The Press. — London, England, 1857-01-31 00:00:00

JANUARY 31, 1857. MR. CHARLES PEARSON UPON PENAL PUNISHMENTS. MR. CHARLES PEARSON, the City Solicitor, has ad dressed a communication to the Lord Mayor,in which lie embodies his opinions upon penal punishment, including prison discipline, transportation, and the ticket of-leave system. In this communication Mr. Pearson gives an elaborate sketch of the policy adopted towards criminals from the sixteenth to the present century, commenting upon its barbarity and general results, citing authorities and facts, and pro- ceeds to give his views upon penal punishments generally. He classes them under three heads:- 1. The system of past days, or the cheap and cruel system. 2. The present, or the expensive and effe minate system. 3. The future, or the self•supporting system. Referring to the first head, Mr. Pearson dilates upon the cruelties to which transports were subjected in former times, and proceeds thus with the second head : Second.—The present, or the expensive and effeminate system.—This system, which is generally known as the separate or cellular or solitary system, was invented by some pious philanthropists in America. It was imported into England about twenty years ago by 11Ir. Crawford, an able and intelligent gentleman, appointed Prison Inspector by the British Government. It was designed to supersede the old prison discipline and transportation systems. Reading and Pentonville prisons were erected to serve as models for all classes of criminals. The system is thus pithily described by its most able and zealous advocate, the chaplain of Reading Gaol, who thus observes, " The essen• tials of the separate system are seclusion as a punishment, labour as a relaxation, and scriptural instruction as a cor rective," as explained by the regulations and illustrated by the practice of the gaol. The chaplain's short description may be thus translated into plain language:—Under the separate system criminals are to have a great deal of soli tude, a great deal of victuals, a great deal of warmth, a great deal of sleep, a great deal of mental instruction, a great deal of religious teaching, with a very little exercise, and labour sufficient only for the purposes of recreative re laxation. By the combined influences of these corporeal, mental, ond religious agencies it was assumed by the en thusiasiic advocates of the system that the hearts of criminals would be softened, their unruly wills subdued, their minds would be enlightened, their souls converted, and their lives reformed. It was, moreover, said by its advocates that by uniting secrecy with solitude, by placing criminals in cells so constructed as to exclude both sight and sound, by hooding and masking them when led out to chapel or exercise, and by changing their name for a letter by which they were to be known from their admisfran into prison up to the time of their discharge, that by a little secrecy Mid good management a prisoner might upon his release maintain his incognito. It was said the world would forgive or torget his crimes, and he might go abroad as an exile or be restored to society as having completed his pt•nal punishment, or be released in this country on a ticket of leave. It was confidently affirmed by the eulogists of the system that. although its first cost and annual outlay were con siderable, it would be presently found that the number of vrisoners would be so much reduced front the effects of its I re}srmatory influence that a considerable saving would be arrAmod by the country in prisons and prosecutions as soon as its daterring and reformatory treatment was known and felt. Your lordship heard me, several years ago, in the pre sence of a number of its most talented advocates, ridicule what I termed the absurdities, and denounce what I cell sidered the serious evils, of the system. In the House of Ce.intnons, and in the committee for which I moved to in. vestigate the subject, I did the same ; but finding the cur rent of authority and power running strongly against me, I retired from Parliament, and have ever since remained a silent, but not an unobservant, spectator of the progress of events. J now deliberately reaffirm as matter of fact what I then stated by way of prediction. It has proved itself an unnatural system—it has broken down, and has entirely failed to accomplish any of the very important objects which were promised as the apologists for its extravagant cost. Mr. Pearson then adduces evidence of persons connected with prisons in support of his views upon solitary confinements, and proceeds to the third head of his subject, the " labour and appetite " system, formally proposed some years since:— The proposed plan is the establishment of large industrial prisons, secure and strong, plain and cheap, with separate sleeping cells for each inmate. The prison to be surrounded by strong and lofty walls, inclosing LOW or 2,0(W) acres f land. I propose that each of these prisons shall accommodate 1,000 or 2,030 inmates, classi fied, sub.classified, and distributed in different prisons according to their economical condition, whether artisans, mechanics, or labourers; according to their physical state, their age, and strength ; according to their moral and legal status ; whether felons or misdemeanants under longer or shorter sentences, and whether hardened offenders or novices in crime. By having one superintending power to deal with the large fund of labour of our prison population, means would readily be obtained for a most perfect system of