MORAL INFLUENCES ON THE PRISONER. 61 



Because under a system in which a man is provided with 

 good and sufficient food, clothing, lodging, fuel, and other 

 necessities of health and life, to a degree of perfection that 

 he never knew before, without the exercise of any personal 

 care, forethought, skill, or labour, much of the real manly 

 virtue of active life becomes a dead letter, and cannot be 

 acquired 1 Because the religion that is preached does not 

 make necessary the practice of prudence, energy, economy, 

 industry, and honest ingenuity 1 Because, under such circum 

 stances, instead of the reception of an elevating, reforming, 

 purifying principle of life, a religion of weak, mystic frames 

 of feeling, and sentimental professions, is more likely to be 

 encouraged, and is hardly distinguishable or avoidable to be 

 confused with vital piety 1 Or is it because nearly all the 

 other influences about the imprisoned criminal are enervating, 

 or opposed to reform and virtue 1 Horrible thought ! But let 

 us consider how he is situated ; what are the influences, what 

 the natural motives, that are likely to be operating upon him 

 in the circumstances in which we place him. 



The criminal is sentenced, we will suppose, for ten years, 

 and finds himself locked into a narrow cell, where it is only 

 at occasional and comparatively distant intervals that he can 

 be communicated with, even by his keeper, chaplain, or phy 

 sician, the only human beings who have access to him. It 

 may be for a certain time each day he is set to labour ; hard 

 labour being given him, not as a privilege, not as a relief, not 

 as a means of bettering his condition, or in any way as to be 

 loved and valued ; but as an addition to the punishment of 

 solitary confinement. It may be practically a relief; but 

 when we admit it to be so, under the circumstances in which 

 it is engaged in, we must have some notion of the dreary 

 loneliness and tedious prospect which he has in his cell, 

 though in it comforts, which iii the ordinary government of 



