246 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XXXVH. 



The County Jail English Prison Discipline The Perfection of the Pres- 

 ent Education and Taxation What Next? Captain Machonochie 

 The Mark System The Christian Idea of Punishment. 



AFTER breakfast, we visited the county prison. It is on the 

 plan of the celebrated Pentonville model prison, near Lon- 

 don, which is supposed to be an improvement on what is called 

 the Philadelphia plan. Any of my readers who are much inter- 

 ested in the great and puzzling problem of prison discipline, are 

 probably familiar with the elements of the last experiment of the 

 British Government upon the sad subject. 



This specimen of it at Hereford was all that could be asked 

 for in its way. Evidently, no skill in planning and no expense 

 in execution had been wanting to make it as perfect as such a 

 thing could be. 



We were first conducted through several long, light, and airy 

 corridors, upon which opened the well-ventilated sleeping-cells of 

 the prisoners each cell appearing the perfection of a cell, as if 

 made to the order of some rich amateur rascal, in the most com- 

 plete and finished style which would be appropriate to an apart- 

 ment bearing that designation ; the walls of plain hewn stone, 

 but white as a bishop's linen ; the floor damp-proof, of asphalte ; 

 the bedstead of iron, the bed of sufficiently appropriate coarse- 



