known and unknowable weight of sufferings personal and domestic, of rescuing thousands of our fellow-men from a premature grave, and of adding largely to the moneyed resources of this nation, by the wise and systematic discharge of the duties of humanity.

If there be any one social improvement for which all parties may unite, it is the improvement of the dwellings of the poor, and the removal of those nuisances and mal-arangements which at present poison their atmosphere. This is no question of Tory, Whig, or Radical-Church or Dissent-but the common cause of humanity and self-preservation. If our religious dissensions forbid the Government of this great nation from extending the means of religious instruction, and threaten even to forbid its intermeddling with the common school instruction of the people, here at least is common ground. As in Ireland's frightful famine, Protestants and Roman Catholics are uniting against the common calamity, and forgetting all but their common brotherhood and common duties to the poor; so, if we would avert from our cities calamities more perilous because more concentrated, let us forget every thing but the fact that vast and gathering masses of our town population have fallen, and cannot raise themselves-are miserable, and demand our help.

We understood that in the new Police Bill of Glasgow, power was to be taken to tax the citizens for the improvement of the habitations of thepoor. The proposed tax was to be one penny in the pound on the valued rental, and was estimated to yield the sum of £2500 a-year. We have not learned whether this clause made its way through the House of Commons, or whether it was cast out as one penny too much for such an object. In or out, it is of small moment. It is not by such peppercorns that this great evil is to be combated. "There is no such thing as a little war," said the Duke of Wellington. Only think it a little war, and it will speedily become a great one. There is no "little war" with these social evils. The Duke of Wellington gained his battles by concentrating his forces and outnumbering his enemy at each point of attack; so did he carry his peaceful triumphs in the metropolis of England, not by a penny-a-pound-tax, but by a million sterling obtained for the improvement of London. He lent the aid of his sound judgment and powerful influence to arrange the details and carry into execution those many intersections of the densest parts of the English metropolis, which have opened up to the air and light of heaven the dwellings of poverty, and have rendered one of the largest also one of the healthiest of cities. Not thousands but millions must be spent on the manufacturing cities of the Empire to repair the neglect of the past fifty years.

Penny-a-pound Tax-Railway Terminus in Glasgow.

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Half a century ago £2500 a-year might have done somewhat to such a city as Glasgow then was, but the mole-hill has become a mountain, and tens of thousands will not repair and renovate its social condition. Before this penny-a-pound tax is exhausted, and its ten years' beneficence has overflowed on the Vennels of Glasgow, its population will have again expended another 79,000 souls. No man will be able to see the good done, in the greater evils that have arisen. Our physical improvement, like our church and school building, looks large only to those that take not the proportions of things, nor regard what remains behind undone. Those who take the measure of the evil as well as the good, know well that the good keeps no pace with the growth of our social evils, and lays no sure foundation for the permanent elevation of the fallen population.

The Royal Commission for considering and reporting upon the advantages of a central railway terminus in Glasgow, had submitted to them a scheme for converting the wynds in the very heart of Glasgow into a great central terminus; and the promoters of this scheme rested its chief merit "upon the circumstance that, the wynds being crowded by the most destitute of the inhabitants of Glasgow, and a hot-bed of disease and crime, the removal and opening out of such a quarter would effect so great a sanatory improvement, and be of such advantage to the city generally, as ought to give to this scheme a preference." On this scheme her Majesty's Commissioners observe with much good sense, "We consider this a very doubtful point, and think it by no means certain that the removal of the Wynds, by simply dispossessing the present occupiers, would effect a sanatary improvement of the city, as it formed no part of Mr. Muir's scheme to provide another or better abodes for them; besides, improvements of this nature are more properly the business of the authorities and guardians of the city than of railway companies, when the accommodation they would obtain but imperfectly fulfils its object."

This grave matter must be taken up by itself and for its own sake-not by the way, as a secondary matter that may follow in the train of some other better paying concern. The Government of this nation must not only do its part, by sanatory, regulations for the future, but must contribute liberally to the object of removing existing evils in aid of local efforts, stimulating, and if necessary, compelling the localities to do their duty towards elevating the condition of the poor. The railway mania may delay this great question for a little; but that very wealth and population which the railway system is expected to develop and concentrate upon our towns, will render their improvement a more urgent and imperious question than ever. Hitherto we have only talked of doing our duty. Each new outbreak of

VOL. VII. NO. XIII.

