If prison discipline be to supersede every other consideration, why are penniless prisoners alone to be put into the mill before trial? If idleness in jails is so pernicious, why not put all prisoners in the tread-mill, the rich as well as those who are unable to support themselves? Why are the debtors left out? If fixed principles are to be given up, and prisons turned into a plaything for magistrates, nothing can be more unpicturesque than to see one half of the prisoners looking on, talking, gaping, and idling, while their poorer brethren are grinding for dinners and suppers. It is a very weak argument to talk of the prisoners earning their support, and the expense to a county of maintaining prisoners before trial, as if any rational man could ever expect to gain a farthing by an expensive mill, where felons are the moving power, and justices the superintendents, or as if such a trade must not necessarily be carried on at a great loss. If it were just and proper that prisoners, before trial, should be condemned to the mill, it would be of no consequence whether the county gained or lost by the trade. But the injustice of the practice can never be defended by its economy; and the fact is, that it increases expenditure, while it violates principle. We are aware, that by leaving out repairs, alterations, and first costs, and a number of little particulars, a very neat account, signed by a jailer, may be made up, which shall make the mill a miraculous combination of mercantile speculation and moral improvement; but we are too old for all this. We accuse nobody of intentional misrepresentation. This is quite out of the question with persons so highly respectable; but men are constantly misled by the spirit of system, and egregiously deceive themselves - even very good and sensible men. Mr. Headlam compares the case of a prisoner before trial, claiming support, to that of a pauper claiming relief from his parish. But it seems to us that no two cases can be more dissimilar. The prisoner was no pauper before you took him up, and deprived him of his customers, tools, and market. It is by your act and deed that he is fallen into a state of pauperism; and nothing can be more preposterous, than first to make a man a pauper, and then to punish him for being so. It is true, that the apprehension and detention of the prisoner were necessary for the purposes of criminal justice; but the consequences arising from this necessary act cannot yet be imputed to the prisoner. He has brought it upon himself, it will be urged; but that remains to be seen, and will not be known till he is tried; and till it is known you have no right to take it for granted, and to punish him as if it were proved. There seems to be in the minds of some gentlemen a notion, that when once a person is in prison, it is of little consequence how he is treated afterwards. The tyranny which prevailed, of putting a person in a particular dress before trial, now abolished by act of Parliament, was justified by this train of reasoning:-The man has been rendered infamous by imprisonment. He cannot be rendered more so, dress him as you will. His character is not rendered worse by the tread-mill, than it is by being sent to the place where the treadmill is at work. The substance of this way of thinking is, that when a fellow creature is in the frying-pan, there is no harm in pushing him into the fire; that a little more misery a little more infamy - a few more links, are of no sort of consequence in a prison-life. If this monstrous style of reasoning extended to hospitals as well as prisons, there would be no harm in breaking the small bone of a man's leg, because the large one was fractured, or in peppering with small shot a person who was wounded with a cannon-ball. The principle is, because a man is very wretched, there is no harm in making him a little more so. The steady answer to all this is, that a man is imprisoned before trial, solely for the purpose of securing his appearance at his trial; and that no punishment nor privation, not clearly and candidly necessary for that purpose, should be inflicted upon him. I keep you in prison, because criminal justice would be defeated by your flight, if I did not; but criminal justice can go on very well without degrading you to hard and infamous labour, or denying you any reasonable gratification. For these reasons, the first of those acts is just, the rest are mere tyranny. Mr. Nicoll, in his opinion, tells us, that he has no doubt Parliament would amend the bill, if the omission were stated to them. We, on the contrary, have no manner of doubt that Parliament would treat such a petition with the contempt it deserved. much too enlightened and sensible to give nance to such a great and glaring error. Mr. Peel is any counteIn this case, the wis and we wish it were a more frequent one dom comes from within, and the error from without the walls of Parliament. A prisoner before trial who can support himself, ought to be allowed every fair and rational enjoyment which he can purchase, not incompatible with prison discipline. He should be allowed to buy ale or wine in moderation, to use tobacco, or any thing else he can pay for, within the above-mentioned limits. If he cannot support himself, and declines work, then he should be supported upon a very plain, but still a plentiful diet (something better, we think, than bread and water); and all prisoners before trial should be allowed to work. By a liberal share of earnings (or rather by rewards, for there would be no earnings), and also by an improved diet, and in the hands of humane magistrates*, there would soon appear to be no necessity for appealing to the tread-mill till trial was over. This tread-mill, after trial, is certainly a very excellent method of punishment, as far as we are yet acquainted with its effects. We think, at present, however, it is a little abused; and hereafter it is our intention to express our opinion upon the limits to which it ought to be confined. Upon this point, however, we do not much differ from Mr. Headlam: although in * All magistrates should remember, that nothing is more easy to a person entrusted with power than to convince himself it is his duty to treat his fellow creatures with severity and rigour, and then to persuade himself that he is doing it very reluctantly, and contrary to his real feeling. 