temptation and escape its dangers, will 
 mourn if he fall back into the paths of sin. I address myself 
 now more particularly to a class of my fellow-townsmen w r hom 
 I know well, and to whom I feel under great and permanent 
 obligations, never by me to be repaid. It is probably known 
 to many of those present that, during the seventeen years of my 
 Kecordership, I have adopted a plan which I learnt from the 
 worthy and excellent magistrates of the Warwickshire Sessions ; 
 namely, that when there is reason to believe a young person 
 at the bar is not utterly depraved that he is there for 
 his first, or nearly his first, offence that there are those 
 allied to him by the relationship of blood, or of friendship, 
 willing to receive him, or that his employer would take 
 him again into his service and give him shelter, I have 
 practised the lesson I learnt; and have delivered up such 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 young persons to these guardians, so that they might be 
 admitted again into a family circle, and there might be hope of 
 reformation from the example of those by whom they were 
 surrounded. And let me say, and I tell it with gratitude, that, 
 in the majority of instances, the friends who have received 
 the youth just stamped with felony, are the very persons who 
 have been the sufferers by the offence of which the young 
 criminal has been convicted. How often has it happened to 
 me to be addressed by a prosecutor with tears in his eyes, im- 
 ploring that the young prisoner might be given up to him again 
 for a further trial ! and when the Court has yielded to that 
 entreaty, there has been a burst of grateful thanks for being 
 allowed to assume the anxious responsibility of making a con- 
 victed felon a member of his household ! Alas ! I have felt, as 
 I am sure you must feel, that thanks and gratitude were due 
 from me to the benefactor, and not from him to me. I have 
 kept an exact register of convicts so dealt with, and the indi- 
 viduals whose names are entered therein have been visited for 
 the purpose of ascertaining the results of this lenity. In the 
 course of these seventeen years, 483 persons have been so dis- 
 posed of at the Birmingham Sessions. We have kept a watch- 
 ful eye upon them, and the result has been that we have not 
 been able to detect more than seventy-eight out of the whole 
 number who have appeared again at the bar. Surely, here is 
 a great benefit conferred on society. I will not waste a word 
 upon pecuniary savings, however large. I would rather direct 
 your attention to the moral gain to the community. Mani- 
 festly a great one has been achieved. Hundreds have been 
 rescued from destruction ; and to what classes of the community 
 do we owe that good ? Why, to the artisan, the small em- 
 ployer, the little shopkeeper ; these are the classes, I would say, 
 to whom is mainly due the great services which have been 
 rendered to criminals and to society. Do not let it be supposed 
 that I speak slightingly of those who are higher in the social 
 scale. But it does so happen that masters who have under 
 their management a large number of workpeople have felt, and 
 perhaps rightly felt, that they are not in a position to under- 
 take the responsibility of that constant watchfulness, which is 
 necessary to preserve him who has once fallen from falling 
 again. I therefore am far from making invidious comparisons ; 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 603 
 
 but the fact still remains, that it is to the least wealthy portion 
 of the middle classes of this town that the reclamation of so 
 many of our criminal population is due. But that fact encou- 
 rages me to ask them, as they have done good, to do more ; 
 and strange as it may appear, I know of no stronger hold over 
 the human mind for benevolence, than that it has been benevo- 
 lent on former occasions. Well, then, do you, my good friends 
 of this class to which I have referred do you step for- 
 ward again. I know you will I know you thoroughly. I 
 was born among you I was brought up among you I have 
 mingled with you I have entered your dwellings I have 
 enjoyed your hospitality I have learned much from my inter- 
 course with you. I know and respect you you are good 
 fathers, good mothers, good sons, daughters, brothers, and 
 sisters. And though it may be that you have but little of this 
 world's wealth, you can do much which wealth cannot accom- 
 plish, to assist us in the great cause in which we are embarked. 
 Money, indeed, I ask not from you. I know that you have more 
 ways for your money, than you have money for your ways. 
 But assist us with your hearts assist us by giving your friendly 
 countenance to these poor creatures. Such is the prevalence 
 of crime, that it is scarcely possible for any person not to be 
 allied by ties of blood, or friendship, or by acquaintance with 
 some family in which there is a fallen member. I ask those 
 of you who can do as much, to fix upon some individual, to 
 watch his trial, to acquaint yourselves with the extent and 
 duration of his punishment, and his conduct during the term 
 of his imprisonment ; to exhort him to apply himself humbly to 
 the great task of self-reformation, and to provide for him if you 
 are able a home and employment on his departure from prison. 
 If you can do no more, attend on the morning of his release, 
 forming, as it were, a body-guard against those tempters who 
 infest the prison gates. You yourselves have, been exposed to 
 temptations, of which the noble Lords and Right Honorable 
 Gentlemen present, may know nothing. You have triumphed over 
 these temptations ; and you will bear me out when I say that 
 among the most fearful and irresistible of the catalogue are the 
 1500 public-houses, the 308 taverns, the 321 gin-shops, and the 
 871 beer-houses the authorized temptations offered by the 
 Legislature ! I speak in the presence of members of both 
 
604 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 Houses of Parliament, and will repeat my words the fifteen 
 hundred dens of temptation which you, the great men of the 
 land, suffer to be opened in every quarter of the town, lest the 
 repentant sinner should discover some obscure spot in which 
 he may find safety. Whatever door is shut against him, the 
 door of the public-house is open ; of whatever offence he may 
 be convicted, so long as he is not guilty of the crime of utter 
 destitution, so long as he has the smallest of her Majesty's 
 coins in his pocket, a welcome is ensured to him a welcome, 
 alas ! far more disastrous than a repulse ! Here, then, are the 
 bitter fountains that feed the swelling torrent of crime! (cheers). 
 I trust you will not suffer your kind feelings to evaporate in 
 cheers ; but that you will let them fructify into good acts. If 
 so, you shall have your reward. You will not, it is true, be 
 one penny the richer during the whole of your lives, for 
 your sacrifices and exertions you will, perhaps, gather no 
 fame your names may never extend beyond your native street 
 but you will have your ' exceeding great reward' the con- 
 sciousness of doing right, of obeying the commands of your 
 Divine Master Him who spake the immortal words, f Do unto 
 others as you would that others should do unto you/ ' The 
 Recorder concluded by moving ' That the plans and operations 
 of the Birmingham Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society, as 
 detailed in the statements now read, be approved by the meet- 
 ing/ 
 
 In answer to an observation in a leading article in the Times, 
 alluding to a satirical attack upon the Meeting, which had 
 appeared in that journal, I wrote the following letter : 
 
 From the ' Times' of November i8th, 1856. 
 
 ' TO THE EDITOR OF THE ' TIMES/ 
 
 ' SIR, On Friday you published a c squib/ from the pen of 
 a correspondent, in ridicule of the Meeting, lately held at 
 BirmiDgham, for promoting the objects of the Society esta- 
 blished, a few months ago, in that town, for the relief and 
 employment of discharged criminals. With him I have nothing 
 to do, except to enjoy his vivacity, such as it is. A serious 
 answer to a jest is always a mistake ; giving it not infrequently 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 605 
 
 the point which its author had omitted to supply. It is your- 
 self with whom I have to deal. You thus introduce the 
 article to your readers : c The following squib, in which 
 one of the morbid tendencies of the age is exposed, has 
 been forwarded to us for publication/ This opinion of 
 yours gives weight to your correspondent's feathers, and it 
 induces me, as having, by accidental circumstances, been called 
 upon to take a prominent part at that meeting, to ask for a 
 little space in yo_ur columns to show, or attempt, at least, to 
 show, that your rebuke is misapplied. That a disposition to 
 shrink from the infliction of pain, even where pain is necessary 
 to the welfare both of him who has to suffer and of the com- 
 munity of which he is a member, is one of the morbid 
 tendencies of the age, cannot be denied by me without the most 
 flagrant inconsistency : but I wish to be permitted to show that 
 the objects of our Society, rightly understood and fairly 
 ' exposed/ are no example of any such tendency ; but, on the 
 contrary, are both wholesome as regards the end in view, and 
 are sought through means entirely unexceptionable. 
 
 ' The project originated with the principal officers of our 
 Borough Gaol the Governor, the Chaplain, the Surgeon, and 
 the Matron, and it has the cordial support of the Heads of our 
 Police. 
 
 ' These are precisely the individuals, it will not be denied, in 
 whose minds idle sentiment must have been long ago extin- 
 guished by their familiarity with the criminal class. If the 
 difficulties of reformation, the discouragements which must be 
 encountered by all who embark in such an enterprise, the melan- 
 choly fact that, as regards a certain proportion of convicts, all 
 efforts to make them better are thrown away if these considera- 
 tions have their due weight on any minds, it is impossible to 
 believe that the ministers of punishment are not of the number. 
 Depend upon it, the assistance which they propose to render 
 will never go beyond the suggestions of common benevolence ; 
 and will be grounded on an intimate knowledge of the individual 
 to be served, gathered from daily intercourse. 
 
 In the first place, they will interpose in favour of no dis- 
 charged prisoner unless he has impressed them with the belief 
 that he not only is inspired with a strong desire to do well, but 
 possesses, to a considerable extent, the power of making his 
 
606 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 conduct accord with his good intentions. Some of these 
 founders, if not all, have long acted, within the scope of -their 
 private means, on the belief that, with regard to individual 
 prisoners, if the difficulty of placing them in honest employ- 
 ment could be overcome, they would be able to maintain their 
 position; and, encouraged by the successful result of these 
 experiments, those who instituted them have naturally and 
 meritoriously, as I must think, desired that the field of opera- 
 tions should be extended until it includes all on whom benevo- 
 lence would not be wasted. 
 
 ' Then, as to the assistance to be rendered, none can feel 
 more acutely than the founders of the Society, and those who 
 have gone to their aid, that the minimum of assistance, provided 
 the object be accomplished, is, on all accounts, the true measure 
 to be allotted. The practice of the Society has hitherto been 
 exactly conformable with its theory. An agent is employed to 
 find masters willing to afford the prisoner about to be discharged 
 a fair trial. Hitherto the offers of employment have been 
 equal to the numbers desiring to be employed, and the expen- 
 diture has consequently been very trifling. 
 
 ' It is quite true that it is contemplated, in special cases, for 
 the purpose of meeting special impediments, that a guarantee, 
 to a small amount, should be offered to a hesitating employer. 
 The suggestion, however, arises out of no theory on the sub- 
 ject. It is but a close imitation of a course pursued by Thomas 
 Wright, of Manchester, who, for forty years, has applied his 
 leisure, and no small proportion of his substance, in placing out 
 discharged prisoners. Mr. Wright has frequently availed him- 
 self of the guarantee, as a means of accomplishing his object; 
 and his report is, that his liabilities have rarely ended in loss. 
 When it is known that, during this period, Thomas Wright was 
 the foreman of an iron-foundry, labouring twelve hours a day, it 
 may be thought that his leisure was not very abundant ; and 
 when it is further known that the income which he derived from 
 his occupation was burthened with the maintenance of nineteen 
 children, it may be concluded that the surplus was not of the 
 magnitude to produce extensive results ; yet the fact remains, 
 that, single-handed, he has rescued a multitude of poor creatures 
 from desperation, and gained them the opportunity, by which 
 they eagerly profited, of abandoning for ever the paths of crime. 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 607 
 
 f Is there anything Utopian in all this, or does the kindness 
 shown to the poor outcast militate against the interests of 
 society ? Doubtless, if every door is to be shut against a dis- 
 charged offender, the severity of his punishment would be enor- 
 mously augmented, and it cannot be denied, in theory at least, 
 that his fate would be a terror to evil-doers ; and on this hypo- 
 thesis it may be maintained that in aiding him to find an 
 honest livelihood we are weakening the force of example. But 
 many a theoretic truth is of no practical value, and this is one 
 of that number. 
 
 ' I can and do appeal with the most absolute confidence to 
 all whose avocations in life have made them acquainted with 
 criminals, to support me in the assertion, that the value of the 
 deterrent to which I have adverted is so infinitesimally small as 
 to be incapable of appreciation. 
 
 f On the other hand, the danger of turning these wretched 
 beings into desperadoes is no shadowy peril. The evil is come 
 upon us. We are crying out against it, and, taking counsel of 
 our fears rather than of our good sense, we expend our strength 
 in vociferous complaints, instead of concentrating our thoughts 
 upon devising a sound remedy. In this state of mind we are 
 apt to quarrel with all who try to help us, and the only chance 
 of avoiding ridicule or censure is either to do nothing, or to 
 swell the chorus of aimless reproach. 
 
 ' The obstacles to be overcome by a discharged prisoner, 
 where punishment has produced its intended effect, and has 
 created the desire to regain his place in society, you, yourself, 
 describe in your leading article with a force which leaves 
 nothing to be said. In casting on him the burden of honest 
 maintenance, ' we are/ to use your own words, ' setting a moral 
 cripple to deal with a weight which a moral athlete could not 
 lift/ Why, then, not help him to raise this weight ? If the 
 assistance we afford is no greater than is sufficient for its pur- 
 pose, I am utterly at a loss to divine what ' morbid tendency' 
 is disclosed by our forming ourselves into the Association which 
 has been made the object of attack. 
 
 ' To you it appears that, looking at discharged prisoners as a 
 class, our task is hopeless ; and I have already said that, on a 
 large proportion, benevolence would be thrown away. Our answer 
 has been given ; we confine our attention to the individuals who 
 
608 Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 
 
 have impressed upon those most intimately acquainted with 
 them a belief in their reformation. 
 
 'That felons, as to -whom no reasonable person can doubt 
 that they will pass at once from the prison gate to the haunts 
 of crime,, should be poured forth upon the country., is an evil of 
 appalling magnitude ; but it is one for which we are not 
 answerable. It is not we who thrust them out into destitution 
 and villany its sure consequence. Some of us have raised 
 our voices for years against the system. Meantime, we seek 
 to mitigate evils which it is beyond our strength to remove. 
 
 ' You think a return to transportation is the only remedy ; 
 and you are supported in this opinion by high authority that of 
 the two Committees, one of the House of Lords, the other of the 
 House of Commons, appointed during the last Session to inves- 
 tigate the subject. For the present, however, transportation 
 has come to an end. Even "Western Australia, the sole colony 
 which can be bribed to take our convicts, remonstrates against 
 the manner in which we are dealing with her; and requires 
 that we should keep our worst felons at home, and send to her 
 shores only our minor offenders. Transportation to Western 
 Australia is therefore quickly approaching its end ; and if we 
 are to find a new vent for our criminal population, it must be 
 by founding a new colony. To discover a site for such a plan- 
 tation is indeed a difficult problem. One Committee makes no 
 attempt to solve it ; the other, that of the House of Lords, is 
 driven to recommend a district in the Gulf of Carpentaria, of 
 which we know little, except that it is within the tropics ; and 
 that our sending convicts there would be viewed with great dis- 
 trust by the neighbouring Australian settlements. 
 
 ' If, then, we are ever able to resume transportation, years 
 must elapse before it will furnish us with the means of ridding 
 ourselves of the multitude of prisoners who are annually con- 
 victed of transportable offences; and even then, unless all 
 offences, great and small, are to be punished with transportation, 
 a large class will still remain, who, when they are discharged, 
 will require assistance to obtain employment, or they will 
 become outcasts, passing from bad to worse from simple theft 
 to violence and murder. Remember, Sir, the murderer of Mr. 
 Holiest, the clergyman, had, from the press of applicants, been 
 refused admission to the Refuge at Westminster, although he 
 
Sequel to Charge of October, 1856. 609 
 
 was willing to undergo the severe probation to which candidates 
 for that privilege are very properly subjected. Put, then, the 
 interest of the prisoner out of the question. Let it be held 
 right that our sympathy for him should be lowered to the 
 freezing point ; ought not the honest part of society the true 
 men, as they had used to be called ought not your correspon- 
 dent himself to feel that we are serving them ? That the benefit 
 we confer is but small compared with our wishes none are so 
 conscious as ourselves ; but we are quite unaware that it is 
 alloyed by any infusion of injurious matter, or that our humble 
 endeavours are justly open to the imputations which I have felt 
 it my duty to answer. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 <M. D. HILL. 
 
 'Stapleton, November 15.' 
 
 E R 
 
6io 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO CHARGE OF DECEMBER, 1856. 
 
 THE belief which I entertained when I delivered the preceding 
 Charge, that the panic had passed away, never to return, 
 was ill-founded. As the winter of 1856-7 drew on, many 
 outrages were committed; and Assizes being very generally 
 held throughout the country, public attention was drawn to 
 the subject from day to day. It soon became apparent that 
 the excitement which prevailed in the latter part of 1855 would 
 be greatly exceeded. Almost every discharged convict was 
 called a ticket-of-leave man, although his enlargement may 
 have been absolute and unconditional ; and many persons, who 
 were only suspected of having been convicted, still fell under that 
 appellation. The consequence was, that public censure became 
 directed against the manner of discharge, viz., by ticket-of-leave, 
 instead of the fact of discharging back unreformed criminals 
 to pursue their old career. The public misapprehension, both 
 as to the disease and as to its remedy, will scarcely be credible 
 a few years hence. 
 
 CHARGE OF DECEMBER, 1856. 
 
 GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND JURY, 
 
 THE Calendar, you will be glad to learn, contains only 70 
 prisoners. Your task, therefore, will not be so burthensome as 
 that which generally falls on Grand Juries at the present season. 
 I wish I could infer from this brevity of the Calendar a dimi- 
 nution in crime. But I cannot. In truth, we owe this result 
 to very different causes; among others, to an unusually short 
 interval between the Michaelmas and the "Winter Sessions. 
 Indeed, Gentlemen, if we are to judge by the number of 
 offences of which we hear and read, and by the impression 
 on the minds of those around us, crime, instead of diminishing, 
 has within the last few months rapidly increased. Whether a 
 longer experience will tend to fortify this conclusion or to 
 weaken it, is more than I can venture to predict. There are, 
 however, causes in operation which may have led to exaggerated 
 
Charge of December, 1 856. 61 1 
 
 inferences as regards the recent alleged extension of crime. 
 These I will lay before you. All whose duties have made them 
 conversant with the subject, know that the winter months of 
 the year are more fertile in crime than the summer months. 
 And again, that the offences which prevail during the long 
 nights of winter are not mere abstractions of property, 
 which, however annoying, create but little fear ; they are deeds 
 of violence, spreading around a wide circle of alarm ; so that, 
 in addition to the injury sustained by the immediate sufferer, 
 the consciousness of security throughout a whole district is 
 often destroyed by a single outrage ; while a series of such 
 events disturbs the public mind from one end of the kingdom 
 to the other. 
 
 It now and then occurs that a particular year will stand 
 prominent for the number and the turpitude of such outrages. 
 The year 1850 was one so distinguished. The attention of the 
 inhabitants of Birmingham was drawn to this fact by a daring 
 burglary in Great Hampton-street ; in the course of which the 
 master of the house was attacked by the burglars, cruelly mal- 
 treated, and placed in imminent danger of his life. Heinous 
 offences were rife throughout the country. In Kent the houses 
 of ten clergymen were robbed during a single month. At 
 Frimley, in Surrey, a clergyman was murdered in his bedroom 
 by midnight assassins. Crime languished in the summer months 
 of the following year ; but as winter approached it sprang up 
 again, and dreadful scenes of violence were enacted. These 
 alternations induced me some time afterwards to extract from 
 the Police Gazette the numbers of outrages in each month for 
 the two years between December, 1850, and December, 1852. 
 This paper I will read to you : 
 
 1851. 1852. 
 
 January 20 18 
 
 February 8 jo 
 
 March 8 14 
 
 April 6 9 
 
 May 7 
 
 June 4 
 
 July 3 
 
 August 3 
 
 September 8 
 
 October 10 
 
 November 13 
 
 December 19 
 
 109 91 
 
 R R 2 
 
6 12 Charge of December, 18 56. 
 
 Probably, Gentlemen, you will agree with me, after hearing 
 this statement, that we must not hastily infer the permanent 
 augmentation of crime from the experience of a few months. 
 Or, even if an increase should be established, that its extent 
 can be safely calculated by the number or the character of 
 offences committed during a short period. Yet, that whether 
 increasing or decreasing, or remaining stationary, the amount of 
 crime is a subject which rightly fills the minds of reflecting 
 men with humiliation and anxiety, cannot be denied. That our 
 lives and our property may be secure from harm is our chief 
 object in submitting to government, and in paying our heavy 
 contributions towards its maintenance. Our advancement in 
 science and art the extension of our commerce our wide- 
 spread empire our high place among the nations all these 
 achievements in their various degrees are the subject of honest 
 pride ; and within moderate bounds we may blamelessly indulge 
 ourselves in contemplating our superiority. But how cruelly 
 are we mortified when compelled to contrast these glorious 
 triumphs of knowledge, enterprise, industry, and order these 
 testimonies of a higher civilization than has ever yet been 
 reached in any age or country with the contempt and defiance 
 of that civilization, and all its potent and multifarious expe- 
 dients for the vindication of its supremacy, hourly manifested 
 by the hordes of brutal savages who throng our streets arid 
 highways, break into our houses, and violate the sacred repose 
 of our sleeping families. 
 
 Thoughts like these, Gentlemen, have often taken possession 
 of my mind when, after reading speeches in Parliament of 
 great length and fervour on some personality, forgotten within 
 a month, or an elaborate critique on a new opera, or, it may 
 be, a minute account of some valuable invention, or a well- 
 merited and long-sustained eulogy on some beautiful picture, or 
 statue, or poem, the offspring of native genius, I have lighted 
 on a brief and obscure paragraph, informing me in ten lines 
 that in the heart of old England a peaceful dwelling has been 
 stormed, and its inmates captured and cruelly treated at the 
 hands of ruffian enemies, by whom the laws of war and their 
 humanities are either unknown or despised ! Forgive me, 
 Gentlemen, if I am wrong, but I have not been able to resist 
 the conviction that we all of us bend too much of our care on 
 
Charge of December, 1856. 613 
 
 what I may call the luxuries of society, unmindful of its 
 necessaries. 
 
 True it is that occasionally, as at the present moment, the 
 public is seized with a spasmodic fit of energy for the suppres- 
 sion of crime ; but as these paroxysms are unfavourable to calm 
 reflection, it struggles for the wrong thing it clamours for the 
 justly discarded weapon of severity. And the gallows, which 
 in the ordinary state of public feeling is barely tolerated, 
 becomes an object of respect, approaching, in persons of ex- 
 citable nerves, to the reverence with which the largest divisions 
 of our Christian world regard the Cross. We forget, amidst 
 this perturbation, that barbarous punishments have ever failed 
 of their intended effect, even when screwed up to a pitch of 
 ferocity exhausting the perverted ingenuity of the most hard- 
 hearted of lawgivers to devise. 
 
 But, Gentlemen, seasons will take their course. Crime will 
 slacken. Newer topics will attract attention, and the former 
 distaste for harsh inflictions will regain its hold. I have 
 watched for nearly forty years the progress of this disposition to 
 lenity. It may be arrested, or may appear to be arrested, for 
 a moment ; but the indications are deceptive. So, Gentlemen, 
 if you stand on the banks of a river when the tide is on the 
 ebb, a wind blowing from its mouth will appear to change its 
 current, and may cause you to believe that the waters have 
 commenced their upward flow. But wait awhile, and you will 
 perceive that the river still sinks, in spite of the direction taken 
 by the waves upon the surface. 
 
 It will not, I am sure, be imagined by you, to whom my 
 opinions on the subject are well known, having been frequently, 
 too frequently, perhaps, repeated from this bench, it will not 
 be imagined that I differ from my countrymen in their feelings 
 of dissatisfaction at the present treatment of criminals. The 
 evil is too flagrant to be denied. Still, nothing is more useless 
 than mere crimination. The true questions for us to consider 
 are the causes and the remedy. And first as to the causes. 
 At the head of these, Gentlemen, I must place that reluctance 
 to visit crime with heavy infliction, of which I have spoken ; a 
 sentiment worthy of all respect in itself, as the exponent of 
 qualities producing the very best effects in their softening in- 
 fluences upon our social intercourse. We feel their beneficent 
 
6~J4 Charge of December, 18 56. 
 
 operations in our family circle, among our friends, in the rela- 
 tions between the rich and the poor, and, indeed, wherever we 
 are brought into communication with each other. But when 
 applied to the question of punishment, the unrestrained indul- 
 gence of this amiable sentiment is fraught with great danger to 
 the well-being of society and the permanent interests of the 
 offender himself. That the prison-gate should open for the 
 discharge of an unreformed criminal is a misfortune to all ; not 
 only to the community, but to the prisoner. For what real hap- 
 piness can accrue to him either in this world or in the world to 
 come, from our surrendering him to the tyranny of his ungovern- 
 able appetites and his malevolent passions ? Yet, Gentlemen, 
 this is what we do every day of the year. Every day, from 
 the ist of January to the 3ist of December, are the officers of 
 our gaols busied in thrusting forth on the unoffending people of 
 England, men who, having been deprived of their liberty because 
 they had used it in a manner inconsistent with the safety of 
 their neighbours, are nevertheless restored to freedom, with the 
 full knowledge of all concerned that they will at once return to 
 their abandoned way of life. 
 
 Gentlemen, amid our complaints of this most injurious 
 system, we ought to remember that it originates with ourselves. 
 I state this truth fully and frankly, without meaning, however, 
 to absolve from blame those who have the management of 
 affairs. They are participators with us in the wrong, and must 
 bear their own share of the reproach. But a share only, not 
 the whole burden. Gentlemen, let us look back for a moment 
 on the course of legislation which has been pursued now for 
 many years past ; pursued, too, with scarcely a murmur of dis- 
 approval, either in or out of Parliament. After capital punish- 
 ments had been limited in practice to wilful murder, and not 
 always enforced even in cases of deliberate, cold-blooded assassi- 
 nation, after degrading inflictions like the pillory and public 
 flogging had been abolished, after our gaols, formerly charnel- 
 houses of pestilence, had become far more comfortable abodes 
 than many an honest and industrious labourer is able to pro- 
 vide for his wife and children, after transportation was known 
 to be a path oftentimes leading to high prosperity, the yearning 
 for mild punishments was still unsatisfied. Take an instance. 
 Up to the year 1849 simple larceny was punishable with 
 
Charge of December, 185^, 615 
 
 transportation ; and within my experience it was a punishment 
 freely administered for this offence. Gradually, however, it 
 became resorted to less and less ; by reason of the influence to 
 which I have adverted. And in that year an Act was passed 
 by which simple larceny, to whatever amount, was secured from 
 all danger of transportation, the maximum of penalty being 
 imprisonment with hard labour for two years. So that if the 
 theft of gold from the carriages of the South Eastern Railway 
 Company, which is now under investigation, should lead to con- 
 viction, none of the guilty parties, unless they happened to be in 
 the Company's service at the date of the transaction, could 
 receive a higher punishment than that which I have mentioned, 
 although the property is said to have amounted to i2,ooo/. in 
 value. But this is not all. The Act of 1849 still left larceny, 
 after a former conviction for that offence, punishable with 
 transportation. In the year 1853, however, the law was again 
 modified; and at the present day no series of convictions for 
 simple larceny, to whatever number it extends, can be so 
 visited; penal servitude for ten years is the highest sentence 
 which can be passed ; and rarely, indeed, is such a penalty 
 inflicted. But penal servitude to any extent, short of servitude 
 for life, necessarily involves a return of the criminal to liberty 
 in this country. 
 
 The measure of punishment applied to the higher offences, 
 which is also inflicted on the relapsed criminal, regulates in due 
 proportion that meted out to minor offenders. Thus, then, has 
 the unreflecting tendency of public sentiment towards a mis- 
 chievous leniency, gradually produced that abundance of short 
 imprisonments, which inures our criminal classes to a most per- 
 nicious alternation of confinement and liberty a detention 
 too short to bring reformatory influences into full operation, 
 even where there is time to initiate them ; and a liberty only used 
 to practise with increasing dexterity and circumspection, the arts 
 which brought the offenders into gaol, and which will, sooner 
 or later, bring them there again. 
 
 Here, then, is laid before our eyes the evil of our present 
 condition the discharge among us of unreformed criminals. 
 Surely, then, all who give themselves the trouble of mastering 
 the subject, must feel that what we ought to aim at is, to 
 prevent criminals, once apprehended and convicted, from being 
 
616 Charge of December } 1856. 
 
 so placed as to have the power of offending again, until we 
 have some proof that their dispositions and their habits are 
 changed for the better. And if the discipline of the gaol should 
 fail to produce its intended effect, then is it not unquestionably 
 right that the seclusion of the prisoners should continue, even 
 if it last for their lives ? such a result being the consequence of 
 their obstinacy in resisting reformatory influences, or their utter 
 inability to keep in subjection propensities incompatible with the 
 public safety. 
 
 Ages ago this island was infested with wolves; a dire 
 calamity, as all conversant with the history of those times 
 well know. Gentlemen, what should we have thought of the 
 sanity of our ancestors, if, after giving a reward for each wolf 
 caught, they had, when a certain number of months or years 
 had elapsed, opened the dens and restored their wolves to 
 liberty. And yet I am sure you will feel that, as between 
 wolves and burglars, the latter are by far the more dangerous 
 beasts of prey. 
 
 The opinion involved in the remarks which I have just had 
 the honour of submitting for your consideration, is gaining 
 ground ; though it may take different practical shapes in different 
 minds. Persons, for whose knowledge and judgment I have 
 unfeigned respect, turn their eyes towards a renewal of trans- 
 portation as our best and most hopeful remedy. Gentlemen, 
 we did not abandon transportation willingly, nor until after a 
 struggle, which showed us that we could not continue it without 
 shaking the allegiance of our colonies to the mother country. 
 It is consequently admitted, that if transportation is to be 
 renewed, it must be done by establishing new settlements ; and 
 it is not denied that, in so acting, we must forego what has 
 always been held as the highest advantage derivable from this 
 method of dealing with criminals, viz., that they become 
 absorbed into the honest population of lands, in which the 
 means of subsistence are more easily and surely acquired than 
 at home : so that the proportion of relapses becomes greatly 
 diminished. Gentlemen, I do not mean to engage you in the 
 discussion of a complicated question, replete with difficulties. 
 If the advocates of a return to transportation can find a suitable 
 territory a task, easy as it may appear to many, which has, 
 nevertheless, baffled the research of able men, thoroughly con- 
 versant with the resources of our empire in all its regions if they 
 
Charge of December, 1 856. 617 
 
 should be able to control a convict population in any way, save 
 by imprisonment, so as to preclude the recurrence of the multi- 
 plied crimes and the mysterious abominations, which would form 
 the darkest page in our history, did not their very atrocity 
 shield them from disclosure if they should be able to devise the 
 means by which the worst and most dangerous of the convicts 
 can be prevented from gradually filtering down into the nearest 
 states whether our own possessions or those of the foreigner 
 then, Gentlemen, I, for one, though not unmindful of the many 
 strong objections remaining behind, and of the enormous 
 expense essential to such a project, will rejoice at that, as I 
 should at almost any other solution of our most distressing 
 problem ' What shall we do with our criminals ?' 
 
