THE MARCH OF JUSTICE.-PRISON LIFE.

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THE MARCH OF JUSTICE.

THE whole tone and tenor of public morals is affected by the state of supreme Justice; it extinguishes revenge, it communicates a spirit of purity and uprightness to inferior magistrates; it makes the great good, by taking away impunity; it banishes fraud, obliquity, and solicitation, and teaches men that the law is their right. Truth is its handmaid, freedom is its child, peace is its companion; safety walks in its steps, victory follows in its train it is the brightest emanation of the Gospel, it is the greatest attribute of God; it is that centre round which human motives and passions turn: and Justice, sitting on high, sees Genius and Power, and Wealth and Birth, revolving round her throne; and teaches their paths and marks out their orbits, and warns with a loud voice, and rules with a strong arm, and carries order and discipline into a world, which but for her would only be a wild waste of passions.-Sermons.]

PRISON LIFE.

THERE are, in every county in England, large public schools maintained at the expense of the county, for the encouragement of profligacy and vice, and for providing a proper succession of housebreakers, profligates, and thieves. They are schools, too, conducted without the smallest degree of partiality or favour; there being no man (however mean his birth, or obscure his situation,) who may not easily procure admission to them. The moment any young person evinces the slightest propensity for these pursuits, he is provided with food, clothing, and lodging, and put to his studies under the most accomplished thieves and cut-throats the county can supply. — [E. R. 1821.]

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THE ENEMIES OF IMPROVEMENT.

PRISON REFORM.

It is inconceivable to what a spirit of party this has given birth;-all the fat and sleek people-the enjoyers -the mumpsimus, and "well as we are" people, are perfectly outrageous at being compelled to do their duty, and to sacrifice time and money to the lower orders of mankind.—[E. R. 1821.]

THE ENEMIES OF IMPROVEMENT.

DISLIKE of innovation proceeds sometimes from the disgust excited by false humanity, canting hypocrisy, and silly enthusiasm. It proceeds also from a stupid and indiscriminate horror of change, whether of evil for good, or good for evil. There is also much party spirit in these matters. A good deal of these humane projects and institutions originate from Dissenters. The plunderers of the public, the jobbers, and those who sell themselves to some great man, who sells himself to a greater, all scent, from afar, the danger of political change,-are sensible that the correction of one abuse may lead to that of another-feel uneasy at any visible operation of public spirit and justice-hate and tremble at a man who exposes and rectifies abuses from a sense of dutyand think, if such things are suffered to be, that their candle-ends and cheese-parings are no longer safe: and these sagacious persons, it must be said for them, are not very wrong in this feeling. Providence, which has denied to them all that is great and good, has given them a fine tact for the preservation of their plunder: their real enemy is the spirit of inquiry-the dislike of wrong- the love of right-and the courage and diligence which are the concomitants of these virtues.[E. R. 1823.]

GAOL DISCIPLINE.-TRACTS.

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EFFECTS OF GAOL DISCIPLINE.

It is quite obvious that, if men were to appear again, six months after they were hanged, handsomer, richer, and more plump than before execution, the gallows would cease to be an object of terror. But here are men who come out of gaol, and say, "Look at us— -we can read and write, we can make baskets and shoes, and we went in ignorant of everything: and we have learnt to do without strong liquors, and have no longer any objection to work; and we did work in the gaol, and have saved money, and here it is." What is there of terror and detriment in all this? and how are crimes to be lessened if they are thus rewarded?-[E. R. 1821.]

TRACTS FOR CULPRITS.

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IF education is to be continued in gaols, and tracts are to be dispersed, we cannot help lamenting that the tracts, though full of good principles, are so intolerably stupid —and all apparently constructed upon the supposition, that a thief or a peccant ploughman are inferior in common sense to a boy of five years old. The story generally is, that a labourer with six children has nothing to live upon but mouldy bread and dirty water; yet nothing can exceed his cheerfulness and contentmurmurs no discontent: of mutton he has scarcely heard of bacon he never dreams: furfurous bread and the water of the pool constitute his food, establish his felicity, and excite his warmest gratitude. The squire or parson of the parish always happens to be walking by, and overhears him praying for the king and the members for the county, and for all in authority; and it generally ends with their offering him a shilling, which this ex

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GAOL EDUCATION.-SCARLETT'S POOR BILL.

cellent man declares he does not want, and will not accept! These are the pamphlets which Goodies and Noodles are dispersing with unwearied diligence.[E. R. 1821.]

GAOL EDUCATION.

A POOR man, who is lucky enough to have his son committed for a felony, educates him, under such a system, for nothing; while the virtuous simpleton on the other side of the wall is paying by the quarter for these attainments. He sees clergymen and ladies busy with the larcenous pupil; while the poor lad, who respects the eighth commandment, is consigned, in some dark alley, to the frowns and blows of a ragged pedagogue.— [E. R. 1821.]

DISCIPLINE.

MRS. FRY is an amiable excellent woman, and ten thousand times better than the infamous neglect that preceded her; but hers is not the method to stop crimes. In prisons which are really meant to keep the multitude in order, and to be a terror to evil doers, there must be no sharing of profits-no visiting of friends-no education but religious education-no freedom of diet-no weavers' looms or carpenters' benches. There must be a great deal of solitude; coarse food; a dress of shame; hard, incessant, irksome, eternal labour; a planned and regulated and unrelenting exclusion of happiness and comfort.-[E. R. 1822.]

SCARLETT'S POOR BILL.

MR. SCARLETT is a very strong man; and before he works his battering-ram, he chooses to have the wall

ANTICIPATED REFORM OF THE POOR LAW. 177

made of a thickness worthy of his blow-capable of evincing, by the enormity of its ruins, the superfluity of his vigour, and the certainty of his aim.

If this bill had passed, he could not have passed. His post-chaise on the Northern Circuit would have been impeded by the crowds of houseless villagers, driven from their cottages by landlords rendered merciless by the bill. In the mud-all in the mud (for such cases made and provided) would they have rolled this most excellent counsellor. Instigated by the devil and their own malicious purposes, his wig they would have polluted, and tossed to a thousand winds the parchment bickerings of Doe and Roe.

His bill, we cannot help saying, appears to us to be a receipt for universal and interminable litigation all over England-a perfect law-hurricane-a conversion of all flesh into plaintiffs and defendants. The parish A. has pulled down houses, and burthened the parish B.; B. has demolished to the misery of C.; which has again misbehaved itself in the same manner to the oppression of other letters of the alphabet. All run into parchment, and pant for revenge and exoneration. -[E. R. 1821.]

ANTICIPATED REFORM OF THE POOR LAW.

As soon as it becomes really impossible to increase the poor fund by law-when there is but little, and there can be no more, that little will be administered with the utmost caution; claims will be minutely inspected; idle manhood will not receive the scraps and crumbs which belong to failing old age; distress will make the poor provident and cautious; and all the good expected from

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