A letter from James Roe, an English clergyman who was transported to Western Australia for forgery. James Roe gives a brief history of his experiences under the English and Australian legal and penal systems, and makes an articulate case for reform of the system.

My Dear Brother,

You are probably meditating, or are actually engaged in a breach of the law. I do not know your circumstances, nor the influences to which you are exposed. But I know that you are in danger, and I therefore take up my pen to set before you the future which is almost certainly in store for you, if you persist in your present course. Law-breaking is not your profession it is not with you a line of trading to which you have bound yourself with all its dangers, as worth the risk; but you have got into a current which may carry you on shoals and quicksands which you know not how to avoid; and though you are conscious of its dangers, and are from time to time thrown into the most dreadful alarm, you still, unwillingly yet desperately, hold on. You could escape - partially escape at least - but it would need an amount of energy and decision which you, perhaps, do not possess: still, you can scarcely be ranked among the incurables, and what I say may not be without its effect: in any case it may be of use to lessen your suffering, if not to ward it off. 

Let me begin your story. I will commence with your arrest. This will most probably happen just when you are doubting whether you should not fly. You will have been warned - warned, perhaps, by something very trifling - nothing more than something odd in the manner of your employer, or in the looks or movements of those about you: but warned you will have been. This seems to be a universal law. And you will have felt the warning, and been uneasy, but you will not have had decision enough, or have made sufficient preparation, to fly instantly, and you are taken. I know your nature, and the whole history of your difficulty. You are not a deliberate plunderer, who has made up his mind to enrich himself by one grand coup and retire - if you were, you would be in little danger: you have allowed yourself in embezzlements or forgeries to meet some pressing emergency, hoping to replace what you have taken before you are found out. You are a poor pottering, bungling amateur, and are unprepared what to do at the moment of decisive action, and will be taken. And now you learn for the first time how society deals with those who offend against her. You are arrested, carried away between two silent men - solemn as undertakers - to a police station. If in London, where we will suppose your arrest to take place, you are “removed” in the old familiar cab. It is a dismal ride. As you ride through the streets, you cannot help feeling that the world is passing away from you. 

Arrived at the police station (we will suppose the station to be Bow Street and the time night), you are searched and deprived of your knife or anything you may have about you with which you can do yourself or others bodily injury, and led into one of a set of rooms with a fixed bench on three sides of it, and a door on the fourth. These rooms or cells, almost dark by day, are quite so by night. Whether you will be alone depends on the number and kind of those waiting for examination. But, as you are a “respectable” man, the policeman in charge of you, belonging as he will probably do, to the upper grades of the service, will no doubt have the good taste to “treat you as a gentleman,” and you will not be thrust in among the roughs. I myself, on each of the days I was at Bow Street, had one, and only one, companion. The first time it was a fat man who was taken up because he was drunk and incapable, and who insisted on taking off everything but his shirt, and lying down on the hard boards. The second was a gentleman who had been so unlucky as to upset “a case of things that looked like glass, and which he afterwards understood to be diamonds;” and the third was a postman - a handsome young fellow, who tried in vain to cheer himself by the hope of a moderate sentence and a life in the backwoods of America when it was finished. But whoever may be your immediate companions, they are terrible hours. 

Without, drunken women dragged along the passage to the cells like sacks of potatoes - mothers, entreating that a message may be sent to their home in some intricate alley where their little children are waiting for them; girls from the streets using their new restricted powers of blandishment to get “Sir Robert” to do this or that for them, or telling Tom or Bill in the next cell “to cheer up for she will pay his fine for him;” and within, an indescribable mixture of feelings arising at once from dread of the scene in which you are about to appear, the thought of the misery of those that love you, and your almost complete isolation from your friends at the moment when so much has to be said and done. The first few hours of your incarceration are, of course, the worst during this phase of your story. You fear almost - so long is he in coming - that you may not have the assistance of your solicitor; but he comes at last, and so does the hearing before the court. It is a quiet little court - it is so at least at Bow Street - and on coming into it you feel momentarily relieved. And now Mr. Smallfry, of the firm of Smallfry and Hunter, or the representative of some other firm of prosecuting celebrity, draws a detailed and most unwarrantable account of your delinquency. You stand aghast at the picture of your guilt as they paint it. However, no one else present seems to be dismayed. You reserve your defence, and you find yourself remanded or committed. 

Your first examination before the magistrate over, you are now taken to prison. If in London, you will be taken most probably in the first instance, and while you are under remand, to Clerkenwell, and afterwards, when fully committed, to Newgate, though it is possible you may be at Newgate all along. 

And now begin to dawn on you the humiliations and restrictions of prison life. Taken away from the police station, no longer in the old familiar cab, but in a small dark compartment of a long hearse-like vehicle, much resembling the Post-Office vans, you are received at the prison, not indeed as a convicted man, but quite as a guilty one. Looking back to my first introduction to Clerkenwell, I have some difficulty, recording such things as I now do, in recognizing it as accompanied by any hardship or even humiliation worth caring about, nor can I at all realize the terrible suffering which it occasioned me. I remember I found myself ranked up in line with a strange medley of men, chiefly from the lowest ranks, and that I was bid to “right face,” and had to march with them as one of themselves, and had my clothes and carpet-bag searched, and was finally locked up in a cell which was certainly a very different place to the comfortable rooms to which I had been all my life accustomed. But what was there in all this? Nothing, as far as I can now see, to cause me anything more than a feeling of annoyance at having got into a mess. The warder of my cell was, I well remember, ready to make me as comfortable as he could, took my orders for dinner, and even found me books for amusement. Then, if my cell was not equal to my own library, it was at least clean and quiet, and had a good jet of gas in it, and a roomy hammock, and I could sleep, or read or write. Truly, I have never been in such good, or at least in as easy, quarters since, though I have been now some time at my liberty. 

But the world has soon to lose its power, and the prison cell its terrors. You will indeed never suffer in this way but twice afterwards, viz. once when you first find yourself in Newgate, and again, when you are convicted. You may suffer a good deal on changing your prisons, and also on seeing your friends for the first time after conviction, but only on the two occasions I have mentioned will you suffer as on the first night in prison. 

You should make arrangements for your defence while under remand, and, if arrested in London, do so while you are at Clerkenwell. This I advise because you will never again have such facilities for making them. The restrictions imposed on you even at Clerkenwell are not such as should be imposed on one who is in the eye of the law regarded as innocent, and whose whole future welfare may depend on the arrangements he may make for his defence. He ought to be able to see his friends at any reasonable hour, and to have his correspondence secure from official or other supervision. This, I regret to say, is not the case. He can indeed see his solicitor at any time, but other friends he can only see from half-past eleven to one o’clock in the day, and his correspondence is all read by one of the principal officers of the prison: meanwhile, the prosecutor is left unimpeded to rake up or suppress evidence and place himself in the best possible position. Still, Clerkenwell presents facilities for arranging your affairs which you will not possess after leaving it. Your friends can talk with you through a perforated plate in your door, and your conversation is private. You can moreover see them every day for half an hour. Besides this, you can obtain from the prison authorities a list of the attornies practising in the criminal court, and any information about them you may require. And of this, let me tell you will do well to avail yourself if you have not (as you ought to have done) determined on your man long before your arrest. 

