The Press. — London, England, 1858-10-30 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 30, 1858. knowledge, obtained in the course of his minis- nations, a goal chaplain might even venture to criticise an Act of Parliament, without com mitting a breach of privilege, or incurring the rnmem Iva moleskins. For our own part, we cannot imagine that any more reliable source ex i sts from which to draw a knowledge of the facts that must guide us in devising a really efficient system of dealing with offenders, whether for penal or reformatory ends, than the insight which those brought into personal contact with the prisoners may gain into their mode of viewing the treatment pursued towards them, and into the feelings engendered by that treatment ; and of all the officials connected with prisons or with reformatory institutions, we should have thought the Chaplain the one most likely to gain the deepest and truest insight, because the very nature of his intercourse with the prisoners is calculated to win for him their confidence, and to give him access to their inmost thoughts. On general grounds, therefore, we find it diffi cult to reconcile the intimation which the Surrey magistrates caused to be conveyed to their Chaplain with the best interests of society, and with the successful prosecution of the reformatory movement. Independently of this, however, at appears to us worthy of observation that the ob noxious part of the Chaplain's report pointed out one particular feature of what all who have thought upon the subject cannot fail to recognize as a primary element of failure in the treatment of offenders—the uncertainty of punishment and the consequent hope 4 at least, partial impunity. The fatal effect of this uncertainty branches out into various parts of our criminal jurisprudence, and makes itself felt in a variety of ways in the practical working of penal and reformatory dis cipline. Sometimes the fault rests with the law itself; at other times with its administration. As an example of the former kind we may instance the fact adverted to at the Liverpool Congress both by Lord Jolts RUSSELL and by Lord Chan cellor NAPIER, that the penalty of death is retained in the Statute-book as a nominal punish ment for divers offences for which, under the more humane system which has prevailed of late years, it is never inflicted. For offences which are now only nominally capital—such as violence to the person, offences against property attended by violence, forgery and uttering forged instru ments—there were,— Sentenced to Executed. Convicted. Death. 1a1817.... 911 .. 011 78 1827. 1,113 .. 1,113 .. 41 1837. 1,061 .. 405 .. 0 1847.... 1,4118 .. 18 .. 0 1847. 2,04 .. 21 .. 0 As the ratio of the increase of these crimes con siderably exceeds that of the increase of the popula tion, the inference is inevitable that the law framed against them is ineffectual to check them or even to diminish their frequency ; and although other causes may concur in thus defeat ing the object of the law, it may safely be assumed that the enactment of a nominal penalty, which is never enforced, is among those causes. Another inference, not less important, may be deduced from the same statistical data. The offences in question are, from their daring charac ter, for the most part not such as are committed by novices in crime ; they presuppose, generally speaking, an antecedent career of criminal courses. We may fairly conclude, therefore, that the majority of the individuals convicted of them had previously been subjected to the operation of our penal laws, and to whatever discipline of a corrective or reformatory kind was, at each of the Periods named, brot:ght to bear upon the pri soners, and from the result we may further con clude that that discipline has, on the whole, failed to produce the desired effect, the reformation of offenders, and the diminution of crime. That the state of the law itself, enacting a penalty which the public conscience, enlightened as to the reverence due to the divine gift of lite, prevents from being inflicted, is essentially faulty and requires cor rec ti on, will scarcely be denied. Ind not less pernicious is the uncertainty of punishment when it arises from the administra tion of the law. Under this head comes the improper use of the summ ar y j ur i s di c ti on o f th e rtgistrates, r emonstrate d against by the Chap oft the Surrey County Gaol. But there are, c'lllllustration of this defect i n our sys t em o f kind ' p roce d ure, examples of a much graver ma Cases are not of unfrequent occurrence in which the intention of the law is defeated by the verdicts of juries. We have not, it is true, reached as yet that acme of judicial self-stultifi cation which obtains among our French neigh bours, the salve of "extenuating circumstances" appended to the verdict. Of the extent to which this device for procuring at the pleasure of the jury a mitigation of the sentence is made use of on the other side of the Channel, fresh illustra tions constantly occur, and quite recently a remarkable one has been furnished in a case of deliberate murder committed upon an un offending child of tender years by its natural protector, under circumstances of bar barity so revolting and disgusting that the pen refuses to record them. The addition of the phrase " with extenuating circumstances" to the verdict in this and some other instances of recent date, leads one almost to suspect that French jurymen have a morbid appetite for melodramatic horrors, and that whenever that appetite is duly gratified by the atrocity of the crime, they feel in duty bound to reward the hero or heroine of the tale, the prisoner at the bar, for the pleasurable excitement which they have derived from the trial, by what is, virtually, a reprieve from the scaffold. On no other principle can we account for the application of that phrase to cases where common sense and the ordinary feelings of huma nity would rather suggest the rider, " under cir cumstances of extreme aggravation." But although English juries would shrink from such a practice as this, no one that has watched the course of our criminal trials can fail to recall instances in which, much to the astonishment of the presiding judge, as well as of the public, the jury saw fit to append to their verdict of " Guilty" a recommendation to mercy. And there is an entire class of offences in which very commonly a verdict of " Not Guilty," or a verdict charging a minor offence, and entailing only a slight punishment, is substituted for the verdict of " Wilful Murder" to which the whole of the evi dence clearly points. Our readers will at once guess that the cases we allude to are those of infanticide—a crime which, owing without a doubt to its comparative impunity, has increased to a