CONVICT ESTABLISHMENTS IlY 1860.

Tw-Eary-rwo years ago a Select Committee of the House of Com- mons, under the presidency of Sir William Molesworth, inquired into the working of the system of transportation as a punishment, and into its influence on the moral state of society in the penal Colonies. The report of this committee, presented to Parliament in the season of 1838, startled all England with its horrible disclosures. For the first time the public became aware that convicts condemned to transportation were turned loose to mix with a culprit class in the penal settlements, under a few task- masters who put them to work in the open wilderness, and a military escort to keep them from revolt. The consequences of this strange assemblage were shown to be vice, immorality, fright- ful disease, hunger, and dire mortality among the settlers ; the convicts-were decimated by pestilence on the voyage, and again decimated by vice and famine on their arrival ; and the most hideous cruelty was practised towards the weaker, or less de- praved, members of the penal gang. Attempts at mutiny were very common. In 1834, the convicts at Norfolk Island took possession of the whole territory, killing their guards. They were subsequently overpowered, their ringleaders were hanged, and the rest were put in heavy chains. To Judge Burton, who tried them, one of these men observed, in a manner which the Judge said drew tears from his eyes and wrung his heart—" Let a man be what he will when he comes here, he is soon as bad as the rest ; a man's heart is taken from him, and there is given to him the heart of a beast." The meta- phor of this poor fellow did not overstate things ; for according to another part of Sir William Molesworth's report, there had been actually, at Port Arthur, men who committed murder "in

order to enjoy the excitement of being sent up to Hobart Town to be tried and executed." From Macquarie Harbour, another penal settlement of Van Diemen's Land, there escaped at some time 116 convicts, whose fate is thus summed up in the lists—" se- venty-five perished in the woods ; two were shot ; one was hanged for murdering and eating his companion ; thirteen were hanged for bush-ranging, and two for murder; eight were found assassi- nated in the woods, and six others were found assassinated and partly eaten by their comrades." In short, the horrors of the system were discovered to be boundless. Indeed, the very worst defy description in our

The conclusion at which ictSir William Molesworth's Committee arrived in the course of this painful investigation was, that "there are the most unquestionable proofs that the two main characteristics of transportation, as a punishment, are inefficiency in deterring from crime, and remarkable efficiency, not in reform- ing, but in still further corrupting those who undergo the punish- ment; that these qualities, of inefficiency for good and efficiency for evil, are inherent in the system, which, therefore, is not susceptible of any satisfactory imprevement ; and lastly, that there belongs to the system, extrinsically from its strange character as a punishment, the yet more curious and monstrous evil of calling into existence, and continually extending, societies or the germs of nations, most thoroughly depraved as respects both the character and degree of their vicious propensities." The further result was a well-considered and emphatic condemnation by the committee, of the old system of transporting convicts to the Penal Colonies, added to a recommendation, first, that transportation should be discontinued as soon as possible ; secondly, that crimes punishable by transportation should in future be punished by confinement, with hard labour, at home or abroad ; and thirdly, that the penitentiaries, or houses of confinement abroad, should as far as possible be limited to places where no free men have settled. With the exception of allowing a partial continu- ance of the transportation system, these suggestions of Sir William Molesworth's committee, have gone far to do away with the mese strolls evils of the old method for punishing criminals. Govand meat, however, did not act upon this advice decisively, but tztria, portation remained an open question in the Cabinet, one minisler condemning, another approving it—the Duke of Newcastle aimv ing at its extinction, Lord Aberdeen desiring its perpetuity. This discrepancy of official opinions was periodically illustrated in the parliamentary debates, which on an average took place every two or three years and which forced the Members of the Government, though not into agreement, yet into some kind of legislation on the subject. Accordingly, we have had a :number of bills, all more or less undecided, framed in haste, and submitted to Par- liament almost without explanation. The most important of these was one presented in 1848, de- signed to fro away with the abominable hulk system. The bill passed, of course ; and in Bermuda Government purchased a site called Boaz Island, where it was intended to concentrate the prisoners condemned to transportation, and to introduce an uniform system of management, the same in kind as that of the model prisons at home. _Enormous expenses which, according to the ,Blue-book just now presented to Parliament, amounted to "hundreds of thousands of pounds," were incurred to carry out this plan ; steamers were despatched to the colony, with able engineers, su- perintendents, clerks of the works, and other machinery necessary to the object in view. The whole has now been in activity for many years ; and what the net result has been, the Blue-book in question* tells us in precise language, which we cannot do better than give with as little commentary as possible. For this pur- pose, we will Tiotepart of the report of the Reverend J. M. Guild- ing, as summing up the whole with admirable clearness :- "The great majority of the convicts are confined on board the hulks, and so long as this is the case it must be prejudicial to any general improvement in the character and conduct of the men.

"Bermuda is the solitary exception, under the British Crown, where these dens of infamy and pollution are permitted to exist. Both on the score of civilization and humanity, they have been everywhere else con- demned. During a short vacation in the preceding year, I made it my business to examine as many of the State prisons in America as my time would allow. I had access to the chief prisons in the States of Pennsyl- vania and New York, and found them all, with the exception of the Silent Prison in Philadelphia, conducted on the system of partial association by day and separate cells at night. I found no such thing as a hulk existing, and the surprise of all prison officers in the United States was great, that in an English colony, at the present day, such hells of abomination could be tolerated longer.

"The original intention, when Boaz Island was purchased by Govern- ment in 1848, was to break up the hulks altogether, to concentrate every prisoner in one prison on shore, and to transport them to their place of labour, if required at any distance, by steam communication. By these means, the several distinct prisons would have been incorporated into one efficient establishment, the costly necessity of keeping up a separate staff in each place would have been avoided, and a uniform system of prison management introduced, according to the practice of the best model prisons in England.