 But, Gentlemen, to send convicts thousands of miles, to 
 remain in prison at the end of their voyage, does appear to me 
 repugnant to the most obvious dictates of common sense ; to say 
 nothing of its being condemned by all authority. If the con- 
 victs cannot, with propriety, be scattered abroad, but must be 
 congregated upon public works, in anticipation of the wants 
 of future colonists, who, the moment they become strong 
 enough, will deprive us of our depot for our criminals, thus con- 
 structed at an enormous outlay, surely it would be far more 
 expedient to keep them at home, labouring at public works on 
 our own shores ; especially when the absence of such works is a 
 national disgrace. Gentlemen, are you aware that, during the 
 last year, more than a thousand vessels were shipwrecked on the 
 coast of the British Isles, involving the loss of many hundreds of 
 precious lives ? Of the vast destruction of property, I say but 
 little ; I cannot consent to urge it in the same breath with which 
 I deplore the destruction of our fellow-creatures ; many of them 
 hard-working fathers, of numerous families maintained in com- 
 fort, but now, by the loss of their stay and support, plunged 
 into destitution. 
 
 Gentlemen, while engaged in my profession at the bar, I had 
 many opportunities of ascertaining the causes of calamities like 
 these ; and the conclusion at which I arrived is in perfect accord- 
 ance with the views of nautical men. It is, that a large pro- 
 portion of our shipwrecks arises from the infrequency of our 
 Harbours of Refuge. Many of our convicts are, at this time, 
 engaged in the construction of such a haven at the Isle of Port- 
 land ; but years and years must elapse before that and all other 
 
618 Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 requisite undertakings of a similar kind are finished. Why, 
 then, should we lose the produce of the labour of our criminals 
 to bestow it on some non-existent community, which, when it 
 comes into being, will repudiate all such aid ? And as I am 
 now on a question of pecuniary advantage, let me not forget to 
 assure you, that whoever favours a return to transportation, on 
 the ground of its alleged economy, has fallen into a grievous 
 delusion. Let two items of expenditure on this head be laid 
 before you. I find them in the Appendix to a Report of a 
 Committee on Transportation, appointed during the last session 
 by the House of Lords. It appears that, although transporta- 
 tion to Tasmania (or Van Diemen's Land as it was formerly 
 called) has ceased for years, 4000 convicts yet remain there, at 
 an annual cost to this country of 1^,1^61., which amounts to 
 35/. per man. In Western Australia, soon, perhaps, to be 
 closed against us, we have 2000 convicts, at an annual cost of 
 82,000^., or 4 1/. per man ! 
 
 But waiving all objections to the revival of transportation, 
 pray, Gentlemen, let it be remembered that to plant a colony 
 is to plant a tree; and that years of growth will be required 
 before the sapling arrives at maturity. What it will then bear 
 remains to be seen, whether sound fruit, or the apples of Sodom, 
 filled with dust and ashes ! At the best, we are contemplating 
 a somewhat distant future ; instead of endeavouring to meet a 
 frightful existing evil with a prompt remedy. Let us look 
 around us for a moment, and we shall find that with a few 
 exceptions, too unimportant to be mentioned, ours is the only 
 country in the world which resorts to transportation for the 
 disposal of its criminals ; and yet all who have travelled know 
 many countries in Europe, and many States of the great Republic 
 of North America, where life and property are at the least as well 
 secured from murderers and thieves as in England. I will 
 instance Bavaria. Having heard and read much of its prisons, 
 especially those under the control of State Councillor Ober- 
 maier, I have, through the kindness of Sir John Millbanke, 
 our Envoy at the Court of Munich, obtained from the Bava- 
 rian Minister of the Interior full information on the treat- 
 ment of prisoners adopted in the dominions of his sovereign ; 
 and I find that a plan which I have for many years urged upon 
 the public and the Legislature is there in actual operation. 
 
Charge of December, 1856. 619 
 
 Their prisons contain a class of offenders under sentence for an 
 uncertain period, or in other words, to be detained until by 
 good conduct they have worked their way back to liberty. But, 
 Gentlemen, neither the Bavarians, nor, so far as I know, any 
 other Continental nation, expect confirmed criminals to be 
 reformed in three or four years; consequently they are im- 
 prisoned for a much longer period ; advancing themselves, 
 however, by progressive stages from treatment in which they 
 are debarred from any indulgence, to a manner of living not 
 destitute of considerable enjoyment. Again, when the day of 
 discharge arrives prisoners are not, as in England, cast out upon 
 the world with the alternative before them of starving or 
 relapsing into crime, but they are sent each to his parish ; and 
 thence disposed of by one or other of the numerous societies for 
 the aid of prisoners, with which that country abounds. In 
 Birmingham, as you know, we are working hard to establish a 
 similar institution. It is not creditable to the English people 
 that such a work of humanity to these unhappy persons, and of 
 safety to itself, remains to be done. 
 
 Why, Gentlemen, do we not condescend to take a lesson 
 from our neighbours, who, not having exercised the privilege 
 of sending their criminals to infest their dependencies, have 
 always managed them at home as best they might ? 
 
 But, without any change in the law, we might, as it 
 now stands, at once greatly alleviate our condition. And this 
 brings me to that word of fear, the ticket -of -leave. Now, the 
 ticket-of-leave, as dealt with by the authorities, might just 
 as well be a piece of blank paper. It purposes to hold the 
 bearer to the liability of being sent back to prison if he shall 
 associate with notoriously bad characters, or in any way fail to 
 prove by his subsequent conduct that he is worthy of her 
 Majesty's clemency. This is the theory of the plan. The 
 practice is to indulge him in every species of misconduct, short 
 of committing a new offence cognizable by the criminal law ; 
 when, of course, whether he had or had not a ticket-of-leave, 
 he would be deprived of his liberty. That an instrument so 
 dealt with becomes an absurdity, must be admitted ; and if it 
 had been made the subject of ridicule none could have been sur- 
 prised, and no one ought to have been offended. But to make the 
 document a grave subject of attack, as if it infected the holder 
 
620 Charge of December, 18 56. 
 
 with a moral poison, is, according to my thinking, to emulate, 
 and even to surpass, the absurdity of treating its provisions as 
 idle words. Long before tickets-of-leave had ever been heard 
 of, thousands of convicts, sentenced to transportation, had been 
 set free at home, by unconditional discharge, on the expiration 
 of half their sentence. Now they are set free, on the nominal 
 conditions to which I have adverted, at a period somewhat, but 
 very little, shorter. To the extent of this difference let it be 
 conceded that the change of treatment is adverse to the public 
 interest. On the other hand, it must, in justice to the autho- 
 rities, be stated, that the encouragements to good conduct, while 
 criminals are in confinement, are far better devised and more 
 efficiently carried into operation, than heretofore ; and also, that 
 they are in course of still further improvement, so that the chance 
 of reformation, however small, is greater than in former days. 
 On the whole, comparing the two regulations for the discharge 
 of prisoners at home, I have no hesitation in stating my belief 
 that the one now in force, though grievously defective, is a 
 valuable improvement on that which it superseded. 
 
 The true evil to bear in mind, let me repeat it, is that, since 
 the stoppage of transportation, our convicts are discharged at 
 our own doors, keeping us in constant alarm; whereas we 
 formerly sent them to persecute our friends on the other side of 
 the globe. 
 
 If, Gentlemen, in deference to popular ignorance, which has 
 wrought a confusion of terms, we choose to alter the English 
 language, and call every prisoner discharged at home a ticket- 
 of-leave man, whether his liberation be absolute or revocable, 
 so be it. The change of names will produce no effect on the 
 thing itself; and, as it has been well said, ' whether an unre- 
 formed ticket-of-leave man is dismissed with or without a ticket- 
 of-leave, he still becomes an insufferable nuisance/* 
 
 Very soon we shall practically feel the proof of this asser- 
 tion. Next year the convicts adjudged to penal servitude will 
 begin to be discharged, as having completed the periods of im- 
 prisonment to which they were sentenced ; and the stream 
 once beginning to flow will never be dried up. In a few 
 months, then, if I mistake not, we shall find ourselves no 
 
 Times. 
 
Charge of December, 1856. 621 
 
 gainers by the absence of the ticket. Learning that their terms 
 of confinement would not be shortened by good conduct, the 
 penal-servitude-men have already, according to the evidence of 
 the prison officers before the Transportation Committee, become 
 lazy and mutinous ; so that we may expect the ticket-of-leave 
 men of the present day, to be reinforced by a body of criminals 
 whom the gaol has made worse much worse than it found 
 them. 
 
 I told you, Gentlemen, I could point out a course that could 
 be taken at once ; and which, if taken, would greatly alleviate 
 our present condition with respect to convicts at large. The 
 step I propose is simply to make the conditions endorsed on 
 the ticket-of-leave, a truth instead of a fiction, to carry into 
 effect the following resolution of the Transportation Committee 
 of the House of Commons : 
 
 ' That to render this system of tickets-of-leave adapted both 
 for the reformation of offenders and the interests of the public, 
 the conditions endorsed upon the tickets-of-leave ought to be 
 enforced more strictly than appears to have been hitherto the 
 case/ 
 
 Many ticket-holders who are misconducting themselves are 
 well known to the police; and these are probably the worst 
 and most dangerous of their class. Many others by reason of 
 no expedients having been adopted to enable the police to learn 
 their names and to become acquainted with their persons, 
 cannot be identified, and must therefore remain as if they had 
 received a perfect and absolute discharge ; an omission which 
 the Committee, by another resolution, altogether disapproved, 
 and recommended should be supplied in future, as I trust it 
 will be. Still, much might be done to calm the agitation pro- 
 duced by the laxity with which the Act has been carried into 
 effect, if even at this, the eleventh hour, the responsibilities 
 which rest on the ticket-of-leave man were to be enforced to 
 the full extent that existing circumstances permit. The pro- 
 posed measure, however, is but a palliative ; and I therefore 
 trust that the next Session of Parliament will not be suffered 
 to pass away without our witnessing a thorough revision of the 
 whole system of our treatment of criminals. 
 
6 2,2 Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 THE state of public sentiment, resulting in the lenity on which 
 I have commented in this and former Charges, is worthy of 
 more consideration than writers have yet given to it. It 
 appears to me to arise from that quickened sympathy with 
 distress, which distinguishes and honourably distinguishes 
 the present age. No feeling, however, requires more discipline 
 to prevent it from becoming mischievous, than sympathy. Its 
 present operation, as regards crime, is inconsistent and absurd. 
 At first it is all with the sufferer ; and the vials of wrath are 
 emptied on the head of the malefactor, for whom no conceivable 
 punishment is too appalling. But the injured party recovers 
 from his wounds; or, if the offence be against his property, 
 some time has elapsed since we heard of his loss, and the first 
 impression having worn away from our own minds, we are 
 rather disposed to think he should have forgotten it also. 
 Meanwhile the offender has been convicted; his sufferings, 
 having the advantage of novelty, engage our sympathies, gra- 
 dually detached from his victim, and we shrink from the 
 contemplation of the fate to which he is condemned. Thus 
 we alternately invoke the visitations of severity and of mercy 
 upon the same individual, for the same offence ! All this is 
 weak and foolish, and comes of our not keeping steadily in 
 view the true end of punishment the repression of crime. 
 That we ought to administer pain with a scrupulous and sparing 
 hand is a truth, and a solemn truth. But the use to which 
 the convict's pain is to be applied is, after all, of more importance 
 than its amount. Had experience justified the conclusion that 
 simply penal inflictions sufficed, by the force of example, to deter 
 would-be offenders, so as to reduce crime within narrow limits, 
 true benevolence would urge us to add to the severity of our 
 punishments until we reached the degree required for the most 
 deterrent results ; benevolence to the community, to the class 
 about to fall into crime, and, indeed, to the criminal himself. 
 For the most grievous penalties, capital punishment included, 
 are to be preferred to a life of crime; preferred for the 
 criminal, although it would be too much to expect it should 
 be preferred by him. 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 623 
 
 But this delusion in favour of deterrents is a vision of the night ; 
 and it will sooner or later be dispelled. Now and then, after some 
 revolting spectacle such as that of the torturous execution of 
 Damieri for his attack on Louis XV. the world has been so 
 disturbed, that it has awaked for a moment to the truth ; but it 
 has soon laid its head again upon the pillow, and, like the author 
 of the Pilgrim's Progress, it has pursued its dream. Whenever 
 the time shall arrive that the public sees its duty and its interest 
 too clearly to remain satisfied with letting its sympathies run 
 to waste, excessive lenity will be avoided with almost as much 
 care as excessive harshness ; and for the same reason because 
 each is incompatible with the object to be attained the repres- 
 sion of crime. I fear I repeat this phrase ad nauseam ; but as 
 Hotspur threatened to have a starling taught the word ' Morti- 
 mer/ to cry it in the ears of Bolingbroke, so have I felt that 
 to obtain some means of repeating the phrase ' Repression of 
 Crime' in the ears of my opponents, until it had securely fixed 
 itself in their memory, was my only chance for protection 
 against the reproach which I have so long endured, for substi- 
 tuting, as it has been alleged, the reformation of the criminal 
 as the end to be sought, in place of the true end the dimi- 
 nution of crime. I am not using the term opponents in a per- 
 sonal sense ; indeed, it includes friends whom I highly respect. 
 One of these, Mr. Dillon, although he has informed me that 
 he declines controversy on the subject of the following letter, 
 can have no wish to prevent my defence of my own views from 
 receiving full publicity. 
 
 From the 'Daily News' of January Tjth, 1857. 
 
 ' TREATMENT OF OUR DANGEROUS CRIMINALS. 
 
 ' To the Editor. 
 
 ' SIR, It is with no small surprise that I read in' your 
 journal of to-day a letter from the pen of my valued friend, 
 Mr. John Dillon, in which he declares that , enormous evils 
 have resulted, and are actually resulting from the doctrine, that, 
 in the infliction of legal punishment, the protection of society and 
 the prevention of crime are secondary objects to the reclaiming 
 or benefiting the individual. Mr. Dillon, then, gravely enter- 
 tains the notion that the law of England or its administrators, 
 or both, sacrifice the great object of criminal jurisprudence 
 
624 Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 namely, the diminution of crime to its lowest attainable amount, 
 to their desire for the reformation of the offender. That such 
 a cry has been raised against philanthropists, and that it has 
 been adopted by speakers and writers who think more of 
 rounding a period, or giving effect to a piece of declamation, 
 than of arriving at the truth, it is impossible to deny ; but Mr. 
 Dillon is one of the last men whom I should have expected to 
 be carried away by such groundless clamour. At the present 
 day our punishments almost resolve themselves into im- 
 prisonment, usually accompanied by a sentence to hard labour. 
 In average years, capital punishments actually executed are not, 
 as compared with imprisonments, in a greater proportion than 
 one to twelve thousand. Fines and whippings are also propor- 
 tionally rare. Transportation, so long as it continues to be 
 penal, is but a species of imprisonment with imposed labour. 
 
 ' I shall be therefore substantially correct, if I resolve all exist- 
 ing penalties into imprisonment with labour. That being done, 
 the next point for inquiry is, what is the average length of the 
 detention in each case? I believe, sir, you will very much 
 exaggerate that length if you put it down at six months. Im- 
 prisonments, technically so called that is to say, excluding 
 penal servitude and the penal portion of transportation would 
 not approach half that term. I have seen it placed as low as 
 six weeks. But what advocate of reformatory treatment believes 
 it possible even fairly to initiate a reformation during a detention 
 of a few months ; to say nothing of perfecting it ? Surely, then, 
 our daily experience demonstrates the fallacy of supposing that 
 the repression of crime is sacrificed to the reclamation of 
 criminals. Who, indeed, are so persevering in their demands 
 for extending the power of detention as the advocates of refor- 
 matory treatment ? aiming thereby to insure to the public that 
 the convict shall either be reformed, or, in the event of that 
 ' object failing, that he shall be incapacitated from injuring his 
 neighbours by his detention being continued for his life (as some 
 would have it) ; and with regard to those who shrink from 
 carrying reformatory doctrines so far, even they ask for a very 
 large increase in the measure of detention. 
 
 ' I will not remind Mr. Dillon that no single member of the 
 reformatory School has ever denied that the reclaiming of 
 offenders is a means to an end ; and that if it can be proved to 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1 856. 625 
 
 be only attainable by the sacrifice of the end videlicet, the dimi- 
 nution of crime, it must be abandoned. Nor will I insist upon 
 what is, nevertheless, the fact, that they frequently preface their 
 writings on the subject by a formal adhesion to this principle ; 
 in the hope (the forlorn hope, however,) of protecting themselves 
 from misapprehension. On the present occasion I pass this by, 
 because I find Mr. Dillon going far beyond the imputation of 
 our entertaining such notions. He declares that our alleged 
 theory is reduced to practice. Am I to conclude from his 
 statement, that it is the reformed criminals who, in some way 
 or other, have produced the outrages of which we all, reformers 
 and terrorists, complain with one voice ? This, although the 
 logical conclusion, cannot be that which Mr. Dillon meant to 
 convey. Does he, then, mean to adopt the words of Lady 
 Macbeth ' The attempt, and not the deed, confounds us' ? 
 Does he mean that if reformation had been actually produced 
 there would have been no ground for complaint; but, does he 
 intend to say, that under an erroneous belief that convicts had 
 been reformed, they were discharged too soon? That many of 
 them were discharged too soon, either for the public safety or 
 their own permanent welfare, cannot be^doubted ; but that they 
 were dismissed under the belief that their reformation had been 
 ensured, is opposed to the avowal in Parliament of the minister 
 who opened the gates of their gaol. ' The reason,' he says, 
 ' why a ticket-of-leave cannot be fairly regarded as a proof of 
 reclamation is obvious. As long as he is in a prison, where he 
 is denied the opportunity of getting drunk and of associating with 
 those who might lead him into temptation, the convict is evidently 
 so circumstanced as that it is impossible for him to afford us 
 the means of arriving at a satisfactory conclusion as to whether 
 his repentance is genuine or affected/ These observations must 
 not be understood as reflecting on the Home Secretary. His 
 defence rests on grounds quite distinct from the points in con- 
 troversy between Mr. Dillon and myself. 
 
 ' Colonel Montesinos, at Valencia in Spain, Captain Crofton, 
 in Ireland, and the wardens of prisons in several of the United 
 States, have overcome the difficulty to which Sir George Grey 
 refers, by passing the convict through the intermediate stage, of 
 which Lord Stanley spoke, in Mr. Dillon's presence, at the 
 Meeting of the Law Amendment Society on Monday night. 
 
 s s 
 
6 2,6 Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 be this as it may, it cannot be maintained that our criminals 
 have been discharged under any belief in their reformation ; and 
 consequently it cannot be maintained that the principle of 
 reformation has been tried. I am not content to urge that it 
 has not had a fair trial I say it has had no trial at all. Yet 
 such is the vigour of the principle, that even the inchoate process 
 to which I have adverted has, by the number of ticket- of-leave 
 men who have been well-conducted since they left their prisons, 
 afforded additional proof that we ought to persevere to the end. 
 ' Sir, apart from measures which go to prevent those in danger 
 of becoming criminals from falling into that class, and confining 
 myself to the treatment of those who have fallen, I know but 
 three ways of dealing with them. First, to eradicate the 
 desire to do wrong by reformation; second, to overpower the 
 desire to do wrong by deterrents ; third, to incapacitate the 
 criminal from doing wrong by imprisonment or death. These 
 three expedients may be harmoniously combined, and if you aim 
 at reformation accepting the consequence of no reformation no 
 discharge, or a discharge long deferred all the expedients may 
 be brought to bear on the same prisoner. While immured in a 
 gaol, he is incapacitated from injuring the community. The 
 gaol, with labour and the suspension of those indulgences which 
 brought him there, acts as a deterrent ; while seclusion, labour, 
 and privation, are essential conditions to success in producing 
 reformation. Let me then suppose that each of these three 
 expedients has its advocate, who has no faith in the other two. 
 To each I would say There is no reason why you should not 
 act in concert. If one of them avowed himself a sceptic as to the 
 efficiency of deterrents to prevent criminals from relapsing into 
 their evil courses, while, on the other hand, he equally dis- 
 believed in the possibility of reclaiming them, to him I should 
 say Why not try the experiment ? You will obtain by that 
 means a longer period of incapacitation for the convict than by 
 any other. Public soft-heartedness will not let you detain the 
 criminal for a long term of years, unless you show, first, that 
 you are aiming at some good to him, as well as to society ; 
 and, second, that if he remain in prison beyond the term which 
 has sufficed for his fellow-convicts to work out their freedom, it 
 is his own fault ; it is because he is in such a state of mind 
 and of habits, that to send him forth into the world would be to 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 627 
 
 * 
 let loose a creature far more dangerous to the safety of others 
 
 than if he were a beast of prey. To the believer in deterrents 
 I would urge much the same arguments as I had used with the 
 believer in incapacitation. You, I would say, seek to make the 
 deterrent power of penal inflictions more adequate to the pur- 
 pose of inspiring terror than it now is, by augmenting their 
 severity. It is immaterial to you with what object the pain is 
 inflicted; you have only to do with the amount of it. Now, 
 therefore, it is to your interest to adopt a course which neces- 
 sarily involves a longer imprisonment, harder labour, and harder 
 fare, than the public would concede, except on the terms of 
 giving the criminal a chance to turn his visitations into a boon 
 (the highest he can receive) by becoming reformed. If you are 
 right in your gloomy faith, so much the severer his punishment ; 
 and so much the greater the deterrent force of the example 
 offered by his suffering. The advocate of reformatory treatment 
 would require no convincing. He is well aware that no convict 
 can be reclaimed by sugar-plums that he must endure much 
 pain, not inflicted, it is true, for pain's sake, in a vindictive 
 spirit, or with a view to retribution or to expiation (whatever 
 may be the meaning of that word, much used and little under- 
 stood), but pain administered as necessary to the cure pain 
 administered on the principle which determines the surgeon to 
 sentence his patient to an operation, and which guides his hand 
 during its course pain inflicted with a wise parsimony ; not 
 withheld when required for success, not lavished when the 
 sufferer can be spared its agony. 
 
 ' Sir, instead of reproaching those who put the reformation 
 of the criminal above the repression of crime a class of beings 
 whom he will find it harder to discover than ghosts or witches 
 let my excellent friend use his talents and his influence, which 
 I have seen with respect and admiration employed in many a 
 good cause, to induce the public to keep their feelings in sub- 
 jection to their reason. Let him denounce as refined selfishness 
 the disposition to relieve the prisoner from pain, without know- 
 ing whether such lenity will prove a blessing or a curse. Let 
 him make them understand that crying out for severe laws, and 
 then labouring to defeat their execution, by making every case an 
 exception to the rule, whether they are engaged in it as 
 witnesses, jurymen, or friends to the culprit, or to his mother, 
 
 S S 2 
 
62 S Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 * 
 
 sister, or tenth cousin, or tenth cousin's ' slight acquaintance/ 
 will not at all mend the matter. Harshness in the abstract is 
 very consistent with a maudlin lenity in the concrete. I could 
 disclose the names of men of talent actuated by the purest 
 motives, who had prayed the Home Secretary to mitigate 
 sentences to an extent quite ludicrous, if the error were not so 
 pernicious ; while the same philanthropists, when acting as grand 
 jurors, have called on the Government to abolish tickets- of-leave ! 
 Sentiment like fire is a good servant, but a bad master. 
 
 ' Yours, &c., 
 
 ' M. D. HILL. 
 
 'Stapleton, Bristol, January 15.' 
 
 Lord Stanley's speech, referred to in this letter, is as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 ' Debate on the means of freeing the country from dangerous 
 Criminals, at a Meeting of the Society for Promoting the 
 Amendment of the Law, January 12, 1857. 
 
 * ijc * ^ ^c ifc 
 
 ' Lord Stanley said he might, perhaps, as Chairman, be allowed 
 to make a few remarks. The debate had, practically, turned on 
 the subject of transportation. That subject divided itself into two 
 distinct questions : first, what they were to do with criminals 
 while they were under punishment ; secondly, what they were 
 to do with them after their term of punishment had expired. 
 As regarded the first of those questions, he believed there was 
 a very general agreement amongst all who had well considered 
 the matter, that while a criminal was actually undergoing 
 his sentence it was in all respects more advantageous to detain 
 him here than to send him abroad. Under the former arrange- 
 ment, there was no possibility of the criminal mixing with the 
 home population, because he was kept secluded ; there were 
 plenty of public works upon which he might be employed; they 
 saved the expense of his passage; they had a more effective 
 superintendence than could be obtained on the other side of the 
 world, and, which was a consideration that ought not to be 
 entirely neglected, there was a better climate here than in most 
 places abroad where public works could be usefully executed. 
 
 ' The real difficulty was met with when they came to consider 
 the other question what they were to do with those whose 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1855. 629 
 
 strictly penal term had expired. It seemed to him that there 
 were only three courses which could possibly be adopted. The 
 first was, to send the criminals to colonies which were already 
 occupied ; the second, to found new colonies expressly for the 
 purpose of receiving them; the third, to keep them in this 
 country, with or without tickets-of-leave. As to the proposi- 
 tion, to send them to colonies which were already peopled, that 
 was an expedient of which he altogether despaired. The 
 colonists would not consent to receive criminals, and no sane 
 man would entertain the idea of forcing them to do so. It 
 was often said that there were particular settlements which would 
 receive a few convicts. The reception of a few would not meet 
 the difficulty ; it would, at the utmost, only postpone for two or 
 three years the adoption of the remedy which must be resorted 
 to at last. Neither ought it to be forgotten, that there were 
 wide differences between one class of convicts and another : so 
 that even if West Australia, or any other colony, similarly 
 situated, consented to receive a limited number of convicts, it 
 was certain that those whom the Home Government would be 
 most anxious to get rid of, the colony would be least willing 
 to receive. There would be a constant struggle Government 
 insisting on sending out their worst felons, the colonists pro- 
 testing against taking any except those who might be supposed 
 to be most reclaimable. The alternative lay between founding 
 a new colony for criminals and providing for them at home. 
 As to the former, it was surrounded with difficulties. In the 
 first place, it would be absolutely necessary to exclude free- 
 settlers from any new penal colony. A new penal colony 
 must be exclusively penal, otherwise the free settlers would 
 gradually strengthen in influence till they became the majority, 
 and prevented any further importation of criminals. Thus, in 
 one supposed object of transportation, the dispersing of a few 
 criminals among a population of innocent settlers, by whom 
 their labours would be speedily and usefully absorbed, the pro- 
 posed scheme failed altogether. Even, however, if free settlers 
 were excluded, a similar result would ultimately arise. The 
 convicts who were sent out would have children for, of course, 
 women would be sent; and in thirty years there would be a 
 new generation, consisting of persons who, being themselves 
 iiuioceiit, would object to the importation of criminals as 
 
630 Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 strongly as settlers who had gone out from England. Besides, 
 there was the practical question, where were they to find such 
 a place of transportation as would be required ? As to select- 
 ing a small South Sea island, that was out of the question. A 
 large area would be required, for it would not be worth while 
 to send out less than a very considerable number, and one, if 
 not the principal, object of sending out criminals would be to 
 put them in a place where there would be almost unlimited 
 space for all. Three situations had been named one, the 
 northern part of Australia ; another, Vancouver's Island ; 
 the third, Hudson's Bay. 
 
 e Now, to every one of these locations there was some grave 
 objections ; as to North Australia, there was, in the first place, 
 the certainty that, whatever the distance might be, the crimi- 
 nals who were confined there would, when allowed a certain 
 degree of liberty, find their way sooner or later to the other 
 Australian settlements. In the next place, it must be recol- 
 lected that the whole of Northern Australia was between the 
 tropics, and that the settlement of Port Essington, which was 
 founded there, was given up because the climate was found to 
 be unhealthy. In fact, all experience showed that in low- 
 lying lands thus situated the European race degenerated, and 
 its labour was unprofitable. 
 
 ' As to the Gulf of Carpentaria, its shores were all but un- 
 explored, and it was impossible to say whether cultivation could 
 be successfully carried on there. He did not attach much 
 weight to reports made by commanders of naval exploring ex- 
 peditions, who could have no knowledge beyond what might be 
 gained by a hasty survey of the coast. Even between their 
 accounts in this instance there was considerable discrepancy. 
 But in such matters experience was the only test : and it could 
 not be wise to incur the risk and cost of sending out a colony 
 on a large scale without first ascertaining whether Englishmen 
 could live and maintain themselves on the spot selected. 
 
 ' With regard to Vancouver's Island, he thought the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Californian diggings, and the feelings of the 
 inhabitants of the United States, were conclusive objections to 
 its being chosen. The same objections did not, indeed, apply 
 to Hudson's Bay ; but there he believed it would be found 
 that a subsistence was only to be obtained by hunting, the 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1 856. 63 1 
 
 climate offering insuperable objections to the keeping of stock 
 and the cultivation of land. These considerations, as it seemed 
 to him, disposed of all the localities which had been mentioned 
 as available. 
 
 ' In this state of things the only alternative left to them so 
 far as their penal knowledge extended, was to try and make 
 the best of detention at home. On this subject he would 
 remark, in the first place, that he did not think the ticket- 
 of-leave system had yet had a fair trial, much less was respon- 
 sible for the whole of the outrageous crimes which had been 
 recently perpetrated. A large number of men had been dis- 
 charged from the militia; regiments of the line which had 
 returned home, on being reduced, had naturally got rid of some 
 of their worst characters ; and owing to those two causes, there 
 was no doubt a larger criminal population than there would 
 have been under other circumstances. But in the next place 
 he did not think the principle on which the ticket-of-leave sys- 
 tem was framed had been fairly carried out. As he understood 
 that system, it was implied that the residence and occupation of 
 every man having a ticket-of-leave should be known, so that if 
 there were merely a strong suspicion that any such person was 
 getting his living dishonestly, he should on that ground alone 
 be called to account. Unless, then, the principle of the sys- 
 tem were applied with much greater strictness than it had 
 been, the system, so far from having had a fair trial, could not 
 be said to have had a trial at all. 
 
