PRISON DISCIPLINE.. 249 



It is a first principle of the plan that labor should end where 

 it begins. The exercising shaft is sometimes applied to a pump- 

 brake, to fill the reservoir over the prison with water, but never 

 in any other way saves labor. Pains are taken in every way, 

 not with absolute success it is admitted, to secure utter silence, 

 and to prevent all communication between the prisoners. Crim- 

 inals are rarely sent here for more than twelve months ; and it is 

 said that, with all the science and care that can be devoted to 

 them, their health, both bodily and mental, is endangered, if their 

 confinement is protracted longer. 



It may be, as its admirers have no doubt, the happiest idea of 

 a prison most happily realized that the world yet knows ; yet it 

 is one of the most painful things to examine that I ever saw. It 

 is hardly possible to speak well of it but in irony, or to describe 

 it without sarcasm, so absurd seems all this scientific care for the 

 well-being physical, mental, and moral of these miserable 

 transgressors, contrasted with the studied neglect, justified and 

 made praiseworthy by strictly economical and religious reasoning, 

 of the unoffending poor. While no talent, painstaking, and com- 

 plicated machinery is too expensive and cumbrous to be devoted 

 to the keeping of the criminal, of the unfortunate, society, through 

 the state, still says Am I my brother's keeper? 



Hold the hand ! Dash not the book behind the grate, my con- 

 servative friend ; I would hint at nothing more dangerous than 

 education a word one may yet speak in America without being 

 finally condemned as an infidel and a socialist, and a man given 

 to isms. Would you still call me to order, remind me that I am 

 writing on the subject of prisons English prisons and that I 

 may take up the subject of schools in another chapter. Yet there 

 may be lessons learned from prisons, and English prisons teach 

 lessons that all who do not care for the subject of education would 

 do well to heed. 



