Captain Maconochie's system may be divided into two distinct and very different parts; namely, the general principles and the details. Concerning the latter, we are unwilling to hazard an opinion, deeming them peculiarly a matter of experiment, and incapable of proof or refutation by any other test than experience. But principles are universal, and, if true, may always be supported by argument, and strengthened by discussion; those of the Mark System, we think, will bear the application of both. No one possessed of the smallest experience of the human mind, will deny that it is utterly impossible to inculcate and fix good habits by a process which is continually distasteful to the patient. With regard to labour, which is compulsory and unproductive, the labourer, so far from becoming habituated to it, loathes it the more the longer he is obliged to continue it. Such labour, moreover, has no good effect upon the mind; it produces nothing but disgust and discontent. A similar result is produced upon the body under similar circumstances. Exercise is only beneficial when taken with a good will, and enjoyed with a zest: a man who should walk but two or three miles, grumbling all the way, would be as tired at the end as though he had walked twenty in a more contented mood. What, then, will some one say, are prisoners not to be punished at all? Is every thing to be made easy to them, and ingenuity taxed for devices to render their sentences agreeable, and to take the sting from imprisonment? The answer is ready. The law is not vindictive, and does not pretend to inflict suffering beyond what is necessary for the security of society. The thief and the homicide cannot be allowed to go at large. They must either be sent out of the country, or shut up within it. By some means or other, they must be deprived of the power of inflicting further injury upon their fellow-creatures. But how long are they to be cut off from the world? For a time fixed and irrevocable, and irrespective of subsequent good conduct, or reformation of character, or any other consideration than only the magnitude of the original offence? Surely neither reason nor humanity can approve such a doctrine; for does it not, in fact, involve the very principle which our law repudiates, namely, the principle that its punishments are vindictive? If a man who steals a horse, and is condemned to three years' imprisonment, be compelled to undergo the whole sentence, without reference to his conduct under confinement, this surely is vengeance, and not, what it assumes to be, a punishment proportioned to the necessity of the case. It is, no doubt, proper that a criminal should be condemned to suffer some loss of liberty, more or less, according to the nature of his delinquency, and a minimum should always be fixed; but it seems equally proper, and consistent with acknowledged principles, that a power should reside somewhere of diminishing the maximum, and where more advantageously than in the criminal himself? If the motives which govern the world at large, and operate upon men in ordinary life, to make them frugal and industrious, and to keep them honest, can be brought to bear upon the isolated community of a jail, why should they not? The object is humane; not injurious, but, on the contrary, highly beneficial to society; and not opposed to any established rule of law or general policy. We can conceive no possible argument against it, save that which we have already noticed, and, we trust, satisfactorily.
It is worthy of notice, as being calculated to satisfy the scruples of those who may be alarmed at the introduction of what they imagine a novel principle into our criminal jurisprudence, that this, the main feature of the Mark System, is not new. It is sanctioned by long usage in our penal settlements. In the Australian colonies, a man under sentence of transportation for years or for life may, by his own conduct, both shorten the duration and mitigate the severity of his punishment. By industry, by a peaceable demeanour, by the exercise of skill and ingenuity acquired in better times, he may obtain advantages which are not accorded to others. By a steady continuance in such behaviour, he may acquire the privilege of working for himself, and enjoying the produce of his labour. In the end, he may even be rewarded by a free pardon. If all these things may be done in Australia, why not also in England? Surely there is more to be said on behalf of convicts sentenced to imprisonment than for those sentenced to transportation. If our sympathy, or, to speak more correctly, our mercy, is to be inversely to the enormity of the offence, then the English prisoner is most entitled to our regard. It is possible that the transportation system may be wrong, but, at least, let us be consistent.
It is not necessary that Captain Maconochie's plan should be adopted in extenso, to the immediate and active subversion of the ancient system. We may feel our way. There is no reason why a single prison should not be set apart, or, if necessary, specially constructed, for the purpose of applying the test of practice to the new theory. A short act might be passed, empowering the judges to inflict labour instead of time-sentences—of course, within a certain limit as to number. Captain Maconochie himself might be entrusted with the superintendence of the experiment, in order to avoid the possibility of a suspicion that it had not received a fair trial. If, with every reasonable advantage, the scheme should eventually prove impracticable, then, of course, it will sink into oblivion, and be consigned to the limbo of impossible theories. The country will have sustained no loss, save the insignificant expense of the model machinery.
