In certain cases a third portion of the earnings of the convict may be appropriated to the support of his family during the period of incarceration; or a fund may be formed in which a portion of the prisoner's earnings accumulate until the expiration of his sentence, so that he may, on regaining his liberty, find himself in possession of a sum of money enabling him to start in life afresh.

I do not press any precise mode of allotting the wages earned, nor do I, at present, enter into details as to the proportions between the one fund and the other; all I contend for is that a true system of prison discipline should include the following points:

I. That, in the classification of prisoners, they should be grouped according to their trades and professions, each man following his own proper calling, and receiving better or worse accommodation in proportion to his earnings.

II. That if a prisoner will not work neither shall he eat, except the poorest fare and in the scantiest quantities.

III. That all beyond this shall be dependent on the man's own exertions.

IV. That a contribution be levied upon the proceeds of the convict's industry in payment for the rations provided by the prison authorities.

V. That an adequate motive to work be provided, and that the motive be of the same kind as that which actuates those who are at liberty.

The scheme proposed, as it seems to me, would attain more adequately and satisfactorily than any other the various objects of prison discipline. Allow me to add a few of the beneficial results which I hope might follow from its adoption.

To the indolent and dissolute imprisonment would become a real punishment. The vagrant or the thief, who prefers a life of crime to one of steady industry, would be compelled to work by a motive so strong as to overcome his aversion to continuous industry. If he chose to remain in indolence he would suffer a penalty so severe as to make the prison a place to be dreaded.

The habits formed by the prisoner, and the motives under which he acted, would fit him for resuming his place in society. While in prison he would be trained and disciplined to use the liberty to which he returns at the expiration of his sentence. We should, in fact, force the man to become in prison what we wish to make him when he comes out of it. He would have to work for his living, and to starve if he did not work, in the one place just as in the other. All beyond bread and water he would owe to his own exertions, and even for his bread and water he must pay. I do not pre

tend to say, or dare to believe, that we should succeed in every case. The depravity with which we have to deal is often too desperate and hardened to yield to any treatment which we can adopt. But the scheme I propose seems to me to hold out a fairer hope of success than any other.

We should, at any rate, avoid the worst evils of our existing system. At present we, to a great extent, disable a prisoner for resuming his place in the ranks of industry. We detach him altogether from his old habits and pursuits. If we set him to work it is, in the vast majority of cases, a task for which he is unfitted by the habits. of his former life, and which in turn unfits him to go back to his old trade. Take for instance the case of a printer. During the term of his imprisonment he may be set to work picking oakum. At the end of his term he is unfit to go back to the printing office. The muscles required have lost their power through disuse. The same cause has robbed him of his old dexterity of finger, and quickness of eye. If he is again to take his place in the printing office, he needs practically to serve a new apprenticeship before he can regain his old facility. By the plan which I propose, this evil at least would be avoided. Having suffered his punishment he would leave the prison as able as ever to follow his own trade.

The moral and mental change in the prisoner is, under our present system, even more disastrous. While under sentence he has little or no scope for the practical application of those common, every-day motives which rule the life of a working man. His mind, like his muscles, becomes enfeebled and paralyzed by want of occupation. The chaplains may seek to impress him by religious considerations. This is good so far as it goes; but the motives and incentives to action which are brought to bear upon him are not those of common life. Out of doors a man is driven to work by the necessity of gaining food. If he will not work he cannot eat. If he works industriously and skillfully he earns good wages. If he is idle or slovenly he earns a scanty subsistence. I want to apply these motives to the prisoner, and to make him practice them while under sentence, so as to prepare him for the life to which he will return on leaving the walls of the prison. This our present system signally fails to accomplish; this the system which I propose would help to carry out.

Or, take the case of the laborer committed for some act of violence. He is probably a man of strong animal passions, full of uncontrolled impulses and appetites. During his imprisonment he has had none of that vigorous exertion, that exhausting labor, which had previously helped to work off his exuberant vitality. His hands lose their hardness, his muscles their strength, and his mind is enfeebled by [Senate No. 21.]

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the silence and seclusion of his cell. His animal passions are pent up and suppressed. They find no vent in the dull routine of prison life. They gradually accumulate, till at last, on his liberation, the craving for physical indulgence, for mere animal excitement, fairly boils over, and the man again plunges headlong into those excesses which soon bring him once more into the clutches of the law. Give the man hard work to do-work of the kind to which he has been accustomed and we should at least escape this evil.

I have already referred to the heavy cost of our police and prison systems. Complaints of the rapid increase of rates and taxes are becoming universal. It will be remembered that, in our recent discussion on the erection of a new prison, this objection was strongly and repeatedly urged. I am not one of those who would sacrifice efficiency to economy. But I confess that I feel a strong aversion to the costliness of our present system. The plan which I propose would, I think, bring with it a very great saving of expense. Why should the mass of skilled and unskilled labor within the walls of our prisons be almost entirely unproductive? Might it not be employed so as to produce some return? I cannot but think that something might be effected-I feel sure that something ought to be attempted—in this direction. It could scarcely fail to diminish the cost of our present system very considerably. If it proved successful in diminishing the number of the inmates of our prisons, by leading to the reform of criminals, and helping them to return to their respective callings, it would promote economy in a yet worthier form.

