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in this case, as in others, at the doors of those who make them. Knives,
however sharp, are very usefull things; and, for most purposes, the sharper, the more
usefull. I have no fear therefore of your writing to forbid the use of them, because
they have been sometimes employed by School boys to raise the Devil with,
or by assassins to cut throats with.
I hope no critic of more learning than candour will do an
Inspection-house so much injustice as to compare it to Dionysius's ear. The
object of that contrivance was, to know what prisoners said without their
suspecting any such thing. The object of the Inspection-principle is directly the
reverse: it is to make them not only suspect, but to be assured, that whatever
they do is known, even though that should not be the case. Detection is the
object of the first: prevention that of the latter. In the former case the ruling
person is a spy: in In the latter he is a minister monitor. The object of the first was to
pry into the secret recesses of the heart. The latter, confining its attention
to covert overt acts, leaving leaves thoughts and fancies to their proper Ordinary, the
Court above.
When I consider the extensive variety of purposes to which this
principle may be applyed, and the certain efficacy which, as far as I can
trust my own conceptions, it promises to them all, my wonder is, not only
that this plan should never have hitherto been put in practice, but how any
other should ever have been thought of. Does it sound natural, that in so
many edifices, as, from the time of the conquest to the present, have been
built for the express purpose of safe-custody, instead of placing the
prisoners under the inspection of the Keepers, the one class should have been
lodged at one end, perhaps, of a vast building, and the other at another
end? — as if the object of the establishment were, that those who wished to escape
might be carried on their schemes, in concert and at leisure. I should suppose
the Inspection principle must long ago have occurred to the ingenious,
and been rejected by the judicious, could I, after all my efforts, conceive a reason
for the rejection. The circular form, notwithstanding is taking demonstrably
less materials than any other, may, for aught I know, on its first construction
be more expensive than one of equal dimensions, in any of the ordinary forms.
But this objection, which has no other force than the loose and random
surmise of one who has had no experience in building, can never have held
good in comparison to all the other prisons that we have, if in truth it
holds good in comparison to any. Witness the massy piles of Newgate, of which the enormous,
and upon the present common plans by no means unnecessary, expence, has been
laid out in the purchase of a degree of security, not equal to that which
the circular form would have given to the slightest building, that could
be made to hold together. In short as often as I indulge myself the liberty
of fancying that my own notions on this head may prove conformable to other people's
of considering the plan as carried into . I think of the old story
of Columbus and his egg.
I have now set this egg of our's mine on its end: whither
it will stand fast, and bear the shocks of discussion, remains to be decided
by experience. I think you will not find it stale: but its freshness is a
circumstance, that may not give it an equal relish to every body's palate.
If the plan should be yet in time to be laid before your
brethren, the Honourable Gentleman in the chair and the rest of the
Magistrates for the County of Middlesex, and you should think fit to trouble
them with it, we should be glad to be apprised of their sentiments,
and, should it meet their approbation, no pains will be grudged in the
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