 ' Now he would just point out one or two means by which 
 he thought the existing evil might be alleviated. It struck 
 him as a great misfortune that in their prison discipline there 
 was no provision for an intermediate state between actual 
 seclusion in prison and absolute freedom of life out of doors. 
 The man who left prison was bewildered by the new state of 
 things in which he found himself. If his term of confinement 
 had been long, the feeling of freedom was strange to him ; he 
 was like a man coming out of a railway tunnel or a coal-pit 
 into the dazzling sunshine. Moreover, the men who were the 
 best behaved in prison were often the worst behaved out of 
 prison and for this reason, that they were the men who were 
 most susceptible to any influences, whether good or bad, which 
 were brought to bear upon them. The man who was docile 
 
632 Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 when subject to good influences was apt to show himself equally 
 docile when placed in contact with his old companions. He 
 thought,, therefore, that one evil which required to be corrected 
 was the sudden transition from a state of complete dependence 
 a state in which the choice between good and evil was hardly 
 offered to a state of unlimited liberty. He was also of 
 opinion that more consideration ought to be given to the 
 recommendation of Captain Maconochie, that the length of a 
 man's imprisonment should be made to depend, to a certain 
 extent, on his own diligence and good conduct, so that the sti- 
 mulus of hope and fear might never be wanting. 
 
 'Another question arose, namely, whether, taking into con- 
 sideration the state of employment in this country, and the 
 extreme difficulty of sending criminals abroad, it would not be 
 practicable to provide continued employment for those who 
 were willing to accept it on public works or otherwise, after 
 their discharge from gaol. It was, he thought, a reproach to 
 the state of the law that a ticket-of -leave man should be com- 
 pelled to come before a police magistrate, as had been the case 
 recently, and say, 'What am I to do? No one will give me 
 employment/ It was easy to talk of the pressure of competi- 
 tion, and of injustice to the innocent labourer : but the notion 
 of an invidious preference being given to criminals might be 
 guarded against by making the rate of wages offered in such 
 case purposely low, so that none would accept them who could 
 find other employ. And, as convict emigration was discontinued, 
 and as such employment of criminals at home must, however 
 slightly, affect the market, it was open to consideration whether 
 the slight injury thus done to the honest labourer might not 
 be balanced by offering increased facilities to free emigrants. 
 
 ' He would conclude by saying that, though they did not 
 pretend to see their way out of all these difficulties, they should 
 at least warn the public against trying vain and fancied 
 remedies. It was better to know that the problem remained 
 unsolved, than to put trust in some imaginary solution which 
 was sure to break down at last/* 
 
 In addition to the sites for a penal colony enumerated by 
 Lord Stanley, the eligibility of the Falkland Isles has been 
 
 * The Law Amendment Journal, January i5th, 1857. 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1856*. 633 
 
 insisted on. But the smallness of their area not much larger 
 than that of Devonshire would make it impossible for them 
 permanently to contain as a home any large number of dis- 
 charged convicts ; even if the fact that it is impossible to raise 
 corn there, and very difficult to cultivate common vegetables, 
 did not present insuperable objections to the project. 
 
 There is now a very general concurrence on two points : 
 i st. That so long as it is right to keep a convict under restraint, 
 confinement in this country is to be preferred to confinement 
 elsewhere. 2nd. That the difficulty with regard to convicts 
 begins to be felt on their discharge; because the burden 
 with which they may load us when they again become their own 
 masters, is vastly more onerous than their cost in prison. Each 
 of these positions is susceptible of abundant proof. To convey 
 convicts to a remote destination requires the use of hulks. 
 Now, why hulks in motion should be deemed capable of better 
 moral government than hulks at rest, I know not. On the 
 contrary, withdrawn, as those in command are, from supervision, 
 it is easy to suggest many reasons why their state should be 
 worse during the voyage than when lying in our harbours. But, 
 be that as it may, when the convicts have arrived at their desti- 
 nation, what assurance can we have that their treatment and 
 their conduct while in confinement will not be what the labours 
 of Sir William Moles worth and his colleagues proved them to 
 be in times past ? 
 
 It is not easy to procure trustworthy evidence as to the 
 manner in which the almost despotic powers entrusted to officers 
 having the charge of convicts abroad, are executed. Very few 
 minds can withstand the injurious effects of irresponsible 
 authority. Hence there is much difficulty in obtaining official 
 testimony on the subject, on which unhesitating reliance can 
 be placed. Officers and convicts stand in hostile relation to 
 each other : the feelings of the officers are therefore engaged in 
 favour of their own body ; and facts, it may be surmised, will be 
 suppressed, softened, and explained away. Testimony from 
 among the convicts is obviously open to even graver suspicion. 
 There is, however, one test which may be applied, namely this : 
 Are the facts related consistent with what we know of the 
 tendencies of arbitrary power ? There has lately been pub- 
 lished a letter by the wcll-knowii John Frost, on this subject, 
 
^34 Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 which I cannot but think deserves careful attention.* Frost 
 was transported for a political offence, which left his character 
 for veracity untouched. He is, however, what Johnson called a 
 ' Good hater :' and persons who deserve that eulogium, seem 
 impelled to depict the acts of those to whom they are hostile 
 in the darkest colours thus first deceiving themselves, and 
 then propagating the deception. There is, however, much 
 verisimilitude in all Mr. Frost's statements. Many of his 
 anecdotes relate to that well-known source of offence and 
 consequent punishment, a rigorous exaction of minute 
 observances, devised, no doubt, with the laudable intention 
 of habituating the convicts to treat those placed over them 
 with great respect. Offences which grow out of the neglect 
 of these rules, multiply with a rapidity scarcely credible to 
 minds which have never addressed themselves to that particular 
 subject. The party to be offended is the officer, who becomes 
 morbidly sensitive to disrespect, and most ingenious in discover- 
 ing its indications. Of necessity he is almost always the only 
 witness. He tells his story to those allied to him by the esprit 
 de corps, and accusation and conviction follow each other with 
 almost invariable certainty. Among the higher officers, the 
 offended party is often, by a like necessity, not only accuser and 
 witness, but judge. The state of chronic animosity in the 
 minds of the convicts, "produced by such a course of petty 
 tyranny, is utterly opposed to all hope of reformation. Indeed, 
 it can hardly fail to make them reckless of consequences, and 
 overwhelm them with despair. I subjoin a few extracts from 
 Frost's pamphlet, to which the reader will give such attention 
 as he may think they deserve. 
 
 ' There is something monstrously unjust in forming rules for 
 the government of a set of men, and then punishing for an 
 infraction of them, when it is impossible to retain the tenth 
 part in the memory. When I was put into the office at Port 
 Arthur, and made police clerk, it was part of my work to read 
 over the code to the prisoners. When convicts came to Port 
 Arthur they were brought to the office of the Commandant, and 
 the code read over to them. There were at that time more 
 
 * A Letter to the People of Great Britain and Ireland, on Transportation. By 
 John Frost. London : Holyoake and Co. Price $d. 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 635 
 
 than one hundred and fifty distinct laws ; it took me from an 
 hour and a quarter to an hour and a half to read them ; the far 
 greater part the most absurd and brutal ; yet implicit sub- 
 mission was required, and a breach of them was always punished 
 with great severity. There were many charges of this sort on 
 the book : ' Breaking the settlement regulations, they having 
 been read over to him on his arrival, twenty-five lashes / 
 ' thirty-six lashes / always bearing in mind the suffering and the 
 degradation arising from a Port Arthur flogging. 
 
 ***** 
 
 ' Many thousands of prisoners were subject to these regula- 
 tions. Hundreds were sent yearly to Port Arthur. They 
 were taken to the office, and the regulations read over to them. 
 It was impossible to observe them. Men were brought up to 
 the office and charged with breaking the rules, and sentenced to 
 be flogged ; no plea was admitted ; they were tied up to the 
 triangle, and their backs cut to pieces by the infernal knout, as 
 if they had committed the grossest moral oifence ; and yet 
 these men were expected to be turned from the error of their 
 
 ivays by such proceedings ! 
 
 ***** 
 
 ' A few days after, I was in the office watching with a good 
 deal of attention the conduct of the Commandant. There were 
 standing before him in the dock several miserable creatures, 
 whom he was trying according to law. ' Call in that man/ 
 said the Commandant : ' call in that man/ A young man Avas 
 brought in and put into the dock ; here was a scene of a similar 
 kind to that which I have just described. ' How did you dare 
 to break my regulations and to treat me with contempt ?' The 
 man was so frightened that he could say nothing. ' Put that 
 man into the cells, Mr. Newman/ said the Commandant ; ' and, 
 by heavens, if you do this again, I will give you a sound 
 flogging/ What had this young man done ? Passed the office 
 of the Commandant with his hand in his pocket ! 
 
 ***** 
 
 ( One day a very intelligent man was brought to the office, and 
 
 charged before Captain with breaking the settlement 
 
 regulations, and insolence to one of the constables. The 
 evidence of the constable was as follows : ' The gangs were 
 going to church yesterday ; I observed the prisoner breaking the 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 settlement regulations, he was walking with his hand in his 
 pocket. I went up to him, and asked him if he was not aware 
 that he was transgressing by keeping his hand in his pocket ? 
 He laughed at me yes, sir, he laughed at me/ ' What have 
 you to say in answer to these charges said the Commandant. 
 ' I plead guilty to the first charge/ said the prisoner, ' and not 
 guilty to the second. I was walking to church with a hand in 
 my pocket. The constable came up to me and asked me ' if I 
 were not aware that I was breaking the settlement regulations 
 by keeping my hand in my pocket ? But/ said he, ' I suppose 
 your hand is cold, and you have put it into your pocket to warm 
 it r ' That is the fact/ said I, l my hand is very cold, and I have 
 put it into my pocket to warm it/ He smiled at me and I 
 smiled at him, and I did not expect that he would bring me 
 before you on such a charge/ ' Do you think that this defence 
 will serve you ?' said the Commandant. ' It is not enough for 
 you to set me at defiance ; to treat me with disrespect ; but you 
 must insult my officer in the discharge of his duty ? By 
 heavens, I have a great mind to give you a sound flogging ! 
 Put this man in the cells, Mr. Newman, and leave him there 
 till I give special orders to release him ; and beware/ address- 
 ing the prisoner, ' that you are not brought before me again, 
 for if you are I will give you cause to remember it/ The 
 prisoner would remain in the cells till, by permission, he would 
 be brought before the Commandant, and then, in the most 
 abject language, would he be obliged to acknowledge his 
 offence, and promise to offend no more ; and if in making this 
 acknowledgment the Commandant perceived anything like a 
 sense of injury, he would be sent back again, if no other 
 
 punishment were inflicted. 
 
 ***** 
 
 f The surgeon at Port Arthur brought a charge against a 
 prisoner, then confined in the cells, ' for disrespectful language/ 
 The evidence, as it stands on the book, is as follows : ' I went to 
 the cell where the prisoner was confined, I called him, he answered 
 very disrespectfully, ' what do you want/ ' ' What have you to 
 say to this charge ?' said the Commandant. ' Wlien the 
 surgeon came to the cell door I was asleep ; I heard a voice, 
 but I did not hear what was said ; the cells are so dark that I 
 could not distinguish the person who spoke, and thinking that 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 637 
 
 it was the constable, I asked him what he wanted. I did not 
 know that it was the surgeon who spoke to me ; if I have 
 offended, I am very sorry for it/ One would think that this 
 defence, which the surgeon knew to be true, would have been 
 satisfactory. It produced no favourable impression on the 
 surgeon or the Commandant ; the man was sentenced to receive 
 thirty-six lashes, and the surgeon was present when the punish- 
 ment was inflicted, and, from my knowledge of the man, I will 
 venture to say that the lash was laid on unsparingly. 
 
 ' One day while I was in the office at Port Arthur an old man 
 was brought up from the cells, where he had been placed by the 
 orders of the Commandant for trial. The charge was made by 
 the Commandant for using to him disrespectful language, he 
 being accuser, witness, and judge. ' How did you dare/ said 
 the Commandant, ' to answer me yesterday so disrespectfully ?' 
 1 1 did not see you yesterday/ said the prisoner. { Not see me '/ 
 said Captain - . ' Did I not speak to you as I was passing 
 your place of work; and did you not very disrespectfully ask 
 1 what do you say ?' ' 'I did not know/ said the old man, 
 ' that it was you who spoke to me : I am, sir, as you can see, 
 nearly blind ; I should not know you at this distance, for I can 
 scarcely see you ; besides, sir, I am nearly deaf. I heard some 
 one speak to me yesterday, I thought it was one of the gang", 
 and not understanding, I asked what he said ; I can assure you 
 that I was not aware that it was you who spoke to me/ One 
 would think that this defence, and the miserable appearance of 
 the old man, who was a charcoal burner, would have satisfied 
 any one possessing the least particle of humanity ; a very old 
 man nearly blind and deaf. All these and the defence excited 
 
 no feelings of a favourable kind in Captain . His vanity 
 
 had been wounded ; he sent the old man back again to the cells, 
 there to remain till his pitiful spirit would be softened by the 
 sufferings of the offending party/ 
 
 These are the lighter charges brought by the Author against 
 the administration of convict government in Tasmania. The 
 others, although judging from the past, and also considering the 
 arguments a priori which may be adduced in support of their 
 probability they ought not to be disregarded, are nevertheless 
 too grave to be circulated, unless upon testimony freer from 
 exception than that on which they stand at present. 
 
638 Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 Still no one can doubt that the tendencies to abuse in the 
 government of all men who are not free whether convicts or 
 slaves are so great, that assiduous watchfulness from without is 
 essential to keep them at all in check. At home we have 
 vigilant eyes to seek information, the press rapidly to diffuse it, 
 and an irresistible force of public opinion to give immediate 
 effect to the dictates of humanity. But when the evil is 
 removed to a distance, the operation of these powers is always 
 weakened and embarrassed not seldom entirely defeated, 
 
 From the 'Spectator' of January $rd, 1857. 
 
 ' WHERE SHALL WE PUT OUR FELONS ? 
 
 ( If the prevalence of violent and predacious crimes excites 
 that hysterical alarm which breaks out in the cry of f gallows/ 
 what will be the state of feeling when the prisoners sentenced 
 to short periods of penal servitude are let loose upon us ? That 
 system began in 1853, so that the first detachment will be 
 coming out in 1857. Already the revulsion has created one 
 of those periodical paroxysms of ' severity/ which, as Mr. M. D. 
 Hill says, cause the gallows to be venerated as an instrument 
 of redemption, almost as much as ' the cross/ The panic fit 
 is a reaction on the habitual ' yearning for mild sentences' into 
 which the people of this country have been persuaded by philan- 
 thropists. Forgery, stealing, and many other offences, were 
 punished by hanging, until the philanthropists and utilitarians 
 abolished the practice ; f severity' was succeeded by a merciful 
 ' leniency/ and when extraneous circumstances compelled Minis- 
 ters to abandon convict transportation, the notion of leniency 
 suggested that the more disagreeable state of close imprisonment 
 in this crowded land must be shorter than a sentence of ' trans- 
 portation,' with the pleasures of going abroad to work, and all 
 the contingent opportunities of trade in the towns or free life 
 among the bush-rangers. We are about to feel the consequence 
 of that ' leniency' in a grand recruitment of our certificated 
 criminals ; and we may well press the alarming question What 
 to do with our felons ? 
 
 ' One process would be the shortest of all it would be to go 
 back to the old principle of action and kill them. No place 
 of safety so secure as the grave ; no example so impressive 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1 856. 639 
 
 as the gallows; no eradication of the vicious element in 
 society so complete as extinction. The criminals are becoming 
 too many for control : extirpate them, and they will neither 
 accumulate,, propagate, nor pervert. We fear, however, that 
 { the age/ whose opinions some people assert so confidently, is 
 scarcely prepared for that capital operation; so the next step is 
 to send the criminals out of the way. Simple exile would be 
 the easiest mode ; but civilized nations object to being colonized 
 by aliens, more especially by felons ; and the Channel Islands 
 are the only states permitted to keep up the practice of felon 
 exile. Pack them off, then, to ' some colony;' or if the very 
 Colonies mutinously object, make a penal settlement where 
 there are no free colonists select ' some island/ We pass 
 aside for the moment the absolute impossibility of reviving the 
 Norfolk Island atrocities : before a Government could do that, 
 it would have perforce to re -study the evidence of 1837, and the 
 subsequent history of the Australias, and would then discover 
 the impracticability of any such dream as renewal of transpor- 
 tation. But even if the convicts were ' transported/ unless it 
 were for life, they must at some time or other return. Trans- 
 portation, therefore, would not meet Mr. HilFs requirement, of 
 preventing criminals, once detected and caught, from returning 
 to prey upon society. 
 
 ' That is the practical want. It has always been felt, but 
 felt doubly since the number of the criminal class has become 
 excessive; while the increase of wealth has increased the 
 temptations to violence, and the development of peaceful habits 
 has made self-defence more distasteful to the quiet citizen. The 
 difficulty is not new. We talk about exposure to the assaults 
 and depredations of ticket-of-leave men, as if it were quite a 
 new invention ; whereas we have only given a new name to an 
 old thing. Those who are now so called promiscuously, are 
 not ticket-of-leave men in ninety- seven cases out of a hundred. 
 They are nothing more nor less than returned convicts and dis- 
 charged prisoners, a class whom we must always have among 
 us under any system of limited sentences. No doubt, the 
 ticket-of-leave men, accurately so called, are a bad variety ; 
 although they are an official importation. How did they come 
 among us ? When transportation was abolished on grounds of 
 colonial policy, and it became necessary to consider how we 
 
640 Sequel to Charge of December, 1 856. 
 
 should deal with the felon multitude left on our hands, certain 
 prison-reformers suggested various expedients for diminishing 
 the force- of that army; and among these, a detention of the 
 worst classes of convicts until they should have undergone some 
 test of their being less dangerous. The tests may be imperfect; 
 the possibility of really reforming hardened rogues may be 
 doubted ; but at all events, the general proposition tended to 
 keep off the weight of a considerable portion, and that the 
 worst portion, of the felonry. As a part of the process, the 
 reformers suggested conditional pardons, revocable on a return 
 to old practices. We have as yet had no completely developed 
 machinery for carrying out this system ; we have no auxiliary 
 ' Societes de Patronage/ such as are to be found in Bavaria 
 and other Continental countries, aiding the discharged prisoner 
 to find that employment which respectable society refuses to 
 him ; our highest prison-governors have been avowed opponents 
 of the system intrusted to their administration ; the very legis- 
 lation has been crude, faltering, and ' lenient/ When condi- 
 tional pardons were suggested, the slow official mind naturally 
 associated the words with the only concrete form of such a 
 thing which it knew. In Australia, convicts were allowed to 
 go at large with a ' ticket-of-leave' and many of them did go 
 at large, seeking whom they might devour, a terror to the 
 honest settlers. The real intent of the proposed correctional 
 discipline and tentative release was not understood, and it has 
 never been adopted ; but that colonial abuse was imported ; and 
 our towns can tell whether they like the import. An unreformed 
 man out with ticket-of-leave, indeed, is no worse than an un- 
 reformed man discharged at the expiry of his sentence ; and a 
 conditional pardon, deferred for seven or ten years, or more, 
 would manifestly be a relief in lieu of absolute discharge in 
 four or five years. These varieties, whether of name or nature, 
 signify comparatively little. Speaking broadly, it may be said 
 that most of our worst culprits have been led into their worst 
 courses by degrees : most of the convict men have been pick- 
 pockets and thieves when lads, and have been punished ; and the 
 great class of adult criminals consists of discharged prisoners. 
 
 ' The question is, how to diminish that class how to draw 
 it off to convert it into a class of not discharged prisoners. 
 We cannot, in the present state of opinion, kill it off. We 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 641 
 
 cannot transport it to the Colonies. If we carry it to ' some 
 island/ we still only imprison it; and the further the prison 
 the greater the cost, the fewer the transports to it, the worse 
 the surveillance. If it be a prison, it were best nearer home. 
 If the men are once immured, it is desirable to make the prison 
 less costly in some degree self-supporting. And as so many 
 human creatures are upon our hands, it is reasonable to ask if 
 we cannot convert them to some use if we cannot employ 
 them, for the health of body and soul if we cannot perhaps 
 redeem a few. That is not the object of public punishment ; 
 but when the culprits are in our keeping, common humanity 
 and the simplest Christian feeling forbid the exclusion of that 
 secondary object. 
 
 f The more so since, on reflection, rather formidable questions 
 arise as to our own relation to the criminals. Are they an alien 
 class of devils, simply our enemies, or are they not our fellow- 
 creatures ? Did any man ever inspect a large number of pri- 
 soners without noting that the general run is cursed at birth 
 with some deficiency of faculties ? See the low heads, the rude 
 features, the strangely-deformed countenances ! The strongest 
 objection to this view lies in another yet more momentous 
 reflection : what are we, the non-criminal class, that we can 
 speak so absolutely of those wretched outcasts ? f Let him 
 that is without sin cast the first stone/ Are all the John 
 Dean Pauls, the Sadleirs, the Redpaths, detected ? How many of 
 them are among us, the ' innocent,' who are clamouring for ' pro- 
 tection?' There is one class of criminals more dangerous 
 than those out on ticket-of-leave, and that consists of the 
 wwarraigned criminals. This is a delicate part of the subject 
 to be discussed, but it cannot be overlooked. How can 
 the respectable ' London Scoundrels'* cry aloud for treadmill 
 and gallows, when culprits as hardened and as bold as any 
 in Coldbath Fields are at large when offenders as notorious 
 are not only unscathed, but the very highest in the land are 
 winking and conniving at their being let off? These cases 
 are not roundly stated in print ; they are not the less noto- 
 rious ; they are known to the Maninis, the Pauls, and Agars, 
 
 * The signature of a correspondent in the Times who, during the panic in the 
 winter of 1856-7, clamoured for increased severity of punishment, and scouted all 
 attempts at the reformation of criminals M . D. 1L 
 
 T T 
 
642 Sequel to Charge of December } 1856. 
 
 of prison society; and wonderfully is the moral lesson in- 
 verted, when the sufferers by gallows and treadmill see their 
 accomplices on the Bench and in Parliament, and know that 
 the ' crime' of the humble is humanely treated as the ' disease' 
 of the lordly or the f honourable/ ' 
 
 From the 'Birmingham Journal 3 of January 14^, 1857 : 
 
 ' A VISIT FROM BUSHRANGERS IN TASMANIA. 
 
 ' The following extract is from the letter of a lady, resident 
 near Hobart Town, Tasmania, to a relation in England. The 
 trustworthiness of the writer is beyond all doubt. It is dated 
 July 1 3th, 1856. To our mind the narrative fully justifies the 
 indisposition of the colonists to receive the scum of our criminal 
 population : 
 
 ' ' A large party of young people were on a visit to Mr. Lord, 
 of Avoca, invited for the sheep-shearing. They had been 
 making merry with dancing and music over night, and the 
 grand doings were to begin next morning. It was summer. 
 Mr. Lord rose at five, and was surprised that he did not hear 
 any of the men stirring. Just as he finished dressing, and was 
 about putting the guard of his watch over his head, the chamber 
 door opened, and a good-looking sort of man, well dressed, too, 
 stepped in, saying, ' Oh, Mr. Lord, I'll save you the trouble of 
 doing that. Give me your watch/ Mr. L. saw that resistance 
 would be worse than useless, and gave it up. The stranger, 
 who was the notorious Dalton, turning to Mrs. Lord, who was 
 in bed with the baby, asked for her watch. Now it so hap- 
 pened that she had three in her possession at the time, one her 
 own, one her daughter's, and one belonging to some one else. 
 She said, foolishly, ' I haven't one.' ' Oh, very well,' said 
 Dalton, ' take your choice ; either give me what you have, or I 
 will blow your brains out ;' at the same time presenting a pistol 
 at her head. Of course she gave up what she had, and he ran- 
 sacked the room for anything else he liked to have. He then 
 said to Mrs. Lord, ' Get up.' Mr. Lord said, ' Not while you 
 are in the room.' ' Ah, well, I don't mind that much; I'll 
 stand outside the door/ I suppose Mr. Lord went out with 
 him, for he placed an accomplice at the chamber-door to watch 
 that Mrs. L. did not escape, and was proceeding to open the 
 next door on the landing, when Mr. Lord said, ' Stop, there are 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 643 
 
 some young ladies in that room, who are my visitors, and under 
 my protection, as well as my own daughter. I will not allow 
 you to go in there/ ' Well/ said Dalton, ' tell them to get up 
 then/ Mr. Lord went in and told them to do so, of course ex- 
 plaining to them who the strangers were. Now I must explain 
 
 that among these girls were two sisters, E and M 
 
 A . Their father is in the office of Royal Engineers. 
 
 The elder had a choice assortment of jewellery, and, I think, 
 showed her presence of mind in disposing of it. The morning 
 before she had accidentally torn an opening in one of the seams 
 of her dress ; into this, between the dress and lining, she put 
 her watch and chain, planning, as her dress was long, to hold it 
 up at that part lest the watch should chink against the floor. 
 Her purse she put in a slipper shoe, and kicked it under two 
 beds until it touched the wall. Bracelets and other ornaments 
 she threw into the fire-place, which they took care to fill with 
 curl-papers and any rubbish they could find. I did not hear 
 much about the others at this part of the affair, as they are 
 strangers to us. Dalton was impatient long before they were 
 
 ready or willing to leave the room. Miss forgot that in 
 
 her little desk she had a choice bracelet At last they 
 
 must come out, and Dalton marshalled them down stairs, for- 
 bidding a word to be spoken. He led them into the large 
 dining-room, where the men and the young Mr. Lords were all 
 ranged on one side, pinioned. He fetched Mr. and Mrs. Lord 
 the guests were allowed seats. Dalton said if they were 
 quiet he would not tie them. He and his companion then pro- 
 ceeded to ransack the house, and in the young ladies' room 
 broke open the little desk, took the bracelet and anything else 
 of value about the room, but never guessed the treasures of the 
 fire-place and slipper. They then returned to their prisoners, 
 and said if they behaved well they would give them a good 
 breakfast, which they did, though only fear of giving offence to 
 these desperadoes would induce any one to eat. The men were 
 untied for the meal, and everything went on quietly until one 
 whispered something to his neighbour. The tremendous burst 
 of passion this excited in Dalton, the threat with a pistol at the 
 head to blow his brains out that instant if a sound were 
 uttered, and the awful language, so paralysed the young ladies 
 
 that M A slid off her chair and crouched near the piano; 
 
 T T 2 
 
644 Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 others disappeared from their seats ; all were afraid of the shots, 
 and terrified at the violent language. While all this had been 
 going on, the constables at the next police station, looking ont 
 towards Mr. Lord's, which was on a rising ground, were sur- 
 prised not to see any stir about the place. One said, l Why, I 
 thought there were to be such early doings with the shearing ! 
 I'll get the glass and examine through it/ He did so, but not 
 a creature was to be seen. ' Depend upon it, there's something 
 up/ (quite a colonial phrase) ; Til go and see about it/ ' And 
 I'll go with you/ said a young man who was returning from 
 the Diggings with 4O/. in his pocket, and had slept at the 
 station on his way from Launceston to Hobart Town. Ah ! the 
 poor constable little thought he should never come back alive, 
 and the young man that he should become penniless. Just 
 after the disturbance at the breakfast, Kelly, Dalton's accom- 
 plice, gave him a signal that some one was approaching; he 
 went to the door and met the constable, who accosted him by 
 name. Dalton told him if he moved a limb he was a dead 
 man. Whether he stirred or not cannot now be known. In 
 another instant those within heard a shot, and poor Buckley's 
 brains were scattered on the pavement. His companion was 
 relieved of the contents of his pocket, pinioned, and brought in. 
 Dalton then ordered young Mr. Lord to pick out three of the 
 best horses. He and Kelly then mounted, each taking one 
 maid servant on the horse with him, it is supposed, to protect 
 them from the shots which might have followed their departure. 
 The third horse was, I believe, to carry stores. They sent the 
 women back at half a mile from the house. The property they 
 made off with was of considerable value, and was never re- 
 covered. The two were taken a few months afterwards, and 
 lodged in the gaol at Launceston, but managed to effect their 
 escape, much to the scandal of the authorities at that side of 
 the island. Kelly was retaken in Melbourne ; and now I want 
 to tell how cleverly a young draper managed the capture of 
 Dalton, when another day would have seen him safe off in one 
 of the ocean steamers. His person and features had been very 
 fully described, when it was known he had escaped to Melbourne, 
 and everybody was on the look-out for him. One evening just 
 at dusk, though lights were put up in the shops, he went into 
 one, and requested change for a 2O/. note. The shopman 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 645 
 
 instantly recognised him, but took no notice, only saying he 
 didn't know, but would ask his master. To the latter he 
 divulged his thoughts, and begged permission to manage the 
 capture. His master consenting, the young man took his hat, 
 and returning to the apparent stranger, said they could not 
 change the note, but if the gentleman would permit him, he 
 thought he could take him where he could get it done. The 
 stranger thanked him, and the young man led him at a quick 
 pace through back streets and byeways until they came to the 
 back of the police-office. Through the gate or door into the 
 yard at the back they passed ; here was the critical moment ; 
 you may suppose the young man did not loiter ; he ran up the 
 steps, closely followed by the unsuspecting stranger, who in the 
 gloom of night and closely shut- up windows failed to recognise 
 what he had only seen perhaps the front of, and by daylight, 
 too. In they went. Still the appearance of the clerks at the 
 separate desks might make it pass for a merchant's counting- 
 house. The young man explained the nature of their errand, 
 giving the officers time to bend all eyes on the stranger. It 
 seemed but a moment ere the cry of ' Dalton !' and the rush to 
 secure him, took place. The convict was fearfully armed with 
 revolvers, pistols, and knife. He said to the young man, ' Ah ! 
 if I had only suspected your purpose as we came up the steps, 
 I would have shattered your head to pieces blown it to atoms !' 
 He was brought over here, and both he and Kelly were executed 
 at Launceston. The last of such terrors of whom we have 
 heard is f Dido/ (of course a false name,) but murder could not 
 be proved against him, as there were no witnesses to the fact, 
 though a labourer heard the shot, and believes it was ' Dido' 
 whom he saw. The felon is sent down to Port Arthur, on Tas- 
 mania's peninsula, where I hope he may remain.' ' 
 
 The writer of this narrative is known to me, and I have 
 great confidence in the truth and accuracy of her statements. 
 As may be well imagined, it is by no means a rare or isolated 
 event which is described. 
 
 While dwelling on the evils which result from the discharge 
 of dangerous criminals in a thickly-inhabited country, we some- 
 times forget how much more to be dreaded these wretches 
 are by a district thinly populated ; and how one or two ruffians 
 may fill a large territory with dismay. Let us rather bear our 
 
646 Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 own burdens than cast them on our countrymen and their 
 descendants, of whose welfare we ought to be as tender as of 
 our own ; and who should never feel the superiority of our 
 strength, but as exercised for their protection ! 
 
