The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-17 00:00:00

THE SU'NrLONDON, MONDAY EVENING. JUNE 17, 1861.

with admirable skill, holding the reins, iu fact,
with a grasp of iron in a glove of silk. Of tho
substitution of penal servitude at home for the old
system of discriminative transportation Sir JOSHUA
JEBB is no more the originator than we are our-
selves. Upon him in noway devolves the responsi-
bility of having led the nation to the adoption of
that ill-considered and most hazardous experiment.
The Government decides upon the change, the
Legislature decrees the change, and the Convict
Department presided over by this distinguished
officer of Engineers is intrusted in its turn with
the heavy responsibility of dealing with the changes
already resolved upon by her AIAJESTY'S advisers,
and realised by Act of Parliament. Since the new
system of Convict Management was finally con-
trived and formally inaugurated in 1848, Sir
JOSHUA JEBB has held the reins in hand as Chair-
man of the Board of Directorate. As far back as
1837 the future chief of the Convict Department
was recognised by " the powers" that then were as
one eminently qualified to assist in the revision and
reconstruction of our growing Convict Establish-
ments. In 1837—that is, recollect, nearly a quarter
of a century ago !—Captain JEBB (as he then was)
in answer to a summons from the Master-General
of the Ordnance, drew up a report on the construc-
tion of a model prison, a report addressed to Lord
JOHN RUSSELL (then as now) her MAJESTY'S Se-
cretary of State (though in a different department,
at the Home Office, instead of at the Foreign
Office)—that report being subsequently " trans-
lated," as a writer in the last number of the
Cornhill Magazine informs us, " into the French
and German languages." Upon the plan sketched
out in that masterly report was eventually built
(under Captain JEBB'S direction) the famous Model
Prison at Pentonville. Subsequently (in 1840) Capt.
JEBB took part, directly and personally in the super-
vision of the management of the Prison at Parkhurst.
Later on (in 1842) he was selected as one of the
Commissioners appointed to inquire into the whole
problem of the Convict system throughout. Even-
tually, as we have said, he was placed (in 1848)
at the head of the newly contrived system of con-
vict management as Chairman of the Directorate.
That position he has, since then, occupied actively
and uninterruptedly during the interval which has
elapsed since—it was by the memorable act of 1853
—the new-fangled penalty of penal servitude at
home was substituted for the old-fashioned penalty
of transportation. The machinery of Convict Dis-
cipline has consequently within the interval
been taxed to the very utmost. With what
result—the People, the Press, and the Par-
liament know perfectly well. We all know,
for example, that casualties like those which
recently took place down at Chatham Convict
Prison are purely and absolutely exceptional. Dis-
cipline and subordination being the sustained rule
throughout the Tarious convict establishments—
large and small—at Portland, at Portsmouth, at
Pentonville, at Chatham, at Millbank, at Dartmore,
at Wakefield, anC, at Leicester, at Woking, at Brix-
ton, at Fulham, and at Parkhurst. Insubordina-
tion and, above a:1, formidable mutinies like those
of the other day It Chatham, being the very rarest
of rare " exceptions " under Sir JOSHUA JEBB'S
management. Yet it is to this skilled administra-
tor individually, but especially in his professional
character, as a distinguished military officer, as a
Major-General of Engineers, that every conceiv-
able and inconceivable evil in the existing
system is attributed, through a singular
perversity of judgment, by—it is a significant fact
certainly in itself—our Civil Service contemporary !
Latterly there have been a succession of personal
attacks upon Sir JOSHUA JEBB in the Civil Service
Gazette, in which that able servant of the Crown
and of the country, has been assailed, not only in-
dividually as the head of the Convict Department,
but, and therefore we cannot but think
with very questionable delicacy (remembering what
the organ is which gives currency to these diatribes)
in his professional character as a military officer, as
an officer of Engineers. Among the more virulent of
these depreciatoryargumentswe have especiallynoted
those continued in two consecutive numbers of the
organ already specified, those, namely, of the 18th
and2sth ult., in the latter of which, especially, it is
insisted that the bane of the whole convict system
is the fact that from the chief downwards, from
Major-General Sir JOSHUA JEBB, as head of the
department, down to the subordinate officers in the
various convict establishments owning the guiding
influence of his supremacy—that the bane of
the whole convict system as-it-is, that " its
radical vice, to which we attribute its working
failure," is the fact of the exclusively military spirit
of its discipline, the fact of the exclusively
military character of its administration.
Officer these convict prisons—that is really the
argument of these Civil Service malcontents—offi-
cer the convict prisons with civilians, have civilians
and civilians exclusively as Directors, as Gover-
nors, and as Deputy-Governors, and you will at
once solve the difficulty. The excessive absurdity
of this argument absolutely requires no demonstra-
tration. Its folly is self-avident. Its flimsiness is
transparent. As well recommend in all but mor-
tal casualties as in deadly diseases, when the lancet,
the cautery, and the ligature are barely adequate for
the emergency, the administration of bread pills or
a delicate sprinkling of the patient with rose-
water.

The chaplain's department in our great Convict
establishment, we believe, is about as far off from
perfection as ever, as a corrective. But without
the maintenance of the military spirit of discipline
complained of, we—civilians as we arc—cannot
imagine to ourselves to what chaotic condition the
whole convict system might not by this time have
degenerated ! In the survey of these establish-
ments, Irma a moral 1.ui..1. Ul view, we are perlemay
well satisfied, that any conscientious visitor
may say nowadays, quite as truthfully as CHARLES
DICKENS said so well now several years since in
that exquisite novel of his that we still cannot
but regard as his masterpiece, David Copperfield:
—" I found a great many foxes disparaging whole
vineyards of inaccessible grapes; but I found very
few foxes whom I would have trusted within reach
of a bunch."—(Original edition, p: 604.) As the
same great author argues, speaking, however, this
time no longer himself in propria persona, but
through one of his critics in a recent number of
All the Tear Bound:—" It is pleasant, doubtless,
to be told by Michael that your teaching and your
eloquence have taken such effect that he no longer
feels the same man, and that he longs to go forth
and reclaim that poor sinner BILL Davis, and to
bring BIDDY SULLIVAN to evening church. It is
pleasant and flattering to the chaplain to hear that
his influence has been so great as this ; but ought
he to put any confidence in such professions ?" In
the convict system the clue is yet to be discovered
that may guide us effectually through all that foul
and darkened moral labyrinth. But meanwhile, we
have at any rate the satisfaction of knowing that
the ruffianism of our felon herds, now that it is kept
here festering and multiplying in the very midst
of us, is for the most part held well in hand—by
what ".Qllcy ? Why, actually by the very means
that some are n67iadays ungratefully reviling—by
means of that military spirit of
(112aipline which
Still (happily for us), regulates our huge convict