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continuing their manufacturing connection after the dissolution of every
other. The workman, after the stigma cast on him by the place of his abode,
would probably not find it so easy to get employment elsewhere. If he go
it at all, it would be upon terms, proportioned, in some measure to the risk
which an employer at large might think he would run on his own part,
and, in some cases, to the danger of driving away fellow workmen by the
introduction of an associate who might prove more or less unwelcome. He
would therefore probably come cheaper to his former master than another man
would, at the same time that he would get more from him in his free sta
than he had been used to get when confined.
Whether this resource was in contemplation with the planner
of the Hard-Labour Bill, I cannot pretend to say: I find not, upon
the face of that Bill, any proof of the affirmative. It provides a sum
for each prisoner, partly for present subsistence, partly as a sort of litt
capital, to be put into his pocket upon his discharge. But the sole
measure assigned to this sum is the good behavior of the party: not to
the sum required to set him up in whatever might have been his trad.
Nor had was 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 Academy, all ideas of reformation under
that name, and of a continuance of the like industry as a means of fut
provision, seem there to have been equally out of the question. That
they the pupils 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 gravel out o
the river had no particular tendency that I can see, but to rub up the
recollection of those trades. The allowance upon discharge would,
however, always have its use, thought not always the same use. It mig
help fit them out for trades: it might serve them to get drunk wit
it might serve them to buy any housebreaking implements, with which
they could not so well come as to steal. The separation between the Landlord
and his guests must, on his side, have been rendered the less affecti
by the expectation of its proving but a short one. Nor was
provision, of one sort or other, by any means wanting, for those who fail
to find it there. The Gallows was always ready with open arms to
receive as many as the Jail-fever should have refused.
Letter 15th
Many are the data with which a man ought to be furnish
and with not one of which am I furnished, before he pretended to speak
with upon any tolerable footing of assurance, with regard to the advantage
that might be expected in the view of pecuniary economy, from the
Inspection plan: on the one hand, the average annual amount of the present establishments,
whatever they are, (for I protest I do not know,) for the dispos
of convicts: — The expected amount of the like average, with regard to the
measures, which, I have just learnt, has been resolved upon, for sending
colonies of them to New Wales: — The Capital, as well including, as well the
maintenance of them till shipped, as the expence of the transportation a
the maintenance of them when they are got there: — on the other hand, the The capital
proposed to have been expended in the building and fitting up of the
experimental Penitentiary-houses: — The further capital proposed to have been
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Identifier: | JB/550/221/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 550.
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