 From the t Daily News' of December ^ist, 1856. 
 
 e The Charge of the Recorder of Birmingham on the trans- 
 portation and ticket-of-leave question is an able and statesman- 
 like address. Mr. Hill, while ignoring neither the errors of the 
 past nor the difficulties of the future, thinks it his duty rather 
 to allay than to aggravate the panic of the present. He 
 seasonably reminds us that before our colonies had refused to 
 take our convicts, before transportation had ceased to be a 
 punishment applicable to the great bulk of our more serious 
 offenders, crimes of violence, attended with every circumstance 
 of outrage and bloodthirstiness, were certainly not less frequent 
 in given years (such as 1850, the year of the Frimley murders), 
 than they are at present. He does not, however, attempt to 
 make a case as against the present panic-mongers out of such 
 a fact as this. The point is not whether serious crime is or is 
 not more frequent in 1856 than it has been in any given year 
 before the comparative cessation of transportation, but whether 
 it is not now far more frequent than it ought to be far more 
 frequent than under a better system it might be. There can 
 be no earthly doubt that it is. Whether serious crimes of 
 violence have progressively increased since the year 1853, and 
 are still progressively increasing, may possibly be a question ; 
 but there can be no question that they ought to be, and that 
 they may be, diminished. 
 
 ' That society has a right to claim from Government protec- 
 tion for person and property by the adoption of the wisest and 
 best practicable measures for the repression of attacks on either, 
 is one of the most elementary propositions in the whole range 
 of social and political science. If in the exercise of this repres- 
 sive power Government can combine the two ends, of reclaiming 
 the convict and protecting society, it is well ; but if not, there 
 cannot be a moment's hesitation as to which of the two objects is 
 to be sacrificed. The security of the persons and properties of 
 those who have not violated the laws is the primary object 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1 856. 647 
 
 the reformation of the transgressors of the law is but secondary. 
 At any other time the enunciation of truisms like these would 
 be a solemn impertinence, but in these days of morbid sympathy 
 with the violators of law and enemies of order, it is absolutely 
 necessary to record a plain and emphatic protest against being 
 suspected for a moment of participating in the weaknesses of a 
 sentimental philanthropy. Let us repeat it once more the 
 protection of society is the main end ; the reclamation of the 
 convict is a secondary end. And the practical problem is, now 
 that our colonies won't take our convicts, how to deal with 
 them so as to secure the former end, without absolutely losing 
 sight of the latter. 
 
 ' Send them abroad get rid of them from our shores ship 
 them off or shovel them away somewhere or somehow is the 
 cry of the panic-mongers. Let us concede at once that if the 
 extermination of the convict part of our population by process 
 of law were the object sought, it might to some extent be 
 attained in this fashion. A fleet of transports might be fitted 
 out, capable of holding all the present inmates (some 9000 in 
 number) of our public-works prisons. This floating cargo of 
 crime might be discharged, with or without a month's pro- 
 vision, on any spot sufficiently remote, roomy, and secure, and 
 there left to its own devices. This is the simplest form of the 
 notion of transportation as it now suggests itself to the more 
 rabid victims of the garrotte panic. It is liable to several 
 trifling objections, which may all be passed over in favour of 
 this somewhat conclusive one that it would be at once far 
 more inhuman and far less effective than hanging, nothing 
 being more certain than that the convict thus transported must, 
 in the course of a very short space of time, either perish or 
 escape. 
 
 ' The next form of transportation that has been suggested in 
 some quarters is really almost as absurd as the last this is the 
 plan of sending your convict some thousand miles beyond seas, 
 in order to shut him up under due watch and ward in some 
 island prison, with a proper staff of officials, and a humane 
 supply of necessaries, either for the residue of his life, or for a 
 lengthened term of years. Why all this needless cost merely 
 for the sake of keeping the man in safe custody ? Alter your 
 laws, lengthen your periods of incarceration and four prison 
 
648 Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 walls, or a proper guard of soldiers, on any Essex marsh or 
 Yorkshire moor, would quite as well answer the purpose of 
 keeping the felon during the term of his sentence apart from 
 all contact with the world. It is at the end of the penal term 
 that the real difficulty begins, and this difficulty will be just as 
 great in the case of a man released from Tahiti as in the case of 
 his fellow-convict let loose from Dartmoor. The difficulty is 
 not to keep in safe custody, but to employ when the custody is 
 at an end. At this moment Bermuda and Gibraltar are public- 
 works prisons beyond the seas, but no one who knows anything of 
 the subject will venture to assert that the convict discharged 
 from Bermuda or Gibraltar is at all more reformed, or at all 
 more likely to find employment on his return to this country, 
 than the convict discharged from Portland or Portsmouth. In 
 fact, if there be any difference, it is in favour of the home 
 prisons, which, as a general rule, are better managed than those 
 more remote from the surveillance of the central authorities. 
 
 ' The next, and at present the most popular, notion of trans- 
 portation is that which involves the creation of a new penal 
 settlement on the grand scale a place, that is, beyond seas, 
 where there is no settled or colonial population (for of such it 
 is admitted on all hands we have no hope of availing ourselves) ; 
 but where a large establishment must be set on foot, a great 
 apparatus of penal discipline inaugurated, and where, at all 
 events for a considerable period of time, the bulk, if not the 
 whole, of the European population must consist of officials and 
 male convicts. That we can found such a settlement is beyond 
 a doubt. Where to do it may be a difficult question, but that 
 somewhere or other it may be done, if we choose to spend 
 enough upon it, admits of no question at all. As yet, indeed, 
 the advocates of the scheme are all at issue amongst themselves 
 as to the locality of the suggested settlement. One gentleman 
 proposes Vancouver's Island ; another ' authority/ after con- 
 clusively disposing of that notable site by the objections of its 
 extreme distance from this country and its close proximity to 
 the gold fields of California, strongly urges upon the attention 
 of a Legislature at a loss for a convict settlement the superior 
 advantages of Hudson's Bay. 
 
 1 It is difficult to see how absurdity can go much further 
 than in thus representing as a proper field for convict reclamation 
 
Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 649 
 
 a land of barren and inhospitable wastes, cut off from all mari- 
 time access to the rest of the world for many months of the 
 year by the rigours of an Arctic winter. Mr. Howitt who 
 seems to consider that the mission of England is to sow the 
 earth broadcast with penal settlements, which, as fast as they 
 ripen into colonies, are to shed the husk of their origin, and 
 refuse to employ the labour which created them has advanced 
 the notion that the temptation offered by white slave labour to 
 intending emigrants is sufficient, after the first rough works of 
 road-making and forest-clearing have been accomplished, to 
 overcome very considerable disadvantages of climate and 
 situation. But does any one suppose that the British Siberia 
 of Hudson's Bay could, by any amount of preliminary road- 
 rnaking, or by any extent of convict population, really be 
 brought into competition, as a field for emigration, with the 
 wheat-waving plains of Canada? Even assuming that in the 
 course of years this might be the case, what in the meantime 
 would be the position of the convict settlement ? There would 
 be an almost exclusively male population of superintending 
 officials and superintended convicts, to the number perhaps of 
 from ten to fifteen thousand. We know what once resulted 
 from this state of things ; we know what must result from any 
 second experiment of the same kind. The abominations of 
 Norfolk Island and Tasmania are literally unutterable they 
 are safe from mention by reason of their loathsomeness, as the 
 skunk is safe from capture by reason of his stink. 
 
 ' But even supposing that, in order to quiet the fears of an 
 excited public, we were ready to risk a repetition of these 
 atrocities, is it quite so clear that we should not be lavishing a 
 vast amount of treasure and wasting a great deal of available 
 labour, for a purpose that might be attained equally well at less 
 cost of both ? Transportation in this form is desperately 
 expensive. A Tasmanian convict costs 35/. a year ; a West 
 Australian convict, 41^. At Dartmoor or Portland they could 
 be kept for i$l. On the ' London Scoundrel' theory, indeed, 
 all this expense is so much waste that might be saved by the 
 summary process of hanging. It is sufficient to say that the 
 British public has not yet been carried by the garrotte panic 
 back to the hanging point ; and the convict, who out of prison 
 costs the community in depredations about zool. a year, must 
 
650 Sequel to Charge of December, 1856. 
 
 still cost the State, while in prison, about an eighth of that 
 sum for his custody and support. It is a miserable burden, 
 doubtless, but somehow or other it must be borne. The thing 
 to remember is that it will press more heavily on the taxpayer 
 of this coimtry, if the convict is sent abroad, than if he is kept 
 at home. That is the first point. The second is, that the 
 taxpayer of this country derives no benefit from all the road- 
 making and forest-felling which are the fruits of the convict's 
 labour in the colony ; whereas, they already derive some, and 
 might derive much more, benefit from his labour here. On this 
 point we agree with the Recorder of Birmingham. We would 
 rather see convict labour employed here on works which no 
 private capitalist could afford to undertake, but which might 
 fairly be undertaken by Government on the principle of getting 
 as much return as possible for the necessary expense of main- 
 taining the convict. This is work in which convict labour 
 cannot improperly interfere with free labour, for it is work on 
 which free labour would never be employed. Of such work 
 there is abundance in this country. There are harbours of 
 refuge to be made, bogs to be drained, marshes to be reclaimed, 
 sewerage works to be executed ; why not employ for the direct 
 benefit of the English public the convict labour which either 
 here or elsewhere the English public has to pay for, and else- 
 where at a higher rate than here ? 
 
 ' Surely these are points to be considered before rushing 
 wildly upon the notion of founding at all costs a new penal 
 settlement. Extend your terms of imprisonment classify your 
 prisoners employ them on useful public works enable those 
 who are corrigible to emigrate to the colonies with funds earned 
 by their own extra labour but do not, before you have tried 
 these things, embark on the costly and doubtful enterprise of 
 creating a new penal settlement, under the vague impression 
 that you are laying the foundation of a new colony/ 
 
CHAEGE OP MAECH, 1857. 
 GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND JURY, 
 
 Executive Government, at the commencement of the 
 JL Session which terminated a few days ago, introduced a 
 Bill for amending what is commonly called the Ticket-of-Leave 
 Act ; and although this bill was withdrawn in consequence of 
 the intended dissolution of Parliament, yet it has been officially 
 announced that it will be introduced again when the Houses 
 reassemble. Permit me then to address to you, and through 
 you to a larger audience, such observations as have occurred to 
 me on the Bill itself, and on the speech of Sir George Grey 
 bringing it before the House of Commons that speech dis- 
 closing the principles by which the Home Office will be guided 
 in the administration of the new law. The treatment of crimi- 
 nals, Gentlemen, is a subject which does not admit of its details 
 being regulated by the inflexible rules of an Act of Parliament. 
 Consequently a large discretion must be vested in the Ministers 
 of the Crown ; and it becomes quite as important to ascertain 
 in what manner they propose to exercise that discretion, as it is 
 to consider the alterations which are now to be made in the law 
 itself. 
 
 But, first in order, let me invite your attention to the proposed 
 amendments in the Act. This Act, which passed in 1853, 
 created an equivalent punishment in lieu of transportation, 
 called penal servitude; consisting in imprisonment with hard 
 labour, either at home, or in certain colonies of the Crown as 
 Gibraltar and Bermuda. But as the new punishment was deemed 
 more severe than that which it replaced, the old terms of trans- 
 portation were in almost every instance considerably shortened. 
 These equivalents being established, the punishment of trans- 
 portation, in all cases in which the law did not authorize its 
 infliction for a period of fourteen years at the least, was repealed. 
 The novelty to which I have directed your attention is not, 
 however, the characteristic feature of the Act. That consists 
 in the authority conferred upon the Crown to grant a licence to 
 
6 $2, Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 convicts to go at large before the expiration of their sentences 
 such licences, or tickets-of-leave, however, to be revocable at 
 will; the convict not being entitled to any notice that his 
 licence is about to be withdrawn, to any information as to the 
 grounds upon which it is recalled, or to any opportunity of 
 rebutting the charges which may have led to this forfeiture of 
 his liberty. Such, Gentlemen, is the law as it stands at pre- 
 sent. But it is proposed to obliterate the legal distinction 
 between transportation and penal servitude, to consolidate both 
 punishments leaving it to the discretion of the Home Office 
 in each particular case to determine whether the convict shall 
 be imprisoned or transported to assimilate the sentences as to 
 length (with one exception) to those formerly appropriated to 
 transportation, and to affix upon this consolidated punishment 
 the designation of Penal Servitude. Such are the changes in 
 the law to be effected by the Bill. 
 
 Let me now put you in possession of the course to be pursued 
 in administering the amended Act. Tickets-of-leave are not to 
 be abolished. In one sense, indeed, they are to be extended. 
 Hitherto they have not been granted to convicts sentenced to 
 penal servitude. The Government, however, yielding to the 
 opinion of a Committee of the House of Commons, appointed 
 last year to inquire into the provisions and operations of the 
 Act now to be amended which opinion was in accordance with 
 that of judges, of directors of convict prisons, of chaplains, and 
 of other persons practically acquainted with the treatment of 
 criminals have so framed the Bill as to make the present 
 distinction, regarding the grant of licences, between convicts 
 adjudged to transportation and convicts adjudged to penal 
 servitude, as impracticable in fact, as it has always been alien 
 both to the spirit and the letter of the law. In another sense, 
 however, tickets-of-leave are to be restricted. Henceforward 
 they will only be granted sparingly, and not until three-fourths, 
 or at the least two-thirds, of the sentence are expired. The 
 result will be to increase the average length of detention, as 
 regards all convicts belonging to the classes hitherto sentenced 
 either to transportation or to penal servitude. Transportation 
 is to be continued so far as circumstances will permit ; but with 
 this important difference : the convicts to be sent abroad are 
 to be such only as it is reasonable to suppose may become 
 
Charge of March, 1857. 653 
 
 useful citizens of the colony which receives them. * There are 
 some persons/ says the Right Honourable Secretary, ' who 
 commit crimes of such atrocity that they are unfit to be at 
 large, or are guilty of such gross misconduct in prison, that 
 they come under the denomination of incorrigible. This class 
 has no claim to any indulgence, and ought not to be either 
 discharged here, or to be inflicted upon a colony. They almost 
 belong to the class of criminal lunatics, who have committed 
 some great crime, for which they are confined for life not as 
 a punishment for an offence for which they are not responsible, 
 but to secure society against the consequences of their being at 
 large/* 
 
 This recognition, by a Minister speaking the sentiments of 
 the whole Cabinet, of the justice of abstaining from either 
 transporting to our colonies our most dangerous convicts 
 permitted to live or from discharging them into our popula- 
 tion at home, indicates an epoch in the advancement of true 
 knowledge, as respects the treatment of criminals, which cannot 
 be too distinctly marked. 
 
 Gentlemen, you have now before you the whole scheme of 
 improvement, whether in the law or its administration, proposed 
 by the Government for the cure or alleviation of the existing 
 evils. Let me ask you to accompany me in a calm and dis- 
 passionate review of this project. 
 
 It is manifest that the Government were neither disturbed 
 nor misled by the panic which so lately prevailed. They had 
 the advantage of information, to which the public had no access, 
 protecting them against the alarm which had overborne the 
 good sense of so many among us. From figures placed by Sir 
 George Grey before the House, it appears that the number of 
 commitments in the year 1855 was 103,013, whereas in 1856 
 it had fallen to 97,100. It is, nevertheless, true that, although 
 the total number of offences had diminished, yet, as Sir George 
 Grey informs us, there had been a considerable increase in cer- 
 tain descriptions of crime, especially in those attended with 
 violence, and he specifies burglary. But, he says, ' it is also 
 worthy of note that the crime of robbery, including, as it does, 
 garrotting, * * * has slightly decreased in 1856, as compared with 
 
 * Hansard's Debates, Vol. cxliv. Third Series, p. 377. 
 
654 Charge of March j 1857. 
 
 1855.'* When the official Tables are published, we shall know 
 what has been the precise augmentation in commitments for 
 crimes attended with violence. It is a very important point, 
 and I cannot but regret that the exact numbers were not men- 
 tioned. Sir George Grey thus accounts for such increase : 
 ' The year 1856 was that in which the militia were disbanded, 
 and the regular army considerably reduced ; and although the 
 majority of the soldiers who served the country abroad were 
 doubtless well-conducted men, yet when a large body of persons 
 from the ranks of the army were thrown again into civil life, 
 as the commanding officers, on making the reductions of regi- 
 ments, were always instructed to discharge the men of bad 
 character, you could not be surprised if that reduction were fol- 
 lowed by some addition to crime, wholly irrespective of the 
 discharge of prisoners with tickets-of-leave/f Gentlemen, I am 
 inclined to give weight to this circumstance as explaining a con- 
 siderable portion of the increase in crimes of outrage, whatever 
 that increase may prove to be. Among offenders apprehended 
 of late, and brought to justice, the names of persons discharged 
 from the militia and other military forces are to be discovered. 
 Moreover, you will find that the disbanding of troops has 
 uniformly been followed by similar consequences. In tables 
 compiled by Sir Stephen Theodore Janssen, an Alderman of 
 London, which comprise the period from 1749 to 1771, it may 
 be seen that a return to peace was regularly followed by an 
 augmentation in the Calendar of the Old Bailey, as respects 
 crimes perpetrated with violence. And in his remarks upon 
 his tables, the compiler adverts to this coincidence as a well- 
 known fact. 
 
 But, although there has been no sufficient cause for panic, 
 since no sudden augmentation of a permanent nature has 
 occurred, yet there has been, there is, and there long will be, 
 cause for deep and growing anxiety. Each year, since the 
 stoppage of transportation, has witnessed a more numerous dis- 
 charge of felons among us, than its predecessor. While, there- 
 fore, there is nothing which ought to shake our constancy of 
 mind, there is much which calls upon us to keep our thoughts 
 
 Hansard's Debates, Vol. cxliv. Third Series, p. 366. 
 f Ibid. p. 365. 
 
 
Charge of March, 1857. 655 
 
 bent on the incontrovertible truth, that the restoration of unre- 
 formed criminals to liberty, is the one great evil to be redressed. 
 That they do go forth from the gaol unreformed, whether with 
 tickets-of-leave or without, is notorious. But if the fact required 
 verification, Sir George Grey might be cited as a witness to 
 prove it : ' The minimum term/ he says, ' fixed by these regu- 
 lations for the discharge with tickets-of-leave of men sentenced 
 to seven years' transportation, was three years ; and of those 
 sentenced to ten years was four years. I say the minimum 
 term, because it was distinctly understood that if a prisoner did 
 not conduct himself well, whether in separate confinement or at 
 the public works, he should have no claim to a discharge at the 
 end of the three or the four years, but might be detained for a 
 longer period. It is a remarkable fact, however, and one which 
 shows how very imperfect is the test of good conduct as a con- 
 dition of the release of the convict, that the vast majority of the 
 prisoners discharged with tickets-of-leave under those regu- 
 lations and I believe the regulations have been honestly acted 
 on by the prison authorities have been discharged at the 
 minimum term. But the test of good conduct in prison is 
 necessarily imperfect. The mere fact of a man's good conduct 
 when he is removed from the ordinary temptations of life, 
 placed in an unnatural position, and required to conform to 
 prison rules, to be industrious in the occupation assigned to him, 
 and to be respectful to his superiors, affords no proof of actual 
 improvement of character, or of moral reformation/* And 
 again, in a subsequent passage, he says : ' There is an erroneous 
 impression that a ticket-of-leave is a certificate of good character, 
 and that those men only obtain it who can prove that they are 
 reformed. There was never a more fallacious idea. It is very 
 desirable that the illusion should be dispelled that the holder of 
 a ticket-of-leave is ascertained to be less likely to relapse into 
 crime than any other discharged criminal. 'f 
 
 Two inferences must be drawn from these discouraging 
 statements. First, that prison discipline, as at present con- 
 ducted, is grievously inadequate to its purpose, namely, to 
 ensure good conduct when the convict returns to society. That 
 
 * Hansard's Delates, Vol. cxliv. Third Series, p. 359. 
 t Ibid. p. 378. 
 
656 Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 his demeanour in prison should be so influenced as to make him 
 what is called a good prisoner, is not without its value ; and, 
 although it furnishes no test of reformation, it is, as Sir George 
 Grey observes, sometimes followed by permanent good effects. 
 ' I believe/ he says, ' it is possible, I hope it is probable, and 
 even that it often actually happens, that the habits of regularity, 
 cleanliness, and decorum acquired in the prison, exercise a salu- 
 tary influence on the convict's subsequent life. But until he 
 is again subjected to temptation, there is no means of deter- 
 mining whether his good conduct in prison was not the result 
 of the compulsion imposed upon him, or even of his desire to 
 obtain his freedom as soon as possible, with a view to enable 
 him to return to his former life of crime/* It is quite plain 
 that Sir George Grey is dissatisfied, and justly dissatisfied, with 
 what has hitherto been accomplished by prison training. But 
 it is also clear, and this is the second inference to be drawn 
 from his remarks, that he is hopeless for the future. He points 
 out very accurately the blot in our existing discipline; but he 
 assumes it to be an irremediable defect. 
 
 Gentlemen, it is disheartening to find the Minister enter- 
 taining such a gloomy doctrine, as that science is utterly in- 
 competent so to regulate the training of criminals, as to bring 
 them into a state in which there is a reasonable probability 
 that they will use their recovered freedom in a manner not 
 inconsistent with the public welfare. If, however, this vital 
 object be really unattainable, I think we have a claim to such 
 a demonstration of the melancholy truth as will assure us that, 
 in folding our hands in despair, we are not abandoning a great 
 social duty, but simply yielding to a fate which cannot be 
 averted. Gentlemen, the report of the Committee, to whose 
 labours I have already called your attention, and to which Sir 
 George Grey often refers, contains evidence drawn from various 
 parts of the world, Spain, Bavaria, and last, but not least, 
 Ireland, in direct conflict with that supposed impossibility. I 
 will not, Gentlemen, do Sir George Grey the injustice of 
 believing him to be less anxious than we are to overcome this 
 obstacle. The office which he fills must, day by day, press the 
 subject upon his mind and heart. He cannot have admitted 
 
 * Hansard's Delates, Vol. cxliv. Third Series, p. 359. 
 
Charge of March, 1857. 657 
 
 such a creed as that which appears to have gained possession of 
 him, without fighting his way backwards step by step ; succumb- 
 ing only to an overwhelming array of facts and arguments. 
 Why not then tell us the story of his defeat ? Why not show 
 that in so good and great a cause no difficulty was left un- 
 assailed, no expedient untried ? Are the alleged victories of 
 Montesinos, of Obermaier, and the experiments so full of 
 promise, of Crofton Sir George Grey's own officer are these 
 mere illusions ? If they are deceptions, let them be exposed ; 
 for it is most unreasonable to imagine that passing them over 
 in contemptuous silence, will induce the public to discard them 
 as the dreams of visionaries. Certainly there is nothing wild 
 or Utopian in their principles. Indeed, they appear so obvious 
 to common sense, that we cannot but wonder how it was 
 possible to neglect them, from the moment when the reformation 
 of prisoners was first attempted. 
 
 The problem (I scarcely need to enunciate it) is so to train 
 the prisoner as to endow him with the faculty of resisting 
 temptation. Gentlemen, to acquire this faculty, the danger of 
 his doing wrong must be encountered. Let the prisoner be 
 gradually and discreetly inured to the trial, while we have him 
 under control. Let us observe how he passes through the 
 series of tests to which he will be exposed ; and which are to 
 be carefully graduated to his increasing power to support them. 
 Let us do this before we abandon all control over him before 
 sending him forth, as we do now, from a state in which he can 
 exercise no will of his own, to one in which he is released from 
 all restraint. 
 
 This is in a few words the theory, by the application of 
 which the difficulty has been overcome, wherever the experi- 
 ment has been made with adequate skill, zeal, and perse- 
 verance. Far be it from me to pronounce the task one of 
 easy fulfilment. But if not beyond the scope of human 
 faculties it ought to be, and must be, performed. Justice to 
 ourselves as a nation, humanity to our erring brethren, and 
 obedience to the commands of our Divine Master these irre- 
 sistible motives urge us onwards, and forbid us to falter. 
 
 Gentlemen, we are told that tickets-of-leave are to be more 
 sparingly distributed than they have hitherto been. This 
 announcement you may perhaps be glad to hear. Up to a late 
 
 u u 
 
658 Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 period they have been attainable by all convicts adjudged to 
 transportation, the moment a certain proportion of their sentence 
 had expired ; unless their conduct in confinement had been 
 blameworthy so blameworthy indeed that instances of deten- 
 tion on that ground are extremely rare. But on what principle 
 the selection is now to be made, is not stated by the Minister ; 
 and certainly cannot be easily discovered. The present test of 
 good conduct is so wide in its meshes that nearly all who are 
 subjected to it pass through. Some better test then is required. 
 But we learn from Sir George Grey that the conditions of prison 
 life are such as to render the application of a more certain cri- 
 terion impossible. The Minister lays down this proposi- 
 tion : The capacity for resisting temptation, without which the 
 convict may relapse into crime the moment he turns his back 
 upon the gaol, cannot be taught him while he is in confinement ; 
 nor, prior to his discharge, are there any means of ascertaining 
 whether he has this qualification for self-government, or has 
 it not. 
 
 But if the old test is to be abandoned, and if the substitution 
 of a better is impracticable, what does this proposal to be more 
 sparing than heretofore in the issue of tickets-of-leave, really 
 mean ? Are the grants of tickets-of-leave to be reduced by 
 some arithmetical rule ? Are they to be assigned by lot, so 
 that, for instance, every tenth convict may gain the prize of 
 liberty, while the nine who draw blanks shall serve out their 
 whole time? Perhaps, Gentlemen, even this method of pro- 
 ceeding, ineligible as it may seem to you, would be better than 
 that indiscriminate use of the ticket-of-leave, which has prevailed 
 nearly up to this date a mode of dealing with prisoners which 
 is equivalent to cutting down the sentences of our Courts to 
 less than half their length. Even this not very happy con- 
 trivance might, I say, have its advantages. The active pre- 
 datory life of a malefactor is of limited duration ; and every year 
 which he passes in gaol strikes off no small fraction of his 
 criminal existence. But such a process when applied to numbers 
 is tantamount to a reduction of the criminal class ; so that even 
 this absurd plan of selection, if it were possible to adopt it, 
 might deserve the praise of being somewhat better than that 
 which is to be abandoned. 
 
 There are, however, serious drawbacks to be considered. 
 
Charge of March, 1857. 659 
 
 When the convicts adjudged to penal servitude learnt that they 
 were not to share the privilege of tickets-of-leave, they became 
 sullen, disobedient, and even mutinous. It is to be feared that 
 a similar effect may be produced on the whole body of convicts, 
 by a large diminution in the number of such grants. We learn 
 from M. Beranger, a French judge, who has written on the 
 treatment of prisoners, that a large reduction having been made 
 in the annual grants of pardons to convicts in France, very ill 
 effects were produced. The attempts to escape multiplied, and 
 many prisoners were brought to despair.* In Spain, where by 
 a recent change of the law every sentence must be fulfilled in 
 its integrity, the results have been still more deplorable.f 
 Again, it is evident that this diminution in the number of 
 grants, coupled with the provision which is to delay the issue 
 in all cases until two-thirds at the least of the sentence have 
 expired, must very materially weaken the incentive to well- 
 doing, created by the hope of liberty. Lord Grey, who has had 
 long experience in the treatment of convicts, considers it very 
 important ' that in providing for the prolongation of sentences 
 of penal servitude, it should be distinctly stated in the preamble 
 that the object of the change is not practically to prolong the 
 actual punishment of those convicts who behave well, but to 
 make their discharge at a comparatively early period depend 
 upon their own conduct, instead of being a matter of right. 'J 
 
 But, Gentlemen, when the ticket-of-leave is granted, what is 
 to be the position of the holder? It certainly strikes me that 
 the less the faith of the Minister in his reformation at the time 
 of his discharge on licence, the greater need is there for hold- 
 ing him strictly to responsibility after such discharge. Might 
 not the Secretary of State reasonably say to the convict when 
 the ticket-of-leave is put into his hands : ' You have behaved 
 yourself well so far as you had a choice between right and 
 wrong; but that choice lay within such narrow limits as to 
 furnish me with no ground of confidence that you will persist 
 in good conduct now that you are to become your own master. 
 
 * De la depression Penale ; de ses Formes et de ses Effets. 2 me Partie. Par M'. 
 Beranger. Paris : 1855. p. 167. 
 
 t Second Report Transportation Committee, House of Commons, 1856. p. 171. 
 
 Letter from Earl Grey to the Rt. Hon. M. T. Baines, M.P., Chairman of the 
 Committee. Second Report, p. 195. 
 
 U U 2 
 
66o Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 As, however, yon are still under the sentence of the law, and as 
 your recommittal to prison will not deprive you of any right, 
 but only of an indulgence, you are to understand that if your 
 way of life should be such as to create the belief that you 
 have relapsed, or are about to relapse, into your evil courses, 
 your licence will be withdrawn ; because, while your liberty 
 will cease to be of any real advantage to yourself indeed, it 
 will become a snare to you it will be a calamity to the 
 public/ 
 
 If, Gentlemen, this be a reasonable view of the case, it seems 
 obvious that precautions should be taken to keep a watchful eye on 
 the ticket-holder. The sixteenth Resolution of the Committee 
 states, ' that every convict, on his release with a ticket-of-leave, 
 ought to be reported to the police of the town or district to which 
 he is sent/* The Committee, by this resolution, did not intend 
 that every member of the police force should have a list of the 
 ticket-of-leave men sent into their district; but they did mean 
 that such a list should be confided to the Chief of that force, 
 to be used fairly and discreetly ; assuredly not for the annoy- 
 ance of such of the holders as are endeavouring to maintain 
 themselves in honesty, avoiding corrupting pleasures and cor- 
 rupting associates, but for a very different purpose. 
 
 Gentlemen, you are probably aware that the police are 
 able pretty accurately to distinguish between the true men of 
 their district, with whose demeanour they have nothing to do, 
 and that happily far smaller, but most troublesome, band, whose 
 course of life indicates the necessity of keeping a watchful eye 
 upon all their movements. So long as the ticket-holder avoids 
 association with the latter class, and does his best to procure a 
 place, however humble, in the former, so long the police, unless 
 it betrays its duty, will take care to ignore his existence ; lest, 
 by recognising him as an acquaintance, they should add to his 
 difficulties, already, alas ! but too numerous. T took upon my self j 
 Gentlemen, a long time since, somewhat presumptuously per- 
 haps, to exhort, through their superior officers, the Police Force 
 of this Borough to a line of conduct in conformity with the view 
 of their duty just expressed. This advice, I have reason to 
 believe, has been followed; indeed I am not aware that the 
 
 * Third Report Transportation Committee, House of Commons, 1856. p. iv. 
 
