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2
Letter XIV. Provision for liberated Prisoners.
Whether this resource was in contemplation with the planners
of the Hard-Labour Bill, I cannot pretend to say: I find not upon the fa
of that Bill any proof of the affirmative. It provides a sum for each prisoner,
partly for present subsistence, partly as a sort of little capital, to be put in
his pocket upon his discharge. But the sole measure assigned to this sum
is the good behaviour of the party, not the sum required to set him up
in whatever might have been his trade. Nor had the choice of his
employment been left to the Governor of the house, still less to the prisoner
but to Committees of Justices, as I observed before.
As to the Woolwich Acadimy, all ideas of reformation
under that name, and of a continuance of the like industry as a means
of future provision, seem there to have been equally out of the question.
That they should hire lighters of their own to heave out ballast from, do
not appear to have been expected: and if any of them had had the
fortune to possess trades of their own before, the scraping of the gavel for thr
five or seven years together out of the river, had no particular tenden
that I can see, to rub up the recollection of those trades. The allowance
upon discharge would however always have its use, though not always
the same use. It might help to fit them out for trades; it might serve
them to get drunk with; it might serve them to buy any house-breaking
implements, which they could not so well come at to steal. The
separation between the Landlord and his guests, must on his side
have been rendered the less affecting by the expectation which he could not
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