CHAP. III.-On the Employment of Prisoners.-On the Impropriety of allowing those Offenders whose work is not voluntary, to spend any portion of their Earnings during their Imprisonment. On the expediency of providing Hard Labor for those: who are sentenced to it; and on the various important Duties which should be performed by the Chaplain of a Prison.

I Now come to the consideration of a subject on which great difference of opinion will be found among those who have given their attention to the management of prisons, viz. the Employment of Prisoners. We all agree in the advantage of their being employed, but we do not concur in the mode of effecting that object, or in the sacrifices to be made for its attainment.

The common law furnishes no powers for setting any class of prisoners to work, or for providing materials for those who may be inclined to use them; but in different Acts of Parliament, the ́employment of prisoners is contemplated in two distinct points of view. The statutes, under which houses of correction have been established, enjoin hard labor as a punishment for certain offences, and: make it a part of the ordinary discipline of the prison for particular classes of prisoners. But by the 19th Car. II. cap. 4, the Justices of the Peace in sessions are empowered to provide materials for setting to work poor and needy persons committed to the common gaol on charges of felony or misdemeanor, and to pay and provide fit persons to oversee and set them to work; and may make such orders, as may be needful, for bestowing the profits arising from the labor of the prisoners so set to work, for their relief; and the 31st Geo. III. cap. 46, sect. 12, enables the Justices to exercise the same powers in favor of all other prisoners within the gaol, "who may at any time be inclined and willing to work." Under these two statutes, work is not compelled, but is offered by way. of an indulgence to prisoners; and it ought, therefore, I conceive, neither to be of the same kind with that which should be allotted to prisoners upon whom hard labor is imposed by the law as a part of their punishment, nor to be conducted upon the same principles. This distinction has in most prisons been in a great measure overlooked: the prisoners of different classes are employed on the same kinds of work, and allowed to purchase the same articles, with such portion of the profit as is reserved for them; the only difference being, that the prisoners to whom the Legislature has offered work as an indulgence, are in some prisons allowed a larger share of the profits to spend in their own gratifications than those on whom it is imposed by the sentence of the law as a punishment.

The framers of the present Bill, however, have gone one step

further in their anxiety to promote work, than any of those who have preceded them. The Bill enacts, that "where the keeper of any common gaol is likewise the keeper of any house of correction, penitentiary, or bridewell, adjoining to such common gaol, he shall and may employ in the said house of correction, penitentiary, or bridewell, all such prisoners in the said common gaol as are by law compellable, or may be willing, to work;" thus sacrificing at once, not only all distinction between voluntary and compelled labor, but even all separation between different classes of prisoners, to the object of giving facilities to work, which in the minds of some of those who are engaged in the improvement of prisons, seems to have prevailed over every other consideration.

It appears to me, that the practice of allowing prisoners a part of the produce of their labor, to spend in the purchase of food for themselves, however proper it may be in the case of those who work at their own will and pleasure, is inexpedient and inconsistent with the true spirit and intention of the law, when extended to those on whom labor is imposed by a judicial sentence.

I am aware that upon this point I have high authority to encounter: for Mr. Buxton, who stands foremost in maintaining the opinion, that prisoners of every description should be permitted to receive and spend a portion of their earnings in prison, I entertain great respect; I agree in most of the sentiments stated in his book, and I readily concur in the applause which it has received; but the very circumstance of its acknowledged merit, and of the weight and influence which the recommendations there given are likely to have upon the public mind, render it the more necessary that the errors in this publication (if there be any positions contained in it that are erroneous,) should be pointed

out.

Mr. Buxton, in his Observations on the Penitentiary at Millbank, (where work is enjoined by the authority of Parliament, though it is not directed to be hard labor,) contends, that a part of the profits of the work done by the prisoner should be paid to him for his own immediate use; and having reccommended that the allowance of meat in that prison should be discontinued, and that "if the prisoner wishes for that, or any other indulgence," he should be permitted to purchase it out of the earnings which are, by the present regulations of the penitentiary, to be laid up for him, and paid at his discharge: he concludes as follows, "I must repeat, that I am much deceived, if a man will not work more cheerfully, and more industriously, if he finds the product of his morning's labor in his dinner and his supper, than if he waits five years for it."

Mr. Buxton is not deceived in this supposition; but if I am not in error, he is mistaken in supposing that to produce cheerful industry is the object of imprisonment in a penitentiary. Punishments are instituted not for the reformation of the offender, (although it is certainly desirable that they should be so administered, if possible, as to produce that effect) but for the protection of the public against offences, and to deter others from following the example of the individual who has drawn upon him the censure of the law.

The authors of the penitentiary system attempted to combine with this primary end of punishment, the creation of a better disposition in the criminal; but they contemplated for this purpose an establishment of a sterner aspect, and of a more severe character than a manufactory. The discipline by which their objects were to be accomplished, they have themselves described in the 19th of the late King, as founded on " solitary imprisonment, ac companied by well regulated labor and religious instruction." Of solitary imprisonment, or that degree of seclusion which is calculated to produce a salutary effect on the mind of the prisoner, by separating him from his fellows, I suspect many of those who speak of penitentiaries make little account; religious instruction, I am persuaded, they would not intentionally undervalue, but they propose so to regulate their labor as very much to lessen the weight and importance of such instruction, and counteract its effect: it is indeed taking a low tone in morals, to measure the amendment of the heart by the amount or value of the work produced by the hands; it is confounding distinctions which ought to be kept far apart, to treat a good workman as a good man. assert, without fear of contradiction, that the prisoners whose labor is most productive in the penitentiary at Millbank, are not those whose behaviour entitles them to most consideration, or of whose eventual restoration, with credit, to society the chaplain entertains the most favorable expectation; yet these men are, ac cording to the new doctrine of allowing offenders to have the immediate use of a portion of their earnings, to be a favored class of prisoners, to eat plenty of flesh meat, to purchase indulgences which others cannot command, to hold their heads high above their fellows, and acquire an undue consequence and influence in the prison by the favors they shall be enabled to bestow; while the prisoner, whose mind religious instruction has subdued to a proper sense of his situation, who has been brought by the chaplain to lay aside the angry feelings against his prosecutor, with which convicts too often come into confinement, to acknowledge. the justice of his sentence, to take his own punishment patiently, and to do his endeavour to allay discontent and repress turbulence