Charge of March, 1857. 66 1 
 
 members of the force are exposed to the influence of any motives 
 tempting them to neglect it. 
 
 I will now lay before you the view taken by Sir George 
 Grey. t If/ he says, ' one could always place implicit confi- 
 dence in the discretion of the police, that might be done [mean- 
 ing the report might be made as recommended by the Com- 
 mittee] but/ he continues, ' I certainly should be sorry to call 
 the attention of the police in every case to men released with 
 a tieket-of-leave, for that might have the effect of increasing 
 the difficulty of those among them who are well disposed in 
 obtaining honest employ men!/* This, Gentlemen, is arguing 
 against the use, because of a possible abuse a course of rea- 
 soning fatal to any grant of authority to any person whatsoever ; 
 as every power may be abused. ' With respect to London/ 
 he proceeds, f the case is somewhat different. I have had 
 reports from the Inspectors of Police, of the character and 
 course of life of men with tickets-of-leave residing within their 
 districts, and I do not think that under their instructions, 
 which I believe they honestly act up to, any obstacles are placed 
 by them in the way of ticket-of- leave men obtaining an honest 
 livelihood/ f 
 
 Gentlemen, I regret to find this invidious, and, I sincerely 
 believe, most erroneous distinction, drawn between the police 
 of London and that of the country. Upon what grounds does 
 the imputation rest ? Have lists of ticket-holders been furnished 
 to the heads of police in the various towns and counties in 
 which they are stationed, coupled with instructions how to use 
 them ? Arid, if so, have these instructions been disregarded ? 
 No such documents, unless I am grossly misinformed, have 
 ever been issued except in the metropolis ; and if not furnished, 
 why is it to be assumed that this most important corps the 
 Provincial Police is unworthy of a trust, without which it is 
 impossible that they should afford us the protection which we, 
 who pay for their services, have a right to expect ? Of this I 
 am sure, that powers far more open to abuse than any which 
 would result from the possession of the information to which I 
 am referring, must be exercised every day, or the services of 
 the police would be utterly worthless. But, Gentlemen, I have 
 
 * Hansard's Debates, p. 380. t Ibid., p. 380. 
 
662, Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 such confidence in Sir George Grey's desire for justice, that I 
 am quite sure the moment the error under which he has been 
 acting shall be dispelled, he will obliterate the stigma attached 
 by his speech to this large body of our countrymen; and, 
 moreover, will avail himself of their valuable assistance. 
 
 I wish I could cherish the same confident hope that when 
 he has enabled himself to acquire, from time to time, informa- 
 tion as to the course of life pursued by ticket-holders who 
 misuse their privilege, he will be prepared to give full effect to 
 another resolution of the Committee, viz., ' That to render this 
 system of tickets-of-leave adapted both for the reformation 
 of offenders and the interests of the public, the conditions en- 
 dorsed upon the tickets-of-leave ought to be enforced more 
 strictly than appears to have been hitherto the case/* These 
 conditions, Gentlemen, are as follows : ' The power of revok- 
 ing or altering the licence of a convict will most certainly be 
 exercised in case of his misconduct. If, therefore, he wishes to 
 retain the privilege which, by his good behaviour under penal 
 discipline he has obtained, he must prove by his subsequent 
 conduct that he is really worthy of her Majesty's clemency. 
 To produce a forfeiture of the licence, it is by no means neces- 
 sary that the holder should be convicted of any new offence. 
 If he associates with notoriously bad characters, leads an idle 
 and dissolute life, or has no visible means of obtaining an 
 honest livelihood, &c., it will be assumed that he is about to 
 relapse into crime, and he will be at once apprehended, and re- 
 committed to prison under his original sentence/ 
 
 On this very important branch of the subject, the opinions 
 of Sir George Grey are not in harmony either with the reso- 
 lution of the Committee, or with the conditions framed by his 
 own department. ' There has been/ he says, ' a good deal of 
 discussion as to the principle upon which these revocations 
 have been directed. There have been cases in which the 
 licences have been revoked without actual proof of guilt upon 
 the part of the convict holding the ticket-of-leave, further than 
 the information of the police or others that he was leading a 
 dishonest life, and was the associate of thieves. The number 
 
 * Third Keport Transportation Committee, House of Commons, 1856. p. iv. 
 
Charge of March, 1857. 663 
 
 so revoked without actual conviction is forty-one.'* Thus, 
 Gentlemen, the Home Department was, by its own admission, 
 able to enforce the conditions of its licence so long as it thought 
 fit to exercise the authority which it had sought and obtained 
 from the Legislature. Why, then, not comply with the recom- 
 mendation of the Committee? I will read Sir George Grey's 
 reasons for a different course. ' But/ he continues, ' as a 
 general rule it has been deemed expedient to act with caution 
 in these revocations, and not to send a man back to several 
 years of his original sentence, where no charge on oath could 
 be preferred against him before a magistrate, and where he 
 had not the opportunity of meeting that charge as he would 
 have had upon a trial. 
 
 ****** 
 f To revoke the licences of men on the mere assertion of the 
 police that they were the associates of thieves, would be to put a 
 most dangerous power in the hands of the officers, without a 
 sufficient safeguard against its abuse. Even in some cases ot 
 summary conviction, where the offence has been extremely 
 trivial, the licence has not been revoked, because it was thought 
 to be a disproportionate punishment to remit a man back to 
 prison for three, four, or it may be five years, for the commis- 
 sion of an offence for which a very short confinement would be 
 ample punishment. But, generally speaking, in cases of con- 
 viction for any crime whatever, at assizes or sessions, or by 
 summary jurisdiction, the licence has been revoked/ f Upon 
 this statement, Gentlemen, it is obvious that the obstacles 
 which have arisen in the mind of the right honourable gentle- 
 man, to prevent him from adopting this conclusion of the Com- 
 mittee, are mainly owing to his indisposition to condemn any 
 man unheard a sentiment in which we shall all most heartily 
 concur. Yet T cannot think it presents any bar to adopting 
 the Committee's resolution. Why not call on the ticket-holder 
 for an answer ? Why not give him an opportunity of rebutting 
 the charges against him? Doubtless, in the present state of 
 the law, such an inquiry must be made without putting the 
 witnesses under the sanction of an oath ; and without the 
 
 * Hansard's Debutes, p. 360. t Ibid., p. 360. 
 
664 Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 power of enforcing the attendance of witnesses refusing to 
 appear. For myself I am not apprehensive of such difficulties 
 often preventing those who conduct the inquiry, from arriving 
 at a safe and just result. But if, in the opinion of the Home 
 Department, the want of these powers is a conclusive objection to 
 inquiry, why does not the new Bill supply them ? Why is it 
 so framed as to leave matters, in this respect, just as they 
 now are ? 
 
 Let me next examine how far the course preferred by Sir 
 George Grey, to that recommended by the Committee, does or 
 can accomplish the desired object, namely, that of keeping 
 licensees in check ; and of returning them to prison, if they 
 misuse their liberty. It seems to have been forgotten that, 
 upon the average, many offences are committed, and a term of 
 impunity is enjoyed, before evidence can be obtained to bring 
 any one offence home to the culprit; although the conditions 
 must have been framed on consideration of this well-known 
 state of things. Gentlemen, the ticket-holder is informed, as 
 you have already heard, that it is not necessary he should 
 commit a new offence ; but that his general course of life will be 
 watched, and that, if that be unsatisfactory in certain specified 
 particulars, the suspension of his sentence by which he has 
 enjoyed his liberty will be terminated, and the law will again 
 take its course. It is obvious too and this fact is verified by 
 a return made to the House of Lords that in the majority of 
 cases the sentence, on a fresh conviction, must outlast that pro- 
 nounced upon the former conviction; and that, in all such 
 instances, the revocation of the licence would be a futile 
 ceremony. 
 
 Again, the Department seems entirely to have lost sight of 
 the cost to the community, incident to this mode of proceeding. 
 I speak not of pecuniary cost, yet that expense is far from incon- 
 siderable. I speak of the injury inflicted by the multiplication 
 of crimes the necessary accompaniment of such a scheme. 
 Crime, surely, ought not to be so lightly considered. It is not 
 to be looked upon as a mere incident, useful as setting in 
 motion the machinery of the law, and thus conveniently deliver- 
 ing an unworthy ticket-holder back to gaol, without trouble to 
 the Home Office. Crime implies the suffering of the innocent. 
 Sometimes it involves a wide-spread alarm, in comparison of 
 
Charge of March, 1857. 66$ 
 
 which the pain or loss endured by the party immediately injured, 
 sinks into insignificance. 
 
 Each of these remarks, Gentlemen, is illustrated by the case 
 of Thomas Wotton. Wotton had been adjudged to transporta- 
 tion for fifteen years. He obtained his ticket-of-leave, and came 
 to reside at Birmingham. Having myself requested the Super- 
 intendent of Police to watch, for six weeks, the conduct of all 
 ticket-holders known to be in the town, and then to report to 
 me their course of life, I received, as regards Thomas Wotton, 
 the following information : ' Went to work at Nottingham. 
 He states that he came to Birmingham at the suggestion of the 
 Nottingham police. He has always borne (since known to the 
 Birmingham police) a bad character, and keeps company of 
 thieves, and has again taken to thieving/* The report from 
 which I cite this passage is made upon the testimony of Inspector 
 Glossop, Sub-Inspector Tandy, and Police- Sergeant Mantori. 
 I transmitted the document to the Home Secretary; but he 
 informed me he was of opinion that it did not show ' sufficient 
 reason to revoke the licences of any of these convicts.' He 
 stated, however, that he had ' desired the Inspector of Police, at 
 Birmingham, to warn those among them who were suspected of 
 having returned to dishonest practices, that their conduct would 
 be carefully watched, and that, on the first occasion of any 
 offence, however slight, being legally brought home to them, their 
 licences would be cancelled/ In the same letter I was also 
 informed that Sir George Grey had 'recently adopted the 
 practice, in certain cases, of restricting the licences, so as to 
 prevent the return of convicts to their former associates/f And 
 believing that if ticket -holders were not permitted to seek har- 
 bour in the larger towns, they could not persist in a dishonest 
 course of life without quickly falling into the hands of justice, I 
 was well satisfied to have obtained so much by my interposition. 
 But, Gentlemen, we cannot reflect upon the consequences which 
 followed this lenient decision, and still less upon the conse- 
 quences which might have followed it, without most painful feel- 
 ings being excited in our breasts. I will not parade the narra- 
 tive of Wotton's outrage before you. I would have refrained 
 
 * Second .Report Transportation Committee, House of Commons, 1856. p. 159 
 f Ibid., p. ii. 
 
665 Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 from adverting to it, if it did not appear to me to raise an un- 
 answerable objection to the course of dealing with ticket-holders, 
 advocated by Sir George Grey in the passage from his letter 
 just read to you. Here we have a convicted felon his sen- 
 tence yet hanging over him. He is well known to be pursuing 
 his nefarious career. The station-master at the railway ob- 
 serves him and his companions quit Birmingham for the North, 
 and is satisfied they are on their way to the perpetration of some 
 crime. Yet all this time the hands of justice are paralysed ! 
 
 Desirous, Gentlemen, after pondering upon the humiliating 
 absurdity of such a miserable state of things, to escape from the 
 disquieting thoughts to which it gave birth, I opened a book, 
 and my eye fell on Lord Chatham's boast that every English- 
 man's house is his castle. ' The poorest man/ says he, ' may 
 in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It 
 may be frail, its roof may shake, the wind may blow through 
 it, the storm may enter, the rain may enter, but the King of 
 England cannot enter. All his force dares not cross the 
 threshold of the ruined tenement.' Very fine, Gentlemen, 
 no doubt, but not even Chatham's eloquence could make me 
 forget that, although the King of England cannot enter, Thomas 
 Wotton can. Though all the king's forces dare not cross the 
 threshold, Thomas Wotton and his murderous gang are free 
 from restraint ; they break through the defences of a peaceful 
 dwelling at midnight pursue a mother, just risen from the bed 
 on which she has endured nature's sorest agony chase her and 
 her new-born infant from chamber to chamber, and are only 
 defeated in their execrable project by the nerve and self-posses- 
 sion of an old man, whose grey hairs might have protected him 
 from blame, had he shrunk from the unequal contest ! 
 
 One conclusion, Gentlemen, is irresistible. If the science of 
 jurisprudence can do nothing better for us than all this, it has 
 little more claim upon our respect than the so-called science of 
 astrology. 
 
 Gentlemen, it is all very well to threaten burglars, and 
 intending murderers, with the withdrawal of their licence on 
 their committing the slightest offence ; but those acquainted 
 with the habits of great malefactors, know well that they have 
 self-command enough to avoid coming into contact with the 
 
Charge of March, 1857. 667 
 
 officers of justice for trifles. They concentrate their thoughts 
 on the means of compassing some lucrative crime, yielding a 
 large harvest of plunder. Having accomplished their object, 
 they are engaged in squandering their ill-gotten wealth ; and it 
 is not until they find it necessary to replenish their store, that 
 they come into further hostility with the law. 
 
 Now, Gentlemen, let us pause and review our position. And 
 first as to our gains. The distinction with regard to privileges 
 repugnant to all principle between penal servitude and trans- 
 portation, is no longer to exist. Transportation is to be so 
 modified as not to work injustice to colonies receiving our 
 convicts. And if it is not wholly to be abolished, perhaps 
 this is all the amelioration of which the system admits. But 
 here a difficulty has to be encountered. What test is to 
 be used in the selection of convicts for transportation, so that 
 none shall be sent but such as will make decent and useful 
 colonists ? According to Sir George Grey, there are no possible 
 means of distinguishing, among prisoners, between those whose 
 f good conduct in prison will be maintained when they go at 
 large, and those whose good conduct is merely the result of the 
 compulsion imposed upon them, or of their desire to obtain 
 their freedom as soon as possible with a view to enable them to 
 return to their former life of crime/ How this difficulty is to 
 be met we are not apprised. 
 
 Our next gain is the recognition of the absolute necessity of 
 keeping incorrigible malefactors at home, and of confining them 
 for life. 
 
 Our last advantages lengthened imprisonments for convicts, 
 and a diminution in the number of tickets-of-leave (if this 
 latter is to be deemed a benefit) we purchase, as I have already 
 said, at a costly sacrifice. In what state then are we left ? The 
 principle of encouragement of hope is still limited to great 
 criminals ; while the exertions of the minor offender to shorten 
 his imprisonment, are to remain unavailing. Ticket-of-leave 
 men are to be held to no more responsibility than at present ; 
 which is nearly the same thing as saying they are to be held to 
 none at all. Finally, the consequences of these errors anoi 
 shortcomings is, that the discharge of unreformed criminals 
 that monster grievance will remain unredressed. On the whole 
 
668 Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 then, Gentlemen, we cannot congratulate each other in much 
 warmer terms than those which Belial addresses to the fallen 
 spirits 
 
 ' our present lot appears, 
 
 For happy though but ill, for ill not worst.' 
 
 One word more, and I close my Charge. Having so largely 
 commented on the speech of Sir George Grey, I should lay 
 myself open to misconstruction, if I omitted to observe upon 
 what fell from him regarding myself. Not imagining that the 
 Home Office would establish a distinction between convicts 
 adjudged to transportation and convicts adjudged to penal 
 servitude, and being strongly impressed with the benefit to 
 prisoners, as well as to the public, of their acting, while in 
 confinement, under the influence of hope, I pointed out to 
 them indiscriminately, when passing judgment, that if they re- 
 mained under punishment during the whole term to which they 
 were sentenced, it would be their own fault; for that, by diligence 
 and good behaviour, they might work their way to liberty at a 
 much earlier period. Sir George Grey complains that I took 
 this course without any communication with the Home Office. 
 But the right honourable gentleman forgets that shortly after 
 the Act came into operation in correspondence with the Home 
 Department, I brought my course of proceeding under its notice 
 on three distinct occasions; and that not a hint of objection 
 did I receive in return. A subsequent correspondence, contain- 
 ing precise references to the letters in which these communica- 
 tions had been made, has been long in print, and will be found 
 in the report of the Committee, to several of whose resolutions 
 I have called your attention.* Sir George also states that I 
 assumed that sentences would be shortened to one-third of their 
 length. I made no such assumption. But the right honour- 
 able Secretary having determined that, although my sentences 
 were of unimpeachable validity, yet it was better to set them 
 aside than to ratify the hopes which I had held out, called upon 
 me to advise as to the extent of remission which then became 
 necessary ; and I, striving to meet the difficulty into which that 
 decision threw me, as best I might, considered that some convicts 
 would perhaps have worked themselves out of prison after a 
 
 * Appendix to Second Report, p. 175. 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 669 
 
 detention of only one-third of their respective terms; but 
 having no means of distinguishing as regards the capacity of 
 one convict over another for performing that task, I thought it 
 incumbent upon me, if I fell into error, to err on the side 
 of mercy; therefore I made the same recommendation with 
 respect to all : I advised the reduction of each sentence to 
 one-third of its length. Gentlemen, the kind recognition which 
 Sir George Grey was pleased to make of my very humble services 
 in the cause to which I am attached, not only demands my 
 thanks, but furnishes a convincing proof that nothing but a 
 failure of memory, common to the age at which he and I have 
 both arrived an infirmity from which I myself am suffering 
 every day could have led him into these inaccuracies. They 
 are not very material, and I could have wished to pass them 
 by without remark. 
 
 From the 'Birmingham Journal' April ^th, 1857. 
 
 ' DISCHARGE OF THE GRAND JURY. 
 
 1 The Foreman, Mr. Morris Banks, addressing the learned Re- 
 corder, said, that as Chairman of the Grand Jury, he had on 
 their behalf to thank him for the very able and deeply interest- 
 ing address he had delivered on the preceding day. The Grand 
 Jury were fully aware that the dealing with criminals was the 
 great question of the present day ; and, on his own part, he 
 would say that he was very greatly impressed with the views he 
 (the Recorder) had taken of the subject ; and he could assure 
 him that the country was under the deepest obligations to him. 
 The Recorder briefly expressed his happiness to have the con- 
 currence of the Grand Jury in the opinions he had expressed/ 
 
 SEQUEL. 
 
 The following synopsis of the state of crime in Edinburgh, 
 during the year 1856, supports, as far as the experience of one 
 city can be relied upon, the statement of Sir George Grey 
 regarding the whole country. It is extracted from the Edin- 
 burgh News of January loth, 1857 : 
 
670 Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 f The police books show no increase in culpable homicides 
 but rather a decrease, the numbers being 
 
 1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856. 
 
 7 13 6 4 4 
 
 but the assaults to danger of life or with lethal weapon since 
 1852 have been increasing, as follows : 
 
 1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856. 
 
 42 58 65 88 130. 
 
 This shows a fearfully steady increase of desperate crime, while, 
 for the same years, the offences against property have been 
 diminishing. Take robbery, and the cases are 
 
 1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856. 
 
 26 32 13 15 17 
 
 and for housebreaking, or rather everything that can by law be 
 called housebreaking 
 
 1852. 1853. 1854- 1855. 1856. 
 
 232 93 108 85 136 
 
 So that, although more housebreakings have been reported last 
 year than in 1855, yet they are nearly 100 less than in 1852, 
 which was before the present panic commenced. The result, 
 however, of the panic is evident in the increased use of lethal 
 weapons in cases of assault, although, of course, the increase is 
 not wholly attributable to this increase of dread among the 
 people. The other facts show that, with the exception of 
 assaults, murderous or otherwise, all other kinds of crime have 
 in Edinburgh been decreasing during the year just ended. The 
 gross number of offences against the person reported were 
 
 1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856. 
 
 65 80 86 105 150 
 
 The gross number of offences reported against property being 
 
 1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856. 
 
 2000 1727 1634 1517 1583 
 
 while the same decrease, or rather absence of increase, is shown 
 in the other classifications of crime. 
 
 ' We have given the cases reported to the police. Take, for 
 example, the number of persons tried and sentenced in the police 
 court. There were in 
 
 1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. 1856. 
 
 1029 877 793 720 728 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 671 
 
 while persons brought into court for simple contraventions of 
 the Police Act show the same kind of decrease : 
 
 1852. 1853. 1854. 1855. * 8 56. 
 
 10,242 10,571 8769 8663 7677 
 
 And when we state that the convictions last year were 7407, 
 against 8277 in 1855, it will be seen that the proved contraven- 
 tions bear nearly the same proportion to those reported as in 
 former years/ 
 
 This abstract is authenticated by Mr. Duncan M'Claren, of 
 Edinburgh, from whom I received it. He has continued it to a 
 somewhat later period, in a letter to me, dated January 24th : 
 
 1 The decrease in the daily average number still goes on. 
 During the present month, so far as it has gone, the average 
 has been about 298. During the same period of 1856 it was 
 335, and during 1855 it was 380 ; so that, in spite of all the 
 warnings to the contrary, and the unfavourable effects arising, 
 first, from the numerous enlistments, and, more recently, from 
 the discharges, the decrease goes on steadily, and in the face of 
 long-continued dear food and work not quite so easily got of 
 late as formerly/ 
 
 From the ' Caledonian Mercury ' of April 4^, 1857. 
 
 ' DECREASE OF CRIME. 
 
 ' In the prison of Edinburgh, on the ist inst., there were 
 only 269 persons confined (including seventeen debtors) ; and, at 
 the corresponding date last year, there were 353. The average 
 daily number in the month of March, for the seven years 
 ending in 1853, before the passing of the Forbes Mackenzie 
 Act, was 589 ; and in the month of April, for the same period 
 of seven years, the daily average was 561 thus proving that 
 the present number is less than one-half of the previous average 
 number/ 
 
 It is right to mention that Mr. M'Claren attributes the 
 decrease of crime in Edinburgh to Mr. Forbes Mackenzie's Act, 
 prohibiting the sale of intoxicating drinks during the whole of 
 Sunday. 
 
 The subjoined letter brings up the results of Captain Crof- 
 ton's treatment of criminals to the latest possible date : - 
 
672 Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 'Cork, April 8th, 1857. 
 
 ' MY DEAR FATHER, Being in Ireland, as you are aware, on 
 business, I have availed myself of the opportunity to visit some 
 of the prisons and reformatory institutions of the country ; and 
 have thus obtained much information upon the subject which so 
 greatly interests yourself and the public, viz., the reformation 
 of criminals. 
 
 ' The endeavour to reform adult offenders, and to establish 
 tests by which their reformation may be ascertained before 
 releasing them, an endeavour which many excellent persons in 
 England regard as hopeless, has been successfully made in 
 Ireland under the judicious management of Captain Crofton 
 and his able colleagues, Mr. Lentaigne and Captain Whitty. I 
 will shortly detail the means which have been adopted. 
 
 ' Male offenders sentenced to transportation are, in the first 
 instance, placed in Mountjoy Prison, in Dublin, a cellular 
 prison similar to Pentonville. I went over this gaol, but 
 observed nothing which calls for particular notice. The 
 employment there consists chiefly in oakum-picking. After 
 remaining at Mountjoy nine months, the convicts are removed 
 to Spike Island, which I have visited. It is, as you are aware, 
 an island in the Cove of Cork, where the Government are 
 erecting fortifications for the protection of that important 
 harbour. The work performed here is principally stone-hewing, 
 masonry, and the attendant branches of labour; which were, 
 when I visited it, being pursued with vigour and efficiency. 
 Prisoners arriving here, whose conduct in Mountjoy has been 
 good, are placed in the third class ; the rest are classed as pro- 
 bationers. At the end of every month marks are awarded to 
 the prisoners for industry, diligence in school, and good 
 behaviour ; three marks being the maximum number attainable 
 in each department. On obtaining fifty-four marks, a prisoner 
 is raised from the probationary to the third class, or from that 
 to the second. The attainment of fifty-four more good marks, 
 raises a prisoner another step, and so on until he has passed 
 through the third, second, and first classes, and has entered the 
 exemplary class ; when he is distinguished by a peculiar costume. 
 After remaining a certain time in the exemplary class, the pri- 
 soner is removed to an Intermediate Prison. I should mention that 
 any misconduct is punished by degradation to a lower class. In 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 673 
 
 some instances offenders have been reduced from the exemplary 
 to the probationary class. 
 
 ' Prisoners eligible for removal to an intermediate prison, if 
 they are handicraftsmen or too weak for hard labour, are trans- 
 ferred to Smithfield Penitentiary, in Dublin. This is an old prison 
 which has been converted into a reformatory. Here they are 
 kept in association (as indeed they have been in Spike Island), 
 and are employed at their own trades (supposing them to be 
 acquainted with one), such as tailoring, shoemaking, carpenter- 
 ing, tinwork, &c. Those who are ignorant of any, are 
 instructed in one, if capable of learning it. Old men, and 
 others unable to acquire a trade, are employed in the house- 
 work of the establishment, or in mat-making. The men, when 
 I visited Smithfield, were labouring vigorously, and their work 
 appeared to be well done. The clothes, officers' uniforms, &c., 
 for the different convict prisons in Ireland, are made here. 
 The accounts of the institution were shown to me. The value 
 of goods already sold, after deducting the cost of materials, has 
 left a profit of above 8oo/. This is actually cash in hand, not 
 merely an estimated amount ; and divided among the number 
 of prisoners, it gives an average result of about 17^. per head 
 per annum. Indeed, Mr. Lentaigne informs me that, were it 
 not for the number of old men among the inmates who can 
 earn very little, the institution would be self-supporting ; the 
 earnings of the able-bodied covering the cost of their food and 
 clothing, and their share of the officers' salaries, and general 
 expenses of the institution. Even now, however, the excess of 
 expenditure over income derived from the men's labour, is not 
 very great. The inmates are allowed a small portion of their 
 earnings, e.g., so much for a coat, pair of shoes, &c., made by 
 the artizans ; and a weekly sum to those employed in house- 
 work. Of these earnings, 6d. a week is paid to them in ready 
 money ; which they are allowed to spend in tobacco, red herrings, 
 or what little luxuries they will, except drink, which is strictly 
 forbidden. This is done as a test of self-control. Very little 
 is now spent ; it is generally saved for better purposes. 
 
 ' The prisoners, as I have mentioned, work in association ; and 
 several sleep in a cell, where they have gas-light, and may 
 read, &c., after they retire, if they please. They are also 
 employed in turn to go about Dublin as the messengers of the 
 
 x x 
 
674 Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 institution. The officers are very few in number, and could be 
 easily overpowered were their wards so minded. Nine and a 
 half hours daily are devoted to work ; after which, in the even- 
 ing, Mr. Organ, the schoolmaster to the institution, comes and 
 holds classes. Writing, reading, arithmetic, &c., are taught, 
 with which Mr. Organ contrives to combine moral and other 
 useful training. Fortunately, school-time arrived before I left 
 the institution. First, copies were written. Many of the 
 men could write well, and most of them had greatly improved 
 after entering Smithneld. Some, however, were mere beginners. 
 One poor old man, who was in very large hand, had been six 
 years in a convict prison, without having been taught to write. 
 Mr. Organ conducted a reading class. This (like all his classes, 
 I believe,) is permanently divided into two parties, who sit 
 opposite each other, and between whom there is much wholesome 
 rivalry. After one man had read a passage, Mr. Organ ques- 
 tioned him on the meaning of the words, their orthography, 
 &c., and the occupants of the opposite bench also questioned 
 him and his mates, all striving for victory. I was informed 
 that the men work hard in their cells at night, preparing for 
 these friendly conflicts, both by asking posing questions, and by 
 themselves answering the questions propounded by the ' lion, 
 gentlemen opposite/ 
 
 ' During the day Mr. Organ is occupied in procuring 
 situations for inmates who are eligible to leave the institution. 
 When a man has been four months in Smithneld, and has 
 behaved well, he is entitled to be considered for release on a 
 ticket-of-leave, to which, on the average, he makes good his 
 claim in an additional month ; but he must further wait until 
 a place of work has been obtained for him. 
 
 ' Thus it occurs that some who have raised themselves into 
 the intermediate prison have not been able to attain to their 
 discharge, on a ticket-of-leave, before the expiration of their 
 sentences ; while again others have not been able to reach even 
 the intermediate prison, but have remained their whole term 
 in the lower grades. It must, however, be remembered that 
 many convicts had passed a considerable portion of the term to 
 which they were adjudged, before the establishment of the 
 ticket-of-leave system. Mr. Organ still keeps up a communi- 
 cation with the convict when in place, if he reside in the neigh- 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 675 
 
 bourhood of Dublin ; and almost always receives from him a 
 weekly contribution to be deposited in the savings bank as 
 an emigration fund the strong desire of both male and female 
 reclaimed criminals, being to emigrate. . 
 
 ' Masons and other able-bodied labourers who have reached 
 the exemplary class in prison, are sent to the ' Forts/ These 
 are two strongholds which Government are erecting upon the two 
 headlands forming the mouth of the Cove of Cork. Here the 
 convicts are lodged in moveable iron buildings. A sufficient 
 number of these are now completed, to enable this class to 
 be employed wherever the public service requires them. I 
 have not had an opportunity of visiting the Forts, but am 
 informed that, as nearly as circumstances will permit, the 
 system adopted in them resembles that of Smithfield. Piece- 
 work not being practicable, a weekly allowance out of his earn- 
 ings is made to each labourer. 
 
 ' Every male convict liberated on ticket-of-leave, whether 
 from Smithfield or the Forts, is furnished with a sort of war- 
 rant, which he is obliged to produce to the police of his district 
 monthly ; and if he removes to a new district, he is bound to 
 obtain a new warrant addressed to the police of that district, 
 who are informed of the circumstances of his case. 
 
 1 Women are dealt with on a plan somewhat similar to that 
 pursued with male offenders. They are first imprisoned in the 
 Dublin Newgate, now devoted exclusively to the reception of 
 female convicts. Here such as are Roman Catholics are 
 visited by the Sisters of Charity, who give them secular and 
 religious instruction. I was so fortunate as to witness the 
 religious teaching of these ladies. After remaining nine 
 months in Newgate, the women are removed to a prison 
 called Grange Gorman, which I have not seen, but where I 
 learn a system, as regards marks, is in operation similar to that 
 in use at Spike Island. When eligible for a reformatory, such of 
 them as are Roman Catholics are sent to an institution established 
 by the Sisters of Mercy at Golden Bridge, near Dublin. This 
 establishment I had the advantage of visiting. As it is not, 
 like Smithfield, a Government prison, but a private institution, 
 analogous to the reformatories for children in England, the women 
 are sent here with special tickets-of-leave which are restricted 
 to the institution, and would be forfeited if the ticket-holder 
 
 X X 3 
 
676 Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 departed without permission. The employment at Golden 
 Bridge consists chiefly in washing, sewing, and house-work ; 
 and after a due probation places are found for the inmates. 
 The Sisters of Mercy keep up a constant communication with 
 those women who have left their establishment, and frequently, 
 as a reward, permit them to spend a Sunday at Golden Bridge. 
 The female discharged prisoners, like the male, evince a strong 
 desire to emigrate; and the worthy Sisters take charge of weekly 
 contributions to the fund necessary for that purpose. 
 
 f Protestant women are sent to two Protestant institutions 
 (which I regret I have not been able to visit), where they are 
 treated, I understand, on a plan somewhat like that adopted at 
 Golden Bridge. 
 
