The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-26 00:00:00

ticket-of-leave system now be tried. Let the sen-
tences solemnly and deliberately awarded by the
judges be rigidly exacted to the last day, and let
breaches of prison discipline and idleness be pun-
ished by additional sentences—as they are for addi-
tional crimes—of six or 12 months, according to
their character. Let the county magistrates have
jurisdiction over these prison offences, their sen-
tences to be subject to the approval of the Home
Secretary, who would not then have a tithe of the
work to do in affixing his signature to them that he
now has in signing tickets of leave every day. If a
convict chose to wipe off such a supplementary sen-
tence by subsequent exemplary good conduct, well
and good; but let the punishment as awarded to
him by the law be strictly enforced. Old warders
say that if such a system were carried out now it
would be better for the convicts themselves, and
would be, beyond all doubt, better for the public.
One thing seems evident, that the power confided
to prison officials and prison directors of annulling
the verdicts of juries and sentences of judges has
been too great and has been misused. It has, appa-
rently, never been administered with a sufficient
sense of the responsibilities incurred in its exercise.
The result has been that this power, from the first
an anomaly, almost at variance with the law, has
gradually extended its mischievous influence till it
has come in conflict with the greatest of all laws,
the law of public safety. It is impossible that the
ticket-of-leave system, if continued at all, can ever
be continued on its present footing. All convicts, of
course, take advantage of the remission, but all who
intend reformation, and who mean to live honestly
if they can, would prefer remaining in prison a year
longer if at the end of that time they were sure of
transportation. These, however, are only the con-
victs who mean to do well, and they are unfortu-
nately a minority, although worth
.the saving. At
Portland Prison there are two Association-Rooms,
capable of aceommodating 40 or 50 convicts each,
who live as sailors live on the 'tween decks of a
ship. They are not used now only because the pri-
son is 100 or 120 short of its full complement,
and when occupied it is stated that warders are
always in the rooms with the convicts. But although
from the admirable good order of Portland, nothing
is likely to occur in these rooms comparable with
the scenes which, it is said, occur in similar apart-
ments under the very lax discipline of Dartmoor,
yet the very principle of Association-Rooms for
convicts is a bad one. They will plot and scheme ;
they will use the foulest language, and they will
often fight desperately, in spite of all the warders.
The latter, however, unless the dreadful swearing
or bad language is addressed to themselves, do not
interfere as long as the prison rules are not openly
defied. Among themselves the warders generally
object much to these Association-rooms, and with
reason.
At Portland there are two classes of diets—that
which we have already given, and which nine-
tenths of the prisoners receive in return for their
so-called " hard labour," and the "ordinary diet,"
a food given to those who have what is called in the
prison " light work," but which out of the prison
would be called almost no work at all. This ordi-
nary consists for four days a week of 12oz. of bread
for breakfast, with a pint of tea ; dinner, 6oz. of
cooked meat free from bone, llb. of cooked potatoes,
and 6oz. of bread; supper, one pint of gruel and
6oz. of bread. On the three remaining days of the
week the rations are better still, the breakfast being
a pint of cocoa, with milk and sugar, and 12oz. of
bread ; dinner, one pint of soup, soz, of cooked meat
free from bone, lib. of cooked potatoes, and looz. of
suet pudding. On this "ordinary diet"—which, as
daily food, would be a very extraordinary one to
most of our hardworking labourers throughout the
kingdom—all the convicts used formerly to live till
a few years ago, when one of the dilettante prison
philanthropists, of whom there are now so many,
discovered that convicts, if worked hard on
such diet, might lose muscle, and it was accordingly
raised to the "increased scale" we have already
given in our previous notice. In addition to this,
all the prisoners of every grade or scale of diet have
each 3oz. of treacle, to eat with their bread, served
to them every week—viz., 14az. on Sunday and
lloz. on Wednesday. For such as are employed
out of doors, but who are not at hard labour—
who have, in fact, only their appetites sharpened by
tne rresn sea breeze—there is what is called
a "light labour diet for the public works." This
consists of a pint of tea or cocoa, with 6oz. of
bread, for breakfast ; 6oz. of bread, Goz. of cooked
meat free from bone, half a pint of soup, and half a
pound of potatoes for dinner; and 6oz. of breed,
with a pint of gruel, or tea "if preferred," for
supper. What the light labour is it is hard to
discover, especially as the " hard" seems to be
about the minimum of what will keep the men's
hands going at all. Stonebreaking close under the
prison walls is one of the works that come under
this category, and though this work, as we generally
see it done, is certainly not light labour, yet the way
in which it is performed at Portland amply jus-
tifies the prison authorities in classing it under
this head. Those who have even seen the pile of
stones which the wretched starving tramp has to
break in the stoneyard of a workhouse, in payment
for his night's shelter in the casual ward, should
come to Portland to see what the convict does for
his day's work. The work in the quarries is a
mockery of hard labour," and the " light labour,"
as the convicts do it, is positively not labour at all.
