★ Keep up to date with the latest news - subscribe to the Transcribe Bentham newsletter; Find a new page to transcribe in our list of Untranscribed Manuscripts
Letter 3d
22 Decr 1802
XVI. Improved prisons
In the Penitent Panopticon pen system
Your Lordship has been seeing a plan, which because
sanctioned once and again sanctioned prescribed by Parliament, in prescribed by one Act, and confirmed+ by Parliament in another Act
confirmed by by £36 grant of £36000 granted towards the execution of it, and
by £14000 public money already actually expended in it, and if
his Grace's will be done, wasted upon it, was termed a "prospect",
and under that name of /unfounded abuse reprobation. One marked out for "relinquishment".
Would to God his Grace's more successful plan—for emaciating his Majesty's
subjects by a "long" courses of illegal "confinement" in /purposely crowded Gaols—
illegally and purposely crowded Jails
for producing Gaol-Fevers in them or whatever other miseries consequences
might be the result of their being "crowded" each of
them in the degree necessary to prevent it from being "neglected"—
for exercising over his fellow subjects, by the secret/ever secretly declared will of this servant of the Crown that authority which, out of sight of his royal master,
if attempted to be have been exercised by the royal
master, a Hampden would have resisted with his blood—
would to God this plan a plan my Lord, a plan like this my Lord, had been but a project! Would
to God that any considerations whatever, divine or human, religious or
moral, of police or economy, of justice or mercy, of
constitutional obedience of individual good faith could have prevailed
upon him to consign this plan his Grace, or could have prevailed now upon his noble successor/Your Lordship to consign such a plan to to that relinquishment, to
which he found it more convenient to consign the Parliamentary project in
which, all these but for him, all these mischiefs might would
long ago have found a cure!
+ four years after
in another Act.
On the 11th of this instant December, in the prison
belonging to the City of London—in Newgate alone, besides
Debtors 211, and Felons 19 persons committed for trial for Felony
198, Convicts 318: of whom convicted for Transportation 283
and of them only 31 Convicted in the last Session:+ Supposing
those 31 to be detained by blameless necessity till disposed of
according to law, there remain for 229 confine kept there
according to law, 252 kept there in spite of law: 252, for the
maintenance
support
+ such is the statement
I have just copied from
a memorandum taken by of Sir
Charles Bunbury.
|
Identifier: | JB/116/567/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 116.
|
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
1802-12-22 |
|||
|
116 |
panopticon versus new south wales |
||
|
567 |
letter 3d |
||
|
001 |
|||
|
correspondence |
1 |
||
|
recto |
f27 |
||
|
jeremy bentham |
|||
|
letter was never sent; see note 8 to letter 1747, vol. 7 |
38100 |
||