Having engaged the legal adviser most to your liking, press on the immediate preparation of your case. At Clerkenwell, and while you are still under remand and can see your friends, you can force forward your solicitor with much less difficulty than when you come to be under stricter regulations, as at Newgate; and your trial, moreover, should under ordinary circumstances, be brought on as quickly as possible. The prosecution has less opportunity to rake up evidence, and, for yourself the sooner the thing is settled the better. At Clerkenwell too, supposing that you are sure to be committed for trial, transfer your property. In short, complete your arrangements while you are still under remand. 

The prosecution, having brought up all the evidence they believe themselves able to find, no more remands are applied for, and you are finally committed, and are said to be no longer merely under detention but in prison; and the dismal, hearse-like vehicle in which you are taken to and from the police-court, deposits you at that place of terrible associations - Newgate. This will be one of the very painful epochs in your imprisonment. The entrance to the prison, which forms part of the old building and is in the dungeon style of bygone days, with massive bars and huge iron rings and thick nailed doors, causes a very unpleasant sensation when you are first introduced to it. The interior of the prison is new and in the light and airy style, but the complete silence - the very word “silence” written in large characters in the centre of the spiral staircase - the long lines of closed doors, tier above tier - fall perhaps more heavily on the heart than even the dungeon entrance. It seems as if your prison were gradually closing around you. I have seen no prison which pressed on me so painfully at first sight as Newgate. How terrible that underground cell was to me in the multitudinous miserable thoughts it brought into my mind I cannot tell you. But it is only for a night; the next day you ascend, and are put into a light cell, just such as you have seen in most prisons - a cell about 10 feet by 6 feet, with a black floor, white walls, a small table, a corner washstand, a window of corrugated glass, a hammock and bedclothes, plate, spoon &c. This comfortable enough, except that in consequence of the window having a very small opening, one’s feelings for some time after being shut up is that of being suffocated. I well remember that the greatest luxury that could have been afforded me would have been to have had my door open. I seemed to want room to breathe. The same feeling follows one in every part of this prison. I used quite to long for chapel time, because I generally sat near an open window. 

Another objectionable feature in the discipline of Newgate is the obliging a prisoner - who is yet, observe, regarded as an innocent man- to polish his floor, keep up the lustre of his brass basin, scrub the table, and fold up his hammock and bedclothes, and arrange the smallest articles of his cell furniture in one precise way. It is no great hardship indeed, when you get used to it, but if you have never done such work, and have, besides, a sore heart - and if, above all, you are busy preparing for your trial - it will seem very hard, especially as nothing short of the most absolute precision will suffice. Another most objectionable thing at this prison, and one which on many accounts should be altered, is the place in which prisoners are alone allowed to see their friends. Except in some special cases, visitors are placed ‘en masse’ literally in an iron cage, with a double row of bars, so that, being at a distance of some two feet from the prisoner, and all talking together, it is positively most difficult for them to make themselves heard. It is a perfect Babel - an arrangement altogether most painful and unseemly. There is, moreover, no excuse for it, as it would be just as easy for visitors to see a prisoner through the wire-covered aperture in his cell door here, as it was for them to do so in Clerkenwell; nor are there any objections in the one case which would not hold good in the other. 

It seems rather hard, moreover, in the case of a man whom the law still regards as innocent, to restrict the visits of friends to three days in the week, as is the present practice. But, with the exception of the above painful and rather unwarrantable arrangements, Newgate is an admirably ordered prison - a model prison of its kind. The food - supposing the necessities of those at home require you to throw yourself on prison diet - is clean, good, and well cooked, and, except for hungry countrymen, sufficient in quantity. It consists of stirabout morning and night - the only skilfully made stirabout you will meet with in your prison course - and soup and meat on alternate days, the soup, again, being the best concocted of prison soups. I should say that at Newgate the art of cooking skilfully and economically is understood as it is scarcely understood in any prison we have. The other hygienic arrangements, for mind and body, are equally creditable. In the way of exercise, medical attendance, religious advice, every effort is made to meet the wants of the prisoner in his new and painful condition, and made with judgment. Strict in carrying out all the rules of one of the strictest prisons in England, the warders yet behave thoroughly well to the real sufferers with whom they come in contact. You will meet with no body of warders who can be compared to them, except at Pentonville. It is now some years since I left Newgate, and I have passed through several prisons in which I enjoyed more light and air, and general comfort, but I still remember the officers of Newgate with respect and gratitude. 

So much for Newgate. The next thing is the trial. You will not find this so terrible an affair as you perhaps anticipate. The position in which you will be placed, and which it now seems to you must be so exquisitely painful, will at the time be almost lost sight of in the importance of this issue. But, on the other hand, you will find much to cause you very great anxiety, over and above the merits of the case. If the court, for instance, is pressed for time, either on account of the number of prisoners to be tried, or because the judges have to be off almost immediately to the Asizes, you will have the satisfaction of learning that, unless you choose to have your case put off to the next sessions, it may not be possible to obtain a fair trial; or should you be lucky enough to stand for trial when the court has no such pressure on it, you may learn that the judge who will try you is extremely “testy,” or “prejudiced,” or is a “special pleader,” or is fond of “cutting down” cases or is “fearfully severe,” &c. But it cannot be helped, and the best thing is to press on. 

Except it be to avoid a notoriously severe judge, do not allow your trial to be put off a single session after your case is or can be prepared. What will be the leading features of your trial, when it is called on for hearing, I cannot tell. All I can foretell is that the perjuries of witnesses, the exaggerations of counsel, the exclusion of evidence which ought to be admitted, the admission of evidence which ought to be excluded, the misconstruction of acts the most innocent, the omission of things you dreaded, the singular conclusions of individual jurymen, will be such as to make you feel how helpless you are, and cause you to resign yourself to your fate - thankful that you have an able counsel, cool, collected, and experienced, to fight your battle. The trial itself will not torture you much; it will bring little to light that is not known - for you have been already torn to pieces in your examination before the magistrate. But you will suffer in the terrible half-hour of suspense while the jury are consulting - and when they pronounce you “Guilty.” The fatal blow has fallen, and what else is said or done you feel to be immaterial. But your state of unconsciousness lasts not long; you revive, and that quickly; and terrible indeed are the first hours afterwards. 

In the journey from Newgate to Millbank you will probably for the first time find yourself in uninterrupted intercourse with those who are suffering with you. As the mode of conveyance will most likely be an omnibus, you will probably form part of a line of prisoners connected by a chain - a type of the close companionship you are presently to hold with them. You shudder at them now; but when you actually meet them during the time the handcuffs are being fitted on previous to your removal, and when, linked hand in hand with them, you ride that strange ride through London, you will merely feel towards them as men more or less good-natured, who are in the same condition as yourself. In other respects that ride to Millbank is not unpleasant. Momentary as it is, the passing out of the gloomy prison into the great stream of human life and the broad light of day, and the being able to talk freely with other creatures of one’s kind, has more of pleasure than of pain. The chain and the handcuffs grate harshly on you at first, but by this time you will have got pretty philosophical. 

