The Sun.
London, England, 1844-06-28 00:00:00

" From the Parliamentary return it appeared that the
cost of every prisoner in the New Model prison was 40/,
in consequence of the nature of the diet they were com-
pelled to give to support them under the solitary system."
And another parishioner observed that—
" Prisoners under sentence of seven years' transporta-
tion were placed there for a period of eighteen months,
and what was the fact ? Why, that the authorities were
compelled to give the wretched prisoners an extravagant
dietary to prevent their constitutions sinking under the
dreadful ordeal of solitary confinement for that period."
Originally, it seems, the Government plan was
still more wildly extravagant. It had been intended—
" To extend this principle to the House of Correction
and the Westminster Bridewell, and no less than 1,491
cells would have to be erected, the cost of which would
entail upon the county an expense of some hundreds of
thousands of pounds.—(Hear, hear.) The attempt to
carry the report recommending this monstrous principle
fortunately failed, and he (Sir P. Laurie) hoped it would
be entirely defeated."
The next point—tbe inequitable distribution of all
the enormous expense inseparable from the design of
Government—was clearly illustrated by several
speakers :
" Mr. G. Daniell said he had received from Sir B.
Hall a return which showed that the assessment of Mid-
dlesex to the county-rate was upon a rental of some
7.000,0001., and Marylebone was called upon to pay con-
siderably above its proper share."
We all know the enormous number of criminal
prisoners at all times under confinement in the Metro-
politan prisons. Sir P. LAURIE showed that—
" The proposed Bill would take three-fourths of these
prisoners from Newgate, and bring them to trial at
Clerkenwell at an enormous increase of expense to the
county.
" Mr. Biers said, if the plan was carried out as pro-
posed the cost of the prisoners at 401. each would entail
on the county an additional expense of no less than
60,0001. annually.—(' Saamer) Marylebone was rated
at one-eighth of the entire county-rate, and thus their
additional share would be 8,000/.
" Mr. Joseph considered that no public Board repre-
senting the feelings of the rate-payers ought tacitly to
submit to the enormous increase likely to be inflicted on
the county-rate."—(Hear.)
So much for the matters of the jobbing involved
in this scandalous scheme; the enormous expense to
be incurred by it; and the arbitrary working of its
unequal distribution. But we must once more direct
attention to the atrocious inhumanity of the object
which all this machinery is set in motion in order to
carry out. What is this monstrous and superhuman
penalty which our puny legislators presume to affix
to crimes, the penal price of which the law of the
land has already ascertained and fixed, by, as it were,
a graduated, but plain, intelligible tariff of punish-
ments ? What is this " model system" to do ? What
are the ends proposed by this gigantic establishment
for the indefinite refinement of human agony, after
its righteous infliction, to a certain and positive ex-
tent, by that law ? On what plea of constitutional,
legal, or moral expediency, is the soul-and-mind-de-
stroying discipline invoked against those who, in the
loss of their own personal liberty—in fine and amerce
ment—in hard labour—perpetually or for various
terms of years, are already undergoing those sen-
tences which the law deliberately subjects them to as
the several specific atonements for their several
specific offences ? Whatever the system was in-
tended to do, whatever the ends anticipated from it,
whatever the pleas alleged in its justification, the
results to which it tends are—idiotcy, and despair,
and madness—suicide, or a more protracted but not
less certain death.
" That this model system," said the Magistrate before
quoted, " That such a system was most inhuman had
been fully established by the fact that three poor crea-
tures had already been sent from the New Model Prison
to Bethlehem on account of solitary confinement pro-
dncing insanity."
But will it be believed that parties are subject to
this cruel infliction even before trial—under their
still unremoved legal presumption of innocence ?
" The size of the proposed cells were 11 feet by 7, and
9 ft et high ; but, he would ask, was it not monstrous
that poor creatures, innocent or:guilty, before trial as wel
as after trial, should be immured in these solitary dun.
geons."

