Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/664

 . 7, 1861.] him. By his own efforts he can lay up a little store for the day of liberation, and by his own efforts he can hasten the coming of that happy day. If he will so act as to obtain good marks it is hastened; if he fails to obtain them it is postponed. Then, during the period of his detention in the intermediate prison, he has, in a higher degree, the benefit of intellectual and moral culture which has been offered to him continually, with the higher blessing of the religious care of a zealous and instructed chaplain, from the commencement of his incarceration. A lecturer, a gentleman very competent and very devoted to his duty, addresses to him plain speech on subjects calculated to arouse his interest and awaken his faculties In very many cases, as part of his penal probation, he is employed at large in this city and its neighbourhood on such service as the convict directors deem suitable for him, or at Lusk, where you will find him discharging the ordinary duties of an agricultural labourer, without enclosure or confinement of any kind; and it is found that he can be so trusted safely, and that neither the city messenger nor the Lusk workman ever dreams of escaping from a control which has no apparatus of bolts and bars to make it effectual. And so the man passes from the prison to his place in society—not his old place, but a higher and better place. He does not make the passage abruptly or without reasonable preparation. Generally he is liberated as the recompense of meritorious conduct before the expiration of his sentence; and the liberation is conditional, subject to be ended if he falls again. And for a time he is under the eye of authority, and finds confirmation of his good purposes in the checks which its supervision puts upon him, and the apprehension of the evil consequences of a return to crime. But, more than this, the continuing guardianship is not at all strongly repressive. To the liberated convict it is a protection against the influence of those who would turn him back to wickedness, and it gives him a shield against many mischiefs and many misconceptions which would be entailed by his tainted character, if he had not the opportunity of appeal to the officers of justice as to his changed life and renewed trustworthiness.”

Such is a brief sketch, by so high an authority as the Attorney-General, of the system, the working of which we were anxious, personally, to inspect.

Our first visit was to Lusk Common, one of the intermediate prisons, the last stage which the convict undergoes before receiving liberty. A large party assembled, among them many magistrates, and other influential persons from various parts of England, and an hour’s ride brought us to Lusk. Had we been merely strangers on a pleasure excursion we should probably have passed by without especial notice what is, morally considered, one of the most wonderful spots in the island. There was nothing to attract any attention. Before us was a large common, part of which had been reclaimed, and gave evidence of much skilled labour having been bestowed on it. Other parts were perfectly wild, and we saw a number of men working very steadily at the drainage of it. No one would have noticed that they were not ordinary labourers; they wore no prison uniform, but the ordinary peasant dress; they appeared under the control of no gaol official, and no turnkey was watching them; they were not handling the pickaxe and spade with the unwilling air of men who were under compulsion to perform a certain amount of Government work, but like free labourers who would gladly do as hard a day’s work as they could. It seemed incredible that those men were prisoners, and even more, men convicted of no ordinary offences, but who were under long sentences of penal servitude; such men as those who had burst forth into violent rebellion at Portland, and who had been more recently, at Chatham, controlled only by extraordinary severity, after the most ferocious outbreaks, and outrageous attacks on the officers. Looking at these men we could hardly, as an English magistrate remarked, believe what we saw with our own eyes. We might have waited to converse with some of the prisoners, for so they really were, and we were quite at liberty to do so, but delicacy restrained us. Indeed, once observing a group assembled round one young man, we approached to listen, but we saw that he was hanging down his head with evident shame, and found that some one was most injudiciously questioning him respecting his former life, and his feelings while engaged in a career of crime;—so we passed on, and gave a courteous greeting to another, who responded with a manly, respectful air, not as one who had for ever lost his position in life. The directors. Captain Crofton and Captain Whitby, pointed out and explained the few and simple buildings. The only dwellings provided for from fifty to one hundred convicts consisted of two large huts of corrugated iron, each of which would contain accommodation for fifty men and one officer, the beds being so arranged that they could be put out of the way and the room converted into a dining and sitting room. There were a few simple tenements for the residence of the superintendent, and for the cooking and bathing of the men; but everything was as informal, simple, and inexpensive as possible. Captain Crofton pointed out some small houses on the outskirts of the common. Those, he told us, after withdrawing us from the hearing of the men, had been intended for policemen, as it had been considered quite unsafe for a body of criminals to be left with no police near. The houses had never been used; there had never been occasion for any police agency. One superintendent only has charge of each Imt. The few labourers employed with the men at work live in separate houses near.

After inspecting all parts of the premises, and satisfying ourselves that everything was as open and free as a common farm, and that the men were controlled only by the strong moral influence which, combined with strict discipline and steady adherence to well-devised laws, constitutes the essence of the system, we felt desirous of learning how far these men were, or rather had been, the same daring criminals who fill our Government prisons in England. Various questions on this subject were put to Captain Crofton by the