Arrived at Millbank, you will be for a few hours placed with some four or five others in a cell to wait the examination of the warders and surgeon. The examination by the latter is well enough, but that by the warders, which takes place when you are stripped for bathing, is of the most disgusting description. It need not be so, nor is it perhaps intended by the authorities to be what it is; but the subordinate officers of Millbank seem, unlike those of Newgate, to have been chosen for their roughness and bearishness. They are unquestionably among the lowest, if they are not the very lowest, of those of any prison through which I have passed. But Millbank is altogether a rough style of prison, both in the way of carrying out prison discipline and in that of prison arrangements. All is loud, indecent, rough* In other respects you will find the change to Millbank grateful to you. The cells - infinitely the best of any I have seen (or even heard of, with the exception of those at Woking, an invalid station) are welcome beyond conception for their windows alone. These are a good size, with clear glass, and open wide, so that you can see the real light of day, and freely breathe and feel the fresh air. 

.(*It must be remembered that all this relates to an experience of several years ago). How delightful to me was the first sensation afforded by these wide-opening, clear glass windows, I cannot describe. As the light streamed down on me, and the air blew fresh into the cell, I revelled in them 

At Millbank the silent system is enforced, but not very perfectly, and you will get quite as much conversation as you are likely to desire. Then the day is broken by chapel and exercise, and the week by a day at school, and perhaps by a visit from a scripture-reader or one of the chaplains. Your food is, in the morning, cocoa, with beef (very hard) for dinner, and very badly made gruel for supper. The materials are good, but the cooking bad. The break is excellent, the best you will get in prison. The hammocks, which are original in structure, with a division in the centre, do not appear to be intended to sleep in so much as to exercise your powers as an acrobat, but with care you may get into them and sleep in one of their two divisions. The chapel is large, the chaplains popular, and the singing tolerably good. Your exercise consists of a walk in one of the yards, - officers in centre, men walking round at intervals of five or six yards, - and a turn at a many-handled pump by which water is raised to the cells. Beyond this I have nothing to remark of Millbank, except that the subordinate officers, an unusual number of whom appear to be tailors, are especially fond of affecting a military demeanour, and making an ostentatious display of their staves. How long you will stay at Millbank is quite uncertain. You may stay there three weeks, or you may remain nine months, but probably after a few weeks you will be removed to Pentonville. 

The journey from Millbank to Pentonville, like that from Newgate to Millbank, will most likely be performed in an omnibus. You will rather enjoy the ride. It is pleasanter than the first prison ride; you are getting used to the situation. You will, moreover, have heard a good report of the place to which you are going. The first sight of Pentonville is notwithstanding, far from encouraging. You see that you have lost your light and air-giving window. But the report is correct on the whole. Except as regards the window, your condition is in every respect improved. The cells, though not so large as those of Millbank, are carefully arranged for decency and cleanliness, and the pervading spirit of the prison is that of quietness, regularity, and good sense. It is a strict prison, but all is done kindly, sensibly, and well; and (which is no little matter to a prisoner) you have easily accessible counsel and assistance, and such as you feel you can rely on as coming from persons experienced and well-judging, and ready to consider your difficulties carefully. At Pentonville you have the same high grade of officers and warders as at Newgate, with a longer period in which to make their kindness felt. As regards the dietary arrangements, these are conducted with a care only equalled, as I have heard, in one Government prison - that of Portland. The contractors are obliged to faithfully fulfil their contracts, and all is well cooked. I remember on one occasion, when some of the mutton was rather yellow, and suspected of not being what it should be, a prisoner who was by trade a butcher was brought down to examine it. He pronounced it of excellent quality throughout. This incident shows the care used. The prison itself is built with a view to easy management, and to accustom the prisoners to the value of cleanliness and propriety. Pentonville is regarded as the representative of the model prison on the separate system, and it represents the system as faithfully and favourably as could be desired. 

After having been from nine to twelve months in separate confinement, you leave Pentonville for the “public works,” as they are called, and are attached to Chatham, Portsmouth, Portland, or Dartmoor prison or, if a confirmed invalid, you are sent to Woking. Of their relative merits I confess myself unable to speak positively, for I have no means of judging, except by comparing statements almost all more or less at variance with each other. But, as far as I can judge, all the first four stations are pretty much on a par - all about equally disagreeable, and possessing, if not the same, equivalent advantages and disadvantages. I shall therefore speak only of Portsmouth, the station to which I was myself sent. The journey from Pentonville is performed by omnibus to the South Western terminus, and thence by rail. Like the other journeys of the kind in which you have taken part, it is on the whole pleasant. There is one disagreeable feature in it, no doubt. You find yourself standing chained on the railway platform in the midst of those unchained ones with whom you have no part; but you will have ceased to care much about such little collisions by this time, and if the weather is fine, or indeed if it is not, you will be fully sensible of the pleasure of breathing the fresh country air, and looking over green fields. You are kept in a carriage devoted exclusively to the conveyance of your party, but you are otherwise little constrained in this transfer of yourself. You left the separate system behind you in passing out of Pentonville, and the officers who accompany you treat you as men passed into a comparative state of freedom. 

Arrived at the “public works” prison at Portsmouth, you see that you have come under a system, not only different from that to which you have been hitherto subjected, but directly opposed to it. Everything you have seen in “separates” you now find completely reversed. No two systems could be more strikingly antagonistic. In “separates,” you have cells sufficiently roomy, and have light and air, and are encouraged and assisted to form habits of cleanliness and decency; at the same time you are carefully kept from the evil influence of other prisoners, and are brought into frequent contact with persons whose influence must be good, - as that of the chaplain and scripture-readers. At the “public works,” the opposite system is tried. The cells consist of tiers of iron boxes (I can give them no other name), 7 feet by 4 feet, and rather more than 6 feet high, or as nearly as possible the size of one compartment of a railway carriage. As for windows, many of the cells have none, except in the door, and the best have only a darkened pane of glass about 12 inches by 4 inches, and their corrugated iron sides are painted a dark dismal drab or iron colour. 

