542 The Galley Slaves. [MAT, 



and the abominations of wicked patronage and the practice of selling 

 places, are discontinued ? There is no honest reason for not throwing 

 open allCourts of Law to all parts of the profession. Justice is the inalien- 

 able indefeasible right of humanity j honour, reason, and the general good, 

 call aloud for the abolition of the whole system, which encourages and 

 legalizes plunder, and which has so long existed, to the disgrace of a 

 civilized people. 



Let their lordships, then, who now seem disposed to effect some change, 

 direct their efforts towards purifying these corrupt sources ; let them 

 look to the facts here stated, and those within their own information, and 

 assist in the cause of the world ; let their lordships do this, and they will 

 earn, not only our applause, the praises of the upright in the profession 

 of which they are chief ornaments, but the lasting gratitude of mankind. 



R.T. 



THE GALLEY SLAVES. 



THERE are few books more interesting than Vidocq's Memoirs. I own 

 they possessed my imagination strongly for the time, and proved the 

 impelling cause which drove me into those unvisited scenes of foreign 

 life, the Criminal Court, that of the Police Correctionelle, and the prisons. 

 Above all, my attention, if not interest, was drawn to those unhappy 

 beings, theforcafs or galley slaves, whose lot, though unseparated from 

 their parent soil, is still far more to be commiserated than that of our 

 expatriated convicts. 



About a mile distant from one of the southern barriers of Paris, a 

 palace was built during our Henry ihe Sixth's brief and precarious pos- 

 session of French royalty, by the Bishop of Winchester. It was known 

 by the name of Winchester, of which, however, the French kept continu- 

 ally clipping and changing the consonants, until the Anglo-Saxon Win- 

 chester dwindled into the French appellation of Bictre. The Bishop's 

 old palace was treated as unceremoniously as his name, being burnt in 

 some of the civil wars. But there is this advantage in a sumptuous 

 edifice, that its very ruins suggest the thought and supply the means of 

 rebuilding it. Bicetre, accordingly, reared its head, and is now a straggling 

 mass of building, containing a mad-house, a poor-house, an hospital, and 

 a prison. 



To see it is a matter of trifling difficulty, except on one particular day 

 that devoted to the rivetting of the chaine. A surgeon, however, belong- 

 ing to the establishment, promised to procure rne admission, and on 

 receiving his summons, I started one forenoon for Bicetre. Mortifying news 

 awaited my arrival. The convicts had plotted a general insurrection and 

 escape, which was to have taken place on the preceding night. It had 

 been discovered in time, however, and such precautions taken, as completely 

 prevented even the attempt. The chief of these precautions appeared in 

 half a regiment of troops, that had bivouacked all night in the square 

 adjoining the prison, and were still some lying, some loitering about. 

 Strict orders had been issued, that no strangers should be admitted to 

 witness the ceremony of rivetting ; and the turnkeys and gaolers, in 

 appearance not yet recovered from the alarm of the preceding evening, 



