JB/116/551/001

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Letter 3 Improve
XVI. Improved prisons

16
Reference to King
and Rose for a
check to the above
calculations.

Such or something like it is the price, at which to save the
is at this price that to the public the expence of the one obnoxious prison
so often mentioned, it is a little more than 3 years, since a determination was professed
as Your Lordship will see presently, though I should suppose such for the first time
to force the country to fill itself with these improved
prisons. That for the fixation of the price Even as to the eventual amount of the expence, intended or unintended <add>not intended that the rule of
three, as above employed should, without any further data
be correctly sufficient, is more than I would undertake
to answer for: I would not haggle for a few more millions:
no, my Lord, nor for a few dozen millions.
A point I can speak to with more confidence, is—that
the talents which that gave birth to that determination,
or at any rate to the demonstrations professions made of it, are the very same
which the public is every day experiencing the benefit of
under Your Lordship's auspices: and if that be not enough the check which
Your Lordship is thus fortunate enough to possess, be not efficient yet sufficient,
for the correction of any error that may have unintentionally
attached itself to so unavoidably rough an estimate
if so powerful an aid a security against misrepresentation but not yet sufficient.
I would beg leave to refer Your Lordship to the still
more resplendent talents of the Right Honourable Gentleman late or distant official sub-professor
of political economy, whose share in the glories of Mr Pitt's poor plan is without dispute
and who on all agreeable occasions is so fond of "arithmetic
"and its calculations". Poor houses up Industry Houses upon
the gallypot scale and Penitentiary Houses upon do are
so identical in principle, that+ without measuring the distance
between the first and the second floors of certain chambers
one may without much apprehension of error one may venture to state them as coming out of the
same ship.

16(a)
Expence of Blackburn's
National
Penitentiary House
not much less/

Note
Instead of In prison architecture, Blackburn's plan for
Battersea rise would perhaps not have been more than about 15
as much as on the Panopticon plan, instead of the 20 or 21
times as much as in the case of Cold Bath Fields. Cold
Bath Fields proved bad ground: Battersea then was excellent good.
But then Cold Bath Fields is up and furnished: and the case of Battersea Rise was affords
neither furnish nor commencement, nor any thing but estimate.

Identifier: | JB/116/551/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 116.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering	16, 16a
Box	116	Main Headings	panopticon versus new south wales
Folio number	551	Info in main headings field	letter 3d
Image	001	Titles	note
Category	correspondence	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f15
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks
Marginals	jeremy bentham	Paper Producer
Corrections	jeremy bentham	Paper Produced in Year
Notes public	letter was never sent; see note 8 to letter 1747, vol. 7	ID Number	38084
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