And is it thus, that, in a free country, the heartless
administration of mere official pedantry is permitted
to assume the terrible attributes of that vengeance
!' which is the LORD'S ?" To attempt to raise that
eternal veil which shrouds the secrets of the
human heart from all perceptions but those of
its CREATOR, and to apportion human punish-
ment to the guilt of intentions which human
judgment can infer only from responsible acts ?
Whether most to deprecate the folly or the wicked-
ness, the presumption or the stupidity, of a system
like this, we know not. The most direct, positive,
and peculiar evidence of the diviner nature of man, as
compared with other animals, is surely the distinctive
faculty of speech—that godlike faculty by which he
expresses his affections, his emotions, his hopes, bis
fears, gives embodiment to the creations of his mind,
language to his passions, effect to his will. With a
tyranny more execrable than the brutal violence
wherewith an oriental despot tears out the tongues of
the victims destined to become the silent instruments
of his future crimes, the concoctors of this model
system make the prisoner himself at once the instru-
ment and victim of a similar privation. Through a
long and maddening night of years he is forbidden to
speak. The " human voice divine" shall escape only
in his permitted groans, or those frantic execrations
of despair that will but bring down aggravated in-
flictions on his devoted head. Caged like a wild beast
in his dreary den, which Sir J. GRAHAM, with feli-
citous mockery, calls a " sleeping cell," one of two
moral annihilations await him. If of a rough
and brutal nature, he indulges his imagi-
nation to an unknown, and therefore unrestricted
extent in the most hideous pollutions of a prurient
imagination. If of a more contemplative or cul-
tivated mind, he broods over his intolerable isolation
and voiceless weariness, till, goaded to madness by its
long endurance he cherishes, with a maniac's per-
tinacity, an implacable, intense hatred to man and all
his institutions, or rebels, in the accumulated bitter-
ness of his despair against the majesty and the dis-
pensations of GOD himself. Educated minds, which
have within themselves intellectual resources to feed
upon, break down in hopeless, drivelling imbecility
under the hideous infliction of such torture. Unin-
formed minds, destitute of all such aliment, degene-
rate into an appalling brutality, which imparts only
additional intensity to their sensual appetites, and
ungovernable fury to their vindictive passions. Such
are the animals, once men, whom the transformation
of your " model system" of prison discipline con-
sumes within its cells; or remits to the " incurable
wards" of your madhouses ; or turns loose, at the
expiration of their imprisonment, to vex and prey
upon that society which has compelled them to be-
come monsters, by disowning them as men.

Madrid journals of the 19th have been received.
Most of them have articles on the proposed conces-
sions of Don CARLOS, alluded to in the House of
Commons, and we are glad to find them in general
opposed to the marriage of his son to the QUEEN.
The Herald() gives the following account of the finan-
cial arrangements just concluded by M. MON :
" Yesterday the arrangement between the holders of Treat-
sury-bills and the Minister of Finance was happily con-
eluded. The former accepted Three per Cents. at 35 per cent.
in exchange for the bills to fall due, the liquidation of the !
contracts whence they arose taking place. This piece of news

, proffers himself as sponsor. Sir PETER LAURIE, at
the Marylebone Vestry meeting of Saturday last,
described this prison-reconstructive scheme as
" Concocted by the Government and the Chairman of
the Middlesex Magistrates, to give the latter a salary,
and carry out the obnoxious principle of solitary con-
finement to an extreme never before contemplated in
this or any other civilised country."
This is quite after Sir JAMES'S way. Whatever he
does must be " a job." It' a repeal meeting at Clo-17.2
tarf is to be watched, he must confer with a spy to
have it reported "au secret," and for an accurately
defined consideration. If intelligence be wanted in
Downing-street as to the proceedings of some friend.•
less foreigner, nothing so apropos to this great politi-
cal genius as a little Cabinet spy at the Pest-office, to
break open his letters. So long as it is a job, dirty or
not, it is put in hand without hesitation. Sir PETER
alluded to the report which had been published by the
Middlesex Magistrates since the last meeting of the
Vestry. The obsequious Magistrates therein
"Approved of the plan of the Government, that the
whole of the New Prison should be pulled down, and
have solitary, or, as Sir James Graham was pleased to
term them, sleeping cells for prisoners erected."
A whole paradise of jobbing must have opened on the
rapt vision of the Right Hon. Secretary here. What
patronage to exercise on the distribution of governors
and sub-governors, inspectors, gaolers, housekeepers,
wardens ! What a field for adroit recommendations
of favoured gaol architects, builders, contractors !
Next, as to the immoderate expense of this pet
scheme of the Home Secretary. The same speaker
said—