THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF PUNISHMENT. 253 



to deny that for this purpose these means constantly prove them- 

 selves entirely inadequate ; that, in this respect, our system is a 

 constant and complete failure. Why ? 



Let us see : 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 labor ; hard labor be- 

 ing 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 val- 

 ued ; but as an. addition to the punishment of solitary confine- 

 ment. He is mainly left to his own thoughts. His recollections 

 are vicious ; are his anticipations likely to be virtuous ? "With 

 ten years to be spent under these circumstances, to what will his 

 mind be most likely to direct itself? To relief from monotony, 

 to anything which promises excitement, to dramatic action, to 

 overcome or mislead the minds he finds acting upon him, or to 

 self-forgetfulness, sleep, sloth, and to the avoidance of so much of 

 the punishment imposed upon him as possible, that is to the hard 

 labor part, in which his only success must be obtained by decep- 

 tion. Thus, with whatever preaching in words, his training is 

 directly to hatred and contempt of labor as a means of no good, 

 but only of fatigue to himself, to unwholesome mental excitement, 

 to deception and to perfect indolence and uselessness. 



And is this lame, inconsistent plan, so working at cross 

 purposes, the end of all the philanthropic labors, private and 

 associated, that have been given to the subject during the last 

 fifty years ? The result, friends, not the end. Then, in God's 

 name, what next ? 



An answer from Captain Machonochie will be found in the 

 Appendix B, and I again beg for it, with all earnestness, the 



