190 APPENDIX. 



prison or penal settlement, as the case may be, to be made the punish 

 ment of all offences according to their degree. A proportion of these 

 marks to be credited to individuals daily, according to the exertion made 

 in whatever labour is allotted them, all supplies of food and clothing 

 to be charged in them, all misconduct to be punished by fines in them, 

 and only the clear balance to be carried to account towards liberation. 

 By this means both wages and savings banks would be introduced into 

 prisons wages to stimulate labour, and give an interest in it, and 

 savings banks to give a similar interest to habits of economy and self- 

 command. To make the resemblance to ordinary life still closer, and at 

 the same time promote kindly and social, as opposed to selfish, feeling, 

 it is further proposed that during a portion of their entire period of de 

 tention criminals be distributed into parties or families of six, with com 

 mon interests and accounts, rising or falling together, and thus all inter 

 ested in the good conduct of each. By this means a strong physical 

 check would be laid on crime in prisons, with a yet stronger moral one ; 

 and an apparatus would be gained by which good conduct and exertion 

 would be made popular, and offence unpopular, in the community, and 

 all would be interested in promoting the one and keeping down the 

 other. My experience on Norfolk Island (which was imperfect, because 

 my views were not then sustained, as I trust they yet will be, at home, 

 my powers and apparatus were consequently imperfect, and my results 

 rather indicated tendencies than gave precise conclusions) yet leads me 

 to attach great value to this, as to several other details explained in other 

 papers. But I regard them all only as they seem to me to carry out 

 the principles laid down. If these are right, when once established, the 

 best details to found on them will soon become of themselves apparent. 

 &quot;With a near tangible end, like individual reform, in view, no mistakes, 

 however at first great, can be long persisted in. 



Severity, then, with a directly benevolent purpose, modelled with a 

 view to recover criminals as well as punish them, controlled and guided 

 by the enlightened pursuit of this noble end, made as great, for the benefit 

 both of the individual and the community, as is compatible with it, but 

 neither greater nor other than strictly subordinate to it, this is the guide 

 here sought to be introduced into secondary punishment: and unless it 

 is attentively considered, it will be found difficult to believe the number 

 of new views that it will open up of interest and promise. It will ad 

 just the controversy between harshness and lenity which has long divided 

 reasoners on the subject, the one impulse having authorized the most 



