Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/663

 656 “I love to sit by Doctor Johnson,” she said, “he always entertains me.”

He was often a guest at Garrick’s house, when Mrs. Peg Woffington presided, and he was there on the night when Garrick,—who like all men who have ever known the want of money, had occasional fits of penuriousness,—grumbled at the strength of the tea, and cried out:

“Why it’s as red as blood!”

Perhaps he never wholly forgave Garrick’s success. Yet he could speak of it temperately, and almost generously, at times.

“Sir, it is wonderful how little Garrick assumes; a man who has advanced the dignity of his profession. Garrick has made a player a high character, and all supported by great wealth of his own acquisition. If all this had happened to me, I should have had a couple of fellows with long poles walking before me to knock down everybody that stood in the way. Consider, if all this had happened to Cibber, or Quin, they’d have jumped over the moon. Yet (smiling), Garrick speaks to us!”

2em

meeting of the Social Science Association at Dublin, in August last, afforded to many an opportunity of seeing and examining for themselves what has lately engaged considerable public attention—the Irish Convict System—as developed and carried on by the Board of Directors, of which Captain Walter Crofton is the chairman.

Even those who have not been called on to pay any special attention to the management of convicts, and to the principle and plan of convict prisons, must be aware that some very radical and important difference must exist between the Irish and the English Convict Prisons. On our side of the channel it would require a very great stretch of philanthropy even to make the trial of taking men into employment who were known to be just discharged from Portland or other Convict Prisons;—those who have come under our own knowledge have been complete failures;—the newspaper police reports continually record offences committed by prisoners discharged under licence or ticket-of-leave; and we know that some of the most atrocious crimes have been perpetrated by those who ought to have been reformed characters, if long years of training and instiniction in Government prisons could make them so. The English public does not believe in the reformation of prisoners by the system adopted in this country.

The contrary is the case on the other side of the channel. There is a belief in Ireland that the system adopted in the convict prisons does reform those who are the subject of it; and the consequence of this belief is, that masters are ready to receive discharged prisoners into their employment; those who at first, doubtingly, tried some, now confidently apply for more. The knowledge that trustworthy, hard-working men are to be obtained by application at the prison for those whose time is completed, is becoming so general, that the grand problem is solved—“what are we to do with our convicts?” The bulk of them are absorbed into the population as honest labourers, and those whose home connections make it undesirable for them to remain in their own country, emigrate to others, well prepared to become useful and respectable members of society elsewhere.

What is the real secret of this marvellous difference?

And why is it that, while elsewhere we hear of increase of crime and of re-convictions of those who have already put the country to great expense by years of public maintenance in prison, in Ireland the number of convicts has actually diminished from 4,278, in January 1, 1854, with several hundreds in those of Bermuda and Gibraltar, who have since been discharged, and on January 1, 1860, there were only 1631 convicts; with 74 in Bermuda and Gibraltar.

We desired then to avail ourselves of this visit to Dublin, to satisfy ourselves fully on these points, and to verify, by personal observation, what we had heard of the Irish Convict System.

The reformatory section of the Association had received an admirable and lucid statement of the system, and its results, from a paper on the subject, read by Captain Crofton himself, which was listened to with the deepest interest, not only by an attentive audience, but by the venerable president. Lord Brougham, who strongly expressed his approbation of it. But we desired also an impartial statement of the whole system, and this was given by the Attorney-General for Ireland in his presidential address. After briefly reviewing the history of Reformatory Schools for juveniles, which are now established in Ireland as in England, he referred to the touching story of the “Vicar of Wakefield,” in which, a hundred years ago, Oliver Goldsmith developed the true principles which should combine punishment and reformation. “Throughout the whole prison life of the convict” (in Ireland), he continues, “these guiding principles regulate his treatment. He enters Mountjoy prison, and he has there to undergo the hard discipline of cellular incarceration. He works alone, not often visited by any one, and with ample opportunity for meditation and repentance during his nine months of that probationary state. But he is allowed to have hope of the future,—a hope to be realised by himself. The shortening of this period of his separation depends on his good conduct, and he knows that when it shall have ended, he will have still further opportunity of improving his condition by his own endeavours. This expectation produces its natural result in his quiet and orderly demeanour, and his obedience to authority, and in most instances the period of his cellular confinement is accordingly abridged. Then he passes to Spike Island or Philipstown, where he labours in association with others under the strictest surveillance, and where continuing good behaviour enables him to rise from class to class, gaining all the while something for himself from the fruits of his toil, until he becomes fit for an intermediate prison, where he has more of freedom and a larger share of his own earnings, and where the same stimulating and sustaining influence of hope still operates upon