To lengthen the sentences according to the old scale, to make some portion remittable, to permit the issue of licences, was all required from the measure, and all this the measure accomplished.
The notion that prevails at the English Home Office is, that a discharged prisoner’s best chance is to obtain a situation under false pretences.
That he could never obtain employment if his felonious antecedents were known, and that his dismissal from any place he had procured under a false character would be the immediate result of their discovery, is taken for granted; and perhaps, while the English convict prisons remain what they are, and the public distrust of their reformatory power continues in consequence unabated, this belief is well grounded.
It is probably true, therefore, that the acknowledged ticket-of-leave and the avowed police surveillance might possibly impede a man’s return to honesty.
As far as Peace was concerned, however, it was a matter of no moment.
He had numberless opportunities afforded him to pursue an honest course of life, but it was not in his nature to be otherwise than a hardened criminal.
There is no question about this; albeit his character in other ways is of a most indefinite and contradictory nature.
Though Peace has given evidence of having a thorough contempt for human suffering, it is asserted that “he could not kill a mouse” if he had been requested to do so.
He further declared that if he had to kill his meat he should have to go without it all his life. Whether from curiosity or interest he had studied carefully the major portion of the Scriptural writings, and read opinions on them, and manifested much skill in controversy on theological questions. One afternoon, when Peace lived in Brocco, he had a long conversation with the Rev. Dr. Poller on religious topics.
On the departure of the vicar of St. Luke’s Peace thus summed up his ideas on the subject—