JB/116/555/001

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Letter 3

11 Decr 1802

XVI. Improved prisons

22
Necessity of quoting
the D. of P.'s letter
of 14 Oct 1799
for proof and
explanation.

It was not my original intention my Lord, to have attempted giving Your
Lordship on the present occasion any trouble on the subject of
the official letter to which the plan thus alluded to has been consigned:
but, having gone thus far, it is become necessary
for me, I fear to transcribe a part of it at least, on pain of
seeing the above statement exposed to the suspicion of being
groundless, as well and perhaps to the charge of being unintelligible.

Wasteful as that plan of Mr Pitt's would have been
in comparison of the wasteful—highly but most
want of a plan just mentioned to have been frugal
in comparison of the plan, for which the public shall
be indebted to me but for which Your Lordship (not
to speak of Mr Addington and his predecessors at the Treasury
Board) is indebted to the Your Lordship's most noble
predecessors the Duke of Portland.

The letter then, to which that
the determination in question, or at most any rate the expression of it
determination was consigned, bears date the 14th of October
1799: Signature that of the Duke of Portland, at that of filling the place office Your Lordship fills adorns at
present.

It is in answer for to a Letter of to his Grace
the Duke of Portland from the Treasury dated the 27th of the preceding month "
"to be apprized of the number of Convicts which the Panopticon....
"is intended to accommodate":+ After stating, in
regard to the object of the Act in question (the Act of 1794 for the
purpose erection of the Panopticon Penitentiary House+ that he "understands
"the object of it" and that that object is—as to transportable
"convicts" "that such Penitentiary Houses should be used...
"as receptacles for such transportable Convicts as the several Gaols of the respective
"Counties can not contain" [and therefore for none that
they can contain] "from the time of their receiving sentence
"till an opportunity may offer for their being transported:
[and therefore none but those which who as soon as one such
opportunity arrives are to be transported] It is after understanding this, that his Grace proceeds to
the "other" class of convicts intended by mentioned in the Act as intended by it to be consigned
to such Penitentiary Houses, viz: all besides transportable ones and of these he says as follows.+

—and therefore for none that they can contain

+ and is the letter that
constituted or at least
helped constitute the
ground of the just-quoted
Treasury letter, written
a little 5 months and
8 days after those of the
his Grace's letter it was
thus grounded upon,
and some time (but
I do not exactly know
how long) after the determination
had
been by most
Noble and Right Honourable
persons, that no
such building as it
thus called upon
me to make preparation
for, should ever
be erected.

+2 requiring as well
as "authorizing" such
House or Houses to
be created.

Identifier: | JB/116/555/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 116.
Date_1	1802-12-11	Marginal Summary Numbering	22
Box	116	Main Headings	panopticon versus new south wales
Folio number	555	Info in main headings field	letter 3
Image	001	Titles
Category	correspondence	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f19
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks	1800
Marginals	jeremy bentham	Paper Producer
Corrections	jeremy bentham	Paper Produced in Year	1800
Notes public	letter was never sent; see note 8 to letter 1747, vol. 7	ID Number	38088
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