The Express.
London, England, 1857-01-20 00:00:00

THE Cl77' SOLICITOR ON SECONDARY
PUXISHMENTB.

The City Solicitor has addressed a long and well-
considered Wee to the 1.4111 Mayor, no the messing question
of the best mode of dealing with our criminal.. Ho selects
three system of treatment ea atandiug in marked satagoninm
to each other.

Friar, The system of past days ; or the cheep and (rued
system.
Beemlly, The present or the expensive and effeminate
mesa
Thinly, The future or the self-supporting and manly
aria
Mr. reernan's pin is what be calls the =or manly
and siFewilpxtlag system, which be thus d
'The peabeeed pia for aciempliehing these objeeta, ea
deeteasibethe arrarktee, contemplated the establishment
of huge Width' prisons, secure and strong, plain and
sheep, with eireete sleeping cells for each mutate; the
prbon to be eramemied by stern and lofty walls, enclosing
ass or two themerd earn of red. I prepuce that each of
then prime shell emermaire ono or two thousand in-
mates. enbeisslig, Ned distributed in different
rem. ewe te disk seenornitel condition, whether
;4=instbeskee or labourers; wording to their
siatetrlLlord: me end strength; eveordizat.o their
morel satstater whether felons or
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Pertests
medwrieelles preorre might be prevented,
diselpire right be mewled, riad the asteration of the pri-
mmer, ere ef the est dale els el the system, right be pro-
• st tis Dam doe that *dee -world be done to the
ireme, by terabit the emOrseed Moor of the criminal
to thsUst sad met pratable areownt. When the proposed
plans he the eimifiselfell of primers are complete, I propose
that they Nisi, es semi as economical comortiretione and
prison anneigemmts vIP admit, be employed in the pursuits
at which they are mast apt, and •to which they will be
retuned at the tmeamtion of their sentences. Thus I do
not impure, as at )Lilbank, that labourers shall be con-
Mid into tailors it shoes, frequently spoiling their
materials, making in lithe or no profit by the, work,
and rarity, it as, tpaalifying themselves to com-
pete with the bee emthenien in the labour market
on their Emirate. On the other band, I would
not condemn the weleihmaker or the ingenious artisan of
soy other moshosital bads to spoil his hand by breaking
14011110 or sloped treeftfil, nor would I disable
a severer en laberrer by netting him in solitude
piek eats star i 4 is the artificial atmosphere of •
heated cell. As I Errieme Ohms' so I disclaim compulsory
sieve Maur us an beirenest of mime discipline
.or refor-
r rnltTrhre=ty Ito",(1.1-akenT is it ttrue, ly roll
be made to rood the !appetite, orythe should be should
to enforce the Mom. Nine times out of ten the irregular
indulgence of stprits will be found either the proximate
or the remote ems% both of the commission of crime end
the suffering of poilluseet 'moppet our prison population.
Appetite bee been le the counted outride of the priori
both a tempter and a thaw • within the walls it ehoeld
be made his teacher or his toriemtor. The criminal should
be practically taught to balance accounts between the
organ of appetite and the organ of labour. The right bend
of industry, long neglected and domieed by the idle criminals
will then be taken into his confidence as the only
friend that can lave him in the hour of distress.
Had beetled a hard bed should be the rem enjoyments of
the idle Maisel who mime to work, and requires to be fed
at the expense of honest industry. As I propose that the
right had of hie isitetry shall be the instrument
by, which the reforming criminal shall appease Ilia
bedily emote and sniffler to his biddy enjoyments,
en I protees that the seem right trend of industry
shall be dee bernerese ef his restoration to freedom, not
by big pat froth by lite and starts of exciting acti-
vity, id by consist and eanlinnous exertion, cancelling,
her by hour, the swim* emir whia he is confined. It is
=—as Msessear Whately, and Paley and
proposed—that the sentence of the case shall
act be • rigid time sentenee, which good or bad conduct
mused either abridge or prolong. It 10 propound, instead
al a judge condemning the criminal to so many years
or months of Imprisonment, that the sentence pro-
flounced than be • labour sentence of so many
thowend hours of labour, se the character of the cri-
minal and the crime shall appear to warrant. It
L proposed that the criminal shall have es an idle man's
allowance 16 ounces of bread a day, with water ad libitum,
and that every honest hour's labour fairly performed shall
entitle him to one halfpennyworth of addltional diet, and
shall se 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, be will, at
the end of the week, have obliterated seventy-two hour. inn
Ain labour sentence, and will have earned the right—the
poeitive right—to have and enjoy three shillings' worth of
palatable food in addition to hi. seven pounde and a half
of bread, the zero diet of his clam If these motive'
