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13
Letter XXI. Schools.
206
no fear therefore of your wishing 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.
X
36
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 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 the a spy: in the latter, he is a monitor. The object of
the first was to pry into the secret recesses of the heart. The latter, confining
its attention to overt acts, leaves thoughts and fancies to their proper
Ordinary, the Court above.
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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 iIn so many edifices, as, from the time
of the Conquest to the present, have been built for the express purpose of
safe-custody, does it sound natural that instead of placing the prisoners under the inspection of their
Keepers, the one class should have been lodged at one end, perhaps,
of
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