 ' The practical effect of prison discipline I have described as 
 in operation in Ireland, is, that of 500 men and 33 women 
 who have been released in 1856, conditionally and uncondi- 
 tionally, after passing through the reformatories, only seven 
 persons (all of them men), have been known to be reconvicted ; 
 and, although 750 males have been subjected to the interme- 
 diary treatment, only six or seven very slight offences have 
 taken place whilst under detention. It is true that some out 
 of the whole number discharged have been lost sight of, but the 
 great majority (including all the women, with whom unremit- 
 ting communication has been maintained) are known to be 
 doing well. 
 
 ' In addition to these highly satisfactory results, crime, from 
 whatever cause, is much diminishing in Ireland. The officer 
 who accompanied me over Spike Island, told me that there are 
 now only 900 prisoners there, though there have been formerly 
 2300 at one time. The only reason he could assign for this 
 diminution is the decrease in convictions. 
 
 ' Garrotting, I am informed, is utterly unknown in Ireland ; 
 and robbery with violence of any kind is rare. 
 
 ' Hoping these details may interest you, 
 
 ' Believe me, yours most affectionately, 
 
 ' ALFRED HILL. 
 
 <M. D. Hill, Esq., Q.C.' 
 
 Mr. Organ is not merely a schoolmaster, he is a lecturer. 
 ' Mr. Organ does not treat his audience as prisoners or as 
 children ; he treats them as men, as he was accustomed to treat 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 677 
 
 his pupils in his night -school. He does not make speeches, he 
 tells them of common things, of the air, the earth, the planets, 
 the tides ; of the animate and inanimate world ; of physical geo- 
 graphy ; of the British Empire and its colonies ; of the rates of 
 wages, and of the opening for honest industry in each of these 
 dependencies. He tells them, and explains to them, the rules 
 of grammar and of arithmetic ; and as ignorance, through early 
 neglect, is not shameful in his eyes, he has so far ingratiated 
 himself with his class, that any man who does not clearly com- 
 prehend any portion of the discourse, at once holds up his hand, 
 and at this signal the teacher, leaving his desk, goes to the 
 place where the man sits, and explains the difficulty to him, 
 and does not leave him till perfectly satisfied that all is under- 
 stood/* 
 
 Mr. Murray, a zealous and indefatigable worker in the 
 reformatory cause, gives testimony to the reality of the refor- 
 mation of Irish ticket-of-leave men. ' I have seen/ he says, 
 ( ticket-of-leave men starving, arid yet continuing honest ; I 
 have known ticket-of-leave men walk from Clare and Cork, to 
 Dublin, to seek employment, and offering to work for what they 
 call ' their bit' mere food, and sleeping in Night Refuges, and 
 most heartily thanking the man who gave them ' their bit,' 
 and why? because he saved them from the blighting laziness of 
 the Workhouse, or from the commission of a crime which 
 would throw them once more into the power of the law. You 
 know what good a Patronage Society can do. You know how 
 Demetz ascribes the noble results of Mettray to its assistance. 
 The Birmingham Prisoners' Aid Society is every day proving 
 how, when carefully conducted, the Patronage Society is the 
 best and surest friend to the discharged prisoner being his 
 friend, it becomes a benefactor to the State, the truest upholder 
 of order, a reducer of taxation, and its supporters are the surest, 
 because the quietest, yet most active patriots in the common- 
 wealth/f 
 
 In a letter to the editor of the Dublin Daily Express, Mr. 
 Murray proposes and answers this important question ' Why, 
 
 * Not so Sad as They Seem: The Transportation, TicTcet-of- Leave, and Penal 
 Servitude Questions. A Letter to M. D. Hill, Esq., Q.C., by P. J. Murray, 
 Barrister-at-Law. p. 40. Dublin : Kelly. 1857. Price One Shilling. 
 
 f Ibid., p. 149. 
 
6; 8 Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 it may be asked, has the system been successful in Ireland, and 
 so unsatisfactory in England ? For the simple reason that the 
 provisions of the Act have been carefully observed in Ireland, 
 and carefully neglected in England ; because the men have been 
 left to find employment on quitting the prison in England, whilst 
 the employment has been secured to them before leaving the 
 prison in Ireland/* 
 
 The reader has seen that the ticket-holders in Ireland are 
 completely under the surveillance of the police, being made to 
 obtain a warrant, and report themselves to the authorities 
 whenever they change the district which they inhabit a cir- 
 cumstance which appears to have escaped the attention of Sir 
 George Grey. 
 
 As the experiment has been instituted, it is very desirable 
 that it should be continued until its effects are fully ascertained ; 
 but I must own that I think the form of proceeding likely to 
 prove objectionable. It is degrading to the ticket-holder to be 
 brought into contact with the police, and I should fear his 
 reluctance to comply with such a regulation would lead him to 
 evade it, and thus bring him again into hostility with the law. 
 I cannot but think the plan of a photographic portrait, accom- 
 panied by a copy of the ticket- of-leave, which always contains 
 a description of the holder, being transmitted to the chief officer 
 of police in the various districts sufficiently populous to afford 
 harbourage to criminals, a preferable arrangement. 
 
 From the ' Times' of February z^rd, 1857. 
 
 f A BURGLAR SHOT BY A CLERGYMAN. 
 
 1 The most daring case of burglary which ever took place in 
 Derbyshire occurred between one and two o'clock on Saturday 
 morning last, at the residence of the Rev. J. Nodder, of Marsh 
 Green, Ashover, about eight miles from Chesterfield. The 
 house in which the reverend gentleman resides stands by itself 
 in a secluded place, about half-a-mile from the village. Mrs. 
 Nodder slept in a room in front of the hall, and Mr. Nodder 
 in an apartment at the back of the building, adjoining the 
 servants' bedrooms. An infant, about seven weeks old, slept in 
 
 * Dublin Daily Express of December 4, 1856. 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 679 
 
 a cot in Mrs. Nodder' s room, but it awoke between one and two 
 o'clock ; while Mrs. Nodder was attending to it she heard a 
 noise, which she first thought was occasioned by her husband 
 stirring the fire in his room, and she took no further notice of it. 
 In a minute afterwards she heard the noise again, and went to 
 the window of her bedroom and drew the blind a little on one 
 side, when she saw the figure of a man outside the window and 
 close to the glass. She was in her night-dress, and immediately 
 drew back, put on her slippers, lifted the baby out of the cot 
 with one hand, and rushed out of the room, shutting the door 
 after her, and holding it in her hand. While she was doing 
 this, six of the lower panes of glass in the window and the 
 centre framework were smashed, and two men entered the room 
 through the window by means of a ladder, which they had 
 procured from the stackyard adjoining the house. Mrs. 
 Nodder held the door until she was overpowered, when she 
 rushed into a passage on the stairs and locked the door, leaving 
 the burglars fastened in the room. They were provided, how- 
 ever, with a 'jemmy/ or small crow-bar, and with this instru- 
 ment they broke the panels of the door, and unlocked it, and 
 so got into the passage communicating with the bedrooms. 
 The first room they entered was that occupied by a lady named 
 Miss Heeley, a niece of the reverend gentleman, who was so 
 alarmed that she lifted up the lower sash of the window and 
 jumped into the yard, a height of fourteen feet, with nothing on 
 her but a night-gown, and in this state ran for three-quarters 
 of a mile into the village to the rectory -house. After escaping 
 from her room, Mrs. Nodder went into that occupied by her 
 husband, and called out, ' Papa, papa, here are thieves, and 
 they'll murder us/ She had locked the bedroom door after 
 her, and Mr. Nodder jumped out of bed, and armed himself 
 with a pair of large horse pistols, which were loaded, on the top 
 of a cupboard, which contained the reverend gentleman's 
 plate. The burglars outside called out, ( Now lads ; now lads, 
 come on, they're here ! ' Mr. Nodder, who was in the room, 
 called out, ' If you enter here I'll shoot you/ The burglars 
 took no heed, but prized the door open, and one of them entered 
 the room with a black mask over his face, and a black gown on 
 his body, which covered his clothes. He had a candle in his 
 left hand, which he held down towards the lower part of his 
 
680 Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 body. Mrs. Nodder, who was greatly alarmed, said to her 
 husband, ' Oh, my dear, give them what they want, or they'll 
 murder us/ Mr. Nodder stepped about three yards back, said 
 to the man, f I'll give you what you want/ and fired one of the 
 pistols at the man, and the shot entered his abdomen. The 
 burglars now made a precipitate retreat, and as the man ran the 
 shot fell from his clothes. They fled into a bedroom and 
 jumped through a window, taking the glass and framework with 
 them. They had to alight in the yard, which was about 
 fourteen feet from the ground, and adjoining the window 
 through which Miss Heeley had jumped a short time before. 
 Mr. Nodder rang the alarm-bell immediately, which brought 
 about a dozen persons to the place, and a search was imme- 
 diately instituted for the wounded man, as it was believed that 
 he was so crippled with the shot and the leap through the 
 window that he could not escape from the neighbourhood. 
 Information was also given to Mr. Holmes, Superintendent Con- 
 stable of the district, and also to Mr. Radford, Superintendent 
 of the Chesterfield borough police, both of whom made a minute 
 investigation of the premises. The burglar who had been shot 
 left traces of blood in the direction in which he had run, and 
 the marks of blood and pieces of flesh on the window through 
 which they had leaped left no doubt that either one or both of 
 them were severely cut. A large yard-dog, which was turned 
 loose at night, made rio alarm, it having been drugged. Foot- 
 marks were traced from the hall across the flower garden, and 
 in the direction in which they had run, by Mr. Radford, Mr. 
 Milnes, a county magistrate, who resides near, and Mr. Nodder 
 himself; and in a field, about 200 yards distant, Mr. Radford 
 found a mask and a dress, which had been used as a disguise, 
 and three others were found during the morning, clearly show- 
 ing that at least four persons were engaged in the burglary. 
 Miss Heeley, the lady alluded to above, lies in a precarious 
 state. She is suffering severely from an injury to the spine, 
 and great nervous excitement. The police have obtained a clue 
 to the burglars, which, we hope, will lead to their detection. 
 A batcher, who was travelling from Wirks worth to Chesterfield 
 market, overtook a man at Kelstedge, near Ashover, whose leg 
 was bandaged up and much swollen, and who lay by the road- 
 side, just within a gate. The man, whose hands were cut. 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 68 1 
 
 asked for a ride to Chesterfield, and he gave the driver one 
 shilling to take him. He was assisted into the cart, and gave 
 two different stories of how he had become lame. First, he 
 said, he had been robbed ; and, secondly, he said he had been 
 engaged in a prize-fight for jjo/. On their arrival at Chester- 
 field the man was put down at the White Horse, where he had 
 his boots and clothes cleaned, and he was conveyed to the 
 Chesterfield station in the omnibus, and took a ticket for Derby. 
 From what information has been gleaned, there is reason to 
 believe that the burglars belong to a Nottingham gang/ 
 
 From the 'Birmingham Mercury' of March jth, 1857. 
 'THE ASHOVER BURGLARY. 
 
 ' Statement of Miss Heeley. 
 
 1 In the reports of the desperate burglary perpetrated on 
 Saturday morning, the sist ult., at Marsh Green House, the 
 residence of the Rev. J. Nodder, particulars are given respecting 
 the flight of the governess, which are, to some extent, incorrect. 
 Miss Marriane Heeley, the young lady referred to, who is a 
 niece of Mr. Nodder, and not the governess, as stated, has 
 addressed a letter on the subject to her uncle, Mr. Edmund 
 Heeley, of this town, from which we have been courteously 
 permitted to make the annexed extracts : 
 
 ' ' I had not been asleep much more than three-quarters of 
 an hour on Friday night, or rather on Saturday morning, having 
 been kept awake with a bad cough, when I was aroused by 
 hearing a tremendous smash, which, I have no doubt, was the 
 panel of the door the men broke with a crow-bar, and a great 
 noise of men shouting. I jumped out of bed and opened my 
 door, intending to get to the alarm bell, which rings in the room 
 next to the one I occupied, but saw a most hideous-looking man, 
 having on a mask and a tall cap. He also appeared to have a 
 many clothes on, as if to disguise his figure. He held a candle 
 in his left hand, and was looking up the attic stairs ; I gazed at 
 him a few seconds, until he turned rather towards me. I then 
 closed the door, and held it ; the key being on the outside. 
 Almost immediately the robber endeavoured to open it, and 
 succeeded in doing so about half an inch. I pushed it to again, 
 and he then struck it two or three blows with a heavy instru- 
 
682 Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 ment, and went away. From the tremendous shouting I 
 thought the villains were murdering my dear uncle, and knew 
 not what to do to save him, except going for assistance, as it 
 would have been useless for me to have offered any resistance. 
 I, therefore, as the only chance of doing him service, opened 
 the shutters and window, and getting outside took hold of the 
 window sill, let myself down the length of my arms, and then 
 permitted myself to drop. I immediately jumped up, ran 
 towards Ashover, and stopped at the first cottage I came to, 
 which is about a quarter of mile from Marsh Green House. 
 Having aroused the inmates, and obtained a promise that the 
 man would go to my uncle's directly, I went on to the next 
 dwelling-place, a quarter of a mile further, found a man up at his 
 work ; he came out to me. I told him that Mr. Nodder's house 
 had been entered by thieves, and he very kindly procured the 
 assistance of two or three men living in the neighbourhood, and 
 they hastened towards Marsh Green. I then almost flew to the 
 rectory, where I continued knocking until I heard the curate's 
 voice at an upper window. I exclaimed, ' Oh ! Mr. Thrupp, 
 can you send some men to Marsh Green there are thieves in 
 the house/ In a few seconds, having thrown on a few clothes, 
 he came down, followed by his wife, and let me in. I had 
 injured my back by falling from the window, and was so ill 
 that Mrs. Thrupp had to assist me upstairs to her drawing-room, 
 whilst her husband set off for Marsh Green to render any assist- 
 ance in his power. It was a great relief to my mind when he 
 returned, and told me they were all safe. * * * I returned 
 to Marsh Green House on Saturday afternoon, in my uncle's 
 carriage, and am now under medical treatment, having sustained 
 what is termed a concussion of the back. I am going on very 
 well. Fortunately on the night of the burglary I had on a 
 flannel dressing gown, on account of my cold. I shall be much 
 obliged if you will tell your friends my motive in escaping 
 through the window, as the papers have led the public to 
 suppose I did it for the sake of self-preservation. My aunt is 
 recovering from the excitement consequent upon the attack of 
 the burglars, but it has made her exceedingly nervous/ 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 683 
 
 From the 'Birmingham Journal' of February 2$th, 1857. 
 
 ' It was said that this man was traced to Derby, where he 
 took a ticket for Birmingham. 
 
 1 The suspicion that the wounded burglar had come to this 
 town was strengthened by the discovery of part of a Birming- 
 ham newspaper in a plantation near the reverend gentleman's 
 house; and on Monday morning, Mr. Holmes, the Ashover 
 Superintendent of Police, came to Birmingham to consult the 
 police as to the steps necessary to be taken. Inspector Glossop 
 at once determined to search the houses where dwell the A I 
 burglars. The most likely of these he thought was a house in 
 Duddeston-row, kept by Mrs. Haden, the wife of a notorious 
 receiver of stolen property, whom the Recorder transported for 
 life a few years back. Mr. Glossop knew that here, when ' at 
 home/ lived a man known to the police, and his associates, by 
 the name of ' Shog/ who some time back ' left his country for 
 his country's good/ for fourteen years; but who found his 
 country so inconsolable on account of his loss, that in 1855 
 he accepted a ticket-of-leave, and once more made Birmingham 
 detectives happy by the knowledge that he was in their midst, 
 carrying on his * little game' more successfully than ever. 
 There being no doubt that by associating with his old friends 
 ' Shog' had made the recall of his ticket-of-leave possible, Mr. 
 Glossop had communicated with the Recorder, and the Recorder 
 had communicated with the Home Secretary, and the Home 
 Secretary had communicated with somebody or nobody, as the 
 case may be ; but ' Shog' remained at large. In spite of the 
 snubbing thus administered to the police, Mr. Glossop thought 
 he might as well inquire after the health of ' Shog/ or anybody 
 else who might be Mrs. Haden's lodger that morning. Down 
 to Duddeston-row he and Holmes went. No one found, 
 though evidence most satisfactory that all Mrs. Haden's beds 
 had been occupied during the night, one of these probably by 
 the owner of a fur cap, very wet, which Mr. Glossop put in his 
 pocket, not oblivious of the fact that on the night of the robbery 
 rain came down in torrents. He also noted the presence of a 
 bottle of hartshorn and oil, a medicament useful in case of a 
 sprain, whether caused by the leap from a clergyman's window 
 
684 Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 or otherwise. The hospitals were then searched, and all the 
 doctors and leech- women in the neighbourhood of Duddeston- 
 row visited, but yet no trace of gun-shot patient discovered. 
 Towards dusk the officers again visited Mrs. Haden, and found 
 her preparing for tea. Though only herself and son were in 
 the house, Mr. Glossop observed that three cups were on the 
 tray. The only explanation she gave of this was, ( I always do 
 put three cups ;' and once more was she relieved of her prying 
 visitors. Fresh inquiries were made in the neighbourhood, and 
 at last, in Allison-street, Mr. Glossop found a woman who 
 acknowledged that at ten o'clock that morning she had applied 
 six leeches to the sprained ancle of a man who was at Mrs. 
 Haden's. Back to Duddeston-row the officers went ; neigh- 
 bours positively affirmed that no man had left Mrs. Haden's 
 house during the day ; but ultimately Mr. Glossop visited an 
 adjoining back yard, where lived a woman who occasionally did 
 a bit of ( charing' for Mrs. Haden. She denied that any one 
 was in her house; she was indignant at the proposal to let a 
 strange gentleman inspect her bed-room ; so Mr. Glossop seized 
 a candle, and proposed to do so without her company. He had 
 his foot on the first step, when a voice from the room above, in 
 a resigned though tremulous tone, called out, ' It's all right, 
 Mr. Glossop ; come up/ ' Oh, Shog,' said the officer, recog- 
 nising the voice, c is that you ?' ' Yes, come up/ was the reply 
 made, as Mr. Glossop entered the room. There, in bed, lay 
 the 'wanted' ticket-of-leaver, a well-made, desperate-looking, 
 thick-set fellow, with huge drops of perspiration trickling down 
 his face this distilling process being probably the result of the 
 minute's confab, held with the lady of the house, as at ' ShogV 
 side lay the woman's husband, who had doubtless rushed up 
 stairs, on hearing the approach of the officers, and whispered 
 into his ear, ' They're coming/ ' Shog' was carefully conveyed 
 to Moor-street prison in a cab, as he was unable to walk. On 
 Mr. Glossop hinting that he wished to see whether he was 
 wounded, the captured burglar at once stripped, saying he 
 might as well do it first as last, and then it became obvious 
 that the police had at last got ( the right man in the right 
 place/ Immediately under his stomach, extending over a con- 
 siderable space, were shot marks, inflammation, and lacerations. 
 Mr. Solomon, surgeon, was at once sent for, in order that the 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 685 
 
 shots might be extracted (both for ' ShogV own relief, and to 
 be used in evidence against him), but it was discovered that 
 none had been left in the wounds, all of which were no more 
 than skin-deep. A bystanding detective having remarked that 
 there couldn't have been much powder in the pistol, ' Shog' said, 
 very indignantly, ' If you had it in you, you'd have known 
 whether there was much powder in it or not/ He'd as soon 
 have been shot dead as taken, he said ; ' but anyhow he'd only 
 be lagged for life, and he'd work as little as he did before.' His 
 name is Thomas Wotton. Both before and since his trans- 
 portation he was known to the police as the leader of a most 
 desperate gang of burglars, who make Birmingham their head- 
 quarters. And yet such a scoundrel was granted a ticket-of- 
 leave, and allowed to retain it, in spite of the representations 
 of Recorder and police. 
 
 1 Wotton was brought before the magistrates yesterday, and 
 an order made for his being taken to Derby/ 
 
 From the 'Birmingham Journal* of March 7, 1857. 
 
 ' COMMITTAL OF ' SHOG/ THE BURGLAR. 
 
 1 This now notorious character, of whose apprehension in this 
 town Ave gave the particulars last week, was brought before a 
 Bench of Derbyshire magistrates at the Greyhound Inn, Mil- 
 town, on Monday last. The case was fully gone into. Mr. 
 Nodder, the clergyman whose house was attacked, and who 
 so gallantly repulsed the gang, was of course the chief 
 witness. He could not swear that ' Shog' was the man at 
 whom he fired the pistol, but he strongly believed that he was. 
 One point of identity was, that he aimed at the burglar's abdo- 
 men, not wishing to kill him ; and it will be remembered that 
 here the shot wounds were found. Mr. Nodder also said that 
 he fired in a direction somewhat oblique ; and Mr. J. V. Solo- 
 mon, surgeon, of Birmingham, proved that the nature of the 
 wounds was indicative of this having been done. The burglar 
 fired at was masked in a bag made of black calico, but Mr. 
 Nodder remarked that the shape of the face was long and 
 oval a description exactly corresponding with that of ' Shog/ 
 The next point of identity was furnished by the footmarks of 
 the wounded burglar, which were traced across a field adjoining 
 
686 Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 Mr. Nodder's house. Besides the blood which accompanied 
 the marks, one footfall was light, the other heavy, indicating a 
 wounded limb, and corresponding with the injury sustained by 
 ' Shog/ In addition to this, the marks were those of small 
 feet, which ' ShogV are. In the next place, Mr. Ogden, a 
 butcher, proved that ' Shog' was the wounded man whom he 
 saw lying by the side of the road that morning, and to whom 
 he gave a ride for several miles, and other witnesses traced him 
 from Chesterfield to Birmingham, where he arrived in the 
 course of Saturday. A cabman plying at the New-street 
 station proved taking him to Mrs. Haden's, 29, Duddeston-row. 
 He was very lame, and had to be assisted into the cab. He 
 seemed to be suffering excruciating agony, which he told the 
 cabman was caused by a sudden attack of gout, though it 
 will be recollected he told the butcher that he had been illused 
 by some men who robbed him. Then came a most impor- 
 tant piece of evidence. The station-master at Saltley, near 
 Birmingham, proved that on the morning preceding the night 
 when the robbery was committed, ' Shog/ and four other men 
 proceeded from the station to Derby by the third-class train. 
 They asked for their tickets separately, but he saw them all in 
 communication on the platform afterwards, and knowing 'Shog' 
 and two others of the five to be men of bad character, he 
 remarked to the guard of the train when it arrived, ' There's 
 surely something up in the north/ This guard also proved 
 that ' Shog' was one of the men, all of whom left the train at 
 Derby. Of course, with such a chain of circumstantial evidence, 
 the magistrates had no hesitation in committing him to take 
 his trial at the assizes. He was not defended by any attorney, 
 nor did he put any questions to the witnesses ; but when the 
 Saltley station-master gave his evidence, he seemed somewhat 
 ( taken aback/ and tried to browbeat him by adjurations to 
 tell the truth. Though not given in evidence, it was mentioned 
 in Court, that about a fortnight ago ( Shog' was seen in the 
 neighbourhood of Ashover, ostensibly engaged in selling brushes, 
 though he was of course engaged in a reconnoitre of Mr. Nodder's 
 premises. Though we knew last week that the whole gang went 
 from Birmingham, we thought it well to abstain from noticing 
 the fact. The Saltley station-master, however, has put the 
 matter beyond doubt ; and we may state that ' Shog' was not 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 687 
 
 the only one of the gang who sustained injury; another of them 
 had a portion of two fingers shot off/ 
 
 From 'Aris's Birmingham Gazette* of March 23, 1857. 
 
 ' At the assizes at Derby, on Thursday, Thomas Wotton, 
 alias ' Shog/ the Ashover burglar, was arraigned before Mr. 
 Justice Wightman for breaking into the house of the Rev. J. 
 Nodder, at Ashover, on the aoth February. The prisoner, to 
 the surprise of most persons in Court, pleaded ' guilty/ The 
 learned Judge, after commenting with severity on the offence, 
 and lamenting the mistaken leniency which had liberated such 
 a criminal on a ticket-of-leave, sentenced the prisoner to be 
 transported for twenty-five years/ 
 
 I have already shown by the evidence of Colonel Jebb,* that 
 the regulation of the Home Office, by which tickets-of-leave are 
 withheld from convicts adjudged to penal servitude, was not 
 made till more than two years had elapsed after the passing of 
 the Act of 1 853 ; and that that gentleman, who is the Chair- 
 man of the Directors of Convict Prisons, and consequently the 
 officer who might expect to be first apprised of the intentions 
 of the Home Department, was, during that whole period, in 
 hopes that no such invidious distinction between the two 
 classes, equally enabled by the Act to enjoy the privilege, would 
 have been drawn. 
 
 When I wrote the passage to which I have just referred, I 
 was quite unaware that my course in not observing a distinction 
 not then established by the Department opposed to the grounds 
 on which the consent of the Legislature had been asked by the 
 Department to their Bill, and utterly at variance both with the 
 letter and spirit of that Bill, framed as it was in the Home Office 
 would expose me to rebuke; and I think it not impossible 
 that the speech of Sir George Grey may have excited as much 
 surprise among the gentlemen of his own Department as it 
 did in myself. Mr. Under-Secretary Waddington thus answered 
 two questions put to him by Mr. Adderley in the Transportation 
 Committee : 
 
 ' 341. Mr. Adderley. Have not the Judges stated, at the 
 
 * Ante, p. 476. 
 
688 Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 time of passing sentence, that the prisoners might, as an en- 
 couragement to good conduct, receive licences? Some have; 
 it was a mistake, undoubtedly ; it has not been frequent. There 
 have been some such cases, I believe ; and it has excited hopes, 
 no doubt, in the convict to whom it has been addressed. 
 
 f 242. Have any sentences been mitigated since ? A great 
 many sentences have been mitigated, not owing to represen- 
 tations held out to the convict, but owing to a mistake on the 
 part of a learned Recorder ; a natural mistake, for which I am 
 sure I do not blame him at all ; he passed very extreme sen- 
 tences of penal servitude in many cases, under the impression 
 that the prisoners would have tickets- of- leave ; and, upon find- 
 ing that such was not the case, he very properly wrote to Sir 
 George Grey, to beg that the sentences might be mitigated, 
 and that has been done ; but those were entirely exceptional 
 cases, owing to a misapprehension of the learned Judge/* 
 
 To this alleged misapprehension I was not prepared to plead 
 guilty; vide my answers to questions beginning 1865 to 1874^ 
 In answer to question 1871, I stated, in the presence of Mr. 
 Under-Secretary Massey, 'that I had three several times, in 
 the course of correspondence with the Home Office on particular 
 cases, though not suspecting that there was any doubt upon this 
 point, brought my course of proceeding under the notice of the 
 Home Office. I mean that I was so dealing with persons sen- 
 tenced to penal servitude namely, dealing with them upon the 
 footing that they had the same opportunity of working them- 
 selves out of prison by good conduct as persons sentenced to 
 transportation/ 
 
 The correspondence to which I referred will be found in 
 extenso in the appendix to the 2nd Report, p. 175. I subjoin 
 two extracts : 
 
 ' I will now, Sir [George Grey] , with your permission, sup- 
 port my reading of the statute by reference to the views of its 
 meaning taken in Parliament. The Bill being in Committee in 
 the House of Commons, Sir John Pakington said he ' would 
 suggest the substitution of the words ' period of imprisonment' 
 for ' penal servitude/ because if by the latter words the Govern- 
 
 * First Report Transportation Committee, House of Commons, 1856. p. 23. 
 f Second Report Transportation Committee, House of Commons, 1856. p. 15. 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 689 
 
 ment meant to distinguish that punishment which was to be a 
 substitute for transportation, then larceny, which could not be 
 punished with transportation, would not be brought within the 
 scope of the Bill/ 
 
 ' Viscount Palmerston said ' the object of the Government 
 was this, they did not intend to touch the law by which a con- 
 finement within the walls of a prison was awarded for a certain 
 limited period not exceeding three years, but to deal simply 
 with sentences of transportation, which constituted a different 
 punishment altogether. If Parliament should think it right to 
 deal with sentences of imprisonment, it might do so, but that 
 would require a separate measure/ 
 
 ( Here, Sir, you will be pleased to observe that Sir John 
 Pakington and Lord Palmerston both agree in drawing the 
 distinction as to the capacity for claiming a ticket-of-leave 
 between convicts sentenced to imprisonment, on the one hand, 
 and those sentenced to transportation and penal servitude, on 
 the other. Sir John Pakington thought the Bill ought to be 
 so altered as to make all the three classes capable of enjoying 
 the privilege ; but both gentlemen evidently agreed, that even 
 as the Bill then stood, penal servitude was clearly within the 
 pale. 
 
 ( Sir John Pakington, as you are doubtless aware, has long 
 filled the office of Chairman at the Quarter Sessions for Wor- 
 cestershire, and it occurred to me a few months ago to be 
 present when a noble and learned Peer pronounced a public 
 eulogy on that gentleman for his extensive knowledge of the 
 criminal law. 
 
 ' Permit me also to invite your attention to the following 
 passages extracted from the debate on the third reading of the 
 same Bill. 
 