classification—legal, moral, social, and economical—for the purpose of meeting all the various objects I have de scribed, so that the mutual contamination of prisoners might be prevented, discipline might be enforced, and the separation of the prisoner —one of the first objects of the system—might be promoted, at the same time that justice would be done to the ratepayer by turning the confiscated labour of the criminal to the best and moat profitable ac• count. When the proposed plans for the classification of THE PRESS. prisoners is complete, I propose that they shall, as nearly as economical considerations and prison arrangements will admit, be employed in the pursuits at which they are most apt, and to which they will be returned at the tcrmi• nation of their sentences. Mr. Pearson then enters into the details of classi fication, and continues : As I denounce idleness, so I disclaim compulsory slave abour as an instrument of prison discipline or reforms- Wry punishment. I would make, it is true, bodily labour t condition precedent to bodily enjoyment. Labour should e made to feed the appetite, or the appetite should be made to enforce the labour. It is proposed, as Maeonochie and Whately and Paley and Howard proposed, that the sentence of the case shall not be a rigid time sentence which good or bad conduct cannot either abridge or pro long. It is proposed, instead of a judge ccndemning the criminal to so many years or months of imprisonment, that the sentence pronounced shall be a labour sentence of so many thousand hours of labour, as the character of the criminal and the crime shall appear to warrant. It is pro posed that the criminal shall have, asan idle man's allowance, ltioz. of bread a day, with water ad libitum, and that every honest hour's labour fairly performed shall entitle him to one halfpenny worth of additional diet, and shall at the same time cancel one hour of his labour sentence; so that if the instinctive love of liberty, or the lower motive of bodily gratification, shall prompt the criminal to give twelve hours a day, day by day, of honest work, ho will at the end of the week have obliterated seventy two hours from his labour sentence, and will have earned the right— the positive right—to have and enjoy 3s.worth of palateable food in addition to his 711 b. of bread, the zero diet of his class. If these motives are less operative upon the minds of other criminals, and they choose to work only ten hours, or eight hours, or six hours out of the twenty-four, their diet will be as much below the diet of their industrious fellow prisoners as the duration of their imprisonment will be prolonged. Assuming that the equivalent of a twelve months' sentence under the existing law would be 3,000 hours of labour, as representing ten working hours for each working day, the man who worked ten hours per day would cancel his sentence in one year ; he who laboured twelve hours would work himself out of gaol in ten months; while he who worked only eight hours or six hours a lay would have his 2s. worth or his 181 worth of food per week, and he would remain in confinement fourteen months or sixteen months as the case might be. Mr. Pearson then enters into some details respect ing his plan, and concludes as follows My Lord Mayor,—lt will be said, I dare say, as the par liamentary committee reported of my proposed plan, that " many difficulties would probably arise under a discussion of its details," and therefore a disposition may exist in some quarters to postpone its consideration for another seven years. But the Government will now be beset in all directions by difficulties upon the subject of penal punishment, the extent of which they will be compelled to weigh and compare. They cannot stand still, and they must not go back. Society will not call again into requi sition the gibbet and the pillory, the whipping•post, the stocks, and the branding irons, the underground dungeons, the penal settlements, and slavery and chain gangs neither will they tolerate the prison palaces and castles of indolence, where ablebodied men in the prime of We cost for hoard and lodging 301. or 401 , and earn only 31. or .11. per annum ; where they have labour for relaxation only, and spend their time in qualifying themselves to deliver lectures upon a variety of subjects which it would have puzzled the Admirable Crichton to deal with. Obituarn. THE PRINCESS De LLEVEN well known in the poli. tical salons of Europe, died at Paris on Monday night last from acute bronchitis. Mn. BARON ALDERSON died at his residence in Park• crescent on Tuesday afternoon, in his seventieth year. The Hon. Sir Edward Hall Alderson, Baron of her 3lajesty's Court of Exchequer, was the eldest son of the late Mr. Robert Alderson, barrister at law and Recorder of Norwich, by the daughter of Mr. Samuel Hurry, of Great Yarmouth, where he was born in the year 1787. Having received his early education at the Charterhouse, then under Dr. Matthew Raine, he proceeded to Caius College, Cambridge, where he closed a brilliant career as an undergracivate by taking his degree in January, 1809, as Senior Wrangler and Smith's prizeman, and Senior Chancellor's Medallist; thus obtaining the all but singular reward of the very highest honours which that university has to bestow for classical and mathematical attainments. In the following year Mr. Alderson was elected a fellow of his college, and in 1812 he proceeded to take his degree as Master of Arts. He had been already called to the bar of the Inner Temple in the preceding year, and for several years