Even taking the light-labour diet as the standard,
no mere hardworking daily labourer in this part of
England can command it. None certainly are as
well ai,d warmly lodged, or as carefully looked
after in health or sickness. We, however, have
merely given the " light labour" and "ordinary
diets to be correct in giving all, though the truth is
that scarcely any convicts are kept on either of the
latter at Portland, the great bulk—or nearly 90 per
cent., we believe—being employed in the quarries
or similar " hard labour," and, therefore, all on the
generous increased diet we have already laid before
the public. Perhaps, however, it is worth while
adding, that even those prisoners on the ordinary
diet, when in their third stages, receive their extra
allowance of bread and cheese and beer after dinner
on Sundays, and that those in the fourth stage have
not only the bread and cheese and beer, but the
usual treacle pudding on Thursdays, baked mutton
in lieu of beef on Thursdays and Fridays, and baked
beef instead of boiled on Sundays and Mondays.
But, in order to give all diets we must give one
which does not appear in the prison books, which
is Infirmary Diet. W hen a convict is placed on this
by the doctor, he has, of course, whatever the doc-
tor orders him. 'When he is placed on Infirmary
Diet through the exertions or intercession of power-
ful friends, he can have almost what he pleases. Sir
John Dean Paul and others were placed on the In-
firmary list through the exertions of their friends,
and an exemption was also made in Sir john's case
from working at the quarries.
It would. not be just in this general account of
liv-
ing at Portland to omit to refer to what we have
already alluded to—the strong desire of many of the
best class of convicts for transportation. It is a mis-
take to suppose that transportation has been quite
done away with. Convicts are still sent yearly to
Western Australia, which would gladly receive more
than ten times the number we now despatch. Only
criminals under very long sentences are transported.
The convict who has, perhaps, been sentenced four

times to five years' penal servitude is not sent, and
being a hardened vagabond who does not at all ob-
ject to short periodical sojourns at Portland, he 18
very glad to remain where he is; and persons who
are sentenced to 12 years or upwards—and these are
mostly forgers or murderers—are sent in turn, prio-
rity being given to length of sentence. As a safe
general rule, however, thealviemryenil::::i.ciltoeer those
ws—iousdtfomriet.
are always averse to transportation,
who wish to reform and do better are
with
The latter class are nearly
sen-
tences, and therefore they are not sent, though they
popular error.
are just the class that would be valuable in a colony.
poefnaal very
While referring to sentences, we may venture to
servitude for life.
Theredisabuse
is
nt hoe suchpublic
t h i
nnigi
.nads
crime orWhat L
No matter what the the character of
the criminal, the longest term that they are held in
servitude is 12 yea
Penal years, Whether judges are or
are not aware of this when they sentence prisoners
to penal servitude for life we cannot say; but the
fact is AO we hate stated that
;there is no such thing,