are lees operative upon the mind of other crimi-
nals, and they choose to work only ten hours, or eight
hours, or six bourse out of the twenty-four, their diet
will be as much below the diet of their industrious fellow-
lprisoners es the duration of their imprisonment will be pro-
onged. Assuming that the equivalent ef a twelvemonth's
sentence under the existing law would be three thousand
hours of labour aa representing ten working bowr for each
working day, the man who worked ten hours per day would
cancel his sentence in one year; be who !Abound twelve
hours would work himself out of gaol in ten month.; while
he who worked only eight hours or six hours a day would
have his two shillings worth or his eighteen-pennyworth of
food per week, and be would remain in eontinement fourteen
months or sixteen months se the ease might be. My dear
Lord Mayor, when I commenced writing the latter portion of
this report for the purpeee of describing the characteristics
of the plan I advocate, I bad intended to address
raper to the principles only, leaving the details to
a future amnia:lca, or to the statements and evident" in that
House of Commons report; bet it is in this as in many other
eases difficult to may where the one COMMEINXO and the other
ends. While I would require a criminal in the industrial
prison to dedicate more house per day to divine worship and
religious teaching, as well as to mental instruction, than
nine-tenths of mankind, rich or poor, ignorant or learned,
who are engaged in the business of the world really apply
to all or any of these important objects of their existence,
yet I verily believe that an infinitely greater amount of
good will be effected on an infinitely greeter number of pri-
'einem by etereotyping their bodiee with habits of constant
and continuu' industry, stimulated by the impulses of
their own will, under the pressure of their own
wants, than bas ever been effected by steeping the bodies of
primmer. in enervating blowy., by crushing; their powers of
volition in awl-subduing solitude, or by crnnunmg their
mini with such worthless—bemuse to them useless— studios
es Dr. Hampton ascribes to the prison pupils of Pentunville.
There are veer by year between thirty and forty thousand
primmer. who figure in the prison reports so recommittals,
beetles a great number not plarvd in that category. became
their former commitment. arc not known to the authorities
of the gaol. I have been told by some of tho best informed
persona in prison statistic., that this thirty thmeand recom-
mitted prisoners represent about double the number of their
own clan who axe living upon the public in mime form out-
side of the gaol, end are ready to supply tbo place of the
confreres within its wells when their time of sentence shall
haVe expired. This army of criminate will be coneidembly
augmented when the crop of ticket-of-leave men that are now
nearly ripe for the harvest shall be garnered amongst us
wain. Men are not only what society makes them, but
what society platys to call them. Society frequently makes
them. Lord Palmerston is reported to have otid that what
ia called a nuisance is but matter in a wrong place. A
criminal is a nuisance in that genre, but only for the same
reason. I dim that if society will put him in his proper
plate, and subject bins to the influence of proper motives, he
will prove hinmelf, instead of a pestilent and dangerous
nuisance, •valuabk property, able and willing to maintain
trinuelf, end to -defray the charger' of his own
reformation. Let all convicted oriented. be elooi-
lied end placed in elseeifying induetriel prisons ; make
the quantity, quality, and palatability of their diet, the
amount and character of their bodily comforts, rest, and re-
creation, es well es the duration of their confinement,
dependent upon their good conduct and the amount of
their anduetry, by which they will cancel their sentence. As
far as the financial interests of the country toe concerned, the
judges need not in such eases and under 'melt a Pram fear
to per sentence equal in duration to their opinion of the
gravity of the crimes they are calks% upon to punish, berthas
the pneleee of the indierry of criminate I. a dam will, I
am confident, be found in • few years to defray the charges
of their incarceration and reform.

ROYAL FAMILY OF OVDE.—Yesterdair his Royal
Highness General Mims Seconds Iltuihmut Ilithadivir and
his Rol Highness Slime Wales Auliud Baliadmir' 114:0111-
µvied by their mit_ie Captain Brendan and Attic Aekbar,
paid • visit to Sir Ftzroy Kelly, M.P. at his neidenee In
Piccadilly, and almrwartY celled and left cards at the Right
Hon T. Milner Gilmon's. We endenitand that this day the
cheirman end several of the dinances of the East India Com-
paoy will visit their royal Isiglimeene, at Harley Emma and
partake of Methane. These visits are of Do political im-
portance, but size* those of .
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