fearful extent. The corollary to all this is, that before we can hope for any great results from reformatory systems of discipline, our penal code requires a thorough revision, establishing a more correct classification of offences, apportioning to each class of offences such punishments as a due regard for the principles of taw, human and divine, will warrant, and the public conscience will support, and making the infliction of that punishment a matter of unfailing certainty. ft is not until the endurance of the penalty has vindicated the ma jesty of the law, and satisfied the demands of retributive justice, that the question of refor matory discipline properly arises. We have no hesitation in saving that one of the radical mis takes committed hitherto, has been that of con founding those two processes, making the refor matory discipline a part, an extension, of the penal infliction. They are essentially distinct in their nature. While the penal sentence has to be undergone, society deals with the offenders on the principle of avenging justice, and ought to pre sent itself to him in that stern aspect ; when the process of reformation begins, that aspect should be laid aside, and in the place of it should be exhibited to the offender, humbled by his punish ment, the Christian compassion, the pitying kind ness of society. By confounding the two prin ciples, and mixing up into each other the two systems of treatment, we mar the effect of both. When the offender passes from the one to the other, everything around him should impress upon his mind this lesson :—"I have suffered " the severity of the law ; I am now about "to experience the mercy and loving kind " ness of the Gospel." IN hen he is made to feel this, then shall we have a chance of touching his heart, of winning his confidence and his good will, and inspiring him with a real desire of amendment. It requires but little reflection to perceive that our reformatory systems, as yet in their infancy, are as far from satisfying the requirements thus indicated, as our penal system is from the effectual application of the indispen sable .preliminary discipline. We had intended to dwell more at large on this part of the subject; but it is altogether too vast, as well as too mighty, to be discussed within the compass of a single article, and opportunities of recurring to it will ' not be wanting. 1047 POOR INCUMBENTS. THERE is a wail of pity raised, every now and then, about the " poor Curates." We do not say that there is no cause for it. Their lot, it is. true, is not an enviable one. They are, as a rule, and with rare exceptions, ill paid and hard worked. Too often their position is no better than a kind of gentlemanly servitude. Their duties are frequently of a nature which requires the cheering consciousness of a willing self sacrifice, to make their performance endurable. On nice points, involving personal responsibility of the highest order, they are not unfrequently expected to put their conscience into their pockets, and to act—at variance, it may be, with their own convictions—at the bidding and discretion of another. Thus socially and ecclesiastically lowered, they are, moreover, deprived of that protection which, in a free country like ours, the law secures to the meanest of subjects, to the lowest of criminals. They are at the mercy of a judge armed with arbitrary powers, who may receive charges against them without requiring their accusers to meet them face to face, condemn them without a hearing, sentence them without trial, and ruin them without appeal. Whoever, therefore, may at any time invoke the com miseration, or the sense of justice, of the public, on behalf of the " poor Curates," we shall not. gainsay him. But there is a large class of Ecclesiastics whose condition, though in some respects less hard than that of the "poor Curates," is on other accounts not less pitiable or unjust, and, what is more, in its effects infinitely more detrimental to society at large. We allude to that numerous body of labourers in the field of pastoral superintendence, reckoned, with painful irony, among the " bene ficed " clergy, and, with a bitter sarcasm upon the hopelessness of their position, called "Perpetual Curates." They are the men who mount the breach as the Church's forlorn hope—the men sent on her desperate service. In newly-formed districts, where a church has with difficulty been built, where the religious feelings of the popula tion are at the lowest ebb, where no provision, except of the most scanty and precarious cha racter, is made for the support of the minister, they are set to fight the battles of religion and morality, and to encounter a weight of responsi bility and an amount of labour altogether dispro portioned to their strength and to the resources at their disposal. In the same category with them we must, in common justice and fairness, place many others of the " beneficed" clergy, distinguished from them by the more ambitious titles of " Vicar " and " Rector," but little better off than the " Per petual Curates"—the Incumbents of countless poor vicarages and rectories. Their ecclesiastical position, it is true, carries with it somewhat more of the sound, at least, of dignity; their official position is not of recent creation ; it rests upon an historical foundation, and is supported by tra ditional feelings among their flocks, which, for the most part, preserve some attachment towards the National Establishment. But against these advantages they have, in many instances, to set the disadvantages arising from a dilapidated church, ill calculated to support the decencies of religious worship, and wholly unfit to awaken its more reverential associations; as well as from the coldness of merely formal attendance through hereditary habit, more hopeless, almost, than total neglect ; and from a variety of local abuses of immemorial standing, which no effort of theirs can eradicate. Their battle, too, though in a different way, is a hard one ; and they are left to fight it while labouring, personally, under all the difficulties and discouragements entailed by straitened means, if not by absolute poverty and. want. Such as we have described it, is the position of a large body of men,—comprehended under the generic term "poor Incumbents,"—men educated for the profession in which they labour, at an expense out of all proportion to the remuneration they receive —who, from the office they fill, are called upon to exercise a most powerful and telling influence, to prove themselves, in fact, the very " salt " of society. That such a position involves an act of gross injustice towards the individuals condemned to wear out in it a mono tonous and cheerless existence, is, though a most serious consideration, yet, after all, perhaps the 1