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31
twelvemonth. In the mean time, the convicts must be somewhere: and
whether they are likely to be best qualified for colonization by lounging
in an ordinary Jail, or rotting on board a ballast hulk, or working in
an Inspection-house, may now, I think, be left for any one to Judge.
Letter 16th.
In considering my Brothers Inspection plan as applicable
to the purpose of establishments designed to force labour, my principal theme I have all along had
has hitherto been principally in view the national establishment of Penitentiary-houses. My
first design, however, was to help drive the nail I saw a going: I mean the House of
much of all that I have said on that head will be thought to apply app less
Correction which the advertisement informed me, was under consideration for your County. I
to the establishment your County has, I understand, under contemplation. I
had little notion, at the outset, of attempting any such uphill work as the heaving up again that huge stone
the Penitentiary-house
which the builders, at
last, had refused, and
which after the toiling
and straining of so
many years, had
tumbled at last to
the bottom. But the
greater object grew
upon me as I wrote:
to say on that
subject I grudged the
less, as thinking it
might, most of it, be
more or less applicable
to your establishment.
How far, and
in what particular
respects it may prove
so, I have no means
of knowing:
really do not know. I trouble you with it at a venture. In my last I proposed,
if the nation were poor and fearfull, a Penitentiary-house upon a very
small scale: so small, if such caution were thought necessary, as not to
contain so many as a hundred prisoners. But however poor the nation may
be, the County of Middlesex surely is rich., and what is more to the purpose
a proposal for setting on foot an establishment not very dissimilar
I mean a House of correction is actually on the carpet or at least was so
late as the 17th of August last, if I may believe the advertisement which has
been the occasion of my giving you all this trouble. What then should hinder
your County from standing forth, and setting the nation an example? What
the number of persons, you may have to provide for in this way, is supposed
to be, I have no means of knowing: but I should think it strange, if it
did not considerably exceed the one just mentioned. What is it, if any
thing; you would risk by such an experiment, is more than I an see. As far
as the building is concerned, it is a question which Architects, and they
alone, can answer. In the mean time, we, who know nothing of the matter,
can find no reason, all things considered, why a building upon this plan
should cost more than upon another. But setting aside the building, every
other differance is on the profitable side.
The precaution against escapes, and the restraints destined
to answer the ends of punishment, would not, I suppose, in your establishment
be quite so strict, as it would be necessary they should be in an establishment
designed to answer the purpose of a Penitentiary-house. Bars, bolts, and
gratings would, in this of yours, I suppose, be rejected: and the inexorable partition
walls might, for some purposes, be thinned away to boards or canvass, and
for others, thrown out altogether. With you, the gloomy paradox of crowded
solitude may might be exchanged, perhaps, for the chearfullness of a common refectory.
The Sabbath might be a Sabbath there as elsewhere. In the Penitentiary
Inspection-house the prisoners were to lie, as they were to eat, to work, to
pray, and to do every thing, in their cells, and no where else. In your house
of Correction, where they should lie, or how they should lie, I stay not to enquire.
It is well, however, for you Middlesex gentlemen, that you are so rich: for,
in point of frugality, I could not venture to promise you any thing like the
success that I would to "poor old England." Your Contractor's Jail-birds,
if you had a Contractor any would be perpetually upon the wing: the short terms, you
would be sending them to him for, would seldom admitt of their attaining
to such a proficiency, as to make a profit upon any branch of industry.
In general, what in a former letter I termed the good hands, would be
his chief, if not his whole, dependence: and that, I doubt, but a scanty one. I
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