I am quite aware that the principles here advocated can only be carried out in their fullness by the sanction of the legislature. But, should they commend themselves to yourself and my brother magistrates, I venture to hope that you will not hesitate to bring them under the notice of her majesty's government. And even under the present law the experiment might be tried by applying them partially and approximately.

My letter has already passed very far beyond the limits which I prescribed to myself. Much which I might have said must be omitted, for I fear to trespass longer upon your time or to weary your patience. The great importance of the subject, and the deep interest you take in it, must furnish my excuse for troubling you at this length.

I am, my dear Mr. Pownall, yours truly,
A. ANGUS CROLL.

SOUTHWOOD, HIGHGATE, Jan. 12, 1870.

XXIX. THE PRISONS OF FRANCE.

BY THE CORRESPONDING SECRETARY.

The following account of French prisons is compiled from several journals recently received from France. We offered last year a very able paper on the same subject, expressly prepared for these Transactions by one of our corresponding members, Mr. A. Corne, counselor in the Imperial Court of Douai, France. But this presents a view of the penal institutions of that country from a somewhat different standpoint, or at least with fresh details.

France provides for a daily average of about 50,000 prisoners in her penal establishments of all grades. These are distributed in 27 central [convict] prisons (19 male and 8 female), 300 detention prisons and houses of correction in the several departments, and 62 juvenile prisons or reformatories (34 for boys and 28 for girls)—in all, 389. The number of cells in each prison varies from 1,400 to 36. Vengeance, in the form of physical pain, long formed the sole theory of prison discipline in France, as in other countries. It was a policy at once of torture and of terror. In the year 1830, De Tocqueville and De Beaumont carried from the United States the idea of isolation as a necessary condition of punishment and reforma. tion, and considerable progress was made in building prisons adapted to the new system. But the enormous expense of the change cooled the ardor of this impulse; and the present system is a sort of compromise between the two, dictated in the first instance by economy. It is, in effect, the Auburn system, though with a less rigid individual separation by night, and a less rigorous enforcement of silence by day, while engaged in associated labor, than are, or at least heretofore have been, deemed essential in the United States. In the 27 central prisons, which receive prisoners sentenced for more than a year, there is more of isolation than in the 300 departmental prisons and houses of correction and detention, which receive only those condemned to an imprisonment not exceeding a year. In many of these the means of complete separation are wanting, but the defect is, in part, supplied by classification. But what was originally a compromise has become a principle; the dictate of poverty has passed into a policy. The new prisons are constructed on what is called the mixed system-a combination of classification and separation, according to the character of the crimes and the state of the prisoners; and enforced silence seems to be generally losing ground.

The return to association is mainly due to the facilities it gives for industrial labor. This is now the controlling idea of penitentiary discipline in France. Industrial, as distinguished from penal, labor is there regarded as the only effectual instrument of reformation, or, at least, as an absolutely essential one, in combination with others.

This species of labor had its origin in France, in 1801, but has undergone various vicissitudes since. It was made a necessary part of every sentence exceeding a year in duration. But complaints soon began to be made, which grew louder and stronger year by year, that the products of prison labor unduly and unjustly interfered with the labor market of the free workingmen. In 1848, the opposition had gained such strength that the government was moved to issue a decree abolishing industrial labor in all the prisons, and even in the reformatories. Such a decree, however, could not stand the intelligence and humanity of the middle of the 19th century. It was partially rescinded within the first year, but the bulk of the prisoners remained unemployed till 1852. In that year, industrial labor was reorganized in the prisons, but upon what we regard as a vicious principle-the contract system. There are two modes of contracting the labor of prisoners in France. The first is called par voie de régie, a phrase which does not admit of an intelligible verbal rendering into English. We can give its sense only by a description. Under this system, the contractor is bound to particular trades agreed upon, and must accept the work of as many or as few of the prisoners as the directors choose to have employed. He finds materials, tools, instruction and all other requisites of production, but does not supply funds for the maintenance or ordinary discipline of the establishment. He does not pay a per diem for the work of the prisoners; he pays for it by the piece: so many shoes for example—not so many hours at such a price. The other mode is called par voie d'entreprise-undertaking, contract. Under this system the contractor farms the prison and all its labor. He takes upon himself the duty of providing for the whole expense of its maintenance and discipline. He does not, as on the other plan, pay the exact worth of the labor as determined by its result in manufactured articles, but a round sum, according to the average number of inmates, thus obtaining the legal (he cannot get from men the moral) right to make all the money he can out of them. He has here two sources of profit - the labor and the supplies. Thus, he becomes a true speculator, taking the risks of loss and the chances of gain, by diminished or increased production, and by a lower or higher market, and that, both on what he sells to the prison, and what he gets from the prison to sell elsewhere. This is a monstrous system. We have denounced it in our