order that it may be well done. Gratuitous neglect in the management of public business is the result of a most unwise economy. To such paid commissioner or commissioners, the general superintendence of the affairs of the commission, the management of its finances, the care of its funds, and the appointment of sub-commissioners, and others in its employ, might properly be intrusted. Under such circumstances, a further saving might be effected in the salary of the secretary, who receives at present 5001. a year, besides allowances, which Mr. Protheroe says (incorrectly, according to the secretary) raise the whole annual expense of the office to 1200. or 1300. A clerk, or secretary, at little more than a clerk's salary, would suffice for the business which, under such salaried commissioners, such subordinate officer would be required to perform. It appears, however, to your committee, that the selection of certain of the more valuable and complete Records for publication, is a work which, though it should be kept subordinate to the proper care of the whole mass of the Records, ought not to be abandoned or neglected, and might, under proper precautions, proceed simultaneously with it. This, however, is a business which does not, in the opinion of your committee, appear to require to be conducted by one or two persons alone: on the contrary, as it is a matter very much dependent on taste, and on an ampler acquaintance with various branches of learning, and with the wants and opinions of different classes of inquirers, than is generally possessed by any very small number of persons, it is probable that it would be better managed if a number of persons, possessing peculiar qualifications in different branches of legal or historical learning, were constituted into a board, under whose sanction some of the more valuable Records might be selected and prepared for publication. It appears to your committee, that a new commission might be so framed as to combine the advantage of leaving to one, or a few, such portion of the business as a small number can do better than a large; and of deriving advantage from the counsels of a larger number, in that department in which it is advisable to have the result and sanction of many opinions. It would, perhaps, not be unadvisable, in accordance with some precedents among our public institutions, to combine some paid with a large number of unpaid commissioners. To the paid commissioners should be intrusted the whole and undivided administration of all the business, and all the powers, of the commission; with a provision, that no publication should be undertaken without the whole of the commission being summoned, and the contemplated work sanctioned and directed by their order, upon a plan to be laid before them by the paid commissioners. It might, perhaps, not be considered prudent to intrust the whole of so large a business to one paid commissioner; and it might, also, be thought advisable that it should be intrusted to persons, each possessing an acquaintance with some particular class of Records, or being in the habit of using them either for legal or historical purposes. With this view the whole of this portion of the business might be intrusted to as many as three paid commissioners. * * "The undefined and almost unlimited authority exercised by the secretary exhibits, in the judgment of your committee, an obvious defect in the constitution and management of the board: since he possessed, as will appear from the following more detailed statement, the entire control over the funds and disbursements of the commission; of the preparation of its works; of the engagements, salaries, and duties, of all persons in the employ of the commission; and of the distribution of its publications." Art. III-Prison Discipline and Secondary Punishment-Remarks on the First Report of the Inspectors of Prisons, with some Observations on the Reformation of Criminals. By P. LAURIE, JUN., a Magistrate of the County of Middlesex. London. Whittaker & Co. 1837, EVERY discussion that bears a reference to the welfare of mankind, especially every discussion that belongs to political, civic, or moral science, aptly falls within the cognizance of a literary journal; and this not merely because the study of all the sciences enlarges and elevates the intellectual powers, and equips them for a range of research, and an accuracy of observation which could not otherwise be attained, but because political wisdom and moral excellence are the kindliest foster fathers of what is beautiful and enduring in the republic of letters. According to this view it is that we frequently direct the attention of our readers to publications, which, in the strictest meaning of the word, literature, may seem to mark no peculiar feature or era in its history. The present pamphlet has afforded an instance of the kind alluded to; for though it be small and unpretending in appearance, it treats of a branch, and suggests views that are capable of a very wide and potent bearing upon some of the most important and serious interests of mankind. Indeed, we think that Mr. Laurie has in it evinced the mastery of more enlightened principles and more practical knowledge, than His Majesty's Commissioners have yet done in their very voluminous Reports on English Criminal Law. It is true, that he has confined himself to narrow grounds, and to only a few peculiarities connected with the details of our criminal jurisprudence, as the title of his strictures intimate; and even then it is of London thieves that he almost exclusively speaks. But though thus limited in his illustrations, his principles are lucid and enlarged, and if carried out into their legitimate results and ramifications, would, as it appears to us, effect a vast deal in the good work of purifying the code of doctrines, and simplifying the forms of procedure which obtain in our Criminal Courts-consequently of insuring the conviction of offenders, and thereby furnishing the best safeguard in support of the authority of the law. Our author thus explains the points which he wishes principally to enforce- " The object of the following remarks is to shew that any extended system of Prison Discipline cannot be carried into effect on prisoners before trial. "That the Penitentiary system has failed in America, and will be equally unsuccessful in this country, when applied to convicts. "That the main cause of crime in this country is not to be attributed to the contamination of gaols, but the numerous chances of escaping conviction, and the uncertainty of punishment. "That solitary confinement is too inhuman and dangerous a punishment to be tolerated in a Christian country. "That the schemes, recommended in the Inspectors' report, involves an outlay of many thousands annually, and the results of this outlay must be, if not happily abortive, most mischievous. "That Transportation, both in a moral and political point of view, is the most efficacious, rational, and cheap mode of punishment, and should be more extensively enforced. "And that, from the palpable errors, contradictions, and want of knowledge displayed in the report, no reliance can be placed on the accuracy or judgment of the authors of it." But before presenting to our readers the current of his statements and reasonings under some of these different positions, a few of his introductory observations will not