352 CRUEL TREATMENT OF UNTRIED PRISONERS. his remarks on the treatment of prisoners before trial, we think he has made a very serious mistake, and has attempted (without knowing what he was doing, and meaning, we are persuaded, nothing but what was honest and just) to pluck up one of the ancient landmarks of human justice.* * We hope this article will conciliate our old friend Mr. Roscoe; who is very angry with us for some of our former lucubrations on prison discipline, —and, above all, because we are not grave enough for him. The difference is thus stated: :- Six ducks are stolen. Mr. Roscoe would commit the man to prison for six weeks, perhaps,--reason with him, argue with him, give him tracts, send clergymen to him, work him gently at some useful trade, and try to turn him from the habit of stealing poultry. We would keep him hard at work twelve hours every day at the tread-mill, feed him only so as not to impair his health, and then give him as much of Mr. Roscoe's system as was compatible with our own; and we think our method would diminish the number of duck-stealers more effectually than that of the historian of Leo X. The primary duck-stealer would, we think, be as effectually deterred from repeating the offence by the terror of our imprisonment, as by the excellence of Mr. Roscoe's education and, what is of infinitely greater consequence, innumerable duck-stealers would be prevented. Because punishment does not annihilate crime, it is folly to say it does not lessen it. It did not stop the murder of Mrs. Donatty; but how many Mrs. Donattys has it kept alive! When we recommend severity, we recommend, of course, that degree of severity which will not excite compassion for the sufferer, and lessen the horror of the crime. This is why we do not recommend torture and amputation of limbs. When a man has been proved to have committed a crime, it is expedient that society should make use of that man for the diminution of crime he belongs to them for that purpose. Our primary duty, in such a case, is so to treat the culprit that many other persons may be rendered better, or prevented from being worse, by dread of the same treatment; and, making this the principal object, to combine with it as much as possible the improvement of the individual. The ruffian who killed Mr. Mumford was hung within forty-eight hours. Upon Mr. Roscoe's principles, this was wrong; for it certainly was not the way to reclaim the man :— We say, on the contrary, the object was to do any thing with the man which would render murders less frequent, and that the conversion of the man was a mere trifle compared to this. His death probably prevented the necessity of reclaiming a dozen murderers. That death will not, indeed, prevent all murders in that county; but many who have seen it, and many who have heard of it, will swallow their revenge from the dread of being hanged. Mr. Roscoe is very severe upon our style; but poor dear Mr. Roscoe should remember that men have different tastes and different methods of going to work. We feel these matters as deeply as he does. But why so cross upon this or any other subject? AMERICA. (E. REVIEW, 1824.) 1. Travels through Part of the United States and Canada, in 1818 and 1819. By John M. Duncan, A. B. Glasgow, 1823. 2. Letters from North America, written during a Tour in the United States and Canada. By Adam Hodgson. London, 1824. 3. An Excursion through the United States and Canada, during the Years 1822-3. By an English Gentleman. London, 1824. THERE is a set of miserable persons in England, who are dreadfully afraid of America and every thing American-whose great delight is to see that country ridiculed and vilified and who appear to imagine that all the abuses which exist in this country acquire additional vigour and chance of duration from every book of travels which pours forth its venom and falsehood on the United States. We shall from time to time call the attention of the public to this subject, not from any party spirit, but because we love truth, and praise excellence wherever we find it; and because we think the example of America will in many instances tend to open the eyes of Englishmen to their true interests. The Economy of America is a great and important object for our imitation. The salary of Mr. Bagot, our late Ambassador, was, we believe, rather higher than that of the President of the United States. The VicePresident receives rather less than the second Clerk of the House of Commons; and all salaries, civil and military, are upon the same scale; and yet no country is better served than America! Mr. Hume has at last persuaded the English people to look a little into their accounts, and to see how sadly they are plundered. But we ought to suspend our contempt for America, and consider whether we have not a very momentous |