APPENDIX D. 



Principles of the Mark System, framed to mix persuasion 

 with punishment, and make their effect improving, yet 

 their operation severe. By CAPTAIN MACHONOCHIE, R. N., 

 K. H., late superintendent of the British penal settlement 

 at Norfolk Island. 



&quot; Our present punishments resemble every thing that is most deteriorating in 

 ordinary life: and they deteriorate accordingly. If we would infuse into them 

 those impulses which, under Providential guidance, make other forms of adver 

 sity improving, we would make them improving also.&quot; 



nptlE constituent elements in secondary punishment are labour and 

 ^ time. Men are sentenced to hard labour for a given time : but the 

 time is here made to measure the labour, and the first proposal of the 

 Mark System is, that instead of this the labour be made to measure the 

 time. This idea is not peculiar to it. In his letter to Earl Grey the 

 Archbishop of Dublin uses these words : &quot; The best plan, as it appears 

 to me, would be, instead of sentencing men to imprisonment for a certain 

 time, to sentence them to render a certain amount of labour. A fixed 

 daily task may be imposed on them, but with power to exceed this at 

 their own discretion, thereby shortening their period of detention. The 

 effect would be, not only that criminals would thus acquire habits of 

 labour, but of attaching an agreeable idea to labour. By each additional 

 step they took on the tread- wheel they would be walking out of prison 

 by each additional cut of the spade they would be cutting a way to re 

 turn to society.&quot; 



It would be difficult to express the direct primary effect of the system 