 ' ' Mr. Keating said there were several clauses in the Bill 
 which deserved the careful consideration of the House. He 
 would refer more particularly to those clauses by which it was 
 provided that the Secretary of State should give tickets -of -leave 
 to such criminals as should have a sentence of penal servitude 
 at home substituted for a sentence of transportation. There 
 could be no difference of opinion as to the propriety of doing 
 everything which could be done, to effect the reformation of the 
 criminal. At the same time, they should bear in mind 
 
 Y Y 
 
690 Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 that that was not the only object for which punishment was 
 awarded. One great object of punishment was to deter others 
 from the commission of similar crimes. Now, in his opinion, 
 those clauses, introducing, as they did, a novel system into the 
 criminal procedure of this country, ought to be well considered 
 by the House before they were enacted/ 
 
 ' ' Viscount Palmerston said he was not surprised that the 
 honourable and learned gentleman, who had probably not 
 attended to the discussions which had already taken place upon 
 the Bill, should be struck with the novelty of the proposed 
 arrangement. He could, however, assure the House that the 
 subject had received the most deliberate consideration from 
 persons much more competent to deal with it than he could 
 profess to be, and it had been thought that the new system 
 would be attended with considerable advantage to the country as 
 well as to the criminals themselves. The practice had hitherto 
 been, after a certain period of preliminary imprisonment, and a 
 certain period of employment upon public works, to send con- 
 victs to a penal colony under that system of qualified servitude 
 which was called the ticket-of-leave system. The hope of ob- 
 taining that indulgence had been found to have a very powerful 
 effect upon the mind of convicts confined in prisons and 
 employed upon public works, and had tended greatly to produce 
 resignation to their condition, and a determination to adopt 
 that good conduct which would entitle them in course of time 
 to participate in the same indulgence. Now, as the great 
 object of punishment for offences not of the gravest character, 
 was the reformation of the criminal and the example to others, 
 he thought it would be not only unwise but undesirable that 
 when transportation ceased, there should with it cease that 
 element of hope which was so important a feature in prison dis- 
 cipline. There appeared to be no other mode of preserving that 
 element of hope than by adopting that ticket-of-leave system 
 which had proved so beneficial in our penal colonies.' 
 
 ' Thus, Sir, you will perceive that Mr. Keating, a gentleman 
 of eminence at the bar, one of Her Majesty's Counsel, reads 
 the Act precisely as I read it, and that his construction meets 
 with the assent of Lord Palmerston, as might be expected, after 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 691 
 
 what had occurred between the noble lord and Sir John Paking- 
 ton, on a former debate. With regard, however, to Lord 
 Palmerston, I have more to say. As, then, filling the office 
 which you now hold, his construction shows not only what was 
 the legal operation which it was at that time considered by the 
 department the Bill would have upon convicts sentenced to 
 penal servitude, but it shows that such legal operation was in 
 conformity with the views of its framers; otherwise the legal 
 effect for which I contend being at that period admitted on all 
 sides, the language of the Bill would have been changed and 
 brought into accordance with the opinion which the department 
 now holds. On this point, however, I will put you into pos- 
 session of evidence which places the opinion of Lord Pahnerston 
 beyond all doubt. 
 
 ' In the cases of E. S., J. H., and W. T., referred to me by 
 the noble lord while he held the seals of the Home Department, 
 I three several times reminded him that if he should think 
 right to mitigate the punishment of the convict, he could do so 
 without disturbing the judgment as pronounced, because, I said, 
 under a sentence of penal servitude the Crown has the power 
 of issuing a licence which would release him from prison at 
 any moment. Lord Palmerston, it is true, did change the 
 sentences in each case ; but the answers apprising me of what 
 had been done were in the usual form, conveying no intimation 
 of the reasons upon which my suggestions had been rejected. 
 Now, Sir, I cannot doubt that, upon my thus disclosing to his 
 lordship my construction of the statute, he would, if it had 
 militated against the construction adopted in the office, have 
 warned me that I had fallen into an error, and was acting on 
 expectations as to the future treatment of the prisoners which 
 could produce nothing but disappointment. I may add, that 
 upon reference to my letter in the case of E. S., dated 27th 
 January, 1854, it will be seen that I detailed so minutely 
 my practice with regard to sentences of penal servitude, 
 and the expectations which I held out to the prisoners, as to 
 challenge the especial attention of the department to the course 
 pursued/* 
 
 * Second Report Transportation Committee, House of Commons. App. 
 p. 177. 
 
 Y Y 2 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 And again, in a subsequent letter to Sir George Grey, I 
 write as follows : 
 
 ' Let me then request you to observe the position in which 
 this long series of judgments now stands : 
 
 ' i. They are in conformity with the law. 
 
 ' 2. They are in furtherance of the views on which the 
 measure of 1853 was proposed by Ministers to Parliament, and 
 to which, by the passing of the Act, the Legislature gave its 
 sanction. 
 
 '3. The interpretation of the Act on which these judgments 
 were based was made known to the department with great par- 
 ticularity at a very early period, and no exception having been 
 taken to the course pursued, the sanction of the department 
 must be added to that of the Legislature/* 
 
 Surely if, in the opinion of the Home Office, I was not war- 
 ranted in thus claiming the sanction of the department for what 
 I had done, that claim should have been met and answered ; 
 whereas neither in that correspondence, nor when I was before 
 the committee of which Mr. Massey was a member, nor at any 
 other time down to Sir George Grey's speech in February, 
 1857, were the facts of the case presented in any other light 
 than that in which I have laid them before the reader. 
 
 From 'Aris's Birmingham Gazette' of April 6th, 1857. 
 ' THE RECORDER'S CHARGE. 
 
 ' Before I consent that men should do what they please, I should like to know 
 what they will please to do.' Burke. 
 
 ' The preceding sentence, applied to criminals, formed the 
 key-note of the valuable Charge delivered on Monday by the 
 Recorder . Reviewing the history of the Ticket -of-leave Act, 
 he pointed out the errors in its administration, condemned the 
 alterations proposed to be made in it by Sir George Grey, and 
 laid down a doctrine for which we have more than once con- 
 tended that it is useless to liberate a criminal until proof of 
 his reformation is obtained. The Home Secretary despairingly 
 admits that under the present system a convict is liberated on 
 
 * Second Report Transportation Committee. App. p. 180. 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 693 
 
 a tickct-of-leave without the slightest proof that the reformatory 
 process has even commenced. He is released just on the same 
 principle as that on which a man allows a savage dog to escape 
 because he is tired of holding him. It is thus with the crimi- 
 nal. The prisons are not large enough to hold the number of 
 criminals properly sentenced to long terms of imprisonment 
 the colonies refuse to receive convicts at all; and therefore 
 the ticket-of-leave system was invented to free the prisons by 
 liberating those prisoners whom it was inconvenient longer to 
 retain. Criminals sentenced to penal servitude a kind of con- 
 centrated transportation are excepted from the operation of 
 the Act, consequently they become mutinous, and less open to 
 reformatory influences. A further development of the law being 
 found necessary, Sir George Grey proposes to extend the privi- 
 lege of conditional pardon to penal servitude men, as well as to 
 those sentenced to transportation. In principle, no doubt, the 
 Home Secretary is perfectly right, but the scheme fails in 
 practice, because the Minister consents that men shall do what 
 they please, without stipulating for a prior knowledge of what 
 they may please to do. Good conduct in prison is sufficient to 
 obtain for the most hardened criminal the virtual remission of 
 half his sentence ; and yet good conduct in prison does not, in 
 the remotest degree, afford a proof of reformation. Men noto- 
 rious for their good behaviour in prison have walked straight 
 from the gaol-door to their old haunts, and, before the lapse of 
 many hours, have resumed their criminal habits. Had these 
 men been fairly tested, their tickets-of-leave would have been 
 withheld ; and if society is to be protected, a test must be 
 introduced severe enough to afford a reasonable hope of the 
 criminal's ultimate reformation. At present the conduct of the 
 Government is only paralleled by that of the cutler who forged 
 a sword -blade, polished it, laid it carefully by, but dared not 
 put it to the test of a blow, lest the absence of tempering 
 should reduce the weapon to the valueless condition of broken 
 iron. The useless sword is a fair type of the ticket-of-leave 
 convict. While in prison, his life is regulated by very simple 
 rules, obedience to which constitutes good conduct, and on such 
 good conduct tickets-of-leave are granted. Naturally, the libe- 
 rated criminal reverts to his old habits, and either as a practised 
 garrotter or a desperate burglar, scatters terror through a whole 
 
694 Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 
 
 district, the law meanwhile being utterly powerless for preven- 
 tion. How forcibly is this illustrated by the history of the 
 burglar Wotton ! He was a ticket-of-leave man known to be 
 still pursuing criminal habits ; the Secretary of State was 
 called upon to revoke the licence ; he refused, and the Ashover 
 burglary was the result. Well may the Recorder exclaim 
 
 * ***** 
 
 ' ' If the science of jurisprudence can do nothing better for 
 us than all this, it has little more claim on our respect than 
 the so-called science of astrology/ 
 
 ' But the science of jurisprudence can help us, if properly 
 applied. All that is wanted is an enlargement of the test on which 
 tickets-of-leave are granted. Instead of making that test a 
 simple observance of prison rules, let the candidate for libera- 
 tion really work out his own freedom by proving that he can 
 resist temptation. Let him be passed through different stages 
 of trial in solitude, in association, in almost unrestricted free- 
 dom and let his conduct under these circumstances determine 
 the period at which his punishment shall cease. Let him know 
 also that his licence will be revoked on proof that he is asso- 
 ciating with thieves, although no actual crime can be alleged 
 against him. Let these provisions be administered wisely and 
 firmly, and we shall diminish by at least three-fourths the 
 number of ticket-of-leave men who resume predatory habits. 
 It is idle to say that such tests cannot be applied. The best 
 answer is that such a system has worked and is working well. 
 Moritesinos, in the very worst among the bad Spanish prisons, 
 proved that he could successfully pass hardened criminals 
 through a course of reformatory training. In Bavaria, Ober- 
 maier still affords proof of the same great truth. In Ireland, 
 Captain Crofton is able to obtain similar results. What, then, 
 is to hinder England from emulating these examples? It is 
 evident that during the next session of Parliament the whole 
 subject will undergo discussion; until that time arrives we re- 
 serve further remarks. We cannot, however, refrain from 
 thanking the Recorder for having again called attention to the 
 anomalous condition of the law. It is important that changes 
 in the law should begin by being made popular, the value of 
 criminal jurisprudence consisting in its harmony with public 
 feeling. When a change is required in public opinion as a 
 
Sequel to Charge of March, 1857. 695 
 
 precursor to an improvement of the law, it cannot more natu- 
 rally begin than by principles being laid down from the Bench, 
 to be canvassed in the jury chamber, and to be disseminated to 
 the widest possible extent through the medium of the press. 
 And while incalculable good may result from the adoption of 
 this course, no harm can possibly arise ; for if the Judge errs 
 either in principle, or because the public mind is not sufficiently 
 prepared for new doctrines, he simply fails to attract the mea- 
 sure of attention necessary to success, and in a month the 
 charge is forgotten/ 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ABERDEEN, Feeding Schools. at, 360 
 
 children committed for crime at, 361 
 Absolute discharge of prisoners, 620 
 Abstinence from intoxicating drinks de- 
 sirable, 399 
 voluntary universal abstinence not to 
 
 be expected, 400 
 
 legislative interference needful, 400 
 Account of reformatory at Stretton-on- 
 
 Dunsmore, 52 
 
 number of boys sent from Birming- 
 ham, 54 
 
 Adams, Mr. Serjeant, 723 
 Addendum to Charge of January, 1855, 
 
 389 
 Adderley, Mr. C.3., 255, 345, 489 
 
 letter from author to, 276 
 Alcoholic drinks, cost of, 387, 394 
 
 medical opinion of, 392 
 
 excess in use of difficult to avoid, 
 
 396 
 
 dealers in should consider that their 
 trade may pass from them, 411 
 
 Amelia, extracts from, 459 
 
 Amicus, letter from, to the Times, 167 
 
 Annual Register, extract from, concern- 
 ing burglaries in 1850, 149 
 cruelties at Birmingham Gfaol, 232 
 
 Arbitrary power, evils of, 633 
 
 Arises Birmingham Gazette of March 23, 
 
 1857, extract from, 687 
 of April 6, 1857, extract from, on 
 Charge of March, 1 85 7, 692 
 
 Arnold, Dr., 58 
 
 Arsenic, 32 
 
 Asbover burglary, 678 
 
 Association of London Bankers, 43 
 
 Atto di accusa, 19 
 
 Austin, Lieutenant, 232 
 
 Average length of imprisonments, 624 
 
 BACON, Lord, 113, 439 
 
 Bail for good conduct, 155,169, 174, 186, 
 
 205, 209, 211, 213, 222, 229, 468 
 
 Baines, Right Hon. M. T., letter to, 
 
 from author, 543 
 Baker, Mr. Barwick, 356, 366 
 Baths and washhouses at Liverpool, 86 
 
 Bavaria, discharged prisoners, how treated 
 
 in, 569 
 
 Patronage Societies in, 569 
 perpetual imprisonment in, 524 
 punishments awarded in, 568 
 Beccaria, 279, 291 
 Bengal, law in action in, similar to one 
 
 proposed by author, 1 58 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 35 
 
 denounced the hulks, 475 
 Beranger, M. de, 5 3 2, 659 
 Bickersteth, Mr. (afterwards Lord Lang- 
 dale), 14 
 
 Bill to amend Ticket-of-leave Act, 651 
 Birmingham Discharged Prisoners' Aid 
 Society, 276 ; special meeting of, 
 
 599 
 
 letter from author to editor of the 
 
 Times respecting, 604 
 Birmingham Graol, 232 ; Andrews, J., 
 prisoner in, ib. ; Austin, Lieut., 
 governor of, ib. ; Blount, Mr., 
 surgeon at, 236 ; Brooks, J., 
 warder at, 235 ; Brown, William, 
 warder at, -233; commission to 
 inquire into cruelties at, 232 ; 
 Frear, T., warder at, 234; Hart- 
 well, D., messenger at, -236 ; 
 Hunt, S., prisoner in, 236 ; laying 
 first stone of, 101 ; punishments 
 at illegal, 235 ; salt forced into 
 mouths of prisoners at, 237; 
 sentences passed on governor and 
 surgeon of, 238 ; Sherwin, Rev. 
 A., chaplain to, 234 ; suicides 
 at > 2 35 ; Wood, Mr. J., school- 
 master to, 235 
 
 Birmingham Journal of October 13, 
 1855, extract from, 143 
 
 of October 12, 1850, 146 
 
 of October 13, 1855, 482 
 
 of February 25, 1857, 68 3 
 
 of March 7, 1857, 68 5 
 
 of January, 14, 1857, letter in, 641 
 Birmingham Mercury of October 25, 
 1851, article from, 210 
 
 of March 7, 1857, extract from, 68 1 
 Birmingham police, excellence of, 9 
 Birmingham, rate of mortality at, 315 
 
6 9 8 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Birmingham, drunkenness cause of disease 
 at, 319; localities where connexion 
 is obvious between disease and 
 crime, 320 
 public-houses in, 603 
 riots in 1839, i 
 ticket-of-leave men in, 590 ; list of, 
 
 596 
 
 Blackstone, 28 
 
 Blanchard, Mons., letter from, 130 
 Biount, Mr., surgeon of Birmingham 
 
 Gaol, 236 
 
 ' Book of Sports for the Poor Man,' 83 
 Boutwell, Hon. George, letter from, 415 
 Bracebridge, Mr. C. H., 255 
 Bristol Branch of Association for im- 
 proving the Dwellings of the In- 
 dustrious Classes, 326 
 meeting of National Reformatory 
 
 Union at, 346 
 
 model lodging-houses at, 326 
 Ragged School Union, 362 
 ticket-of-leave-men in, 591 
 Brougham, Lord, 19, 346, 444 
 
 on the inefficacy of simply penal 
 legislation, 294 ; on the Hulks 
 system, 476 
 
 his Judicial Statistics Bill, 593 
 Brougham, Mr. James, 346 
 Burdett, Sir Francis, 14 
 Burglaries in 1850, 149 
 Burglary at Ashover, 678 
 
 at Great Hampton Street, Birming- 
 ham, 146 
 
 at Mr. Holford's, 191 
 at Manchester, 150 
 at Manningtree, 150 
 Burt, Rev. John, 276 
 Bushrangers in Tasmania, 641 
 
 'CALEDONIAN MERCURY' of April 4th, 
 
 1857, extract from, 671 
 Calthorpe, Lord, 345 
 Cambridge, Duke of, 517 
 Campbell, Mr. George, 157 
 Canning, Elizabeth, 21 
 Capital punishment for forgery, 43 
 Carpentaria, Gulf of, 608 ; suitability of 
 for a penal colony, doubtful, 630 
 Carpenter, Miss Mary, 342, 346, 356 
 
 extract from paper by, read at Bris- 
 
 . tol, 363 
 
 Certainty of punishment far from at- 
 tained, 6 
 
 Chadwick, Mr. Edwin, 299 
 Chance, Mr. William, 265, 271 
 Chaplains of prisons, 184, 471 
 
 have no undue influence in procur- 
 ing remission of sentence, 519 
 Charge of July, 1839, 2 
 
 of May, 1840, observations on, 46 
 
 of April, 1841, 52 
 
 Charge of January, 1845,64 
 of October, 1845, 71 
 of March, 1847, IO 7 
 of April, 1848, 112 
 of October, 1848, 117 
 of April, 1850, 135 
 of October, 1850, 151 
 of October, 1851, 180 
 of October, 1853, 238 
 of March, 1854, 299 
 of September, 1854, 335 
 of January, 1855, 372 
 of April, 1855, 439 
 of October, 1855, 462 ; opinions set 
 forth in opposed by Times, 478 ; 
 Examiner, 493 ; Inquirer, 496 ; 
 Era, 505 ; Morning Chronicle, 508 
 approved by Birmingham Journal, 
 482 ; Globe, 484; Spectator, 48 7 
 Weekly Dispatch, 500 ; Daily 
 News, 512 
 
 of October, 1856, 529 
 of December, 1856, 610 
 of March, 1857, 651 
 
 article upon, from Aris's Gazette 
 of April 6th, 1857, 692 
 Charity, 76 
 
 Charter of Incorporation for Birming- 
 ham, 4 
 
 Chartists in April, 1848, 112 
 Chartists in Birmingham, I 12 
 Chatham, Lord, 666 
 Cheap concerts, 83 
 Checks to crime, 72 
 Chesterton, Mr., on Captain Maconochie, 
 
 271 
 
 hope as a reformatory agent, 585 
 perpetual imprisonment. 522 
 Clarke, Mr. Andrew, 87 
 Class who pursue crime as a calling, 7, 152, 
 
 177-9, 200, 204, 213, 327 
 Clay, Rev. John, 345. 387 
 
 on effect of good or bad times on com- 
 mittals to prison, 415 
 Cochrane, Mr. Baillie, on prison at 
 
 Munich, 544 
 Code Napoleon, 20 
 Coke, Lord, 26 
 
 Colons at Mettray, number of, 120, 131 ; 
 medal commemorative of their 
 gallant conduct, 134 
 Combe, Mr. George, 48 
 Commission proposed to inquire into sub- 
 ject of law reform, 519 
 Committee on juvenile offenders, House 
 
 of Commons, 1852, 344 
 Common Lodging Houses Act, 304, 324 
 Comparison of number of forgeries com- 
 mitted, with convictions, 42 
 Conference at Birmingham, 1851, 342 
 resolutions adopted, 343 
 1853, 344 
 
INDEX. 
 
 6 99 
 
 Conkey Beau, 219 
 
 Constabulary force, report of commis- 
 
 missioners on, 7 42 
 Convictions for forgery compared with 
 number of forgeries committed, 42 
 number of, no index to number of 
 
 offences, 7 
 Convicts may be employed on public 
 
 works at home, 175, 617, 649 
 cost of. at Dartmoor, 649 
 Portland, 649 
 in Tasmania, 618 649 
 Western Australia, 618 649 
 Corfield, Miss Martha, 276 
 Cornish miners, 279 
 Correspondence between author and Sir 
 
 George Grey, extract from, 688 
 Cossham, Mr. Handel, 346 
 Cost of convicts at Dartmoor and Port- 
 land, 649 
 Tasmania and "Western Australia, 
 
 618 649 
 
 criminals at large, 128 
 witnesses in Belgium paid by the 
 
 public, 5 
 witnesses in France when paid from 
 
 public fund, 20 
 
 Counterfeit coin, uttering of, 46 
 how made, 46 
 materials used. 47 
 
 Court of Requests at Birmingham, 446 
 disgraceful state of prison attached 
 *i 455 j letter from author to 
 Sir J. Graham describing, 456; 
 answered, 458 
 
 Courteilles, Vicomte de, 120 
 Crank, 250 
 
 Crime in 1850 and 1851, 6n 
 
 in 1855 and 1856, 653 
 
 in Edinburgh, 669 ; causes of, 109 ; 
 
 checks to, 75 ; cost of in London, 
 
 327 ; diminished by operation of 
 
 Maine Law, 424-5-6-7-8-9, 430- 
 
 1-4 ; incapacitation from, 626 ; 
 
 increase in partly attributable to 
 
 reduction in army and militia, 
 
 631 654 ; means for repression 
 
 of, 9, 16 1, 328 ; perseverance in, 
 
 20 j; pursued as a calling, 7, 152, 
 
 327-8 ; repression of, the true 
 
 end of punishment, 622, 646 
 
 temptations to, in Birmingham, 603 
 
 more frequent in winter than in 
 
 summer, 611 
 
 Criminal code, former severity of, 462 ; 
 mitigated of late years, 204, 614, 
 638 
 
 statistics in France, accuracy of, 592 
 
 Criminals below the average in intellect, 4 8 
 
 may defray cost of imprisonment, 466 
 
 discharged uiireforiued, 260-1, 614, 
 
 655 
 
 Criminals when discharged unable to find 
 employment, 632 
 
 habits of great, 666 
 
 necessity of keeping at home recog- 
 nised by Government, 667 
 
 identification of, 537, 594 
 
 impunity of, 8, 182 
 
 labour appropriate for, 175, 617, 649 
 
 cost of when at large, 128 
 
 misplaced sympathy with, 2ir, 622 
 
 recklessness of, 48 
 
 should be detained in prison till 
 reformed, 520 
 
 treatment of, 103 
 
 well known to police, 152-6, 162, 230 
 Crime: Its Amount, Causes, and Re- 
 medy, by F. Hill, quoted, 244-7 
 Crofton, Captain, 346, 657 ; evidence of, 
 563 ; system pursued by him at 
 Smithfield Penitentiary, 586, 672 
 
 'DAILY NEWS,' October^, 1855, article 
 
 from, 512 
 
 Dec. 31, 1856, article from, 645 
 Jan. 17, 1857, letter from author 
 
 in, 623 
 
 Dalton, the Bushranger, 642 
 Dartmoor, cost of convict at, 649 
 Degrading discipline, evil effects of, 14 
 De la Repression Penale; de ses Formes 
 
 et de ses Effets, 659 
 Demetz, M., 55, 120, 356, 470, 480-7-9, 
 
 49 1 
 
 communication from, 128 
 on French criminal statistics, 592 
 
 Denman, Lord, 461 
 
 Deterrents, inefficiency of, 46, 242, 260, 
 266, 274 ; treated of in letter to 
 C. B.Adderley, Esq., M.P., 276 ; 
 why believers in deterrents should 
 advocate reformatory treatment, 
 627 
 
 Digby, Wriothesley, 347 
 
 Dillon, Mr., 623 
 
 Diminution in number of offenders, 151 
 
 Diminution in number of pardons annu- 
 ally granted in France, effect of, 
 
 6 59 
 
 Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society in Bir- 
 mingham, 276, 543 ; author's 
 speech at meeting of, 599 
 how treated in Bavaria. 569 
 how treated in Spain, 577 
 Disease and crime, connexion between, 300 
 localities in Birmingham where their 
 
 connexion is obvious, 320 
 Dow, Hon. Neal, 425 
 Draft Report on principles of punishment, 
 
 522 
 
 Drainage, effects of bad, 302 
 Dramatic entertainments, 82-4 
 Drunkenness a cause of disease, 319 
 
7oo 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Drunkenness, Ragged School pupils vic- 
 tims of, 364 
 
 Dublin Castle, Camden Town, plundered, 
 150 
 
 Dublin Daily Express, Dec. 4, 1856, ex- 
 tract from letter from Mr. P. J. 
 Murray in, 677 
 
 Dunne, Mr. J., Chief-constable, Newcastle- 
 upon-Tyne, letter from, 358 
 
 Dwellings of the poor, 211, 300, 320 
 
 Dyson, William, 191 
 
 EASTERN PENITENTIARY at Philadelphia, 
 
 248 
 
 Edinburgh, crime in, in 1856, 669 
 Edinburgh News of January 10, 1857, 
 
 extract from, 669 
 Edinburgh Review, 1826, extract from, 36 
 
 October, 1854, extract from, 227 
 Education, 9 
 
 regarded by Morning Advertiser as 
 the sole means for the diminution 
 of crime, 225 
 in factories, 78 
 
 Effect of good or bad times on committals 
 to prison ; opinion of Rev. John 
 Clay, 415 ; of Dr. Walsh, 437 ; of 
 the author, 438 
 Ellis, John, Mr., 255 
 Embezzlement, 71 
 
 % Employers and employed, relation be- 
 tween, 77 
 England almost the only country which 
 
 resorts to transportation, 618 
 Englishwoman in America, extracts from, 
 
 370 
 Era, October 14, 1855, article from, 
 
 505 
 
 Erskine, Lord, 186 
 
 Evidence before Transportation Commit- 
 tee of House of Commons, 1856, of 
 author, 523, 688 
 Jebb, Colonel, 476 
 Waddington, Mr. Under Secretary, 
 
 5^5, 687 
 
 of Mr. Holford's servants, &c., 191 
 Examiner, extracts from, October 19, 
 
 1850. 191 
 Oct. 26, 1850, 194; Oct. 13, 1855, 
 
 493 
 
 Expense of prosecutions, 5 
 
 Exposing goods at shop doors, 75, 349 
 
 FALKLAND ISLANDS unsuitable for a penal 
 
 colony, 633 
 
 Fallaciousness of criminal statistics, 7 
 Family principle, 121, 356 
 Fe lining, Eliza, 32 
 Few Remarks on the Convict Question, 
 
 by Captain Crofton, 585 
 
 Field, Rev. John, 215 
 
 Fielding, Henry, Life o.f, 2 1 
 
 Fines, 18 
 
 Firearms, two innocent persons killed in 
 
 consequence of use of, 189 
 use of, in self-defence, recommended 
 by Examiner, 196 
 
 Flood of the Loire in 1856, 133 
 
 Forbes Mackenzie's Act, 435, 671 
 
 diminution of drunkenness and 
 crime, 43 
 
 Forats, effect on, of diminution in an- 
 nual number of pardons gran ted in 
 France, 532, 659 
 
 Forged bank-notes, 7, 42 
 
 France, accuracy of criminal statistics in, 
 
 59 2 
 Frequenting a place with criminal intent, 
 
 154 
 
 Freshfield, Messrs. J. C. & H., 45 
 Frimley, burglary at, 150 
 Frome, outrage near, 189 
 Frost, John, on transportation, 634 
 
 GAOL at Birmingham (see 'Bir- 
 mingham Gaol'), laying first 
 stone of, joi 
 
 Gardner, Mr. (Governor of Bristol Gaol), 
 photographs his prisoners, 593 
 
 Gascoigne, Sir Crisp, 24 
 
 Gentleman' 1 s Magazine, extract from, 23 
 
 Glimpses of Spain, by S. T: Wallis, ex- 
 tract from, 559 
 
 Globe, Oct. 13, 1855, article from, 484 
 
 Glossop, Inspector, 148, 276, 683 
 
 Godwin, Mr. George, 320 
 
 Golden Bridge Reformatory, 675 
 
 Goulbourn, Mr. Serjeant, 38 
 
 Governor of a gaol, qualifications for, 252 
 
 Grand Juries, functions of, 10 
 Charge upon, 439 
 
 their jurisdiction, 441 ; superseded, 
 442 ; when mischievous, 444 ; 
 proposed change in their func- 
 tions, 447 ; opinion of the Grand 
 Jury addressed respecting, 449 ; ob- 
 servations on, by Mr. Oakley, 45 1 ; 
 Inutility of Grand Juries, 461 
 address of, October, 1856, 543 ; 
 
 March, 1857, 669 
 advocates reformatory treatment, 191 
 
 Grange Gorman prison, 675 
 
 Great Exhibition of 1851, 18 
 
 Grey, Earl, on tickets-of-leave, 534 
 
 on influence of hope in treatment 
 of criminals, 659 
 
 Grey, Sir George, on tickets-of-leave, 540, 
 
 655 
 dissatisfied with results of present 
 
 system of prison discipline, 656 
 speech on bill to amend Ticket-of- 
 leave Act, 653 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Grey, Sir George, letter to the author 
 respecting ticket-of- leave men 
 in Birmingham, 665; regards a 
 satisfactory test of reformation im- 
 possible of attainment, 667; com- 
 ments on course pursued by the 
 author respecting persons sen- 
 tenced to penal servitude, 668 
 
 HALL, Mr. Robert, 27 
 
 Hansard's Debates, extracts from, 653-6, 
 661-3 
 
 Harbours of Refuge, want of, 617 
 
 Harrowby, Earl of, 345 
 
 Heely, Christopher, 148 
 
 Heely, Miss, statement of, 68 r 
 
 Herapath, Mr. Thornton J., 33 
 
 Hill, Mr. Alfred, 346; extract read' at 
 Bristol from paper by, 360 ; letter 
 from, 672 
 
 Berkeley, letter from, 33 
 Frederic, 323, 346 ; on prison disci- 
 pline, 244 ; prison visiting, 247 ; 
 perpetual imprisonment, 521-4 
 M. D., evidence before Prisoners' 
 Defence Bill Committee, House of 
 Lords, 1835, 29 ; before Trans- 
 portation Committee, House of 
 Commons, 1856, 523, 688 
 
 Hilyard, Mr., Governor of Birmingham 
 Gaol, 275 
 
 Hodgson, Mr. Joseph, 50 
 
 Holderness, Rev. William, on penal ser- 
 vitude, 534 
 
 Holiest, Mr., 160, 608 
 
 Hone, Mr. William, 35 
 
 Hope, a necessary element in reformatory 
 treatment, 534, 690 ; Mr. Chester- 
 ton's opinion, 585 ; Earl Grey's, 
 659 ; evil effect of depriving pri- 
 soners of hope, 532, 659 
 
 Hoskins, Mr. G. A., on the prison at 
 Valencia, 552 
 
 Howard, John, 105, 2^7 
 
 Howitt, Mr. William, 648 
 
 Hulks denounced by Jeremy Bentham, 
 
 475 
 by Lord Brougham, 476 
 
 Hume, Mr. Joseph, letter from, to Cap- 
 tain Maconochie, 274 
 
 Hunt, Mr. Leigh, 14 
 
 IDENTIFICATION of criminals, difficulty of, 
 
 537 
 by means of photographic portraits, 
 
 593 
 
 Imprisonment with labour, almost our 
 only form of punishment, 624 ; 
 term of, becoming shorter, 184 ; 
 length of, should be determined 
 by reformation of the prisoner, 522 
 
