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33
allowance must therefore be made them gratis, and that at least as good an one as
I recommended for the Penitentiary-house. In order to supply the defects of
this allowance, the point then will be, to provide some sort of work for such,
who, not having trades of their own which they can work at, are yet willing
to take work, if they can get it. If to find such work might be difficult,
even in a House of Correction, on account of the shortness of the time which
there may be for learning work; for the same reason, it should be still more
difficult, in a prison appropriated to safe-custody before conviction: at least
in cases where, as it will sometimes happen, the commitment precedes the
trial but a few days. If, on the ground of being particularly likely to have
it in his power to provide work, the Contracting Keeper of a Penitentiary-house
should be deemed the fittest person for the keeping of such a Safe-custody-house
(for so I would wish to call it rather than a prison) in other respects he
might be thought rather less fit, rather than more so. In a Penitentiary-house he
is an extortioner by trade: a trade he must wholly unlearn, every time he
sets his foot in a safe-custody-house, on pain of such punishment as
unlicensed extortioners may deserve. But it by no means follows, because the
Keeper of a Penitentiary-house has found one or perhaps half a dozen sorts
of work, any of which a person may make himself tolerably master of in
the course of a few months, that he should be in possession of any that
might be performed without learning or learnt in a few days. If therefore,
for frugality's sake, or any other convenience, any other establishments were
taken to combine with that of a safe-custody-house, a House of Correction
would seem better suited to such a purpose, than a Penitentiary-house. But
without considering it as a matter of necessity to have recourse to such
shifts, the eligibility of which might depend upon local and other particular
circumstances considerations, I should hope that employments would not be
wanting, and those capable of affording moderately good subsistence, for
which a man of ordinary faculties would be as well qualified the first
instant as at the end of seven years. For instance the performing by a hand
mill or other such engine, any operation such as the grinding of substances
for colours, for tooth-powders, or for medicinal or a variety of other preparations,
for which there might not be demand enough to employ a more powerfull
and more frugal primus mobile, such as the strength of animals, or
or wind or water. But for general hints this much may suffice, and
for more particular discussion, it is neither in my inclination to trouble
you with it, not in my power to engage in it at this distance. I could
almost venture to mention examples, but that the reasons so often given stop
my mouth pen.
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