confined in a gaol, although I see that practice resorted to in one of those which is entitled to great credit for its general management. I believe that a large discretion is sometimes exercised by gaolers, in regard to the part of their prison in which particular prisoners should be placed. In some gaols, if a person be committed for a simple misdemeanor, who has previously been convicted of a felony, or who has a very bad character, the keeper takes it upon himself to confine him among those charged with felony, as being unfit to associate with the prisoners of his proper class: and this practice seems to be approved of. It appears to me, I own, to be likely to lead to great abuse, and to furnish an excuse for many irregularities; and it is, moreover, if I am not mistaken, as the law now stands, illegal. If any latitude be allowed upon this subject, it should be authorized by Parliament, and should be extended no further than to those particular cases in which the visiting Magistrates of the prison should see occasion to give a special order in writing for such departure from their general rules.

The chaplain should also read all letters to and from prisoners convicted of felony or committed to hard labor; nor should such prisoners be allowed to carry on any correspondence, or see any of their friends, without his approbation. The friends and connections of prisoners should indeed engage a large share of the chaplain's attention, as the knowledge of them would frequently enable him to confer upon the prisoners the most essential benefits. How often might it be in his power to obtain forgiveness for a criminal from an injured master, who might take the prisoner back into his service on his discharge? to reconcile the offender to friends whose regard he had alienated? to make his peace with relations, who had thrown him off in consequence of his vices, but who might be induced, by the mediation of a respectable clergyman, to receive him again among them, or to furnish him with the means of beginning life anew at a distance from the scene of his disgrace ? I believe that much good has been done in this way, and in procuring employment for discharged prisoners, by benevolent gaolers, who have taken an interest in the future fate of those whom they have sent out from their prisons; but much more might of course be effected by the exertions of men, whose better education and higher rank in society must give them greater weight and more extensive influence, and who could devote more time to these objects than can be bestowed upon them by a person who has the general concerns of a large gaol to attend to.

In giving efficiency to the chaplain we must take care to avoid all collision of authority between him and the gaoler, or governor of the prison: all direct power must continue in the hands of the latter, in whom alone rests all responsibility for the safe keeping of his prisoners; the chaplain can only act, either upon officers or prisoners by advice; even if he were insulted in the prison, it is not his province to order punishment, but all possible means should be taken to uphold his character and consequence: the governor should be particularly required to take care that he is treated on all occasions, and by all persons within the walls of the prison, with proper respect; to report to him all such punishments as he may be called upon to inflict for breaches of prison discipline, and generally to consult with him on all points connected with the moral state and condition of the prison: nor do I conceive that the attention of the chaplain ought to be confined to matters purely of a moral or religious nature-he is by his profession the friend and guardian of the distressed, and if he should think fit, at any time, to make a representation to the keeper of the prison, upon any subject which has no reference to religion or morals, either in consequence of his own observation, or of a complaint made to him by a prisoner, he ought not to be treated as an officious meddler with what did not concern him, but his application, even if the keeper did not see occasion to comply with it, should be patiently and respectfully received; it should be the primary object of the attention of the visiting Magistrates of every gaol, to see that the chaplain did not assume too much, and that he was not on the other hand overlooked as a person of no consequence in the prison; and wherever the duties of that officer were correctly performed, I am mistaken if these Magistrates would not soon feel that they derived much assistance from him in their superintendence.

The amount of the annual salary which the justices may appoint to the chaplain of a gaol, by the 55th Geo. III. cap. 48, is 100l.; for the duty done in the house of correction they may give 50l. but where the same person is to attend both gaol and house of correction, (which is often found convenient, the latter being often under the same roof with the former) the salary for the double duty is not to exceed 120l. In small houses of correction, calculated for the reception of a few prisoners, where there may sometimes be only two or three persons in confinement, and sometimes none at all, it is not necessary to go as far as the sum to which the justices are limited; such prisons must be attended by some clergyman who has other occupations in the neighbourhood,

At Gloucester the chaplain signs his approbation of every punishment in the book in which it is registered; but the propriety of this practice is very questionable: that the chaplain should formally sanction proceedings of this kind seems equally inconsistent with the relation in which he stands towards the prisoners, and with a due regard to the consequence and authority of the governor.

and all the duty, that can be expected, is the service of the church upon a Sunday, attendance upon the sick when required, and one or two visits in the course of the week; but for the care of a large prison, the sum of 120l. does not seem to be a sufficient remuneration; it is the lowest sum allowed by the legislature in the Act relative to stipendiary curates, for the curate of a non-resident rector in a parish in which the population shall exceed five hundred persons; but there is no parish in which the clergyman, having the cure of souls, can be supposed to be in habits of communication with all its inhabitants; a large portion of them must be infants, or persons with whom he can have no intercourse; whereas, in a prison there is no individual who ought not to be an object of attention to the chaplain, and few who do not demand much more spiritual assistance than would be required in the case of an ordinary parishioner. Perhaps it may be expedient in fixing the limits to which the justices shall have power to raise the chaplain's salary, to adopt the principle taken with respect to the stipendiary curates, and to let the amount depend, in some degree on the average number of the prisoners confined, or on the number which the prison is calculated to contain. We must be aware that parsimony on this head is not economy, for laying aside all higher considerations, (which however ought not to be disregarded) we cannot but see, that the amount of any addition which could be made to the salary of the chaplain of a county gaol, would soon be saved to the county, if a few prisoners only should be replaced by his exertions in the paths of honest industry, instead of being turned loose at the end of their imprisonment, to commit fresh offences, and fall again under the censure of the law; since every re-commitment adds to the expenses of the gaol, and a very large proportion of the charges incurred in the prosecution of offenders is immediately repaid out of the county purse.