Anything more dreadful than these places when you are first enclosed in them cannot be conceived. Many a man when first shut up in them feels as if he must go out of his mind. Cheerful-looking places to the visitor who sees them through their open doors when the light streams into them from the hall, they are simply horrible to the man who is shut up in them. These constitute the first evil of “public works.” The next is, that even in these, bad as they are, you are not allowed a moment’s rest or security. In “separates” it was thought well to allow time for reading, thought, prayer. Here not a moment is allowed for anything but noise and work. Matters are so arranged that from the ringing of the first bell in the morning till you go out to work, all is hurry, noise, dirt, bustle. In a cell in which you can barely turn, and in which you have everything to do in almost perfect darkness, and which is so ill provided with vessels and other means of cleanliness that to get through your cell-cleaning at all is like working a Chinese puzzle, and requires the most adroit management, you have to work rapidly and ceaselessly (swallowing your cup of cocoa in sweat and dirt) till you go to Chapel, Then comes a few minutes’ rest; then - I shudder while I write it - the grand scramble for the closets. It is impossible to describe this scene - it is too shocking. Chapel and the grand scramble over, you go to work in the dockyard, and you will find it really hard work. You do little or no good. All the prisoners together - let them be six hundred - do no more than fifty regular workmen, who knew their business and had proper appliances, would do with ease. Then, again, a great part of the work done does not want doing. Blocks of iron and pieces of timber are moved backwards and forwards for the mere purpose of giving something to do. Those who have to point out the day’s work have often quite a difficulty in devising a job. But this is all one to you. Your only care will be, after you have been on the works a few weeks, to get into one of the easier parties and with one of the better class of officers. The subordinate officers at Portsmouth are, or were, at least, in my time, a very inferior class of men as a body, but there were good men among them. The prisoners injure each other greatly, for all intercourse between them is a communication of vicious reminiscences and designs, but with you they will not interfere. They will even respect you, if you deserve it; and some will gain your respect in return. After dragging about wood or iron, cleaning the sides of vessels, cleaning out docks, coaling, or expending your unskilled labour, and running hairbreadth escapes of losing a finger, or leg, or arm - for few escape maiming sooner or later - you return to dinner. This consists of plain boiled beef or mutton, with some kind of vegetable, and, though mixed up together in very dirty tins, is sufficient for health. You have now an hour’s rest - your one quiet hour in the day. This ended, comes a few minutes’ freedom in the yard, where the scramble of the morning is re-acted in a less violent form; then parade, and the searching of the person, and the filing off to work. 

The afternoon’s work ended, you are again marched to the prison, and after another searching of the person are discharged to your cell, to change your smock and boots for a jacket and shoes before going to chapel. Then comes another grand parade before the cell doors, then filing off to chapel, then a weary service, in which a weary chaplain prays and preaches before weary men, with inward growlings and unquiet slumbers for the result. Men who have been hard at work during the day are in no condition, mental or physical, for joining in a holy service. 

After chapel you go to your cell and your supper of gruel, but not to rest. The half hour allotted for supper ended, there arises such a Babel of sounds - of warders shouting and swearing, and feet rushing and brushes scrubbing - that you begin to think yourself in a North-country weaving factory. You may not take part in the work every night, but you will find your turn come pretty often, and may have to work on in sweat and noise till ten minutes to bed-time. Then at length you are hurried to bed, with scarce time to put up your hammock (which must not be touched before), and are left through the noises of the night to seek a fitful sleep. It requires long use to sleep soundly. All through the great tier of iron boxes which serve as cells, you hear everything that is done by your neighbours; and what with the noise of the warders, and rows in one or other part of the resonant building, your sleep will be broken for many weeks; while you grow gradually sensible, as the morning draws one, that you are in the midst of a great cesspool. I speak strongly, but with truth. 

Such is the system of “public works” in England: in the day it is endless parade, and keeping step, and misapplied labour; and at night broken rest in a most foul atmosphere. A more irritating discipline I have never seen put in practice, and it was astonishing to see how thoroughly reckless it made the prisoners subjected to it: I never saw any discipline affect men more unfavourably. The officers might not see it; the authorities might know little or nothing of it, except as it gave rise occasionally to partial outbreaks; but I, who lived in the undercurrent, saw it clearly. To make things worse, just as I left, the men were deprived of their Sunday. The relaxation of parade on this one day had hitherto been a saving point in this most wretched system. Hitherto the prisoners, though surrounded by officers and kept in a small circle like people at a fair, could select their companions and even sit down on the ground by the prison side and rest. But a few Sundays before I left the prison even this one comfort was taken away, and the “day of rest” was divided between parading for chapel, sitting in chapel, and being marched round and round the yard. You must look forward to a trying time at public works. And yet, so pleasant is it to be out of doors and drink the fresh air, that you would not willingly go back to the “separate-system” prison. 

I have spoken of the “public works” system as it will appear to you or any who have occupied a respectable position. But, mistake me not, by the mass of prisoners many of the evils of the system are hardly perceived, even though insensibly irritated by them. The one great thing with these is to have free intercourse with each other, and so long as they have this, and can get enough to eat and obtain an occasional chew of tobacco, other annoyances, even while they irritate, do not trouble them greatly. Again, you yourself will suffer less after a while. Things will become more and more tolerable every day. The Chinese puzzle of the cell will be solved, and you will actually be able to get a little time to yourself; and to the noise and scolding, and darkened light, and nightly odour, you will become almost indifferent. You will deteriorate. I myself was satisfied that if I stayed at Portsmouth, I should lose all power of abstraction, together with all mental habits of any use to me, and that I should become as completely brutalized as it was possible for an educated, temperate man to be. One thing I ought to add. There is every disposition on the part of the governor and principal assistants in the prison to act fairly and kindly, nor are they responsible for the evils of the place. They are there to carry out a system clearly defined, without power to modify it. The evils I have pointed out belong in part to the form of building adopted for the prison, in part to the system itself. 

And now one more stage - Western Australia - and I have done. The time you will have to serve in England has, I understand, been greatly and very injudiciously extended, but if (as I suppose to be the case) you are a long-sentence man, and Australia is a penal settlement in your time, to Australia you will eventually come. Be thankful that it is so. The passage may look alarming, the idea of being cooped up between decks for three months with the worst of the class you see before you, may be abhorrent to you; but the very voyage itself which seems so dreadful will be better than public works. To be cooped up with the characters you see before you - even though you are so only at night - is indeed bad; worse, far worse in some ways than you can have any idea of. In those hours during which you are shut down below - hours in which no officer dare show his face - the atmosphere is for foul conversation a little hell. You then see human nature, not in its highest form of development, wholly unrestrained in word or thought. What the heart suggests is spoken out without shame or hesitation. There is no savageness or brutality - nothing of the kind; but filthiness beyond belief. The god of the professional thief is not Satan, but Beelzebub; not the god of hate and pride, but of lewdness and dirt. 

