The Sun.
London, England, 1842-10-27 00:00:00

LONDON
THURSDAY MORNING. OCTOBER 27, 1842.

We adverted on the 15th instant to the great
familiarity with legal punishments, depriving
them of all terror, and to the vast extent of des-
titution which prevails in conjunction with it, as
calculated to alarm those who reflect on the
means which the State employs to protect the
rights of individuals. The whole of our political
fabric rests on punishment. Terror secures
pm :Tr, and terror protects property. The dis-
franchised and, as it were, outlawed multitudes,
destitute, as the rule, of any property, can only
be preserved in obedience and taught to respect
the possessions of others by coercion and penal-
ties. All persons, therefore, who rely on the
terror inspired by punishments to keep 'society
together, must learn, we think, with some addi-
tional alarm, that such is the present destitution
of the people, and such their lessened horror of
imprisonment, that they voluntarily become in-
mates of gaols. We are indebted to Mr. F. Pi.
GOU, a Correspondent of the Morning Chronicle,
for directing public attention to this startling fact.
On looking into the Seventh Report of the Inspec-
tors of Prisons, to Which he refers, we find the
following statement •

" I am sorry to say that there has been a consider.
able increase in the number of prisoners during the
last year, especially at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee,
Perth, Ayr, and Dumfries.- . . . " I fear that
no small portion (of this increa:4!,) i attributable to
the great amount of poverty which exists, and which
in some paces apiii-ars to- be bordering on destitu-
tion." .7 . "But the most - striking proof that
has come to my knowledge Of the existence of great
noc,n-ty and destitution among. some of the people ni
the fact that there are at the present mo-
ment nearly forty persons in the prison of Glasgow
who h:ivo voluntarily subjected themselves to all the
rigour of imprisonment (and of imprisonment on the
separate system), in order to obtain food and shelter.
S
o,lie have been in this kind of civil death for
more
than a year, giving up every particle of personal
liberix, performing a task of ten hours' labour every
day I)efore they
can earn a.penny for themselves,
livir.g
on very plain food, rising early in the morn-
ing, both in winter and summer, and many of them
confined day after day, and month after month, in
a
smaThcell apart from all human beings except
officers of the prison ; and this with the knowledge
that at any moment they have but to utter a word and
they can be placed at perfect liberty. P. 14.
That is decisive and fearful evidence that the
punishments inflicted by the law have lost their
terror. The Metropolitan Police-courts supply
evidence almost every day of persons corn-
milting petty offences to be sent to prison, or
taking: refuge in gaol from utter destitution. In
fact, than the slow and lingerinc, starvation to
AV :1 C h..a great skumher of persons • have been
F.osed within: the last eighteen months, no
avny caw- be :greater, only it-is' bOine with
a consciousness that .it..is not. deserved, and
hope that it cannot last. The destitution,
tlierefore, to which so large a portion of our
Ulation is reduced, is paralysing the criminal

-s_-
."1-
V..' tt._ .- . "".> ..•
4 . ..
-7
~, i, ~
1,,,,-
_yon
2-...4_,, 11.,=t, **l4ll cit?,§' l'i..
.4;,
j,),.• Ar*!P*-- f, -,. - ', .•
~,,tt.--4 .
if
. ~.„.• „,_, •., . .4 . ~..: • s
.. ,
~, ,
_mi.., . ,-irt•-• .0.4 --,-••-•,,,, "-? i•-;-•,-,-.--- ... • I

ZbtfltL