The Express.
London, England, 1853-09-12 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, MONDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 12, 1858.

case were enough to stamp them with the character
of " accessories titer the fact." But, if Mr. AUSTIN
and others may be believed, they were also " awes-
' series before the fact." A strong case has been made
out to show that Mr. AUSTIN succeeded in having
Captain MacoNoctits, to whom he owed his
first appointment, turned out, and himself ap-
pointed successor, by underhand flattery of—we
use a mild term—the stern disciplinarian pro-
pensities of the Justices. Mr. AUSTIN persuaded
those gentlemen that he would deal more rigor-
ously with the prisoners than his principal and prede-
cessor in office had done. lie avers that he and a
Mr. Luc KCOCK (a V isiting Justice) made a tour of gaols
to pick up lessons in severity wherever they could find
them. This, if true, gives to the breaches of law in
the gaol of Birmingham the character of systematic,
premeditated departures from it by the Justices, of
whom AUSTIN was merely the willing tool or
instrument. Mr. AUSTIN, moreover, owns
that one of the Justices, passing through
the prison, observed, that the gruel of
one of the prisoners ought to be weakened;
and that he (AUSTIN), with his wonted lickspittlo
promptitude, took the hint, and forthwith caused
two-thirds of water to be added to the gruel. No-
thing like this has been heard of since the skilligales
disclosures of the inquiry into the Andover work-
house management. The case against the Visiting
Justices is not (as yet) so strong as that against Mr.
AUSTIN and his bull-dogs. The Justices have yet to
give their own account of their conduct to the Com-
missioners. We suspend our judgment as to their
previous complicity till they have been heard : their
attempt to screen the offenders from exposure is
already placed beyond a doubt. Hero seems the
place to remark, that the abuses in Birming-
ham gaol do not appear to be confined to that
institution. AUSTIN states that it was at Leicester
gaol he was taught to evade the law by omitting
to record the punishment of prisoners by privation of
food. We certainly are not prepared to believe the
authorities of Leicester gaol guilty, on the simple
unsupported averment of Mr. AUSTIN. The
way in which he has been made to wriggle
out of some of his stories against Capt. MACONOCUIE
renders it impossible to lend credence to his solitary
testimony. But the matter ought to be inquired
into: the innate savagery of some men may have
found vent in other gaols besides that of Birming-
ham. It was in the neighbouring gaol of Coventry
that the Chaplain some year or two ago undertook
to illustrate the nature of future punishment to a
condemned criminal by holding the wretched crea-
ture's hand in the flame of a candle.

It is clear from the Birmingham proceedings that
our system of prison discipline is wretchedly defec-
tive in the points of superintendence and control.
Were there no means of detecting the complicity of
the Visiting Justices (assuming tho statements of
Mr. AUSTIN and other witnesses on that head to be
true) in the ordinary working of the system: no
means of detecting the culpable neglect of duty of
the Visiting Justices (on the assumption that that
is the utmost limit of their offence)? What
is the use of our well-paid Inspectors of
Prisons if such abuses as have been proved to exist
at Birmingham can be carried on without their
knowledge or suspicion ? It is net enough to make
laws and regulations if no care is taken to enforce
obedience to them. Lord PALMERSTON will do well
to carryon the work he has so well begun, by call-
ing on the Prison Inspector in whose district Bir-
min2ham is situated for an explanation of his official
blindness.