21(3 HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, ETC., 



Captain Maconochie's argument for the necessity of a change is 

 founded on the admitted fact, that the example of severe suffering on 

 the conviction of crime, has not hitherto been found effective in pre- 

 venting its recurrence. He maintains that the sole and direct object 

 of secondary punishments should be the reformation of the individual 

 culprit, or at all events his subjugation, and his training to self-com- 

 mand, by the latter of which he may give satisfactory proof that he 

 deserves a restoration to his privileges in society. He does not pro- 

 scribe punishment, but on the contrary believes it indispensable to 

 induce penitence and submission; he regards it as necessary as a 

 deterring example, and not for a vindictive end. 



An entire reform, or a self-control tantamount to it, can, in his 

 opinion, be obtained only by specific punishments for the past, and by 

 a training for the future. To effect this latter he proposes to group 

 prisoners together in associations, made to resemble those of common 

 life as closely as possible, subdividing them into small parties or 

 families, as may be agreed on among themselves, with common 

 interest ; that they shall receive wages in the form of marks of com- 

 mendation, which they may exchange at will for immediate gratifi- 

 cations, but of which a fixed accumulation should be required before 

 receiving freedom. He thus hopes to prepare them for society in 

 society, giving them a field for the exercise and cultivation of social 

 virtues, as well as for the voluntary restraint of vices. 



Captain Maconochie deems the union of punishment for the past, 

 with training for the future, as totally incompatible with each other, 

 and, therefore, thinks that the former must in all cases precede the 

 latter, and be effectual of itself. He argues, that success in medical 

 treatment by beginning to administer restoratives before the disease 

 is eradicated, might as well be expected as reform while punishment 

 is undergone; and that it is just as necessary to prepare for society in 

 society, as to train man by a preliminary education to the useful 

 employments of life ; that it seems idle to expect that mere theoretical 

 instruction, however strongly enforced by short but severe suffering, 

 should be sufficient to enable persons advanced in life to guide their 

 future conduct, as it would be to hope to teach a trade, or any other 

 practical employment, by abstract rules; and that moral lessons, to be 

 taught profitably, require a field of progressive experimental applica- 

 tion just as much as engineering. 



On these elementary principles Captain Maconochie founds his plan 

 of convict management, to which he applies the name of " Social 

 System," and trusts for its success to the application of moral force in 

 the place of physical coercion. He considers that hitherto the reform 



