360 APPENDIX. 



[B.] 



Principles of the Mark System, framed to mix Persuasion with Punishment, 

 and make their effect improving, yet their operation severe. By CAPTAIN 

 MACHOXOCHIE. R. N., K. H v late Superintendent of the British Penal Set- 

 tlement at Norfolk Island. 



"Our present punishments resemble everything 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 adversity improving, we would 

 make them improving also." 



THE constituent elements in secondary punishment are labor 

 and time. Men are sentenced to hard labor for a given time : 

 but the time is here made to measure the labor and the first 

 proposal of the Mark System is, that instead of this the labor 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 : " 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 labor. 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 labor, but of attaching an agreeable idea to labor. 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 return to society." 



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

 system in happier or terser terms ; and even when thus stated, 

 the improvement contemplated on existing practice appears im- 

 mense. But much more when the ulterior consequences are also 

 considered. By substituting a powerful internal stimulus to ex- 

 ertion for that physical coercion which must ever be at best an 

 imperfect external one, while all necessary bondage and suffering 

 as the consequences of crime would be retained, direct "slavery" 

 would be banished from among our secondary punishments. The 

 tendencies of our management would be to good, whereas those 



