C 8 3 [July. 



SPECIMEN'S OF CANT. 



Prison-Reform. — Great things are to be clone by sincerity and zeal 

 in most affairs of this world, and something is to be done by them even 

 in prisons, hulks, and transportation ; but we cannot endure the per- 

 petual meddling, bungling, and hustling of political friends of humanity; 

 of bitter and persevering hunters after public influence, through those 

 calls on public feeling; of a little junto of republicans for power, 

 whether they call themselves Irvingites or Wilberforceites, political 

 economists or parliamentary evangelicals, saints of Balham-hill or 

 sinners of St. Giles's. We see the worldly principle creeping out under 

 the piety ; there is some little interest always to be insinuated in the 

 most unearthly smile ; some dexterity in the softest squeeze of the 

 sanctified hand ; the lip sigheth not, without a meaning worthy of the 

 Stock Exchange ; and the eye turneth not upon Heaven, without a 

 glance upon the things of this, " alas ! transitorj' existence," worthy of 

 the chief of speculators in gunpowder, condemned musket-barrels, 

 aquafortis-gin, and East India-liberal-sacrosanct-freelabour-sugar. Non- 

 sense is of course the staple of those orations ; and the ignorance, 

 contempt of history, and disregard of consequences, are too charac- 

 teristic to be ever forgotten in the " ingredients of their cauldron." 



Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline. — A meeting of this society 

 was held on Monday at Exeter Hall, Mr. F. Buxton, M.P., in the chair. 

 Among the speakers were Dr. Lushington, Sir G. Hanson, Mr. Hoare, and Mr. 

 J. J. Gurney. In the course of the conversation the unhealthy condition of 

 many of our prisons, the evil effects produced by the indiscriminate confine- 

 ment of juvenile offenders with those hardened in crime, the difficulty of 

 finding a secondary punishment consistent with their views, and the superior 

 management of convicts in the United States, were some of the principal 

 topics touched upon. It was also contended that the proper object of punish- 

 ment was the reformation of the offender as well as the prevention of crime, 

 and Dr. Lushington argued that capital punishments were a direct violation of 

 humanity, and repugnant to the laws of God. Resolutions passed in favour of 

 abolishing capital punishment, and to institute those which, while they in- 

 flicted pain on criminals, would, at the same time, be likely to advance their 

 temporal and spiritual welfare. 



Passing over the worn out common-places of those harangues ; the 

 praise of American prison affairs, as if there could be any rational com- 

 parison between England, crowded as she is with temptations to pilfering, 

 and loaded with a population of six millions of a mercantile and manufac- 

 turing race ; and America, where there is nothing to steal but grass or 

 water ; where the spade is the only thing of value, and the land the only 

 thing out of which a man can live ; America, where every man must 

 be his own tailor, carpenter, lawyer, and rearer of cabbages ; where, if 

 a man devises the stealing of a pair of breeches, he must first slay and 

 strip the wearer, inasmuch as no man, from the president downwards, 

 has a second pair ; where the arts of life consist in planting maize and 

 potatoes, and the luxuries of life consist in boiling them into puddings ; 

 where there are more acres of land than knives and forks ; a looking- 

 glass is a shew that congregates the population of a province ; a picture 

 has never been seen ; a saltspoon is a phenomenon which no American 

 traveller, Avho values his reputation for veracity in the States, has ever 

 ventured to announce ; and it is notorious, that a tea-service of French 

 plate accumulated the unpopularity of the Adamses to such a degree. 



