196 ANDAMAN ISLANDS AND INHABITANTS 



with a little capital of his own earning, for years habituated to 

 provide for himself in an orderly way, and thoroughly broken to 

 harness as it were. 



" It does not require much imagination to contrast the differ- 

 ence in the personality of the same human being as he reaches 

 and leaves Port Blair. He that arrived an outcast, void of 

 restraint, and unfit for association with his kind on equal terms, 

 goes forth a useful citizen, broken to restraint, and not only fitted 

 for human society, but well used to submit to the conventions by 

 which alone that society can be maintained. And men so reformed 

 are not sent back to India by ones and twos, but by scores every 

 year. Every one of the life convicts sent home is such a man. 

 The incorrigible are kept till death, and the slow to learn are kept 

 until they mend their ways, while those only that have good in 

 them, and are capable of reform, are returned to the society they 

 once disgraced. 



" The difference between transportation to Port Blair and 

 imprisonment in a jail lies in this very matter. While the 

 Port Blair returned convict is a man fitted to, and habituated 

 to, support himself, the prisoner released from a jail is not only 

 a pauper but has became pauperised. That is, he has become 

 unaccustomed to find for himself, and this disability has grown 

 upon him with the length of his imprisonment. On this im- 

 portant ground alone, one cannot help hoping that some day 

 it may be found feasible to extend the Andaman System to 

 long-term prisoners from India. 



" Besides the direct personal education that the Port Blair 

 convict receives, he is taught various lessons of general import- 

 ance in indirect ways. There is the value of justice, for instance. 

 For though his life is absolutely controlled by executive officers, 

 everything that happens to him is the result of a quasi-judicial 

 procedure. No punishment can be inflicted without a proceeding, 

 without registration, or without record of the evidence on which 

 it is awarded. There is a regular course of appeal, and a further 

 untrammelled appeal to the Head of the Administration himself. 

 Thus, though the punishments in such a place as Port Blair 

 must on occasion assume a form of deterrent severity, there is 

 as much security of justice in award as elsewhere. 



" Then there is the system of local marriage. This is no con- 

 cubinage, no temporary or irregular alliance. Every inquiry is 



