EDUCA i'lOX. 667 



mony ; the prisoners come from it uninslructed, and are neither 

 taught to respect it, nor themselves, nor the laws and institutions of 

 their country. 



The most easy and least expensive of all things to be attempted in 

 a prison would be a sufficient schooling. A regular and full change 

 of mind should be produced by education. This would be correction. 

 The best theory of mind extant proves that this may be done. It is 

 the proper repentance to be brought about for past misdeeds. It has 

 been proved that an active and proper application to change of 

 mind, and here we will say of wrong propensities, will accomplish 

 its purpose in two years. To such a change every criminal should 

 be made subject ; not by severity, by irons, by the lash, or by tor- 

 ture of any kind ; but by kindness, care of health, and a teaching of 

 a due sense of comforts, of individual and of general happiness. 

 The prisoner would soon learn that his imprisonment was correction, 

 not punishment ; he would become pleased and grateful, and society 

 would be acquitted of all imputation of outrage on person or de- 

 light in personal suffering, which is not now the case. 



We have lately had a royal commission to enquire into punish- 

 ments inflicted in the army, and more particularly with regard to 

 flogging. Soldiers of every description have been examined, from 

 Field Marshal Arthur, Duke of Wellington, down to the private. 

 The evidence of the Duke of Wellington was clearly conscientious, 

 according to his taste and judgment, and be it remembered that we 

 are not among the duke's political revilers. The duke gave his sanc- 

 tion to the supposed necessity of continuing the system of flogging. 

 We carefully read his evidence, were pleased with some of the truths 

 it unfolded ; but throughout we saw the one great defect. The duke 

 paid the British army the compliment of saying that it was composed 

 of a worse set of individuals than entered into the composition of any 

 other army in Europe, that they were more troublesome to the 

 officers and more difficult to manage and discipline. The duke la- 

 mented that there was no proper occupation of the spare time the 

 soldier found in the army in time of peace. He advocated rational 

 pastimes, amusements, and recreations as properly belonging to the 

 soldier. But it does not appear to have entered the duke's mind that 

 the original fault of which he complained as belonging to the British 

 soldier was the want of education in the society from which the men 

 had been taken, and that the same continued want of education in 

 the army was a prima facie cause for-all its disorders,'in idle and bad 

 habits formed through unoccupied time. Here is the point. The 

 British army is not a school of science. Nothing would be more 

 easy and less expensive than so to make it. All the discipline, ar- 

 rangements, barracking, and settlement of a regiment would be the 

 necessary preliminaries for the formation of a school. 'I'here should 

 be no officer who was not a ripe and good scholar, and who would 

 not feel it an lionourahle employment to be assisting in the education 

 of tlie men. We should then soon have good officers and good men. 

 Whatever talent was latent in the men to qualify them for non-com- 

 missioned, and even for commissioned officers, would be drawn forth, 

 and be ready for use on all occasions. An army never need be idle 