be unacceptable; although, while we praise him for the sound sense with which he maintains every one of his grounds, we cannot but say, that, had there been less of attempted sarcasm and supercilious sneering, and more of accurate composition in some of his pages, we should have liked them better. Mr. Laurie happily suggests, in the commencement of his remarks, that the cant and impracticable measures which have characterized the history of enthusiasm, have lately found an additional and we may add, notable instance in that which has for its object and boast the most enlightened system of prison discipline. He by no means, however, is an advocate for the old state of things, when to "rot in a goal," was a phrase proverbially common, and a fact not unknown in England's domestic history. Howard, as all the world knows, immortalized himself, by performing gigantic achievements, that he might wipe from Christendom this horrid mockery of the ends of justice and the rights of humanity. But what will some of our readers say, when they are informed by such a competent authority as our author confessedly is, that at this very moment there exists in nations which call themselves the most enlightened and free of all that ever flourished-that in Old England, and in young, robust, boastful, but reflecting America-systematic methods of cruelty and oppression, that to be doomed leisurely to rot in consequence of squalor and bodily disease may be called mercy as compared with them-the latter being the gross abuse of physical energies in a ruder state of society-the former, the refinement of sophists who know how best to drive the iron into the soul. Nor does this ingenious method of tormenting become the proper object of abhor rence merely on account of the measureless and unparalleled nature of the pain and the destruction which it induces. One can hardly maintain an unruffled countenance or a bridled tongue, when he begins to reflect concerning the parties, and the patrons, who have so zealously, and often so honestly lent their authority in support of the extreme and supreme cruelty which they have curiously invented for the chastisement of their erring brethren. Is it not strange that the philosophy of mind, that the registered knowledge of mankind, that the Christian code should not singly, and if not singly, unitedly, have brought the framers of laws, the proclaimers of wisdom, the men who in high places cherish as the noblest object of their ambition the greatest possible amelioration of man, to a sound and irrevocable decision on the doctrine of rewards and punishments? More strange still is it not, that in England, in London, fallacies should prevail, that cost the community enormous sums of money, and which are prejudicial to the public and the prosecutor as well as to the prosecuted, without in the course of a few years opening the eyes of the active and disinterested promoters of public good, and directing them to some method of reform which might abide the test of experience? But what says Mr. Laurie ? "Committee after Committee of both Houses of Parliament has sat Session after Session-Commission after Commission has traversed the length and breadth of the land on this subject, with all the tardy caution of well-paid tediousness; rules and regulations, plans and suggestions, have been poured in upon us, Thick as the autumnal leaves that strow the brooks and, except some ponderous tomes of equally ponderous reports, and evidence, what at last has been the result of their labours? in sober sadness-nothing; and this appalling fact stares us in the face, that Crime is daily increasing." And what are the methods, which as our author describes them, "a restless, busy, and meddling spirit of mingled quackery and credulity," adopt to counteract this increasing tide of crime? Why, "silent systems and visiting committees, separation, solitary cells, &c." all which err and fail, when brought to bear upon such formidable and intractable materials as the majority of London thieves present; whereas the only obviously rational mode of procedure would be to strike first in advance of the evil, and effect the utmost that can be done by prevention, without, however, relinquishing such methods in criminal trials, and such a system of prison discipline or of secondary punishments, as would operate as a warning to others. But instead of this order of conduct, fanciful, and generally perfectly inefficacious, measures are resorted to, with the view of reclaiming offenders that are morally beyond the reach of any human inventions or agencies. To be sure, it may be so contrived that the most hardened and experienced criminals, when within the precincts of a goal, shall conduct themselves after the most approved models of decorum. They may, to use Mr. Laurie's words," be drilled to march with all the gravity and regularity of the parade, from the washing-tub to the tread-wheel, from the tread-wheel to their meals and back again to labour, and at night to bed ;"-the woman may be taught to " ask for tracts instead of tea, and prefer spinning to spirits; cry at good advice and curtsey becomingly:" but what does the real amount of all these endeavours prove, but this, that it is labour and money foolishly and cruelly applied; that the public is thereby deceived and wronged, while the criminals themselves are just rendered the more inveterately wedded to their vices, and determined when the first opportunity arrives of profiting by it? Let us behold the outlined account which our writer gives of London thieves "With a large portion of London thieves, crime is the profession by which they live; they are educated for it, and pursue it for a livelihood, until they are disposed of by the law. This may appear a harsh and uncharitable opinion, but when it is estimated that there are nearly 12,000 juvenile offenders within the bills of mortality, who contribute to support themselves and their parents by the proceeds of their crime; this is of itself sufficient to prove the extent of contamination and vice existing in the homes of these children, which, added to the total want of any thing like religious notions, or even a sense of moral degradation, will help to convince the most unwilling that the picture, lamentable as it may be, is but too true; and, the best way to view this moral waste, is not to affect to disbelieve the uncharitable truth, but to take effectual measures to eradicate the cause of it. That this statement is not over-charged, will appear from the following table of re-commitments from Michaelmas, 1833, to Michaelmas, 1834, to the six following prisons: Cold-Bath Fields, Westminster Bridewell, Brixton, Giltspur Street Compter, Borough Compter, and Surrey Gaol. And Mr. Chesterton states, that there were in his custody, at the time he gave his evidence, the following number of women, with the number of times committed to the House of Correction : Three exceeding sixty times. One fifty Three exceeding forty times. thirty." We now come to some of the several distinct heads under which our author ranges his views on the entire subject of " Prison Discipline and Secondary Punishments." And first as to "Confinement before Trial." Here, it is argued, that when a person is committed for trial, he is not sent to prison to be punished, but that his forthcoming at the day of trial may be ensured. He may be innocent, |