THE GAOL AND THE HOSPITAL.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
Sra—I cannot help thinking, that in the discussions with which you have re- cently indulged me on the subject of Criminal Law Reform, we severally illustrate in a somewhat remarkable manner the difference between the theoretical and practical man. Seated in your closet, you ask too much; while I, on my justice- stool, possibly offer too little, but it applies immediately to the sorest point, and can easily be added to afterwards if found defective. You compare a gaol to a hospital; and I willingly accept the analogy. There are differences between them, of which you notice one: in the hospital it is an ob- ject to minimize suffering; while in the gaol, without exactly saying that this should be maximized, it is yet an element in the treatment to be pursued, not to be dispensed with, and which is due at once to the patient himself, to society, and to abstract justice. But besides this, the mind cannot be probed like the body; the precise seat of its disease cannot thus be so well determined: from its elasti- city such precise seat speedily ceases to exist; a mental gangrene soon spreads; and mental treatment can thus be more easily reduced within general rules than bodily. Still, the analogy is good to a certain extent: let us see, then, whither it will undeniably conduct us. We send our patients at present to their moral hospital, not until cured, but for a fixed definite time; and our only medicament for them is the compress. We swathe them round and round, (as some savage nations, in the absence of better medical skill, are said to do their fractured limbs,) until they are unable to stir unless to do evil. If they complain of this, we give the tourniquet another turn. If still they are dissatisfied, we plunge them into darkness and starvation to assist its operation. If their yells and cries continue still troublesome, we place them by themselves, that their example may not contaminate others. And emaciated, we discharge them, feeble, emaciat and demoralized under this treatment, if they fall again we pronounce them incorrigible: what I neither deterred nor converted by such tender mercies! what villains they must be I Now, Sir, were this the practice of a medical hospital, and were you further told that the state of the law made it impossible to alter it, would you require a detailed treatise on anatomy to induce you to press at least for permission to grope for a better system? Observe, that nothing authoritative is asked, but merely that such magistrates as please to try experiment may be enabled to test the efficacy of other treatment. And is it not by experiment that all valuable truth is arrived at? Is that induction to be forbidden in the moral sciences which has carried, and alone carried, the natural sciences so high ? I am sure that you do not seriously mean this; and yet the tendency of your recent articles may be sup- posed to infer But besides this, let me ask, is our knowledge of the human mind and of its tendencies really so defective as your demands imply ? Is mental philosophy really still a blank page? Surely not. And are any facts more certain in it than these,—that naked, direct compulsion, is injurious to mind; that a slave condi- tion, without motive, and without anxiety for maintenance, is destructive of its energy; that a form of adversity which requires exertion and self-command to overcome it, however painful, and thus deterring, while endured, is yet improving and renovating in its ulterior effects, while one that requires merely patience and submission to extricate from it is as certainly debilitating ? And with these in- dubitable truths before us, and our recollections teeming with illustrations of them, can it be called presumptuous to ask that our national punishments may be permitted slowly and progressively, at the discretion of their administrators, to deviate from the worse into the better type? Can it be necessary to lay down prospectively throughout the whole of so promising a navigation our courses and distance, before we are allowed even to contemplate the voyage, or to set sail?
Do not, then, Mr. Editor, I beseech you, draw attention aside from the practical i
point at issue, by diverging. into subtilties, which, however valuable they may be an the abstract, have no immediate practical application. Whatever may be the right principle of punishment, the present is most assuredly a wrong one; and only by deviating from it, the more widely the better, shall we at length find the right. The change is not, either, due to me, as you allege, but to the urgency of the case—to the thousands on thousands of our fellow men who are now annually drawn into the maelstrom of our secondary punishments, and left there to perish. Only in last week's Spectator you quoted from the Portsmouth correspondent of the Times an incident illustrative of the state to which they are reduced: and you may be assured that turbulence is not the worst exhibition of it. In tur- bulence there is at least vitality; but in patient acquiescence this does not always exist. Yet these men have all been once young, and many of them are so still. They have been comparatively innocent, and they have still great capabilities. The eleventh hour yet remains to them; and their stake in this world, whether as a scene of enjoyment or probation, is as precious to them as ours to us. And shall we continue to fling it away as a thing of no importance? Actively or pas- sively, by our support or indifference, we all contribute to maintain a system in regard to them which is a reproach at once to our science as philosophers, our humanity as men, our intelligence as legislators, and our religion as Christians. And are we prepared to meet the responsibility that we thus incur? At least let an effort be now consistently made and supported, to give the young, the minor delinquents, a chance. To grant permission to impose task sentences, is not all thst is required on the occasion. The whole spirit of our penal administration requires revision. It must be made more persuasive and less compulsory, more paternal and less military, more conciliatory and less disdainful. But at least let us get into the right way. Once entered on it, we shall pass insensibly from good to better—from the imperfect to the more complete; whereas by doing no „ we only go from bad to worse—our only receipt for emergencies, another turn of the screw. I am, Sir, your very obedient servant, A. MACONOCIEUE.
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