It is only since the year 1791 that the subject we have undertaken briefly to treat has attracted any attention in France. Previous to that period penal justice belonged in that country to seignorial and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, and consisted for the most part in capital or corporal punishments. Sentences being then summary, there was no need of confinement before trial; and after trial either à perpetual privation of liberty, for which the galleys sufficed, or torture, or mutilation, were the verdicts ordinarily pronounced. But the destruction of the feudal power of the nobility and of the church, the abolition of corporal inflictions, and the adoption of the trial by jury, introduced many distinctions. Crimes and offences were no longer met by arbitrary judgments, but were dealt with by a deliberate process of law. Hence there sprung up a necessity of having prisons for persons awaiting their sentences; and, as all penalties except the highest consisted in imprisonment, a multitude of penal establishments of different grades, corresponding to different classes of offenders, became likewise requisite.

It was owing, no doubt, to the late epoch at which prisons thus became national institutions in France, that the importance of their classification, and the classing of their inmates, was at once fully appreciated. Of a penal

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system excogitated as a whole, and not arising gradually out of the wants of society, this was naturally the prominent feature. The Constituent Assembly, the first French national authority which legislated on this matter, distinguished between the arrested, the accused, and the condemned between all the gradations of criminals and the establishments which were destined to receive them, with a degree of precision which no other nation had then attained to. Subsequently this classification has been insisted on with a growing emphasis, and so completely do we consider it as the beginning of all penitentiary discipline, that we shall commence this paper by giving an account of what has been done, or rather what has been decreed by the law in this respect in France.

There are in that country six different kinds of prisons: Bagnes, maisons centrales, maisons departementales, or houses of correction, maisons d'arret, maisons d'arret and de justice, and depôts. Of the bagnes, that of Brest is destined to receive those who may be condemned to ten years of forced labour, and upwards to perpetuity; the other two bagnes are for those whose sentences of the same nature extend not beyond from five to ten years. The maisons centrales, of which there are nineteen spread over the whole kingdom, are

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ment is to be continued beyond one, and not beyond ten years. eighty-seven houses of correction are for smaller offenders, whose punishment is limited to one year. The maisons d'arret and de justice are for those under accusation and awaiting judgment. The maisons d'arret are simply to receive arrested or pected persons, charged with small offences; and the depôts correspond in some degree to our lock-up-houses. All prisoners indifferently, when first. apprehended, are thrown into the depots, but remain within them only for a few days.

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In this enumeration of French prisons we see the principle of classification abundantly recognised. Even before trial prisoners are classed in two categories, are called prevenus and accusés, according to the lightness or gravity of their offences, and are confined in distinct kinds of establishments, maisons d'arret, and maisons d'arret and de justice: after trial there is again a threefold distinction made between them, corresponding to the houses of correction, the central houses, or houses of reclusion, and the bagnes.

But all this classification, which appears so admirable on paper, disappears, we are sorry to say, altogether, when we come to examine the practical working of the French system. So great is the confusion which exists between all the establishments we have above named, that they hardly appear ever to have had distinct destinations; and so promiscuous are the crowds which they harbour, that if the necessity of separating and classing culprits had never been recognised, the mixture of criminals of all grades associated together could not be more complete than it now is.

This confusion arises partly from the insufficient number of correctional and central houses, partly from all the prisons being places of passage and temporary abode to criminals on the road, or awaiting their transference to the establishments to which they are sentenced, and partly from the admission of persons into penal institutions who ought to be otherwise dealt with. Thus a maison de justice is often really converted into a house of correction; and those already sentenced undergo the whole or a part

and are associated with others who are untried. A house of correction, again, harbours temporarily those condemned to reclusion, and a maison centrale is encumbered with galleriens till they can be removed to their proper destination; and all these establishments receive indifferently in this way all these different descriptions of criminals. Indeed, the houses of correction have become also houses of arrest and of justice, and are open to those charged with misdemeanours or crimes, to beggars, vagabonds, lunatics, debtors, and children imprisoned by the paternal authority. All the prisons of the departments represent, therefore, all the crimes, abominations, and miseries of society blended and festering together.

