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11
my Brother's circular penitentiary houses, they might receive these
benefits, in every circumstance, without stirring from their cells. No thronging,
nor jostling, in the way between the scene of work and the scene
destined to devotion. No quarrelling, nor confederating, nor plotting to
escape: nor yet any whisper or fetters to prevent it. The whole building
might receive (why should it not?) in proper form the properties of a
Chappel. The Minister, stationed in the central Lodge, shall be heard, and
if you please, without being so much as seen. If the Chappel of Saint
Stephen (that great sink of corruption, were we to believe so many of those
who should be best acquainted with it)x retains still its virtue, after being
applied for so many hundred years to purposes which, were they ever so
rigidly adhered to, are but political at best, I see not how the reforming
purposes of the penal discipline should profane the sacredotal character,
if conferred on penitentiary houses. For surely, since the fall of our first
Parents, in no one spot could ever so great a measure of innocence have
been found as in this, at least if that be innocence which is the result of
impotence. No whisperings, no laughings, no gossipings, no oglings here.
Religion on the seventh day, as labour on the six, would find for once an
assembly, whom no distractions would render unattentive to her voice.]
Should you be curious to learn before hand how far in point of
and convenience the circular form may suit this purpose, the
experiment may be performed without much trouble you need but bid the
Coachman stop at the (I forget the name of it it was once the Pantheon in
Clerkenwell) on your return from your Sessions House to Queens Square
Place I once was in that Rotundo the attractions it then presented (I
speak not of myself for my motive I do assure you was no other than a
pure and very transient curiosity) were allowed refreshments and as
some suspected other entertainment which how unfit so ever to be allowed
will be sure to be found so long as London is London, if not there yet
certainly to be found in not the less in some other place. Despoiled
of those allurements you know perhaps better than I do it since presented
and I suppose still presents the flowers of sacred oratory culled in the
bye-paths of Methodism. I should be sorry to be bound to say how much
it may have been a gainer by the change. I would rather my Alma-Mater
should say for me whose industry when I was dosing on her lap
was certainly more conspicuous possibly more strenuous more successfull
in diverting herself of the last mentioned redundancies than
the former. But you who want the one as little as the other have
nothing to do but step in for a moment without looking back to
former days.
Letter 9th
To come to the point at once, I would do the whole by contract.
I would farm out the profits, or the no profits, or, if you please the losses if you
please to him who, being in other respects unexceptionable, offered the
best terms. Undertaking an enterprize, new in its extent, in the description
of persons to be subjected to his management, and in many
other circumstances, his success in it, if he does succeed, may be regarded
Letter 9th
I come now to the
article of pecuniary
economy; and as
this is the great
rock upon which
the originall Penitentiary-plan
I
understood has
x
and which you,
and your fellow-
-steersmen of the
County of Middlesex,
are eyeing, I suppose,
with most anxiety,
I cannot resist the
temptation of throwing
out a few hints
relative to the
mode of management
which I
look upon as the
most eligible in this
view, but which
could not, as you
will see, have been
established, with
any thing like the
advantage, upon
any other ground
than that of my
Brother's Inspection
principle.
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