801. a year. By an Act passed in the session of 1843, the name of the Penitentiary has been changed, and in future its proper designation will be the Millbank Prison. It is under the control of the Secretary of State, but is more immediately under a Committee, not exceeding twenty nor less than ten, nominated by the Queen in Council. The prisoners are chiefly persons sentenced to transportation or to death, whose punishment has been commuted to imprisonment; and military delinquents. In their last Report but one, the Superintending Committee remark, that "in consequence of a distressing increase in the number of insane prisoners, the separate system has been relaxed." The prohibition of intercourse is now limited to the first three months; then a modified system of intercourse is allowed, consisting of permission to converse during the hours of exercise, with two or more fellow prisoners, a principle of classification being observed with reference to age, character, and conduct; and the privilege is liable to be suspended. In their last Report the Committee state that eighteen months before the alteration of discipline took place, 15 prisoners became insane; in the eighteen subsequent months only 5. The Inspectors of Prisons in their Seventh Report state that the existing system of discipline "is neither calculated to deter from crime, nor contribute to the personal reformation of the offender." The defective health of the prisoners has always been a great obstacle to the maintenance of an efficient discipline.

The boundary wall of the Millbank Prison is nearly three miles in extent, with only one entrance-gate. It encloses an area of sixteen acres, seven of which are occupied by the prison-buildings and thirty airing-yards, and the remainder is laid out as garden-ground. The plan of the prison-buildings is most intricate : arranged in the form of a pentagon, though a sixth angle has been added. In each pentagon there are twelve cell-passages, each 152 feet long, or 1824 feet in cach pentagon, or 10,944 feet in the six-a length of cell-passages two miles in extent. These passages are broken most inconveniently by 54 angles, into lengths of 50 yards each; so that to command a view of 100 yards of the passages it is necessary to stand at one of the angles. Besides these cell-passages there are others communicating with the two infirmaries, the two chapels, airing-yards, punishment-cells, &c. There are 28 circular staircases, and 12 square staircases, each of which is the same height as the building; making, in all, a distance of three miles to be traversed in going over that part of the building appropriated to prisoners. The Inspectors of Prisons state, that in consequence of the injudicious plan of construction, two or three times as many officers are required in the Penitentiary as would have been necessary under a better arrangement.

It is at the new Model Prison at Pentonville that we must expect to see carried out the views of the most enlightened minds of the present day on the subject of prison discipline. The contest between the "Silent System" (recommended by a committee of the House of Lords in 1835), and the "Separate System" seems to have gradually become most favourable to the latter mode of discipline, though the "Separate System" has often been confounded with the punishment of solitary confinement. The Model Prison is a place of instruction and probation, and not a gaol of oppressive punishment. It is for adults between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five: the Reformatory Prison at Parkhurst, in the Isle of Wight, for juvenile offenders, is on the same principle. The Commissioners for

the control of the Model Prison are nominated by the Queen in Council; and the correct name of the place is "The Model Prison, on the Separate System." The objects to be kept in view are thus explained by Secretary Sir James Graham, in a letter addressed to the Commissioners in December, 1842:-" I propose "I that no prisoner shall be admitted into Pentonville without the knowledge that it is the portal to the penal colony; and without the certainty that he bids adieu to his connexions in England, and that he must look forward to a life of labour in another hemisphere. But from the day of his entrance into the prison, while I extinguish the hope of return to his family and friends, I would open to him fully and distinctly the fate which awaits him, and the degree of influence which his own conduct will infallibly have over his future fortunes. He should be made to feel that from that day he enters on a new career. He should be told that his imprisonment is a period of probation; that it will not be prolonged above eighteen months; that an opportunity of learning those arts which will enable him to earn his bread will be afforded under the best instructors; that moral and religious knowledge will be imparted to him as a guide for his future life; that at the end of eighteen months, when a just estimate can be formed of the effect produced by the discipline on his character, he will be sent to Van Diemen's Land, there, if he behave well, at once to receive a ticket of leave, which is equivalent to freedom, with the certainty of abundant maintenance, the fruit of industry; if he behave indifferently, he will be transported to Van Diemen's Land, there to receive a probationary pass, which will secure to him only a limited portion of his own earnings, and which will impose certain galling restraints on his personal liberty; if he behave ill, and if the discipline of the prison be ineffectual, he will be transported to Tasman's Peninsula, there to work in a probationary gang, without wages, deprived of liberty, an abject convict. This is the view which should be presented to the prisoner on the day when he enters Pentonville; this is the view which should never be lost sight of, either by him or by those in authority over him, until the day when he leaves the prison for embarkation; and when, according to the register to be kept of his conduct, the Governors will determine in which of the three classes he shall be placed." The Model Prison is situated between Pentonville and Holloway, and occupies an area of 6 acres, surrounded by lofty boundary walls. The first stone of the prison building was laid in May, 1840, and it has been completed at an expense of 85,000l. The cells are each 13 feet long, 7 feet broad, and 9 feet high, and are all of uniform dimensions. Each is provided with a stone water-closet pan, a metal basin supplied with water, a three-legged stool, a small table, a shaded gas-burner, and a hammock, with mattress and blankets. There is a bell in each cell, which when pulled causes a small iron tablet inscribed with the number of the cell to project on the wall to direct the officer on duty. Each cell is warmed by hot air, and the ventilation is effected by means of perforated iron plates above the door of the cell, which communicate with a lofty shaft. None of the prisoners will ever be seen by each other, and in chapel each has his separate box. The officers wear felted shoes, and can inspect the prisoners, whether in the cell or in the airing-yard, without being either heard or seen.