went the Northern Circuit. Ho became well known in his profession by editing, in conjunction with Mr. Barnewall, five volumes of reports of cases heard in the Court of King's Bench between 1815 and 1820, which form part of the standard classical series of law reports of that court, and which were afterwards continued by Mr. Justice Cresswell. He never held a seat in Parliament, but perhaps on that very account had leisure to earn even a higher reputation as a legal junior, and to secure a very ex tensive practice as a chamber counsel. W still wearing a stuff gown, he was promoted, by Lord Lyndhurst, in 1830, to the Court of Common Pleas 115 as an additional puisne judge (Mr. Justice Patteson and the late Baron Taunton being his companions in the elevation) ; and on that occasion lie received the honour of knighthood. He was transferred from that court, however, in 1834 to a puisne judgeship in the Court of Exchequer, where for many years he was second to the late Mr. Baron Patke. They were the two great legal luminaries of that court, and they delivered judgment in many important cases with great learning. Among others, the Turf, Gorham, and Salomons gees. Baron Alderson bore in his profession the character of a careful, learned, and conscientious judge. His intercourse with the members of the bar was uniformly courteous and friendly, and his good humour and wit made him generally popular. In 1823 he married the youngest daughter of the Rev. Edward Drewe, of Broadhembury, in the county of Devon, by whom he had a large family. Da. V.H. MEuticasr, the late eminent missionary to China, died last Saturday night at his lodgings in Pimlico. His age was sixty-one. Dr. bledhurst was first appointed to China in 1816, and had conse quently spent forty years in that important portion of the missionary field. After residing at Malacca and Penang for several years, he settled at Batavia. In 1835 he was called upon to undertake a journey along the south east coast of China, with a view to ascertain how far the country might be open to the reception of the Gospel. Many of our readers will remember the striking narra tive, " China ; its State and Prospects, with special reference to the Spread of the Gospel." It compre hends a succinct, yet most interesting account of that marvellous country and people, their antiquity, manners, literature, and religion ; and it also con tains some notices of the more ancient, as well as a fuller account of the more recent, labours of I'rotes taut missionaries, and affords ample proof of the writer's title to the confidence of the great society as its leading representative in China. Diane Blarket anb ttitg ntriligenct. FRIDAY EVENING. THE return of the Bank of England for the week ending the 24th inst. shows the following ciAnges compared with that for the week preceding ; Decrease in Circulation Increase in Public Deposits Decrease in Other Deposits ,000,9'2,13; Increase in Public Securities Decrease in Other Securities Increase in Bullion Decrease in Rest Increase in Reserve Bullion iu Both Departments Circulation, including Bank Post 19,939,801 This comparison shows the present return to be more satisfactory than was anticipated, and it affords an explana tion of the policy of the Bank Directors in not advancing the rate of discount yesterday, as was anticipated in many quarters. The Reserve is strengthened to the extent of nearly half a million, while the Private Securities have run off to the amount of more than 750,0001. That a very active demand prevailed for money out of doors, at the J oin t stock Banks and the Lombard•street houses, is however proved by the heavy falling off in the Private Deposits, The Public Deposits are taking an upward turn now that the dividend payments are conzlnded. The Bullion shows a trifling increase, notwithstanding that nearly '200,0001. was sent away last week for transmission to the Continent in payment for silver; this is owing to the return of coin from Ireland and from Constantinople. The improvement in the Money Market described in our last, proved, as we anticipated, only temporary ; it has not only been wholly lost, but constant apprehensions have prevailed both of rates advancing and of the supplies being restricted. Under these circumstances we have not a very satisfactory report to make. Rates upon the best bills have averaged fully six per cent., and, at the present mc ment, the demand is so active that there is really a scarcity of capital even for the most legitimate commercial enter prises. Gratifying as it must be to see the external signs of progress and prosperity, we have serious apprehensions of the financial results if capital becomes, as it threatens, one or two per cent. dearer. High-priced money may be consistent with active trade, but the profit is not so widely diffused as we could wish to see it; and hence with an enormously progressive entutnerce we may expect loud com plaints at its small results to individual producers. Needy, struggling men in vain contend against high discounts on the one hand, and against the cash payments offered Irt the merchant capitalist upon the other; so that among tl.s class we look for great disasters in the course of the present year. This is undoubtedly the present tendency of things, and we cannot clearly see any means of averting it, except by a fall in discounts to somewhere about four or four and a half per cent. However, leaving these considerations for the present, we may mention that the current week has been productive of considerable einbarrabbment in commer•