 Imprisonment for life, 624 (see also Per- 
 petual Imprisonment); when neces- 
 sary, 521, 616 ; contemplated by 
 Government, 653, 667 
 Imprisonments, repeated, evils of, 350 
 Impunity of criminals, 7, 8, 182 
 Incapacitation from crime, 626 
 Incendiary fires at Birmingham, 1 1 
 Inciting to murder, 198 
 Incorrigible offenders, necessity for per- 
 petual imprisonment of, recognised 
 by Government, 653, 667 
 Increase of crime, doubtful, 646 
 Indian Thug, 182 
 
 Industrial Feeding Schools, 343 ; in Aber- 
 deen, 360 
 Inefficacy of simply Penal Legislation, 
 
 by Lord Brougham, 294 
 Innocent persons, instances of verdict of 
 
 guilty against, 187 
 killed in consequence of use of fire- 
 arms in self-defence, 189 
 Inquirer, Oct. 13, 1855, article from, 496 
 Intemperance a bar to moral and physical 
 
 improvement, 325 
 consequences of, 373, 387 
 crime produced by, 395, 420-2 
 Intermediate prison, 672 
 
 stage between imprisonment and 
 
 liberty, importance of, 631 
 Intoxicating liquors, table exhibiting sale 
 
 of, in United States, 412 
 in British America, 414 
 money spent in, 388 
 Introduction to Charge of July, 1839, r 
 October, 1850, 146 
 October, 1853. 232 
 January, 1855, 367 
 December, 1856, 610 
 
 JANSSEN, Sir S. T., 654 
 Jardine, Mr., 469, 515, 516 
 Jebb, Colonel, evidence of, before Trans- 
 portation Committee, respecting 
 penal servitude, 476 
 letter respecting tickets-of-leave, 5 1 8 
 Jeffreys, Judge, 30 
 Johnson, Dr. 373, 390 
 Jury, trial by, when introduced in Bir- 
 mingham, 4 
 
 Just administration of the law, 6 
 Justices of the Peace, 107, 258 
 Juvenile offenders, 108, 183, 208 
 cases of 14, at Liverpool, 127 
 Committee, House of Commons, 
 
 1852, 344 
 number committed at Aberdeen, 36 1 ; 
 
 at Bristol, 362-6 
 reformatory treatment of, 267 
 returned to parents or employers, 
 1 1 8, 35 T, 60 1 ; register of those so 
 returned kept at Birmingham, 35 1 
 
702 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Juvenile Offenders' A ct, i>jth&i 8th Viet. , 
 
 explained, 336, 345 
 as amended, 345 
 
 KAISERSLAUTERN, 549 
 
 Keating, Mr., in debate on Ticket-of- 
 
 leave Bill, 689 
 his construction of the Act accords 
 
 with the author's, 690 
 Kinnaird, Hon. Arthur, 345 
 Knacker's yard at Birmingham, 447 
 Knight, Mr. Charles, 388 
 
 LABOURING CLASSES' Lodging House Act, 
 309 ; endeavour to bring it into 
 operation at Bristol, 326 
 
 Landlords should be made responsible for 
 respectability of their tenants, 67, 
 32 7 ; proposal for effecting this, 
 332 ; their interest to annihilate 
 the predatory class, 330 
 
 Large number of offences never detected, 
 
 7, 42 
 
 Law, just administration of, 6 
 Laying the first stone of Birmingham 
 
 Gaol, 1 01 
 Leamington Spa Courier of April 5th, 
 
 1855, extract from, 346 
 Lees, Dr. Frederic, on operation of the 
 
 Maine Law, 423 
 Legislative interference, evil results of, 
 
 323-4 
 
 when useless, 391 
 as regards sale of intoxicating drinks, 
 
 already in existence, 374 
 Leipner, Mr., 544 
 Lentaigne, Mr., 672 
 Letter from author to C. B. Adderley, 
 
 Esq., 276 
 
 to Right Hon. Talbot Baines, 543 
 to Daily Neivs, 623 
 to Times, 604 
 
 Lewes' Life of Goethe, extract from, 293 
 Liberated convicts, increase in number of, 
 
 185 
 Liberty of the subject interfered with, 
 
 211, 223 
 
 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,' 113 
 Licensed victuallers, 410 
 Licensing marine store dealers, 69 
 Life of Fielding, by Frederic Lawrence, 
 
 21 
 
 Liverpool, baths and wash-houses at, 86 
 cases of 14 young offenders at, 127 
 local act in, regulating licences to 
 
 marine store dealers, 69 
 petition from magistrates of, 127 
 public-houses in, 94 
 Liverpool Life, extracts from, 84 
 Liverpool Mercury, October 28th, 1851, 
 
 extract from, 221 
 Locke, John, 410 
 
 London Bankers' Association, 43 
 London police sent to Birmingham, 2 
 London Shadows, extracts from, 320 
 Lovett, Mr., 12 
 Lyndhurst, Lord, 25, 39 
 Lyttelton, Lord, 345 
 
 MACONOCHIE, Captain, 175, 217, 232, 
 
 239, 489 
 
 letter to, from Rev. T. B. Faylor, 
 273; Mr. Joseph Hume, 274; his 
 opinion that it is more hopeful 
 to reform adults than juveniles, 
 471-4; his services, 473; his 
 system, 243, 251-7, 262, 271; 
 testimonial to, 265 
 
 M'Claren, Mr. Duncan, 437 
 . communication from, 671 
 
 Maine Law, 367 
 
 its supporters opponents, 367; 
 evasion of, 367 ; effects of, 368 ; 
 not yet carried into full effect, 369 ; 
 Englishwoman in America, on, 
 370-1 ; history, 382 ; not yet 
 possible to introduce in England, 
 386, 404 ; summary of author's 
 views upon, 389 ; progress of in 
 America, 40 1 ; table exhibiting it, 
 412; objections raised against, 404 ; 
 declared to be unnecessary when 
 possible, 407 ; difficulties in way 
 of, in England, 408 ; publicans 
 influence a large number of voters, 
 409; Hon. George Boutwell on pro- 
 gress of Maine Law, 415; Dr. Fre- 
 deric Lees, 423 ; prisons and work- 
 houses emptied by operation of 
 Maine Law, 425-7, 431-3; bene- 
 ficial effects of, 426-8-9, 430-1- 
 2-3-4 5 crime diminished by, 
 424-5-6-7-8-9, 430-1-4 
 
 Manchester, burglary at, 150 
 massacre, 14 
 
 Manchester Courier, Nov. 22nd, 1851, 
 article from, 225 
 
 Manchester Guardian, Oct. 22nd, 1851, 
 extract from, 203 
 
 Manningtree, burglary at, 1 50 
 
 Marine store dealers, 69 
 
 Mark system, 262 
 
 Marston, Mr., 146 
 
 Masters and servants, 71 
 
 Mayne, Sir Richard, 162, 324 
 
 Means for repression of crime, 9, 161, 
 328 (see also 'Education,' 'Maine 
 Law,' 'Recreation') 
 
 Metropolitan Association for Improving 
 the Dwellings of the Industrious 
 Classes, 302 
 
 their charter, cost of, 308 
 branch societies, 308 
 Bristol branch, 326 
 
INDEX. 
 
 703 
 
 Mettray, 55, 356; account of author's 
 visit to, 119; conditions on which 
 Sacrament is administered at, 
 472 ; cost per head, 126, 133; 
 effect of Revolution of 1848 upon, 
 128; expulsion from, 124; family 
 principle, 121; funerals, 122; 
 gallant conduct of colons, 133; 
 the institution imitated, 133; in- 
 creasing success of, 131; in- 
 firmary, 122; mental instruction, 
 123; mortality, 131; officers, 
 121, 132; Orfrasiere, 133; pro- 
 portion reformed, 126, 131, 470; 
 recidiristes, 125, 131-2; refuge 
 for well-conducted colons, 125,471; 
 religious teaching, 124; results 
 obtained, 131; Sisters of Charity, 
 123; training school, 121, 132 
 
 Military called out at Birmingham, 2 
 
 Millbanke, Sir John, 618 
 
 Milnes, Mr. R. M., 345 
 
 Minister of Justice for Belgium, 19 
 
 Mitigation in criminal code, 204, 614, 638 
 
 Model lodging houses at Bristol, 326 
 
 Modern India, 158 
 
 Moles worth, Sir William, 633 
 
 Monk, Dr., late Bishop of Gloucester and 
 Bristol, 326 
 
 Montesinos, Colonel de, 532, 571 
 on prison at Valencia, 557 
 
 Montgomery, Mr. James, 14 
 
 Moral hospitals, prisons regarded as, 105, 
 209, 267 
 
 Morgan, Mr. W., 265, 345 
 
 Morning Advertiser, Nov. 8th, 1851, 
 article from, 222 
 
 Morning Chronicle, Oct. i5th, 1855, 508 
 
 Morning Post, Oct. 25th, 1851, 212 
 Oct. 28th, 1851, 218 
 
 Moveable iron huts for convicts, 588, 675 
 
 Mullens, Mr., 43 
 
 Munich Prison described by Mr. A. B. 
 
 Cochrane, 544 
 by Mr. G. Combe, 578 
 by Rev. H. C. Townsend, 550 
 expense of each prisoner in prison 
 
 at, 567 
 
 officers employed at, 568 
 proportion of convicts reformed at, 
 
 566, 581 
 
 questions and answers respecting, 564 
 results obtained at, stated by Herr 
 
 Obermaier, 549 
 
 system pursued at, adopted else- 
 where, 566 
 
 Murderous outrage at Birmingham, 146, 
 
 *5i 
 
 at Frome, 189 
 Murray, Mr. P. J., 677 
 Murrietta and Co., Messrs. Christobal de, 
 544 
 
 National Reformatory Union, first pro- 
 vincial meeting of, 346 ; autho- 
 rised report of, 346; letter from 
 Mr. Dunne read at, 358 , papers 
 read at, 346 
 
 Naylor, Rev. T. B., letter from, to Cap- 
 tain Maconochie, 273 
 
 Needlemakers, 282 
 
 North Australia unsuitable for penal 
 colony, 630 
 
 Northcote, Sir Stafford, 345-6 
 
 Not so Bad as They Seem, extract from, 
 677 
 
 Oakley, Mr., observations on Grand Jury 
 system, 451 
 
 Obermaier, Herr, extracts from his work 
 on Prisons, 549 (see also ' Munich 
 Prison') 
 
 Observations on Charge of May, 1840, 46 
 
 O'Connor, Fergus, 14 
 
 Offences against property, 7 
 
 large number of, never detected, 7, 42 
 
 Offenders already convicted to be liable 
 to be called upon to show that 
 they enjoy means of honest liveli- 
 hood, i$i(seea.lso ' Proposal, '&c., 
 
 704) 
 
 diminution in number of, 151 
 (See also 'Juvenile Offenders.') 
 
 Orfrasiere, offshoot from Mettray, 133 
 
 Organ, Mr., 587, 674, 676 
 
 PAGE, Judge, 30 
 Pakington, Sir John, 344 
 
 on debate on Ticket-of -leave Bill, 688 
 Palmerston, Lord, in debate on Ticket- 
 
 of-leave Bill, 689 
 
 his construction of Ticket-of-leave 
 
 Act accords with the author's, 691 
 
 on importance of hope in reformatory 
 
 treatment, 690 
 
 Parental responsibility enforced, 338, 356 
 excellent results of enforcing, at 
 
 Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 358 
 Parkman, Dr., murder of, 20 
 Patronage societies in Bavaria, 569 
 Paulton Literary Institution, extract 
 
 from address at, 364 
 Peace Association, 197 
 Pearson, Mr. Charles, 466, 519 
 
 his plan to make prisons self-sup- 
 porting, 520 
 
 Mr. Chesterton upon, 520 
 Penal colonies, 184 
 
 difficulty of founding, 629 
 servitude, 513-6 
 
 application of the term to be ex- 
 tended, 652 
 
 defined, 475 ; Colonel Jebb's evi- 
 dence respecting, 476 ; remission 
 of, 159 ; sentences to, 477 
 
74 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Penal servitude men, ill effect of excluding 
 from privilege of ticket-of-leave, 
 562, 659 
 
 eligible to receive them, 535 ; Mr. 
 Waddington's evidence respecting, 
 687 ; will begin to be discharged 
 in 1857, 620 
 
 Penal settlement, evils of, 648 
 
 Perpetual imprisonment, 522, 624 
 
 Mr. Chesterton on, 522; Mr. Stuart 
 Wortley on, 523 ; author's evi- 
 dence before Transportation Com- 
 mittee on, 524 ; Mr. Waddington 
 upon, 525 ; when necessary, 616 
 for the incorrigible, 465 ; advocated by 
 the Times, 481 ; Spectator, 490; 
 Examiner, 496; Weekly Dispatch, 
 502 
 
 principle of, recognised by Govern- 
 ment, 653, 667 
 
 Persons pursuing crime as a calling (see 
 'Class who,' &c., 698) 
 
 Petition from Liverpool magistrates, 127 
 
 Petitions in favour of prisoners, 135, 
 141 
 
 Philadelphia, penitentiary at, 248 ; re- 
 fuge at, 448 
 
 Phillimore, Mr., 26 
 
 Philpotts, Mr. Thomas, 346 
 
 Photographic portraits of criminals, 593, 
 678 
 
 Photography as an A id to the A dminis- 
 tration of Criminal Justice, a 
 letter from Mr. Gardner, 594 
 
 Phrenology, 48 
 
 Physicians, opinion of seven, on phreno- 
 logy, as applied to criminal dis- 
 cipline, 49 
 
 Physiology, 49 
 
 Police, chief-superintendents of, should be 
 furnished with means of detecting 
 criminals, 596 
 duties of, towards ticket-of-leave 
 
 holders, 660 
 
 excellence of, at Birmingham, 9 
 officers, testimony of, 177 
 surveillance by, 221 
 ticket-of-leave holders in Ireland 
 required to report themselves to, 
 675, 678 
 
 Police Gazette, extract from, 611 
 
 Political prisoners, 12 
 
 Poor man's ' Book of Sports,' 83 
 
 Port Arthur, convicts at, 635 
 
 Portland, cost of convicts at, 649 
 
 Powell, Rev. Town send, 55, 353 
 
 Press, vigilance of the, 154, 638 
 
 Presumption of guilt to be met by counter- 
 presumption of innocence, 155, 188 
 'Prevention,' letter from, 70 
 
 Price's Candle Company, 78 
 
 Principle of reformation has not yet been 
 tried in England, 626 
 
 Principles of punishment, draft report 
 
 on, 522 
 
 Prison, discharge from, period when 
 criminals are most difficult to deal 
 with, 647 
 
 labour should be profitable, 249 
 
 does- not unjustly interfere with 
 honest labour, 128, 503 
 
 visiting, 248 
 
 discipline, 14, 103, 258 
 
 in Ireland described, 672 ; results 
 
 of, 676 
 object of, 657 
 
 results of present system unsatis- 
 factory, 656 
 
 select committee on, 1850, 519 
 Prisons, their condition formerly, 258 
 
 Mr. Pearson's plan to make self- 
 supporting, 520 
 
 of Munich and Valencia, 543 
 
 should be regarded as moral hospi- 
 tals, 267 
 
 too sumptuous, -211 
 
 and workhouses emptied by operation 
 
 of the Maine Law, 425-7, 431-3 
 Prisoners' Aid Society at Birmingham, 276, 
 
 599, 604 
 Prisoners' Counsel Bill, 25-8, 41 
 
 employment of, on public works, 617, 
 649 
 
 employment of, supposed to interfere 
 with honest labour; fallacy of this 
 opinion demonstrated, 128, 503 
 
 how they should be treated, 286 
 
 instances of, who are well-conducted 
 in confinement, but outrageous 
 when at liberty, 521 
 
 petitions in favour of, 135, 141 
 
 photographed to secure identifica- 
 tion, 593 
 
 should be permitted to earn a little 
 money to support them after leav- 
 ing prison, 1 79 
 Prize-fighters, 95 
 
 Proposal to call upon persons once con- 
 victed and suspected of living by 
 crime, to show that they possess 
 means of honest maintenance, 155, 
 181 
 
 approved by 'Amicus,' 167 
 Edinburgh Review, 228 
 Liverpool Mercury, 'ill 
 Manchester Guardian, -203 
 Spectator, 173-6, 215 
 Times (partially), -230 
 
 disapproved by Birmingham Mer- 
 cury, 210 
 Examiner, 194" 
 Manchester Courier, 225 
 Morning A dvertiser, 222 
 Morning Chronicle, 207 
 Morning Post, 212, 218 
 Times, 159, 163, 170, 200 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Principle adopted by Government, with- 
 out safeguard of trial proposed by 
 Author, 468 (see also '.Reputed 
 Thieves') 
 
 Property, offences against, 7 
 
 Prosecutions, expense of, 5 
 
 Prostitutes, 74, 85, 138 
 
 Public baths and wash-houses, 86 
 
 houses, in Birmingham, 603 ; com- 
 mittee on, 380 
 
 play-grounds, 81 ; readings, 83 ; 
 works, employment of convicts on 
 at home, 617, 649 
 
 Punishment, 102, 753 ; rapidly become 
 lighter, 463 ; now almost re- 
 solved into imprisonment with 
 labour, 624 ; repression of crime, 
 the true end of punishment, 622, 
 646 
 
 Puritans, 82 
 
 'QUARTERLY REVIEW,' December, 1855, 
 
 ^ extract from, 342, 4, 5 
 Questions regarding prison at Munich, 
 
 564 ; at Valencia, 571 
 sanitary state of Birmingham, 317 
 
 RATE OP MORTALITY AT BIRMINGHAM, 315 
 
 Rathbone, Mr. William, 87 
 
 Rauhe Haus, 356 
 
 Reader, Mr., no 
 
 Receivers of stolen goods, 9, 67 
 
 Recommitments at Warwickshire Sessions, 
 348 
 
 Recreation, 81, 4 
 
 Redhill, 356 
 
 Reformation, the object to be aimed at 
 in treatment of criminals, 243 ; 
 impossibility of, with a system of 
 short imprisonments, 624 ; of all 
 criminals impossible, 227 ; of 
 large proportion proved possible 
 by experience of Bavaria and Spain, 
 656 ; how attainable, 657 ; must 
 be relied on for diminution of 
 crime, 284 ; should determine 
 length of imprisonment, 522 ; test 
 of, 542, 672 ; satisfactory test of, 
 regarded by Sir George Grey as 
 impossible to obtain, 667 
 
 Reformatory discipline, 539; principle has 
 not yet been tried in England, 626 
 
 Reformatory schools, 543 ; their manage- 
 ment, 354 ; government allowance 
 for each child at, 341, 345 
 
 Reformatory treatment, 8, 103, in, 117, 
 129, advocated by grand jury, 
 191 ; applicable alike to juvenile 
 and adult offenders, 289, 337; im- 
 portance of hope as an element in, 
 $34> 5 8 5 > 659, 690 ; of necessity 
 penal in nature, 245 
 
 Z 
 
 Relation between employers and em- 
 ployed, 77 
 
 Remission of sentences of penal servitude 
 men, 159, 477 
 
 Repeated convictions, 108 
 imprisonments, 183 
 
 Report of commissioners on constabulary 
 force, 7 
 
 Repression of crime, true end of punish- 
 ment, 622, 646 
 
 Reputed thieves, proposal to restrain, 
 155, 186, 205, 210, 212 ; con- 
 sidered dangerous, 165, 195, 202, 
 212, 224 ; impracticable, 164, 
 210, 213, 221-4; inoperative, 
 218 ; unjustifiable, 172 ; unneces- 
 sary, 1 66 (see, also, 'Proposal,' 
 &c., p. 704) 
 
 Retributive principle in punishment, 182 
 
 Returning juvenile offenders to their pa- 
 rents or employers, 118, 351, 601 
 register of those returned at Bir- 
 mingham, 351 
 
 Riots in Birmingham in 1839, I 
 
 Rogers, Mr., surgeon to Birmingham Gaol, 
 276 
 
 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 184; Memoirs of, 35 
 
 ' SALMONIA,' extract from, 280 
 
 Salt forced into the mouth of a prisoner 
 in Birmingham Gaol, 236 
 
 Saltley Reformatory, 255 
 
 Salvagnoli, Sig., 286 
 
 Scotch prisons, 244 
 
 reports on, quoted, 521 
 
 Self-respect of prisoners should be culti- 
 vated, 17 
 
 Sequel to Charge of July, 1839, u ; of 
 October, 1845, 75 ; of March, 
 1847, 109; of October, 1848, 
 130; of April, 1850, 141 ; of 
 October, 1850, 157 ; of October, 
 1851, 191 ; of October, 1853, 262 ; 
 of March, 1854, 31 1 ; of September, 
 1854, 342 ; of January, 1855, 
 390 ; of October, 1855, 474 ; of 
 October, 1856, 543 ; of December, 
 1856, 622 ; of March, 1857, 669 
 
 Servants and masters, 7 1 
 
 Seven bishops, trial of, 29 
 
 Shaw, Mr., 325 
 
 Sherwin, Rev. Ambrose, 234 
 
 'Shog,' 683 
 
 Shop-doors, exposing goods at, 75, 349 
 
 Short imprisonments, evils of, no, 183, 
 
 208 
 render reformation impossible, 624 
 
 Simons, Mr., letter from, 306 
 
 Skipworth, Sir Grey, 347 
 
 Smith, Dr. Southwood, 299, 305 
 
 conversation of author with, 3 1 1 
 Rev. Sydney, 36 
 
 Z 
 
7c6 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Smithfield Penitentiary in Dublin de- 
 scribed, 673 ; by Captain Crofton, 
 586 ; proportion reformed at, 587 
 
 Smuggling suppressed on the Sutherland 
 estate, 331 
 
 Socialists, 114 
 
 Societe de Patronage, 287 
 
 Somers, 29 
 
 Spain as It Is, by G. A. Hoskins, 552 
 
 Spain, evil effect of depriving prisoners 
 of hope in, 659 
 
 Spectator, extract from, October 26th, 
 
 1850, 173 
 
 November 2nd, 1850, 176 
 October 25th, 1851, 215 
 October J.^th, 1855, 487 
 October 2 oth, 1855, 516 
 January 3rd, 1857, 638 
 
 Speech (author's) at meeting of Birming- 
 ham Discharged Prisoners' Aid 
 Society, 599 ; at Warwick meet- 
 ing, 346 
 
 of Lord Stanley at meeting of Law 
 Amendment Society, 628 
 
 Squires, Mary, 21 
 
 Stanley, Lord, 346 ; his speech at meeting 
 of Law Amendment Society, 628 
 
 Statistics fallacious, 7 
 
 Stephen's Commentaries, 198 
 
 Stephens, Mr. (Chief of Police at Birming- 
 ham), 74, 148, 276, 306 
 
 St. James' Back Ragged School, 363-4 
 
 St. Leonard's, Lord, 516 
 
 Stone, Dr., 367 
 
 Stretton-on-Dunsmore, 38, 52, 63, 119, 
 
 127, 353 
 
 described in letter from Sir J. E. 
 Eardley Wilmot, 55 
 
 Strikes, 64 
 
 Sturge, Mr. Joseph, 265, 345 
 
 Suicides in Birmingham Gaol, 235 
 
 Summary convictions, 107 
 
 Summary of a plan for making landlords 
 responsible for respectability of 
 their tenants, 327 
 
 Surety to employer of discharged pri- 
 soner, 606 
 
 Sutherland estate, smuggling suppressed 
 on, 33i 
 
 Swimming, endeavour to learn without 
 water, 54 1 
 
 Sympathy with criminals, danger of un- 
 due, 211, 241, 622 
 
 Tasmania, bushrangers in, 641 
 convict government in, 634 
 cost of convicts in, 618, 649 
 transportation to has ceased, 618 
 Temperance societies, 369, 374 
 Tests of reformation, 471, 5*42, 563, 672 
 regarded by Sir George Grey as un- 
 obtainable, 667 
 
 Testimonial to Captain Maconochie, 265 
 Theatres at Liverpool, 84 
 Thornton, Mr. Lee, extract from letter 
 to Rev. J. W. Bellairs, from, 362 
 Ticket-of-leavesystem, 275, 462 
 
 principles it embodies, 462 ; appli- 
 cation limited to great offenders, 
 464 ; conditions endorsed on ticket- 
 of-leave, 467, 662 ; misapprehen- 
 sion of, 5 r 3 ; Act explained, 65 r ; 
 not carried into effect, 469, 610, 
 631, 664; Tinpopularity of, 529; 
 partly attributable to stoppage of 
 transportation, 469 ; Daily News 
 upon, 512; cumbrous machinery 
 of Act, 515 ; Spectator upon, 516 ; 
 St. Leonard's, Lord, upon, 516 
 Ticket-of-leave, 230 
 
 earned by length of imprisonment, 
 not by good conduct, 5 19 
 
 have occasionally been revoked with- 
 out fresh conviction, 662 
 
 Earl Grey's favourable opinion of, 534 
 
 should be granted to penal servitude 
 
 men, 535, 562, 659 
 
 Ticket-of-leave men confounded with con- 
 victs absolutely discharged, 536 ; 
 and others, 610 
 
 in Birmingham, 5 38, 590 
 
 list of, 596 
 
 Sir George Grey to author respecting, 
 665 
 
 letter from Mr. "VVaddington respect- 
 ing, 598 
 
 in Bristol, 538, 591 
 
 in Warwickshire, 590 
 
 in England and Wales, no data exist 
 for calculating proportion reformed 
 cf, 589 
 
 reconvicted, return to House of 
 Lords respecting, 664 
 
 proportion of, said to be reformed, 4 70 
 
 panic respecting, on mistaken 
 grounds, 536, 610 
 
 difficulty in obtaining employment, 
 
 632 
 
 Ticket-of-leave holders in Ireland required 
 to report themselves to the police, 
 675, 678 
 
 Ticket-of-leave no proof of reclamation, 
 540, 563, 655 
 
 Sir George Grey, upon, 540, 563, 655, 
 662 
 
 holder should be held to strict 
 responsibility, 659 
 
 duties of police towards, 660 ; rule 
 withholding licence from penal 
 servitude men made two years 
 after passing of the Act, 687 
 
 to penal servitude men, Mr. Under- 
 secretary Waddington respecting, 
 687 
 
INDEX. 
 
 7C7 
 
 Ticket- of-leave Bill, debate on, 689 
 
 Act, construed by Mr. Keating 
 similarly to the author, 690 
 proposal to carry it into effect, 62 I 
 bill to amend, speech of Sir George 
 Grey upon, 653 
 
 Times, October 22, 1850, 159. October 
 23> 1850, 163. October 24, 
 1850, 170. October 22, 1851, 
 200. October n, 1855, 478. 
 November 14, 1856, 230. No- 
 vember 1 8, 1856, 604. February 
 23, i857, 678 
 
 Tom Jones, 30 
 
 Total abstinence pledge, 368 
 
 'L'ownsend, Mr. Charles, medical officer of 
 Birmingham, 312 ; his report to 
 Borough Inspection Committee, 
 312 ; extract of letter to author 
 from, 317; his answers to ques- 
 tions proposed by author, 318 
 
 Townsend, Rev. C. H., on prison at 
 Munich, 550 
 
 Trading Justice, 460 
 
 Trainers of thieves, 99 
 
 Transportation, 8, 513; becoming less 
 frequent, 184, 615 ; more diffi- 
 cult, 608 ; difficulty of finding 
 site for, 616; to Tasmania has 
 ceased, 618 ; no longer open to us, 
 463; proposal to have fresh re- 
 course to, 616 ; renewal of, held 
 to be impossible, 639 ; rarely re- 
 sorted to by any country beside 
 England, 618 
 
 Transportation Committee, House of 
 Commons, 1856, author's evidence 
 before, 524; showing impossibility 
 of calculating number of ticket-of- 
 leave men reformed, 589 ; Mr. 
 Waddington's evidence before, 
 525 ; Charge on resolutions of, 
 
 5 2 9 
 Transportation, letter on, by John Frost, 
 
 634 
 
 Transported convicts, 273 
 Travaux Forces, 518 
 Trial by jury, first introduction at Bir- 
 mingham, 4 
 
 Tribunals all fallible, 187 
 Turner, Rev. Sidney, 342-5-6, 356 
 
 UNREFORMED convicts, evils of discharg- 
 ing from prison, -260-1, 614, 655 
 
 VAGRANCY, 217 
 
 Valencia, prison of, 532, 544 
 
 described by Mr. Hoskins, 552 
 described by Montesinos, 557 
 
 Valencia, officers employed at, 575 
 cost of each prisoner in, 574 
 questions, &c., regarding, 571 
 Vancouver's Island unsuitable for a penal 
 
 colony, 630 
 
 Vidal, Rev. 0. E., 149 
 Vigilance of the Press, 154, 638 
 Visiting magistrates, 24.3, 275 
 Visitors in prisons, 184, 247 
 Visits to prisoners from friends, 16 
 Voluntary principle in establishing refor- 
 matory institutions, 339 
 
 WADDINGTON, Mr. Under-Secretary, his 
 evidence before Transportation 
 Committee, 525 
 respecting tickets-of-leave to penal 
 
 servitude men, 687 
 letter from, respecting ticket-of- leave 
 
 men in Birmingham, 598 
 Wallis, Mr. S. T., on prison at Valencia, 
 
 559 
 Warwick, meeting at, to establish county 
 
 reformatory, 346 
 Warwickshire Sessions, 347, 461 
 ticket-of-leave men in, 590 
 Webster, Professor, trial of, 20 
 Weekly Dispatch, Oct. I4th, 1855, article 
 
 from, 501 
 
 Wells, Susannah, 22 
 Western Australia, cost of convicts in, 
 
 6 1 8, 649 
 will not receive our worst felons, 
 
 608 
 Whately, Archbishop, 405, 473 
 
 would substitute labour for time 
 
 sentences, 474 
 Wheatley, Mr. E. B., 346 ; fire on his 
 
 estate, 366 
 
 Whitmore, Mr. Wolryche, 345 
 Whitty, Captain, 672 
 
 evidence of, regarding penal servi- 
 tude men, 562 
 Wichern, Dr., 356 
 Wilde, Mr. Edward, 187 
 Wills, Mr. William, 243 
 Wilmot, Sir Eardley, 38, 348 
 Wilmot, Sir J. E. Eardley, letter from, 
 
 describing Stretton-on-Dunsmore, 
 
 55 
 Witnesses, cost of, 5 
 
 paid by the public in Belgium, 19 
 in Massachusetts, 20 
 in Tuscany, 19 
 
 Workhouses and prisons emptied by opera- 
 tion of Maine Law, 425-7, 
 
 43 r -3 
 
 Wotton, Thomas, 665, 683 
 Wright, Mr. Thomas, 248, 606 
 
 THE END. 
 
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