In the ship in which I came out, the scene on Christmas night, a night of supreme uproariousness, gave me a more fearful idea of hell than any I could have ever conceived, and yet all was good-humour and jollity. It was a display of unrestrained though exhibited in unrestrained language. It was horrible. I remember a first-class thief of the French school saying to me that could he have ever realized being present at such a scene it would have cured him of thieving. A hardened professional, and by no means nice, even he felt it to be “horrible.” But your life on board the convict ship is, with this one drawback, a step forward. While on board you are practically free. You are shut down at night, but in the day you are your own master in the forepart of the ship, and even at night are undisturbed by officers. A convict ship, from the moment she is out of sight of land, is practically in the hands of the three hundred men she is transporting. There is a guard of pensioners, it is true, and precautions are taken to meet any outbreak, but the power is with the three hundred young able desperates, and there are so many occasions when the guard might be taken unprepared that the safety of the vessel really depends on the temper of the men. It is therefore an object of primary importance to avoid anything calculated to give unnecessary irritation. The great thing is to keep the men contented and careless, and this is best effected by leaving them to themselves. So left, allowed to lounge about and read and talk and smoke (above deck) as they please, and obliged only to keep their part of the ship clean, and do what is necessary for health and cleanliness - they give no trouble. Easily, very easily irritated, they yet desire a safe, quiet voyage. Most of them men who have seen a great deal of life and well able to calculate consequences, they see no good to be gained even by a successful seizure of the vessel, and if left to do pretty much as they please, will be as orderly as ordinary passengers. The surgeon who has charge of them either knows this from his own experience, or is carefully warned of it, and leaves the men to themselves accordingly. How far the knowledge that they are to receive no conditional pardons may operate on long-sentence men on future voyages it is impossible to say. But I apprehend it will make little difference, as most would think it best to wait till they get to Australia, and escape thence in some quiet way. But, in any case, it must always be the policy of those in charge to allow all reasonable liberty on board ship. This you will find very grateful, The order of things will vary in many details every successive trip, but the leading features will be much the same in all. You will be new-clothed for the voyage, will have a double suit of under-clothing, will have an idle day or two of preparation, will undergo sundry surgical examinations, and a sermon at chapel specially adapted to the occasion, and will be addressed by a director on the improvement you may expect in your condition, by your transportation to a colony where there is plenty of employment and high wages, and on the special advantages which will accrue to you as prisoners if you are well conducted during the voyage. At any rate such an address used to be made, and then it was to a certain extent true; for though only a very few prisoners, those, namely, who held billets in the ship or who acted as informers, received any remission of their sentence in consequence of their good conduct on board, they did receive something considerable, six, twelve, and even eighteen months being struck from a probation; but now this is all done away with. Let the surgeon who takes the men out do his best to obtain remission for deserving men, he can only obtain three weeks or a month. 

The address over, you march to the waterside, whence you are conveyed by boat or steamer to the transport, your late companions on shore cheering heartily, and your own fellows cheering back. Told off on board ship, the first thing your companions do is to rush and clamber over the bunks, seeking associates from whom they have been temporarily separated, and the first hour is taken up in greetings and question. All are jolly; singing breaks out from all sides. This lasts the first day. Next day the singing continues, but in knots just as you hear it in a fair. After a few days a centralization principle prevails, and the singing becomes limited to public performances in the hatchway in the evening. This, alternating with step-dancing, an exhibition which gives great delight, continues for some weeks. Then it partially loses its interest, and dies out, and cards take possession of the ship, maintaining their ascendancy to the close of the voyage. By day there are faint attempts on the part of the scripture-reader to carry on a school, but they come to nothing. The greater part of the day is divided between cleaning the berths and decks, washing and cooking, smoking and reading. There will be a few fights. These begin shortly after the men are put on salt rations, and continue at intervals throughout the voyage. They are seldom interfered with, it being thought best to let the men settle their quarrels among themselves in their own way. The rations are sound and good - good pork, good pease-soup, good “plum-dough;” but you will do well to have yourself provided with money (which can be sent to you after you are embarked and before you sail), and should keep a servant. You will find plenty able and willing to cater and cook for you, and do all the pushing and rough work, and take care of your clothes, for the sake of the better table your service will afford them. Money and a man will be the greatest comfort to you - do not forget this. It will take away the chief discomforts peculiar to a voyage of the sort, and leave you little to do but take your ease. Avoid accepting any office or “billet.” A billet is very harassing, attended with some responsibility and not a few annoyances connected with the men, without any adequate compensation. It was all very well when it was rewarded with twelve months’ remission, but the three or four weeks now given are really not worth thinking about in Australia to a long-sentence man, and what-ever the surgeon-superintendent may tell you, he can get you no more now. You should also get a berth amidships. If you are not allotted one, you can exchange into one for a few shillings at the commencement of the voyage. You will find this part of the ship better for sleeping and for your meals. There is more air, more room, more quiet than in the other parts of the vessel. You have every prospect of arriving at your destination safely and even quickly. The vessels taken up for this service are all first-class boats of 900 or1,000 tons, and are selected carefully. On the other hand, as the object of the surgeon in charge is not so much a swift voyage as a safe one, you will escape the wet berths and critical situations of crack liners on other stations. 

The first you see of the land of your exile is a rather low coast-line, broken by two rocky islands, which rise out of a long low reef of sand and rock, and assist in forming a moderately safe roadstead. As you round the northernmost of these, and approach the land more closely, you see it to be covered with a wild heathery scrub, out of which rise here and there wild-looking trees, scantily leaved and of no great beauty. The town of Freemantle, before which you will anchor, is not unlike some of the small sea-side watering-places in England, and looks pretty and cheerful. The stone of which the houses are built is very white, and the place looks new and substantial. Conspicuous above all rises the prison, or, as it is here called, the “establishment.” To this you will be conveyed in detachments in the course of a day or two after anchoring, merely accompanied by a couple of officers, and without parade or ostentation. Your first impression, on finding yourself within the gates, is a mixed one. The courtyard is very quiet - not unlike that of a large deserted country inn, and the inspection you undergo before going to the baths is a quiet affair, conducted without fuss or nonsense, and only carried just as far as is necessary. So far so good. But the windows of the great building before you, being all of a thick grey glass, impress you most unpleasantly. You will, however, find them all right - just what they should be. They are semi-transparent; but the light does not come in deformed, and their opacity is not more than is necessary for the strong light of the climate. After inspection on entrance you go to the baths, and now is the time for you to secure any money you may have with you. But if you will be advised by me, you will either get some one of the warders whom you have made a friend of during the voyage to take charge of it, or else intrust it to your ship-servant or other professional whom you can trust. From the baths, which are sensible and conveniently contrived, you pass into a great yard to be shaved and have your hair cut, both which operations, let me tell you, will be performed most effectually. Every particle of whisker, every hair of your head which can be made to pass through a flat comb, is taken off unsparingly. They cut the hair pretty close in England, but what they leave on there is a “luxuriant growth” compared with what they leave on in Australia. It will, however, be a matter of little moment to you, and you will see that your position in all substantial points is improved immensely. Acquainted only with the English prisons where you must march in closely-defined lines and have an officer looking sharply after you at every corner, and have doors here and bars there, and where there are ringing voices of command on every side of you, you seem not to be in prison at all. You find yourself confined, indeed, to the yard, but you see no officer, except perhaps one at the door, and find that you can walk about and talk with your friends as you please. So long as there is no disturbance there is no interference. The officer on duty is to the prisoners in their exercise-yards what the policeman is to the public at a fair or flower-show. He is there for the preservation of order, or to hold the entrance to some forbidden avenue. The Australian system aims at being as far as possible self-acting. Order is sought to be obtained, not by an incessant display of force, and by making the presence and power of authority felt every minute of the day, but by an appeal to the god sense of the men themselves, and by calling on a certain portion of them to assist in all those duties where a paid officer is not actually necessary. These men are denominated constables, and have a certain remission for their services, and are probably really more useful in keeping the men contented and orderly than any officers could be. At all events the system, as far as the preservation of order and regularity is concerned, is perfectly successful. No English prison is half as safe from emeutes, no, nor as orderly, as the establishment at Freemantle. The men, who know their being left in a great measure to carry out the discipline of the prison themselves depends on their being no call for a more stringent system, fall into their duties quietly and regularly, and, of three or four hundred men within or about the prison, it is rare that any one is not in his place. This offers a pleasing contrast to the English public-works prisons, where the men, when not actually at work, are in a constant state of drill and irritation, and where, with an officer at every corner, there is no security against an emeute at any moment. This Australian plan of keeping the red rag out of sight will afford you a relief you cannot now estimate. Passing from the yard to your cell, you find fresh cause for satisfaction. In size, the cells here are little larger than the iron cages at Portsmouth: but they are built of stone, have a good window, are of good height, and are plastered and whitewashed, have a firm table and sufficient conveniences, and are really cheerful, airy little dens. What is more, you are not shut up in them. You have, when not at work, full liberty of entry and egress. For about ten minutes at breakfast-time, and the same at dinner and tea, you must be in them; but even then the doors are left open. All the rest of the day out of working hours you can go down to the yard or stay in your cell - as you please. The doors are closed only at night. This, again, is good. 

