REVIEWS. 417 



there retrieved their character or plunged into fresh crimes. We should not 

 then have been responsible for them. But now all i= changed. The sentmce of 

 the law has placed them in our keeping for many years. We cannot, now they 

 are legally proved guilty of crimes against society, drive them fi'om our eountiy, 

 or banish them from our shores, content that ihey shall still be responsible for 

 their crimes to the Judge of all, before a higher tribunal. We have deprived 

 them of the right to guide their own actions since that right has been abused; we 

 subjugate their will, we confine them in our own country, and put them untler such 

 treatment as we consider best for them nnd for society. We therefore have 

 doubly bound them to us, and ouiselves to th^'ra. They are ours^ and we ca>inoty 

 if we would, shake off the responsibility arising from this relationship, howi-ver 

 painful it is. It behoves us then to consider the 'Treatment' which 'Our 

 Convicts' should receive." 



Next we will give our author's preliminary sketch of her plan: 



" We shall first consider who Convicts aie. 



'* The fact of their being classed together under the same brand of the law, by 

 no means makes them of one nature or of the sime degree of guilt. The commis- 

 sion of the same legal crime by no means indicates the same moral depravity. 

 Burglary may involve daring robbery and murder, and may be perpetrated by 

 one long experienced in all the arts of housebreaking, who wanders from county 

 to county like a wild beast seeking his prey, or one who would be a brigand or a 

 bandit in a country under leas controul than our own ; — while, perchance, an 

 offence legally designated by the same term is coinniilted by a little giil of tea 

 years old, whose sole fault was, that having lost her Mother, and being necessarily 

 without proper care from her Father, who was compelled to earn his daily bread 

 ahe had na&de her way into a neighbour's house to supply her wants. Robbery 

 from the person may be perpetrated t>y a daring and experienced Convict, ready 

 to add violence or even murder to his theft; or by a small child of nine years old, 

 ■who is trying the lessons which have been given to her diminutive fingers by a 

 wicked parent. We cannot cla-isify Convicts by their nominal crimes; we shall 

 endeavour to form some correct idea of them by other means. 



" It will be important, in the n -xt place, to lorm some idea of how persoiiB 

 arrive at the degree of hardened vice which our investigation will disclose. 

 We must try to learn the cause of the disease as a guide in our treatment of iti 

 and as a means of checking its progress. 



"The principles which have been laia down by experienced persons, and which 

 have been proved to be true by actual success, will next be considered; facta will 

 be adduced in demonstration of them. 



"After this preparation, we -hall endeavour to form some clear idea of the 

 system of Convict discipline actually in existence in our country, with its results. 

 In doing this, it must be clearly understood that no means of information are opeo 

 to the writer but such as are perfectly accessible to every one who chooses to 

 investigate the .subject. The Prison Matr »n reve.ih-d secrets of the prison-house 

 of which none but a resident in thit abode of h rr .ra could have been possessed. 

 Persons oflBcially connected with the Government Gaols have sources of informa- 

 tion which none but those so circumstanced can obtain. They who enjuy personal 



