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"of him and that he was a plague and an expence to them, They
"would care less and less what became of him. They "would neglect him every now and then: he would fall ill, and, when
"they found him in that plight, they would leave him to get out of
"it as he could. 'What is to be done with this fellow here' — one would
say — 'He is good for nothing? - I shan't trouble myself about him —
'do you go and look after him, if you will. — 'No not I' says another.
'Why am I to be plagued with him more than you?' and while
the point is debating, the wretch dies, and so settles the dispute.
"I don't know," continues my brother, "that there is any thing
"particularly savage in my disposition, more than in another man's;
"and yet I would not promise, but that, with a few more years over
"my head, and some of them spent in such a way of business, I might come
"to feel and reason in somewhat the same way. Old Cato's avowed
"maxim, you know, was, as soon as a slave became useless to turn
"him out to starve: a notable good manager, it must be confessed:
"and if one of your fine ancient worthies could be this cruel from
"principle, is there any thing so unnnatural in supposing, that a Jailer,
"in these degenerate days, might fall into the same track, through
negligence.2"
The Patrons of the Hard Labour Bill, proceeding with that
caution and tenderness that pervades their whole system, have denied
their Governor, as they call him, the power of whipping. Some penal power,
however, for putting a stop to mischief was, under their plan, absolutely
necessary. They preffered, as the mildest and less dangerous power,
that of confining a man in a dark dungeon underground, under a bread
and water diet. I did then take the liberty to object against the choosing,
by way of punishment, the putting of a man into a place, which differed
not from no other places in any essential point, but that of the chance
it stood of proving unwholesome: proposing, at the same time a very
simple expedient by which their ordinary habitations might be made
to receive every other property of a dungeon; in short the making of
them dark.
But, in one of my Brother's Inspection-houses, there the
man is, in his dungeon, already; (the only sort of dungeon at least, which
I can conceive any man need be in) very safe and quiet. He is likewise
entertaining himself with his bread and water: with only one little
circumstance in his favour, that, whenever is is tired of that regimen,
it is in his own power to put himself under a better: unless my Contractor
chooses to fine himself for the purpose of punishing his boarder, an act
of cruelty which I am in no great dread of.
In short, bating the checks you have seen, and which certainly
are not very complicated, the plan of establishment, which such a principle
of construction seems, now at least, if not for the first time, to render
elligible, and which, as such, I have been venturing to recommend; is exactly
upon a par, in point of simplicity, with the forced and temporary expedient
of the Ballast-lighters: a plan that has the most perfect simplicity to
recommend it, and, I believe, not much else. The chief differences are,
that Convicts are not, in the Inspection-houses as in those lighters, jammed
together, in fetters, under a master, subject to no inspection, and scarce
under any controul, having no interest in their welfare, or their work,
in a place of secret confinement, favourable to infection and to escapes. Having
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Identifier: | JB/550/220/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 550.
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550 |
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220 |
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001 |
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