Should you be retained at the establishment at Freemantle, it will be the greatest comfort to you. Its humanizing and quieting effect on the minds of the prisoners is most marked. It is possible, however, that you may have to go up the country, or into the bush, as it is called. Should you be sent to a road-party, you may perhaps have reason to regret this; but I myself regard the being attached to a road-party, even as a simple labourer, as better than anything inside the walls of a prison. You may have to live in a hut, but a hut is by no means an uncomfortable lodging. You associate with it wet and dirt and the assaults of not a few of the most annoying varieties of the insect tribe. But if you suffer from any of these, it will be your own fault. A hut is, in this country, one of the cleanest and most pleasant habitations you can have. The roof, formed of the rush of the blackboy (grass-tree), keeps it cool in summer and dry in winter, while, if it is at all cold, you can always have a glorious fire. Your bed, made of the same rushes, is springy and clean, and, by a little care, may be kept free from insects during every part of the year. In two-thirds of the houses of the country you are for many months of the year devoured with insects and cannot get rid of them, but in a hut you need have none. And then you are only required to do a fair day’s work in proportion to your strength; while out of working hours you are left to yourself entirely, being desired only to keep within certain limits defined by the officer in charge of the party. Some other little advantages there are in road-parties which you will find out for yourself. But I should add that what I have said of these road-parties does not apply so fully to those close to Freemantle and Perth. These being mere suburban affairs, and close under the eye of the colonial public, are displays of prison vigilance and severity. The hot sand and want of shade, moreover, make the work very oppressive. It is certainly better to be in the “establishment” than at one of these parties. 

But, although I have thought it well to notice the road-parties so far, you will probably be made a clerk in the chief establishment. The system being one which aims at being as far as possible self-acting, it is the custom to put every prisoner to the work at which he is likely to be most useful. If he is able as a clerk to do work for which Government must otherwise pay from 80l. too 100l. a year, he is not employed, as in England, on some physical labour of which he understands nothing, but he is placed at a desk amongst books and accounts. And such will almost certainly be your own lot. The establishment at Freemantle being the centre from which all the convict stations or depots scattered throughout the colony receive instructions and supplies, and through which almost everything connected with the service ultimately passes, affords occupation for a large staff, which is with difficulty kept up to the necessary strength. This causes every educated prisoner to be pounced on by one or other department as soon as he arrives. There is occasionally a struggle for his service between different departments. Again, you may be sent as clerk to one of the country establishments,. This will be still better. The clerkships at these “depots,” as they are called, are the best positions in the service, sufficiently good to compensate for their one drawback - the loss of society. This is a great loss, as the society obtainable in the Freemantle prison, where there are some of the best informed and most agreeable men of the day, is really most enjoyable. But the greater freedom and superior accommodation you will enjoy at the depot is to most men more than an equivalent. You can scarcely, however, hope for one of these posts till you have been at the establishment some time, as they are generally applied for some months before they fall due. Again, if you make yourself really useful, you will never be sent to them, for it is a rule at the chief establishment never to send away its best men. You get no reward there for usefulness - none. You might think that at least you would get some extra remission, or that the authorities might interest themselves to find you a situation on your discharge. Nothing of the kind. I believe I do injustice to no one when I say that there is not a head of any department in the establishment who would interest himself to find you a situation on your discharge. As for remission, you just get your ordinary states as you would if you were nearly useless. It is otherwise at the country depots, but this is the rule at the establishment. Beware, therefore, of being too useful. Just do what is required and nothing beyond. It is, perhaps, the true theory of comfort everywhere. Placed at work for which you are fitted, your time will now pass quickly, and, on the whole, pleasantly. You rise early, have regular employment, good society, a diet plain and somewhat hard, but wholesome and substantial, have tea in place of gruel, and reasonable time for exercise and self-improvement. The library is miserably chosen and badly managed, but you can find some readable books in it. 

In Australia a quieting, self-acting, improving system is substituted for one whose only real result, and whose seeming object (if one did not know the better spirit by which Government is really actuated) is, to use a rather vulgar but very expressive phrase, to “establish a raw.” The Australian system has to deal with men who must speedily form part of a large and formidable class in the country’s population, and seeks to prepare them gradually to act sensibly and temperately. There the officering, keeping down, parading, drilling, grinding system will not do. There, the bond class stand in the proportion of fully five-sevenths of the entire grown male population, and are perfectly conscious of their power, and only quiet and orderly because they see there is nothing to be gained by a contrary course. To keep up the irritation-principle, therefore, is out of the question. An emeute at Portsmouth or Portland is a mere trifle - an affair of a few hours - and ends where it began. But were a serious outbreak to occur at Freemantle, no one could tell where it would end. 