That offences of every description have of late years become more numerous in this kingdom, is a fact too notorious to be disputed; it is unnecessary here to inquire how far this may be owing to the increase of the wealth and population of the country,-or to the growth of large towns, (among the inhabitants of which we must expect to find more crimes committed than among an equal number of persons living in villages, or spread over the face of a large district,) or to the fluctuations of trade incident to a great extent of commerce and manufacture, by which large bodies of workmen are often thrown at once out of employment, or to the imprudence and want of forethought resulting from the dependence which the lower orders have of late years been accustomed to place in parish relief, for their support in the hour of distress,or to the tide of blasphemy and sedition, which is poured inces

santly from the public press, to subvert the principles, and deaden the moral feelings of the people; all these causes probably contribute, more or less, to swell the list of offenders, but it is amongst the circumstances which have the largest share in producing this evil, that the ordinary penalties of the law have ceased to carry with them any terror: transportation is no longer dreaded as an exile to an unknown and savage [land; but on the contrary, is hailed by the hardened criminal as holding out to him the prospect of being settled in a country which is represented as possessing many advantages, and where he hopes to meet again the companions of his former dissolute life; while imprisonment, no longer aggravated by hardships, with which it ought never to have been attended, has lost those which should properly belong to it; we have passed on this head from one extreme to another. In former times, men were deterred from pursuing the road that led to a prison, by the apprehension of encountering there disease and hunger, of being loaded with heavy irons, and of remaining without clothes to cover them, or a bed to lie on; we have done no more than what justice required in relieving the inmates of a prison from these hardships; but there is no reason that they should be freed from the fear of all other sufferings and privations; and I hope that those, whose duty it is to take up the consideration of these subjects, will see, that in penitentiaries, offenders should be subjected to separate confinement, accompanied by such work as may be found consistent with that system of imprisonment; that in gaols or houses of correction, they should perform that kind of labor which the law has enjoined; and that in prisons of both descriptions, instead of being allowed to cater for themselves, they should be sustained by such food as the rules and regulations of the establishment should have provided for them: in short, that prisons should be considered as places of punishment, and not as scenes of cheerful industry, where a compromise must be made with the prisoner's appetites to make him do the common work of a journeyman or manufacturer, and the labors of the spinning wheel and the loom must be alleviated by indulgence.

! That I am guilty of no exaggeration in thus describing a prison conducted upon the principles now coming into fashion, will be evident to any person who will turn to the latter part of the article, "Penitentiary, Milibank," in Mr. Buxton's book on prisons; he there states what passed in conversation between himself and the governor of Bury gaol, (which gaol, by-the-by, he praises as one of the three best prisons he has ever seen, and strongly recommends to our imitation at Millbank). Having observed, that the governor of Bury gaol had mentioned his having counted 34 spinning wheels in full activity when he left that gaol at 5 o'clock in the morning on the preceding day, Mr. Buxton proceeds as follows, "after he had seen the Millbank Penitentiary, I asked him what would be the consequence, if the re

APPENDIX.

The designs for prisons, published by the Society for Prison Discipline, are all formed on what is called in prison building the windmill plan; that, on which I mean here to remark, is the large one, intended for a county gaol, and calculated to hold 400 prisoners. It consists of central buildings, in which are the governor's apart. ments and those of the chaplain, when residing within the gaol, and of six ranges of building stretching out from the centre, like the radii of a circle, or the arms of a windmill, in which the prisoners are to be placed: each of these six ranges of buildings consists of five stories, of which the three upper stories are night-cells, and the two lower, day-rooms, being each divided in the middle by a wall, which runs down the rooms longitudinally, so that the two stories make four day-rooms, or work-rooms: at the further end from the centre, where the staircases, privies, &c. are placed, there are two rooms for a superintendent, the one above the other, with an interior communication between them, from one of which rooms he can see into each of the four work-rooms; and the governor

gulations there used, were adopted by him." "The consequence would be," he replied, "that every wheel would be stopped;" Mr. Buxton then adds, "I would not be considered as supposing, that the prisoners will altogether refuse to work at Milibank-they will work during the stated hours; but the present incentive being wanting, the labor will, I apprehend, be languid and desultory." I shall not on my part undertake to say, that they will do as much work as will be done in those prisons in which work is the primary object; but besides the encouragement of the portion of earnings laid up for them, they know that diligence is among the qualities that will recominend them to the mercy of the Crown, and that the want of it is, by the rules and regulations of the prison, an offence to be punished. The governor of Bury gaol, who is a very intelligent man, must have spoken hastily, in his eagerness to support his own system, and did not, I conceive, give himself credit for as much power and authority in his prison as he really possesses. It is not to be wonderedat, that the keepers of prisons should like the new system; there is less trouble in the care of a manufactory than in that of a gaol; but I am surprised to find that so much reliance is placed in argument on the declaration of some of these officers, that the prisoners are quieter where their work is encouraged by allowing them to spend a portion of their earnings. It may naturally be expected, that offenders will be least discontented, and consequently least turbulent, where their punishment is lightest, or where, to use Mr. Buxton's own words, "by making labor productive of comfort or convenience, you do much towards rendering it agreeable;" but I must be permitted to doubt, whether these are the prisons of which men will live in most dread.