Each prisoner will be visited hourly during the day by a keeper, daily by the

deputy-governor and chief officer; and the surgeon and schoolmaster will be frequently in attendance upon him. Books will be supplied to him, and the trade which he exercises will occupy his mind. The prisoners are to be permitted to lay their complaints before the visiting Commissioners. Many modes of secondary punishment have failed, but the one to be pursued at the Model Prison is an experiment founded on past experience of the deficiency of other systems, and promises at length to be successful.

The Philanthropic Institution and the Refuge for the Destitute belong rather to another class of institutions, though they are partially of a penitentiary cha racter; but we shall notice them elsewhere.

66

THE Englishman cannot exist without his newspaper. Foreigners laugh sometimes at the Englishman and his tea-kettle. They are inseparable," they say. "If he goes to the top of Mont Blanc, to the North Pole, or to Central Africa, 'tis all the same: he must carry it with him." The newspaper is, however, a still more indispensable necessary of life. Give the working-man his pint of beer, and he will not ask for tea, but he must have his newspaper. Every countytown has its newspaper; every distant colony, however remote, recent, or small. The first regular settlers in New Zealand had the first number of their colonial newspaper printed in London, and the second a few days after they landed. Melbourne (Port Philip) and Adelaide (South Australia), the foundations of which were unlaid ten years ago, have each their four or five newspapers. Nay, the very military stations-the cantonments of our armies in the East-must have their newspapers; and the Hong-kong Gazette' is already more than a year old. In all the new settlements of Englishmen the order of proceedings appears to be:-First, to run up sheds to cover themselves from the weather; next to kindle a fire and set the tea-kettle on to boil; and then to set about printing a newspaper, though it should be done, like the Auckland Observer,' by a mangle instead of an ordinary printing-press. These three necessaries

VOL. V.

insured, John Bull is contented-breeches will come in time, when those he has brought with him are worn out.

The

The newspaper is a European invention, and a necessary consequence of the invention of the printing-press. There were substitutes for newspapers even before Faust and Guttenberg, but poor shabby makeshifts they were. Romans had their Acta Diurna, a daily manuscript paper, both under the republic and the empire. It appears to have contained an abstract of the proceedings of public assemblies, of the law-courts, of the punishment of offenders, accounts of any public buildings or other works in progress, together with a list of births, deaths, marriages, and divorces. It is not only in the staple materials of the Acta Diurna that we find a close parallel to our modern newspapers. The manner in which the former were "got up" appears to have been not unlike what now prevails. "The due supply of information," says a writer in the Penny Cyclopædia,' "on political and judicial affairs, was to be obtained, as now, by reporters (actuari). In the celebrated debate of the Roman Senate upon the punishment of those who had been concerned in the Catilinarian conspiracy, we find the first mention of short-hand writers, who were specially employed by Cicero to take down the speech of his friend Cato." The Senate of Rome appears to have been as jealous of the reporters' gallery as the British Parliament. It was a close court until the first consulship of Julius Cæsar, who no sooner entered upon his office than he made provision for giving the same publicity to all the proceedings of the Senate that already existed for the more popular assemblies. Under the despotism of Augustus and his successors, publicity was inconvenient, and prohibited; the subordinate assemblies had lost their political importance; and with the extinction of political news the Acta Diurna lost their interest. At the best this state gazette can have been but a meagre document: the conversational wit of Horace, and the dainties of Apicius, may have equalled anything modern times have known; but Cicero himself never knew what it was to have 'The Times' on his table at breakfast. Perhaps in the police and crim. con. department the Acta Diurna were equal to any modern newspaper. Not a gazette appears, says Seneca, without its divorce, so that our matrons, from constantly hearing of them, soon learn to follow the example.

In all civilised or semi-civilised countries the profession of news-writer (as it is to be found in the East at this day) was probably followed; but the services of the news-writer were hired out to private patrons. Before the introduction of printed newspapers it would appear that our great English families had private gazetteers in London, who transmitted the news of the day to them in written letters. This custom accounts for the following memorandum extracted from the archives of the Clifford family by Whitaker, in his History of Craven: 'To Captain Robinson, by my lord's commands, for writing letters of news to his lordship for half-a-year,-five pounds." (The "private correspondent" of any respectable provincial journal has in our days a guinea a letter.) As the people in any state rose into importance, their governors found it necessary to keep them in good humour by telling them, or pretending to tell them, what it was about. Thus the war which the republic of Venice waged against the Turks in Dalmatia in 1563 is said to have given rise to the custom of communicating