The Australian prison and its stations have their defects, of course, as have other prisons. The system is not perfect, and suffers, as do all systems, by imperfect working. It has amongst its officials childish old men, who are kept on because there is no excuse for getting rid of them, other than there has been for years; and there are low blackguards amongst its subordinate officers who are kept on because they are smart men, and see that the pots and pans are kept up to the required brightness. But the management is, on the whole, judicious, and has good results. One experiment is being now carried out in Australia with regard to one particular class of prisoners - principally those recommitted for attempting to escape - which stands in most unhappy contrast with that part of the system which I have been describing. It is called the “chain gang.” It was determined to stop attempts to escape by terrific punishment - namely, heavy irons in a separate and dark cell for from fifty to a hundred days, with a diet of water and one pound of bread. The irons, weighing, some of them, twenty-eight pounds, were not to be removed day or night. Now this punishment is really tremendous. The unfortunate runaways come out of their fifty or seventy days’ confinement weak, sickly, famine-stricken men, looking much as persons do who are in a consumption. In this state they are made to work in heavy irons on the roads, and are kept very strictly to very hard work. If it be summer they have the no slight additional torture of working, heavily ironed as they are, under a burning sun. But this punishment is really ineffective. Nine-tenths of the attempt to escape are now from this very chain gang. Flogging, the necessity for which this punishment was intended to obviate, has been added to it, and added in vain. The heavy irons never off for a moment - with them in the bath, with them in bed, with them painfully at every turn of the body, sleeping or waking - make the men so desperate that the poor fellows break, in some marvellous way, the very heaviest irons, and try continually to get away, at any risk. The men who form this gang are by no means the worst in the prison; but they are under a mania for running away, and the more heavily they are ironed, the more will they try to get free. In the meantime, the effect on the poor fellows is ruinous; every day does something towards making them hard, fierce, savage. Break them down you never can. And when they come to their liberty, it will be found that they have been made very dangerous men, and society may one day think that so natural and harmless a thing as an attempt to get out of prison called for a punishment somewhat less severe than one to which death itself were leniency. The experiment was not, I believe, unkindly meant; it was thought that a very little of such a punishment would produce the desired effect, and that attempts to escape would be stopped at once; but this did not prove to be the case, and successive links were added to the ponderous chain till it became the terrific punishment it is. Bad in principle, bad in its results, its continuance is the more to be regretted as it is the one great blot in an administration that has been, on the whole, sensible and manly. 

Such is the Australian system inside the prison. I wish I could speak as favourably of the system outside - the system i.e. to which a man becomes subject on his obtaining his ticket-of-leave. It is as bad as it can be. Professedly aiming at making the released man an energetic, respectable, successful member of the community, and attaching him to the colony, its every rule seems formed with a view of either disabling or disgusting him. It is a system of disabilities. Its first act on his going out is to dictate the field in which he is to labour, and to depreciate the value of his services. Before he is released he must find a master! Occasionally, indeed, a man is allowed to set up on his own account, but he must previously satisfy the resident magistrate that he is likely to be successful; and this functionary, whose standing orders are to give as few independent tickets as possible, and who is seldom the man fitted to be a censor of trades, most commonly refuses. As a consequence, many of the best disposed and most useful men give up all thought of doing anything in the colony, or even sink into dissipation and recklessness. Two instances to the point have come under my own notice. Two men, one a moulder and the other a glass-blower, believed there was a good opening for their respective trades, and some merchants thought so too, and offered to assist them with plant and orders. The men, having sufficient capital to start, applied for tickets on their own hands. The one was refused because the magistrate could not see how such a trade could succeed, the other was refused without reason given. In both cases the men went and spent their money in disgust. And so it is again and again. Men come out intending to be sober and live respectably, but are so disgusted with the discouragements and obstructions that meet them just when they expect a helping hand, that they fling away all their good resolutions in despair, throw down their money on the first public-house table, and spend it in a “glorious rouse” with their friends. The next disability is the confining each ticket-man to a particular district, out of which he must not pass without the authorities being satisfied that the transfer applied for will not derange the balance of labour, and that it is otherwise desirable. Even where a man has received a positive engagement from an employer in another district, he cannot enter on it until an order for his transfer has been obtained, and this seldom costs less than ten days or a fortnight, and where the applicant is at a great distance from head-quarters, very much more. Attached to this regulation requiring prisoners at large to find masters is another highly injurious. All do not find masters, or, at all events, do not succeed in the two or three days allowed them for the purpose; or after they have found a service they do not always stay in it; in either case they are sent on public works at one of the Government depots. These depots are branch convict establishments in different parts of the colony, through which are sent supplies to the various road-parties. They are comissariat or engineer depots, and are in the charge of one of the higher subordinate officers of the service. They have hospitals attached to them for the reception of patients from the road-parties, a resident magistrate sits at them on cases of breach of discipline, and they have a radius of some twenty miles. All this is very well, and the arrangements are perhaps as good as any that could be made. They answer all necessary purposes and work well. But to force men on these depots, as is done at present, because they are for the moment out of employment, is radically bad. The road-parties to which unemployed ticket-holders are attached are in all respects under the same regulations as the convict road-parties, except that the men are not required to work so hard, and that they occasionally receive passes to seek for employment. To oblige a man, therefore, directly he is discharged from service to go straight to the depot, and if he cannot by a two days’ pass which he receives after being there a day find a fresh employer, to send him on the roads, is really to send him back to prison. This cannot be right. Without going into the question as to whether it is well for able-bodied men to have a workhouse to retire to in a country where, employed or unemployed, no one need starve, it cannot be well to force them into one. The effect often is to quench any little desire they may still have to be independent. The fact that they are mere prisoners at large without power of independent action is so pressed on them that too many of them resign themselves to their condition, and prefer degradation and a life without care or trouble to freedom and difficulties. Once sent on depot, there are many hundreds who, except for a month or two in the year, never leave it. The road-party, be it understood, offers some advantages to a working man which are not afforded by private service. The latter is a state of freedom, but there is hard work, irregular meals, contemptuous treatment. There are few places under colonial masters where the ticket-of-leave workman is not made to feel his position. At the road-party, on the contrary, all is regular, cleanly, decent; the work moderate, the officer conciliating; and, above all, there is the pleasant party of old friends sitting round the great wood fire in the evening, and talking over old times. I know men who have been on these parties for years, and would not leave them for any service in the colony. They get a pass occasionally to look for work, but it is only used to enable them to be present at some spree of which they have had intelligence. There are many who never intend to leave permanently till they are due for their conditional pardon. And yet, almost all these are men who surrendered their freedom at first reluctantly, and who could find for themselves a comfortable subsistence. There is such an abundance of small edible wild game, and it is so easily snared or caught, that a man need never be at a loss for food. With a dog and gun he can always keep himself well. There is sale for the flesh of some, and for the skins or furs of everything that runs. Again, the wild products of the forest, as manna, gum, palm cotton, and bark, afford another means by which a man free to move about and seek them may get a living. Again, if a ticket-man is ever hard up, the hand of every one of his class is open to him. Starvation in a country like this is impossible, except to the man who has his hands tied. 

Another great mistake of our disability system is the not allowing the released prisoner the protection of the law. From the time of his leaving prison to that of his receiving his conditional pardon he is under arbitrary power, and for an offence of the most trivial nature may, at the discretion of the sitting magistrate, be sentenced to several years’ imprisonment. Two men were recently condemned, the one to five years’ imprisonment for being suspected of dropping some tobacco at a road-party, and the other to three years’ imprisonment for being suspected of leaving some spirits at a road-party. I say suspected, for the who evidence in the latter case was that of a gentleman who saw the prisoner “walking in the neighbourhood of the party.” On this last point I can speak most positively, as an intimate friend of my own was present during the so-called trial, and related the particulars to me immediately afterwards. I do not say that such judgments are given frequently, or that the magistrates as a body are either cruel or unjust. But such judgments do occur, and this creates in the mind of the ticket-of-leave holder a feeling of insecurity. Unfortunately, too, it seems rather a point with the authorities to press on the ticket-holder this fact of his want of security in the most offensive way. So particular are they in asserting their irresponsibility and absolutism that one reads notices in the public prints that such and such a ticket-of-leave holder has been “sent back to the establishment (prison) at the recommendation of the resident magistrate,” without mention of any offence. 

