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might lose some credit by it. I have no mind it should take place.
Bread, though as bad as wholsome bread can be, they shall have,
then, in plenty: this and water and nothing else. This they shall be
certain of having; and, what is of full as much consequence, every
body else that pleases shall be certain of their having it. My
Brethren of the would-be reforming tribe may go and look at it at the
Baker's: they may weigh it if they will, and buy it and carry it
home, and give it to their children or their pigs. It shall be dealt out
by sound of trumpet, if you please: and Christian starers may
amuse themselves with seeing the bad bread dealt out to felons, as
Christian Ambassadors are entertained with the sight of bags of bad
money counted out to Janissaries. The latter wonder I saw: the other, I
assure you, would give me much more pleasure.
With these saving clauses, I deliver them over to the extortioner,
and let him make the most of them. Let him sell porter at the
price of port, and "humble port" at the price of "imperial tokay": his
customers might grumble, but I don't think you would, and I am
sure I should not, for it is for that they were put there. Never fear his
being so much his own enemy as to stand out for a price that
nobody will give.
In the next place, I would not allow don't know that I should be for allowing him the power of beating
his boarders, nor, in short, of punishing them in any shape: Any where
else, indeed, such an exemption must have been visionary and impracticable.
Without either punishment, or interest given him in the profits of his
labour, an interest which, to get the better of so many adverse motives, must
have been a pretty strong one, how could you have ensured a man's doing
a single stroke of work? and, even with such interest, how could you
have ensured his not doing all sorts of mischief? As to mischief, I observed
to you, under the article of Safe-custody, how easy their keeper might
make himself upon that score: and as to work, I flatter myself you
perceive already that there need be no great fear of a want of
inducements adequate to that purpose.
If, after all, it should be insisted, that some power of correction
would be absolutely necessary, for instance in the case of a prisoner's
assaulting a keeper of a teacher at the time of his receiving his food or
his instruction, a case which, though never very probable, would be always
possible, such a power, though less necessary here than any where
else, might on the other hand be given with less danger. What tyranny
could subsist under such a perfect facility of complaint as is the result
of so perfect a facility of inspection? But on this head a word is sufficient,
after what I have said in considering the general heads of advantage
dependant on this principle. Other checks assistant to this are
obvious enough. A correction-book might be kept, in which every
instance of chastisement, might be entered upon record with the cause for
which it as administered, might be entered upon record: any
the slightest act of punishment not entered, to be considered as a lawless
. If these checks be not enough, the presence of one or more persons
besides him by whom the correction was actually administered, might be
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