Considering the whole subject—its importance, its difficulty, the novelty of the proposed amendments, and their magnitude—we are disposed to agree with the learned Recorder of Birmingham, that "the plan is highly deserving of notice." Objections, of course, might be made in abundance, over and above those we have thought proper to notice. These, however, may be all reduced to one, namely, that the scheme is impracticable. That it may prove so, we do not deny; nor could any one, with a grain of prudence, venture to deny it, seeing how many promising projects are daily failing, not through their own intrinsic defects, but through miscalculation of opposing forces. The test of the Mark System, we repeat, must be experience. All that we seek to establish in its favour is the soundness of its principles. Of these we do not hesitate to avow a perfect approval; and, in doing so, we do not fear being classed among the disciples of the new school of pseudo-philanthropy, whose academy is Exeter Hall, and whose teachers are such men as Lord Nugent and Mr Fox. It is quite possible to feel compassion for the guilty, and a solicitude for their temporal as well as eternal welfare, without elevating them into the dignity of martyrs, and fixing one's attention upon them, to the neglect of their more honest and less protected neighbours. It is no uncommon thing to hear comparisons drawn between the conditions of the prisoner and the pauper—between the abundant nourishing food of the former, and the scanty meagre rations of the latter! There is no doubt that better fare is provided in a jail than in a workhouse. Good reasons, perhaps, may be given for the distinction, but in appearance it is horribly unjust. No system which proposed to encourage it would ever receive our approbation. The Mark System is adverse to the pampering of criminals. It seeks to enforce temperance and frugality, both by positive rewards, and by punishing gluttony and indulgence. Its object is the improvement, not of the physical, but the moral condition of the prisoner. His mind, not his body, is its especial care—a prudent, humane, we will even say, a pious care! Visionary it may be, though we think not—absurd it can never be, except in the eyes of those to whom the well-being of their fellow-creatures is matter of indifference, and who, too frivolous to reflect, or too shallow to penetrate the depths of things, seek to disguise their ignorance and folly under cover of ridicule. To such we make no appeal. But to the many really humane and sensible persons who are alive to the importance of the subject, we recommend a deliberate examination of the Mark System.
M.
LAYS AND LEGENDS OF THE THAMES.
Never was there such a summer on this side of the Tropics. How is it possible to exist, with the thermometer up to boiling point! London a vast caldron—the few people left in its habitable parts strongly resembling stewed fish—the aristocratic portion of the world flying in all directions, though there are three horticultural fetes to come—the attachés to all the foreign embassies sending in their resignations, rather than be roasted alive—the ambassadors all on leave, in the direction of the North Pole—the new governor of Canada congratulated, for the first time in national history, on his banishment to a land where he has nine months winter;—and a contract just entered into with the Wenham Lake Company for ten thousand tons of ice, to rescue the metropolis from a general conflagration.
—Went to dine with the new East India Director, in his Putney paradise. Sir Charles gives dinners worthy of the Mogul, and he wants nothing of the pomps and pleasures of the East but a harem. But, in the mean time, he gathers round him a sort of human menagerie; and every race of man, from the Hottentot to the Highlander, is to be found feeding in his Louis Quatorze saloons.
This certainly variegates the scene considerably, and relieves us of the intolerable topics, of Parliament, taxes, the last attempt on Louis Philippe, the last adventure of Queen Christina, or the last good thing of the last great bore of Belgrave Square; with the other desperate expedients to avoid the inevitable yawn. We had an Esquimaux chief, who, however, dwelt too long on the luxury of porpoise steaks; a little plump Mandarin, who indulged us with the tricks of the tea trade; the sheik Ben Hassan Ben Ali, who had narrowly escaped hanging by the hands of the French; and a New Zealand chief, strongly suspected of habits inconsistent with the European cuisine, yet who restricted himself on this occasion to every thing at the table.