WHAT TO DO WITH THE 4,000 A YEAR.
Tens country produces yearly about four thousand convicts sen- tenced for offences of such gravity as to involve liability of trans- potation. Hitherto it has been the custom to convey those cul- verts to the Colonies; but the Colonies have successively protested araust the infliction : it may be said that now we have no cob- lies to receive the transportable population. The old system of hulks has broken down ; and although not formally abandoned, there can be no doubt that it must undergo ebanges tantamount to abandonment of the system as it has been.
It is proposed to establish travaux forces: but the proposal aerates great alarm, on account of the experience of France.
The convicts, then, are thrown back upon the prisons : but hone new difficulties arise. Mere imprisonment in the squalid neglect of the old gaol system is out of date—prisoners are no bogey stowed away like live lumber in cellars, and there left to ma. There must be some kind of plan in their treatment. The ohl gaols will not do for the four thousand annual recruits.
The Solitary system, never very generally adopted, is aban- doned, on account of its shocking morbid effects. That will nos do-.
The modified form of that system, called the "Separate," is atilt under trial, with doubtful results. Some allege that it pro- dries insanity. Glasgow Bridewell, where the Separate system liaised, is famous for its healthiness; but there the separation has net been by any means of a desolate kind, nor literally enforced la every cue. We want more experience of this system.
The Silent system is used in some English prisons : we cannot say that it proves to be very efficacious either in deterring or reforming. None of these methods having satisfactory results, Minis- ters are about to try a scheme compounded of all except the old gaol-incarceration. This compound is devised quite empi- rically; much as if a doctor, who had found several medicines fail successsvely, were to try a mixture of all. The Govern- ment scheme of convict discipline will comprise the reformatory and the retributive methods, penalties partly fixed and partly not fixed, separate confinement and associate confinement, travaux forces, hulks, and transportation. It is not shown by any process of reasoning or practical experience, that those methods which have proved without sufficient virtue in themselves will be more efficacious in combination. If any trust is to be placed in the new scheme, it rests on those portions which are not essential to either of the old systems—on the instruction, the moral training, the opportunity of abating penalty by good conduct and of earning some profit, the scope for acquiring motives of healthy activity ; all of which are things that in no respect belong to the old me- thods, or to any system of retributive discipline. But these most hopeful ingredients in the scheme are intro- duced with a timid hand, and are soornixed up with the anti- quated methods, which have failed, that the effect of either will not be distinctly cognizable. The experiment is so arranged that it can hardly supply the thing wanted—experience.
Indeed, it could not be otherwise, since it is an experiment made without any scientific or systematic inquiry into the pri- mary question, hew offenders ought to be treated in order to the prevention of crime. Every existing system is based on dome or assumption. That is not practical philosophy. Practicalaphi- losophy rests upon experiment; but upon experiment conducted on analytical principles with a scientific aim. Before we can tell where, in what sort of places, in what custody, or under what processes of discipline, we can most advantageously place our offenders we must ascertain what is the nature of the motives to
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crime and what are the appropriate counteractions. - We have no right to assume that such an inquiry would be more impossible or less profitable than that into physical disease and the appropriate remedies ; but at all events we cannot plead the impossibility until we have attempted the investigation.
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