"This plan appears to have been unfortunately abandoned. The com- pletion of the prisons has long since been discontinued, and, after all the expense that has been incurred in sending out the steamer, in the purchase of Boaz Island, and the erection of several houses for the officers, the only result has been, that a third prison on shore has been added to those al- ready afloat, that the Island is never likely to fulfil the intention for which it was professedly designed, and that hundreds of thousands have been spent upon the scheme to no purpose at all.

"And yet if the hulks were so bad in principle that they have been to- tally atindoned in England, even with the careful supervision which the

Home Government could bestow, what must they be in this distant colony,

• " Annual Reports on the Convict Establishments at Bermuda and Gibraltar tor 1839."

where abuses are more likely to grow up, and far less likely to come to light ? It is my painful conviction, after some years' experience of the matter, that the great majority of the prisoners confined in the hulks become incurably corrupted, and that they leave them, in most cases, more reckless and hardened in sin than they were upon reception.

"Few are aware of the extent of suffering to which a prisoner is exposed on board the hulks, or the horrible nature of the associations by which he is surrounded. There is no safety for life, no supervision over the bad, no protection to the good. The hulks are unfit for a tropical climate. They are productive of sins of such foul impurity and crime that one even shudders to mention them. In the close and stifling nights of sum- mer, the heat between decks is so oppressive as to make the stench intoler- able, and to cause the miserable inmates frequently to strip off every vestige of clothing and gasp at the portholes for a breath of air. A mob law, and tyranny of the strong over the weak, exists below, which makes the well- disposed live in constant misery and terror ; and when the passions of these lawless and desperate men are excited by quarrels among themselves the most deadly and murderous affrays are the consequence. "The spectacle on board the Medway hulk upon the 1st of June last, when one prisoner was slain and twenty-four desperately wounded, would have appalled any human heart. The hulk was a perfect shambles, and a frightful scene of uproar, excitement, and bloodshed. Suffice it to say, that a mere handful of warders was powerless to deal with the armed mob 'below decks. All that could be done was to fasten down the hatches, and when the work of butchery and carnage was over descend below to fetch up the dead and wounded.

"I crave your honour's indulgence for dwelling so largely upon this topic, but the evils of the hulk system have become so palpable, and are so destructive to all better feelings in the breast of the criminal, that it is ne- cessary the truth should reach those whom God has entrusted with the power and responsibility of redressing what is wrong and injurious to their fellow creatures.

"A second cause, to which I attribute in a great degree the failure of re- formatory success, is the fact of the indiscriminate association of prisoners by night and day, both in the land prison and hulks. " Under proper restriction, partial association during the hours of labour and exercise, is calculated to strengthen character by preparing the pri- soner to encounter the temptations of the world when he returns to society ; but indiscriminate association at all hours must neutralize the best moral agencies that can be devised. "It is to be feared that, in many cases, where good feelings have been -1.-oduced in the mind under the influence of a Bible class, a sermon, or W LI-lesson yet when the half-reclaimed criminal is turned loose into the the.-upting atmosphere of vicious companions, all is again undone. He has is place to which he can retire for privacy or reflection. To read or pray le.the midst of hundreds who are smoking, cursing, laughing, and talking around him, is no easy task. The good seed is speedily snatched away, and the force of his former evil associations revived.

"This might, however, be partially remedied by distributing the several classes and stages, into which the prisoners are divided, in different parts of the prison or hulk, so that, as far as possible, only men of the same stage anti class shall mess and associate together. This measure, I believe, has already engaged the attention of the Comptroller, who, I may add, has always given the weight of his high authority to whatever could promote the moral interests of the establishment.

"Taking these facts into consideration, it is improbable, so long as the establishment remains in its present unsettled and imperfect state, that its moral or disciplinary condition can much improve.

"Complete ignorance and uncertainty prevail on all sides as to the mode in which it is proposed to be conducted—whether the original design of one central prison on shore is to be carried out—whether the hulks are still to be continued, as being best adapted to the local features of this colony (which seems the generally received opinion)—or, whether it is the inten- tion of Government to retain the land prison, together with the hulks, at the same time, and thus perpetuate the present scattered and complex esta- blishment."

Full as Blue-books often are of disclosures, greater horrors than these have seldom been laid open to view within the pages of a single document. The Chaplain's report, sketches a real hell upon earth, and the picture is made complete in the figures contributed by the Comptroller of the establishment. The sta- tistics tell us that there were on the 31st of December, 1858, 1077 convicts at Bermuda and that the number of punishments inflicted in the course of !the past year, was no less than 1278, or more than one for each prisoner. Among the men whose con- duct we have indicated, a large proportion were originally con- victed of violence against women, or of crimes still more atrocious, —yet we see that even that fact failed to suggest proper checks. From the same source we learn that oases of insanity are annually becoming more numerous, and that the comptroller "cannot con- ceal his impression that a good deal of mental unsoundness pre- vails among mauy prisoners not classified as insane." The whole is fitly wound up by the report of the medical man who states that, out of the number of convicts already mentioned, no fewer than 1758 were admitted into the hospital during the year 1859; that seven died, four became insane, and two were killed by their fellow-prisoners. It almost seems as if the horrors, revealed twenty-two years before Sir William Molesworth's committee, are coming into life again.

Now, this is the system that Colonel Jebb would have renewed ; this is the system for which Captain Crofton has worked out the wholesome alternative. Jebb says, you cannot manage the con- victs in England,—send them to the Colonies. Crofton does manage them in Ireland, showing how to keep down their num- bers; and Crofton shows too, how to filter them back into so- ciety in a much purified state : the Bermuda prisoners whose time has expired, are brought home, and turned loose, like vermin, to prey upon society, and give their fellow-countrymen hearts of beasts.