always as a reward for good behaviour, and in a moment of calm; and he who is soonest able to tell me that he has no longer a single patient under restraint, I shall consider as the man best fitted for his post, and treat him accordingly. If this be managed discreetly, it may be the means of each man obtaining great influence over the persons committed to his care. "In a fortnight," he continues, "I was surprised to find not a single person under restraint in the Asylum. I instantly removed all the manacles, all the staples to which these manacles were attached, and sent them to the blacksmith to be forged into more innocent implements. We have never had occasion to use them since, and I hope such things are for ever exploded."

In this wish every friend of humanity must cordially join. Few English readers need be told, in addition, that Dr. Conolly's system of treatment has been eminently successful, and that the influence of his example is happily extending to other establishments of a similar kind, both private and public. The harsh and cruel treatment of the insane, derives, in fact, from the time when insanity was conceived to be a species of Satanic possession. With the explosion of the error, it is not too much to expect the universal discontinuance of the barbarous practice.—(W.)

While these pages are passing through the press, it is gratifying to notice, that a series of wise and comprehensive measures have been introduced into the legislature by Lord Ashley, with the warm concurrence of Her Majesty's Ministers, which have for their object the establishment, support, and supervision of Lunatic Asylums throughout the kingdom, with a view to humanize the general treatment, and facilitate the effectual recovery of the insane.-(W.)

CHAPTER VI.

KINDNESS AND CRIME.

"The secret of the success of the Prison Discipline Society, is its use of the great principle of the Gospel-love to the guilty."-PRISON DISCIPLINE REPORT.

THERE is yet another department of human life, in which the law of kindness is acquiring extensive and powerful influence. I have reference to criminalsthose victims of vice who break the laws of society, and consequently endure the penalties attached to those laws. In times past, criminals have been visited with constant severity, and, in multitudes of instances, with positive cruelty. And at the present day, it is not only the fact in many prisons, that prisoners, in order to subdue them, are subjected to vindictive and frequent corporeal punishments, but multitudes of people still cherish the erroneous notion, that prisoners cannot be controlled in any other manner than by unrelenting severity. The annals of criminal legislation too truly prove that this severity has been faithfully administered. To examine the neglect, the filth, the stripes, the revenge, and the vitiating influences, to which criminals have been compelled to

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submit, even in countries which boast of their civilization, makes the soul thrill with horror. Legislators and public opinion have been entirely, and, in many instances, now are strangely wrong in this respect. If an individual so acts that the law cannot grasp him with its iron hand, and he dresses well as a votary of fashion, he, too often, is so much countenanced, that he is admitted to gay society and the smiles of many of the influential, though he may plunder the widow and the orphan, and riot in seduction and debauchery. But let a man commit the smallest crime, in the eye of criminal law-let him pass the ordeal of public trial and conviction-let him wear the striped dress of a convict—and straightway the mark of Cain is on his brow; and in the wretched prison to which he is consigned, and the stripes and suffering to which he is a slave, people forget that he is still a man, with feelings that might become active in virtue, if excited by the voice of kindness. Who cares for him? The past answers, None, with the exception of here and there a philanthropist, whose voice has warned legislators of the revenge and cruelty they were inflicting on those who should be raised up from their degradation, instead of being crushed deeper into an infamy which destroys all hope of reform.

From the multitude of facts but a few will be selected to show the unsurpassed wretchedness which has hitherto been the lot of criminals. In the Memoirs of Howard is the following statement:-The prison for the county of Cornwall was, in fact, but a room, or passage, twenty-three feet and a half, by seven and a half, with only one small window in it; opposite to that window there were, however, three

dungeons, or cages, about six and a half feet deep; one nine feet long; another about eight; the third not five; the last for women. They were all, as we may naturally suppose, very offensive. No chimney; no drains; no water; damp earth floors; and no infirmary1." Can it be wondered at, that in such a hole as this, unfit even for wild beasts, every prisoner, but one, was sick with the jail-fever? And yet this loathsome place was a fair sample of the prisons and jails in England and the continent of Europe.

Nor was the condition of convicts, formerly, in America, any better than in Europe and England. The prisons, not excepting that which existed in the philanthropic city of Philadelphia, were of the most wretched and comfortless character; and into them crowds of persons were huddled, from the murderer to the miserable and perishing debtor. There the hardened villain taught the most flagrant forms of crime to the young novice in sin; there every nameable vice was unblushingly practised, and in the presence of females too, for both sexes were mingled together; there were heard the clanking of chains, and the sound of the lash, accompanied by imprecations and curses; and there scores were swept into eternity by distemper, generated in filth and crowded apartments, without a friend to compassionate them, or a voice to speak to them in mercy; while the oaths of their companions were their requiem, and an ignominious death their end. Can it be a subject of astonishment, that such treatment of criminals should increase the crime which it was ex

1 Memoirs of Howard, p. 77.

pected to destroy? that convicts, like the serpent struggling to bite the man who crushes him, should be excited by a deadly hate against the community who thus cruelly abused them? that their feelings should become frozen, and their souls filled with the desperation of revenge? That such is the tendency of this unchristian revenge is demonstrated by the following instance, which we quote from an admirable article on Prison Discipline :

"As an illustration of the nature and tendencies of the former, and to too great a degree the present system of prison discipline, we would mention a case, which occurred only a few years since in one of the New England states. The voucher for its accuracy, it is true, is the veracity of the sufferer himself; but the naturalness of the whole narrative is such, that we have never doubted for a moment its essential authenticity.

"The young man to whom we refer was an orphan, left in mere boyhood to the care of an uncle, who taught him his own trade, that of a shoemaker. The uncle, however, absconded in debt, while our informant was still a youth, and he apprenticed himself to another person of the same occupation. The master was poor, and the apprentice, of course, still poorer; the former failed, and was, we believe, sent to jail; and the latter, almost destitute of clothes, was again turned out, without a friend, into the street.

His appearance was so squalid, that no respectable mechanic would employ him, and he wandered about the city for several days, cold and hungry, procuring barely enough to prolong existence, by doing little errands on a wharf.