in others, provided he shall have no skill in manufacture, is to find, that in the penitentiary virtue is its own reward, is to be commended by the chaplain, and fed on low and spare diet.

In many cases this stimulus applied to labor would operate directly against religious instruction: our chaplain in the penitentiary is desired by our rules to make his arrangements with a view to the instruction of the prisoners in such manner as to interfere as little as possible with the hours of labor, but his discretion is not controlled by positive regulations on that head. He may order school during the hours of labor in any ward in which it shall appear to him to be necessary or proper, and whenever he directs any portion of the prisoners to be asssembled for examination in the chapel upon a week-day, during the winter season, it must be before the regular time of locking up for the night, since it would not be consistent with the safety of the prison, to conduct the prisoners to and from chapel after dark; at all events he must be in the constant habit of having such personal communication with prisoners in their cells in the day time, as will occasionally delay. their work but exactly in proportion to the degree of cheerful industry that shall have been excited by the prospect of the good dinner or supper which is to be the fruit of it, will be the dissatisfaction created by the interruption, by which that pleasing expectation is to be destroyed. If you stimulate men to activity by the hope of a better meal than the prison allowance, and then send the chaplain to deprive them of it by his conversation, can you believe that his admonition will be received with willing ears? I am afraid, that upon Mr. Buxton's own principles, the prisoner who shall see himself compelled by the entrance of the chaplain into his cell, to put down the unfinished shoe, or lay aside the half-made coat, on the speedy completion of which he depended for meat at his next meal, must be expected to be thinking more, while the chaplain shall stay with him, of the immediate loss of enjoyment occasioned by his visit, than of the benefit to be derived in future from his instruction or advice.

On the head of prisoner's earnings, it is moreover to be observed, that the amount of them in works of trade and manufacture, such as those of which we are now speaking, is a measure of the skill of the workman, rather than of his industry. Some prisoners will earn a good deal on their first coming into prison, while others, whose course of life has not led them to exercise any regular trade, or who have been used to different trades from those set up within the prison, with equal dispositions to be diligent, will find their labors very unproductive. I hope, that if ever the scheme of varying the food of offenders according to the produce of their exertions is to be adopted in the penitentiary at Millbank, some

of the advocates for that measure will take care to furnish me with an answer to a convict who may have been a servant employed in a stable, or the driver of a hackney coach, or a glazier, or a locksmith, by whom I may be asked concerning the justice of letting such of his fellow prisoners as were bred shoemakers and tailors, or weavers, eat their fill of meat before his eyes, and of debarring him and his companions above described from such food, because we have no horses to look after in the prison, our windows happen to be unbroken, and we do not find it expedient to manufacture locks and keys. It is also among the inconveniences of making the food of the prisoner depend upon the quantum of his earnings, that when he has made sufficient progress in one branch of his trade, and should be taught another, that he may become master of the whole craft, the immediate effects of this change will be to lessen his food by diminishing his earnings; so that if he be very fond of the good meal, he will probably be slow in perfecting himself in the first operation of the trade or manufacture in which he is employed.

It is another objection against allowing offenders, confined by a judicial sentence within the walls of a prison, to spend a portion of their earnings while they remain there, that this practice introduces a degree of luxury, or at least of good living, among them, very inconsistent with the kind of imprisonment which the law intended them to undergo.' I cannot tell what it is intended to

'It has been said, that the prisoners live too well already at the penitentiary at Millbank; and I have often been reproached with their being better fed than the laboring poor in some parts of the country: this fact, the truth of which I do not deny, being considered by many as a convincing proof that they are fed too well: I will therefore take this opportunity of offering an observation or two upon this head. There are, I fear, numbers of persons in this country, who wear clothes which are insufficient to protect them from the inclemency of the weather, or who are lodged in close and ill-ventilated apartments, or who inhabit damp and unwholesome situations, or are employed at noxious trades, or work at unseasonable hours, or are subject to other hardships or privations of the like nature; but I have never heard it contended, that these evils, from which it is not in our power to relieve other classes of the community, are on that account to be imposed upon prisoners. The food of persons confined for offences in a prison, as well as their clothing, lodging, and employment, must be regulated with a due regard to their health, (it not being intended to inflict sickness or disease as a part of their punishment,) and the dietary of a prison becomes therefore a medical question, connected with the circumstances of their particular situation, and not a question of comparison between them and persons in other places or conditions of life. Our dietary at Millbank was settled with the assistance of medical advice; if further experience or more knowledge of the subject should show that it is too good, there can be no reason why it should not be altered; but it ought not to be condemned upon reasoning which no person would think of applying to the treatment of prisoners in other respects. There is