io8 LIFE IN IRELAND 



wholly depraved, if followed up by hard labour in a 

 school of industry, might in most instances produce 

 reformation ; but here the wretch no sooner receives 

 his punishment than he is carried back to the prison 

 where all his associates are waiting to hear how bravely 

 he Shoved the ttwibler^ and grinned defiance on the 

 Sheriff's gang. In most of our prisons there is no 

 discrimination made; the veteran thief, the juvenile 

 beginner, the abandoned woman, and her that has only 

 made a few false steps, are all mingled together, and, 

 contrary to the laws of God and reason, virtue and vice 

 are alike cherished and alike rewarded. Our prisons 

 are dreadful : cast your eyes into the chief receptacle 

 in Green Street for cowardly villainy and slavish crime ; 

 there the voice of applause is never heard, the hope of 

 future fame never enters ; the mind expatiates on a life 

 to come with gloomy despondency, and the barriers 

 erected by virtue before a weak understanding are in- 

 stantly broken down, or so shattered by the persevering 

 assaults of vice in this den of infamy, that when freed 

 from durance they are easily carried by the next corrupt 

 invader. They manage these things a little better in 

 England, for which they are little or nothing indebted 

 to the legislature, but to the humane and indefatigable 

 exertions of a few individuals, who think a little time 

 is not lost, when it saves the gallows from suspending 

 a few dozen malefactors as an example which never yet 

 produced any salutary effect.' 



' Thanks for your serm®n,' said Brian. ' My servant 

 Mooney's friend found out a novel way of clearing a 

 British gaol lately : I was listening to him reading the 

 paper one morning in my dressing-room, and he 



