CHAPTER XI.
Punishment awarded to Criminals.—Capital Punishments.—Plea of Insanity.—Penitentiaries.—Houses of Correction.—Improvement in Laws.—Periodical Publications.—Editors of Newspapers.—State of Literature.
The travellers proceeded to ask some further questions, which had been suggested to them by what they had observed in the course of the trials they had witnessed.
“We perceived,” said they, “that the punishment most frequently awarded was that of confinement in a penitentiary; instead, however, of naming the period of confinement, it was generally announced that the terms of confinement would be determined subsequently. We wish to know the reason of this procedure.”
“We do not,” replied Sir Peter, “in most cases regulate the confinement by time, but in another way. We require that each man should perform a certain quantity of daily labour, as a compensation—though, of course, often a very inadequate one—for his maintenance; and whatever he can earn above this, is placed in a bank for him. Each man is sentenced to earn a sum, regulated according to his trade, state of health, and other circumstances. When he has earned this sum, he is set at liberty. We think this has a double advantage: it encourages him to labour, because he is made aware that his own industry will affect the period of his confinement; and this has a tendency to create in him a permanent habit of industry. Again, the sum of money he has earned being given to him when released, he is not thrown on the world as a pauper, exposed by his very destitution to fresh temptation, but has the means of carrying on some species of industry.
“We have also as a punishment secret branding (usually on the back), performed in the way of tattooing, as your sailors do. Every culprit is examined as to whether he had been thus branded; in which case, the punishment for any subsequent crime is always the more severe. At the same time, as the brand is secret, the individual is not exposed on that account to the scoffs of his neighbours, which might make him regardless of character and produce a hardness of disposition. These are our most ordinary punishments.
“In case of murder, however, and some few other crimes, we resort to capital punishments. This is restricted, as I have intimated, to very few species of delinquency; but when those are perpetrated, the punishment of death is rigidly enforced and speedily inflicted. In any punishment prompt execution adds greatly to the terror; but in this more particularly, because death, some time or other, is a sentence passed by nature upon all men.”
[Here occurs, as a marginal note to Mr. Sibthorpe’s memoranda, a quotation from Shakspeare’s dialogue of Pistol and Fluellin:—
Pistol.—Base caitiff! thou shalt die.
Fluellin.—You say fery true, scald knave, when Cot’s coot pleasure is.]