If such really be the case, it is evident that a wrong course has been pursued in making the prisons so comfortable. Some years ago, when society was seized with a paroxysm of humanity, prisons were got up in a style of palatial splendour, and criminals, the most worthless of the population, were treated with a degree of tenderness which was opposed to every principle of justice. Possibly the method of reclaiming by kindness was not bad in the abstract, and in numerous instances it was perhaps effective; but in the main it was unsuitable to a complicated condition of ignorance, poverty, vice, and wretchedness. It should have been borne in mind that there is a distinct class of persons to whom any kind of provision is desirable, and who, being sunk below all sentiments of self-respect, shame, and regret, would very willingly sell themselves into slavery for the sake of a momentary gratification. To think of a warm, comfortable prison being an object of dread to this utterly-abandoned class!
Another philosophical crotchet did no small mischief. It was alleged that hard labour on the tread-mill would do harm: knowing that the labour tended to no useful purpose but merely the turning of a wheel, prisoners would feel degraded, and this feeling would prevent their reclamation! The error here consisted in imagining that the criminal class possessed the feelings of gentlemen; whereas the real thing to be thought of, was to give them labour so excessively toilsome and irksome as to be remembered with salutary horror all the days of their life. For example, no kind of punishment, we believe, has proved so sure a terror as that of the shot-drill in the military prisons. This consists in lifting a cannon-ball of perhaps twenty pounds' weight; marching with it for a dozen yards; then laying it down; and so on, repeating the same thing for an hour. Now this is clearly a useless and most degrading species of labour; yet it is a terrible infliction, and we are told seldom fails in its effect—that is to say, it deters from the commission of crime.
The experience of the last few years would shew that much is still to be learned in the art of criminal discipline; and indeed the whole question of what is to be done with our criminal population is becoming daily more perplexing. Mere confinement is found to be of small avail. Transportation is exploded; for it improves the circumstances of criminals instead of making them worse. Capital punishment has also had its day, and, excepting for a very few offences, is abandoned as useless, independently of being revolting to humanity. One writer proposes to work convicts in gangs at out-door labour, such as mining, and making railways; but the public would never tolerate the spectacle of this worst species of slave-labour; and besides, the employment of honest workers would be ruined. We are inclined to think that imprisonment, in a severe form, is after all the only practicable means of dealing with criminals. If anything be urgently wanted, it is a plan for preventing the growth of the criminal class; and this probably is not so difficult as it may appear. Of course, till there be a far broader system of public education than now prevails, the criminal population will never want recruits. Nevertheless, even with our present imperfect educational arrangements, something might be done. The criminal class is discovered to be on the whole a narrow class. The practice of living by depredation runs in families, and clings to individuals. The police of any given town could put their hand on almost every person who lives by fraud, theft, and robbery. They could at a day's notice secure nearly every one of them. A knowledge of this fact has suggested to Mr Matthew Hill a plan for capturing the whole criminal class, and obliging them to give security for their good behaviour; failing which, they should suffer incarceration as notoriously dangerous and troublesome to society. A fear of trenching on the liberty of the subject may prevent this ingenious scheme of the Recorder of Birmingham from being carried into effect; but to something or other of the kind he proposes, society must come at last, if it wish to save itself from being everlastingly worried and plundered by a habitually predatory class. In the Prison Report to which we have above referred, mention is made of a single family of thieves, consisting of fifteen individuals, who cost the country L.26,000 before they were got rid of. Is not such a fact quite monstrous!
[ FRENCH BATTLE-PICTURES. ]
In an American work—Glances at Europe, by Mr H. Greeley—the following sound observations occur on the battle-pictures in the palace of Versailles: 'These battle-pieces have scarcely more historic than artistic value, since the names of at least half of them might be transposed, and the change be undetected by ninety-nine out of every hundred who see them. If all the French battles were thus displayed, it might be urged with plausibility that these galleries were historical in their character; but a full half of the story—that which tells of French disaster and discomfiture—is utterly suppressed. The battles of Ptolemais, of Ivry, of Fontenoy, of Rivoli, of Austerlitz, &c. are here as imposing as paint can make them; but never a whisper of Agincourt, Cressy, Poitiers, Blenheim, or Ramillies; nor yet of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Leipsic, or Waterloo. Even the wretched succession of forays which the French have for the last twenty years been prosecuting in Algerine Africa, here shine resplendent; for Vernet has painted, by Louis-Philippe's order, and at France's cost, a succession of battle-pieces, wherein French numbers and science are seen prevailing over Arab barbarism and irregular valour, in combats whereof the very names have been wisely forgotten by mankind, though they occurred but yesterday. One of these is much the largest painting I ever saw, and is probably the largest in the world, and it seems to have been got up merely to exhibit one of Louis-Philippe's sons in the thickest of the fray. Last of all, we have the Capture of Abd-el-Kader, as imposing as Vernet could make it, but no whisper of the persistent perfidy wherewith he has been retained for several years in bondage, in violation of the express agreement of his captors. The whole collection is, in its general effect, delusive and mischievous—the purpose being to exhibit war as always glorious, and France as uniformly triumphant. It is by means like these that the business of shattering knee-joints and multiplying orphans is kept in countenance.'