Monsieur Gasparin, in his late report on provincial prisons, addressed to the King of the French, expresses himself as follows on this subject:—

"The population of these prisons is of two sorts-fluctuating and stationary. The first is composed of soldiers and sailors, of whom the number is considerable, especially near the stations of councils of war and of revision; of criminals who are to be transferred to the central houses and the bagnes by the gendarmerie; of beggars and vagabonds committed by the mayors of their respective communes ; of lunatics and prostitutes; of prisoners to be sent before the Court of Assizes; of correctioners to be brought before the judges of appeal; of culprits to be delivered over to the courts and tribunals, either as witnesses, or to plead the pardons they may have received; of galleriens or reclusionaires, who have been sent from one bagne to another, or from one central house to another; and of several other descriptions of persons, of whom it would be difficult to give an exact enumeration."

After declaring that no separation exists between this fluctuating population and the stationary population of the provincial prisons, and pointing out how corrupting and how destructive of order and discipline the constant flux and reflux of such masses must be in houses of correction, M. Gasparin enumerates the several classes of persons which constitute the permanent inmates of these establishments; viz. 1st, prevenus, or those

charged with misdemeanours; 2d, debtors; 3d, individuals imprisoned to secure the payment of fines or reimbursements due either to the state or to private claimants; 4th, debtors to the treasury; 5th, bankrupts; 6th, prisoners to stand their trial before the Courts of Assizes; 7th, criminals condemned to the guillotine awaiting the execution of their sentences; 8th, culprits sentenced to a year or less of correctional imprisonment; 9th, children committed by the parental authority; and 10th, youths above the age of sixteen under restraint or condemnation by virtue of the 66th and 67th articles of the penal code.

According to the intention of the law, all these different descriptions of prisoners should be kept apart, but "the inspectors who have lately visited the prisons in question," says the report," have in no instance found the legal classification put into practice. Even the separation of the sexes is not general; in many prisons the men and women have free intercourse with each other during the day, and in almost all they have opportunities of meeting and communicating together. The sexes are nevertheless kept asunder much more effectually than the other classes of prisoners. In the houses of arrest and of justice it rarely happens that the prevenus and the accusés are either by night or by day separated, or hindered from associating with those who have been already condemned; and when the same building serves for a maison d'arret, de justice, et de correction, which is very frequently the case, a deplorable confusion takes place, for then, under the same roof, criminality in all its elements and all its degrees is exhibited in one revolting medley of all crimes and all vices."

Having now shown, by one medium example, what the French prevailing system, first theoretically, and then practically, is, and pointed out the master vice which pervades, more or less, all the penal institutions of France, viz. confusion, overtopping and negativing classification, we proceed to other particulars, in which indeed the radical evil just named will reappear, for it is ascendant in every detail of the subject before us.

We have visited two establishments of preventive imprisonment in Paris a maison d'arret, and a maison d'arret

and de justice. We make no distinction between these two sorts of prisons, because in truth none exists beyond their distinct names. Prevenus and accusés are found mingled together in both of them. Their inmates, being untried persons, are presumed to be innocent, and some, no doubt, are so; but the great majority of them are most desperate ruffians. We saw droves of human beings shut up in the maison de force in Paris in perfect idleness, and having the most complete freedom of intercourse with each other, It was a fearfully revolting spectacle. The building has accommodation only for 600 persons, and 800 are actually lodged in it. Two beds placed side by side serve for three prisoners. The director of the house assured us that it was impossible for any individual to go out of this prison after the usual sojourn in it, which is about three months, without being thoroughly depraved, although he might have entered it with a character comparatively immaculate. He said also that 300 of those in confinement would probably be acquitted, or could at least furnish bail which would ensure their appearance before a jury, but that this bail, though deemed by him sufficient, would not be received by the law courts. We leave to the reader's imagination the horrid state these crowds of poor wretches must be in; the hell of mutual corruption they must make together; and the dreadful sufferings and degradation they must bring upon themselves, between the alternations of squalid debauchery and excess (for they are permitted every indulgence consistent with their safe custody and a very relaxed discipline) and complete indolence.

But however bad may be the state of the maisons d'arret and de justice, that of the depôts is still worse. These hideous dens are houses of short detention, situated in every market town and arrondissement all over the French territory, and are, besides, receptacles for criminals till they can be disgorged into the prisons to which they are destined. So malignant to life are these horrid stews, that the galleriens, on their passage to the bagnes, can hardly pass a night or two under their roof without having some of their members paralysed by the damp and infected walls and atmosphere." No words," says M. Leon Faucher, a gen