only the fair outside of these "abodes of broken hearts."

"The loading of prisoners, even before trial, with very heavy irons so that they can scarcely walk beneath the weight, at the discretion of the gaoler, not by the measure of the alledged offence, is not only a very inhuman, but, I should think, a very needless practice, in a prison so constructed and so regulated as to preclude all expectation of escape on the part of the prisoner, and all fear of it on that of his keeper."

"In these prisons also, as if the miseries of separation from their families and the world, and a prospect of hours and weeks and years, in this forlorn exile, were too much like blessings, the prisoners are made contemptible to themselves, and to each other, and a gazing stock of scorn to superintendants, and visitors, by a particoloured dress of harlequins. Surely these are severities which gall and press down the spirit, without the slightest tendency to reformation, or any moral consideration of the prisoner. Let a Christian magistrate learn consideration and humanity from the Jewish Lawgiver, and " suffer not his brother to seem

vile unto him."

that

It has been the boast of this country, the law extends its protection equally to the

poor and wealthy; but Mr. Wakefield has pointed out a circumstance which detracts, not a little, from the merit of our legal institutions.

"Much injustice and cruelty arises from the distance of the prison and place of trial from the spot where the offence was committed. Great alleviation would accrue from favourable testimony to character. Yet for a judge or magistrate to ask a poor defenceless criminal for such testimony, when he lives at a distance and has no friends, but such as are pennyless, and can neither be spared from their work, nor pay for a journey, is, to say the least of it, a most inconsiderate requisition. Cases within my own knowledge give rise to these reflections.

"All causes should be tried as near, as possible, to the spot where the offence is alledged to have been committed, or the ends of justice must, in many cases, be entirely frustrated.

"Another serious injury arises from the long interval of imprisonment before the trial. A man shall lie in prison for eight months, and, after all, no crime be found against him. But his time has been lost, his character ruined, his family impoverished-every possible evil, and no recompence." "

"See some striking instances of this evil in Mem. i. 362.

From his habits of reflection and observation, Mr.Wakefield had no difficulty in assigning what appeared to him adequate causes of the evils he so much lamented. He has left among his papers the following detached re

marks:

"Laws and magistrates by too much severity increase and encourage crimes; because men of humanity are deterred from prosecution when the punishment is so disproportionate to the offence."

note. This deplorable condition of prisoners upon their enlargement, either by acquittal or the termination of their punishment, because "no one will receive a man or woman out of a jail, into any service or employment whatever," has been well exposed, and some remedies suggested by Archdeacon Paley, Mor. Phil. ii. 293. Very lately also by Bishop Watson in his "Sermon before the Society for the Suppression of Vice," pp. 8, 9,

• Dr. Johnson enlarging upon the prevailing "desire of investing lawful authority with terror, and governing by force rather than persuasion," complains, that "crimes very dif ferent in their degrees of enormity are equally subjected to the severest punishment that man has the power of exercising upon man." He shews the inefficacy of those punishments which, in his nervous manner, he describes as a periodical havock of our fellow-beings," and remarks, that "they who would rejoice at the correction of a thief are shocked at the thought of destroying him. His crime shrinks to nothing. compared with his misery; and severity defeats itself by ex citing pity." See Rambler, No 114; where the author defends

"The severity of judges, and their assistants the justices and jailors, arises from the unavoidable effect of an authoritative and dictatorial intercourse with criminals and crimes, and from this false principle-a contemplation of wickedness with sentiments of hatred rather than pity; a principle incompatible with a due sense of our own frailty, and the best precepts of Christianity. The sentiment which every judge and magistrate should wear as his phylactery is, "To have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity." [Heb. v. 2.]

No doubt a general discipline of tenderness and humanity might be established in

the principle of "invigorating the laws by relaxation, and extirpating wickedness by lenity," on the authority of SIR THOMAS MORE. We presume that he refers to the general doctrine of the Utopia on that head. See Bishop Burnett's translation of that work, published by Dr. Warner in 1758, pp. 40-42; upon which the editor has an excellent note, introduced with a sentiment equally free with any thing written by Mr. Wakefield on the same subject. He says, "It has long been my opinion, that we presume too much on our power of making laws, and too far infringe on the command of God, by taking away the lives of men, in the manner we do in England, for theft and robbery; and that this is not only a pernicious error, for the reason given, but a national abomination."

these prisons; but an expectation of ordinary sensibilities at suffering or peculiar considerations of special distress, is an expectation incompatible with the inevitable operation of things. The heart perpetually conversant with these scenes of profligacy and wretchedness, becomes gradually obdurate in spite of its native gentleness and all counteracting influence of caution and reflection: just as a path, notwithstanding the vegetable influences of the season, is unavoidably worn by the petual feet of recurring passengers.

per

"Yet no man can have either experience of human conduct, or philosophical knowledge of human nature, who can suppose culprits emendable by severity, or by any other means than kind treatment and useful knowledge. The Supreme Being exercises himself in reforming the wicked by boundless liberality and unwearied benevolence: he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

We cannot conclude our quotations from Mr. Wakefield's remarks on these subjects without regretting that the unconnected and unfinished state of his papers enables us to give so small a part of them to the public. Yet it would be unjust entirely to suppress them.