Again: you cannot move without reporting yourself here and reporting yourself there, and obtaining passes, getting passes viseed, passes extended, &c. You have a journey of five miles to take, and you must go perhaps twenty to obtain a pass, and again go twenty miles to report yourself on your return; - or you want to leave a town on urgent business, and you must wait till next day because it is now past noon, and the magistrate has done sitting. In any case you must lose half a day hanging about the court. We may be in a wilderness and escape; many of what Humboldt terms “the errors of a long civilization,” but we have red tape enough for the oldest government in the world. The discouragement which such a system offers to the ticket-holder must be evident. But there is one circumstance which may not occur to you in England which makes this system specially injurious here. There is in Australia, side by side with the great bond class, a small free class. This class, far inferior in numbers to the class beside it, as far as the adult population is concerned, is inferior also in energy and intelligence. Hence arises between the two classes the bitterest hatred. The free class, jealous of the superiority of the bondsmen in all essentials, yet affects to look down on it, and withdraws within itself, only striking some side-blow at it through the press when it has an opportunity. The bond class, on the other hand, hate the free, whom they regard really and unaffectedly as almost beneath their contempt, for their greater privileges. No outbreak ever will take place - no general one, at least - for the simple reason that there is nothing to make it worth while; but they none the less sincerely or deeply both hate the colonial and despise him. It is unfortunate, but the Government, in legislating for the prisoner, have forgot they were legislating for a colony. They saw before them only dangerous men to be guarded, not men to be encouraged to embrace a new life and form a new state. The attaching excessive punishments to slight faults, as if discharged prisoners were more perfect than other men; the judgments of private tribunals; the surveillance of the police, are things which can nowhere work well. But to form an idea of the effect of the disability system here, you must suppose all London under ticket-of-leave law with the exception, say, of the freemen of the City. 

Still you may greatly modify the evils natural to the position, by taking a judicious line. Live in the bush, and the evils of the system will press lightly on you. Take up a grant of land far back in a fine hunting country, build a comfortable hut on it, try to get a pleasant companion and a couple of good dogs, get permission to carry a gun, visit the town only when necessary for obtaining supplies, have a useful horse and a good spring-cart, and keep away from everyone, and you will be practically as free in your Australian forest-home as if you were on the untrodden shores of the Oronoco, and much more comfortable. You will of course choose a fine country. I should advise you to be near a good lake. You will have no difficulty in finding a spot to suit you, as you only want a small plot of land for a station, and this may be rented, if not bought, for a nominal sum anywhere. I should not advise you to farm, but you must have some land, as the possession of what is called a “station” will obtain you a freedom and immunities which you would not otherwise have. Having once got what you want, keep out of sight and out of mind. You must, of course, have money, but that I suppose you to have - enough, at least, to do what I have advised. Much is not necessary. The forest will supply you with meat. Kangaroo, exactly like fine beef; opossum, like rabbit; kangaroo-rat, like chicken; bandicoote, like partridge; these, with pigeons, parrots, emu, wild turkey, and other of your feathered neighbours, will leave little to be desired in the way of animal food, though you may add tame fowl if you wish. Your lake will supply you abundantly with the finest fish, and your garden with almost every kind of vegetable you can desire, and of fruit, too, if you could wait for it. As it is, it will yield you grapes in two years, and some other fruits in one. To be supplied with milk and butter, you have only to keep three or four goats, and if you keep a small piggery you can even indulge in pork. With a good selection of books, and, if you are a smoker, a supply of good tobacco, what can you want more? Society, say you? No doubt; and many of the other good things that belong to older countries; but you have here a life which is not only practically free, but with which you may be well content for a few years. 

Such is our present prison system, and such are the opportunities and position of the ticket-holder in Australia, as they have presented themselves to me. The prison system now in operation in England seems to be part good, part very bad. The separate system I regard as most useful - as useful as any prison system could be. The effect of being almost always alone, and brought in contact only with good books and good men, leads to reflection and regret, if not to penitence. I remember, as probably does every one else, being greatly amused at the scene in David Copperfield, where the two arch-scoundrels Littimer and Heep, are represented as describing the happy effect of the discipline of the separate system on themselves. The description is somewhat highly-coloured, but I can quite conceive that such scenes have not only really taken place, but that the penitents who may have figured in them may have spoken in good faith. The frame of mind into which a man is brought by the separate system (as carried on at Pentonville - the only prison of the kind of which I have had any lengthened experience) is, to say the least, one of serious thought and good resolves. I should not think it would be sufficiently powerful to support a professional thief against the allurements of his old trade, even if he were kept under this discipline during the whole term of his sentence. But the effect of this discipline on the mind is undoubtedly good. For that portion of the prisoners which does not consist of professional thieves, and which comes not from the dangerous but from the working classes, it is all that is required, and the only part of our system to which they should be subjected. 

We have no right to throw these men into a mass of crime and corruption, whatever right we may have to punish them physically. This is recognized in the American system, which does not allow them to be even seen by those who might subsequently prove an annoyance and injury, much less subject them to a close communication with men of the foulest conversation. This is an act of justice and economy which may be well copied. The thief who has plundered society systematically all his life, and is her natural open enemy, is indulged by being associated with his old friends and men of his own tastes and habits. The working man who has been led into some one crime, is made to live with others who, considerate as they may be to his personal feelings when addressing or speaking close to him, are constantly filling his mind with images of which he may never rid himself all his life. Besides, it is absurd to talk about reforming criminals when you ruthlessly corrupt those with whom lies your only chance. For charity’s sake these men, at least, should be kept “in separates,” or only associate with each other. For professional thieves I conceive the best system would be the separate for a short sentence, transportation for a long one. I see no use in applying two systems to any one sentence. If it is a first offence, the separate plan might, and I think should, be followed for the whole term of imprisonment. In the case of a second offence, or a long sentence, I would transport the offender at once. There is no reformation (proper) to be expected from transportation, nor perhaps from any other system, but it gives a chance to a man to take up a respectable life and to keep within the law. But it is quite useless to make men “good” in separates and then “bad” by bringing them together. As to the best mode of carrying out transportation, or the best place to transport criminals to in future, it is not for me to say; but the shorter the time the men are together, and the sooner the transported criminal merges into the exile, the better. The men should, moreover, be sent to some country where they can make themselves a home, and which they may hope eventually to make prosperous. Western Australia would have been an excellent place, had it not been for the strange fancy of making a system of prison regulations the law of a people, and transforming a whole country into a convict establishment, and virtually working the finest part of the population in irons.

To read a transcript of his trial, click here.