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fever has sent new alarms to the heart of the middle and upper classes, and benevolence, re-inforced by terror and selfishness, has quickened its pace, to relapse after a few weeks or months into its wonted apathy. The same mal-arrangements are continued and extending the same crowding of human beings, unprovided with the means of health and cleanliness. Year by year the foul sore spreads, grows with the growth and strengthens with the strength of our towns, is nourished by their increase, and enlarged by their enlarging capital, feeding foul on their very prosperity; and should our railway system realize its promise of still further gathering and accumulating population in a few great towns, it will be seen, like the social ills of unhappy Ireland, to be no little war-but the war of giants which your penny-a-pound tax and fitful subscriptions, like the money the Roman emperors paid in the decline of the empire to the barbarians to retreat, has only brought back the enemy in greater force-to inspire new alarms and be bribed off by new subscriptions, until the day of reckoning, when the old German alliance of the shoes against their feudal lords will be revived against the moneyed aristocracy of the nineteenth century!

Yet we cannot despair of this country, melancholy as is the social condition of tens of thousands of her population. There is a way, and we trust there will yet be found the strong and virtuous will. Looking around for the materials of hope and the prospects of deliverance, we find them where least they were to be looked for within the walls of our prisons and bridewells. It is now sixty years since the cry of the prisoner came before Howard when sheriff of the county of Bedford. "Sick and in prison, and ye visited me not!" was the condition of all whom. crime or misfortune immured within the walls of the prisons, hospitals, and lunatic asylums of Great Britain. Jail-fever yearly destroyed more English criminals within, than the hand of the executioner without the walls of all the prisons of Europe. To rot in a jail, a poor-house, or an asylum, was the too just description of the fate of those consigned to such institutions. In 1730, the jail-fever broke out in the Court House, and cut off the Lord Chief Baron of England, the Chief Sergeant, one of the Sheriffs, and many attendants on the sessions. In 1750, two of the Judges, the Lord Mayor of London, an Alderman, and many of inferior rank connected with the administration of justice, were swept away by it. This pest, bred and nursed in the jails of this country, spread into our fleets and armies, and carried off thousands of our soldiers and sailors. This pest stood sentinel at the doors of our prisons and hospitals, guarding them against the visits alike of private benevolence and

Howard's three visits to Scotland.

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official duty. "I have often inquired at the Jailers," says Howard, "whether the Sheriff, Justices, or city Magistrates inspected the jails? Many of the oldest have answered,- None of these gentlemen ever looked into the dungeons or even the wards of my jail! Others have said,— Those gentlemen think that if they came into my jail they should soon be in their graves.' Others said, 'The Justices think the inside of my house too close for them; they satisfy themselves with the view of the outside!'" Of the filth and loathsomeness of the inside of the dwellings of the criminal and lunatic sixty years ago, the following graphic account from the pen of Howard himself may suffice:

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'My clothes in my first journey were so offensive, that in a postchaise I could not bear the windows drawn up, and was therefore obliged to travel commonly on horseback. The leaves of my memorandum book were often so tainted, that I could not use it until after spreading it an hour or two before the fire. Even my antidote, a vial of vinegar, was, after using it in a few prisons, intolerably disagreeable." "I do not wonder,” he adds, "that in my journey many fellows made excuses, and did not go with me into the felons' wards."

Thrice did this remarkable man visit Scotland on the errand of purging our jails-in 1779, 1782, and in 1783. His first visit wrought no change. No one in Scotland would spend time or money in reforming prisons. No one could be troubled cleaning and ventilating jails, and redressing the wrongs of prisoners. These augean stables and pandemoniums remained unswept, repelling inspection and forbidding inquiry, like the present habitations of the poor in our great towns. In 1783 he again visited the jails of twelve Scottish towns and counties, and again found them dark, dirty, and inexpressibly offensive-unvisited by magistrates or ministers, no proper separation of male and female prisoners, and spirituous liquors sold and used in abundance. He was so shocked at the sight of Scottish filth and misery in the heart of our cities, that the good man, observing the strange union of Scottish pride and Scottish dirt, and contrasting the national apathy about the state of their public Institutions with private ambition for architectural finery, then begun in Scotland, is provoked to set down in his Journal the following reflections:

"I do not think it possible that a nation can attain to improvement in science, to refinement of taste and manners, without at the same time acquiring a refinement in their ideas of justice and feelings of humanity."

A third time he visited Scotland, in 1783, on the same errand, and he then signalizes Glasgow in his Journal on account of its total apathy as to all exposure and to all remonstrance. magistrates, of course, present the philanthropist witl: the free

The

dom of the city, for, like the ancient Athenians, though they would not practise, they knew to applaud virtue in a Howard. All manner of polite attention he receives during his last visit. There is no failure of courtesy; but neither Glasgow civilities nor Glasgow hospitalities can make him forget the one object for which he had performed thrice the tour of Europe. After the briefest notice in his Journal of Glasgow civilities, he brings back the attention of her magistrates to the object of his visit, and here is his manly and straightforward English dealing with the chief magistrate of Glasgow in 1783 :

"I freely related my remarks to the Lord Provost, that the tolbooth stood in the same improper place, that it had no court, and was not whitewashed, that the jailer had no apartments in the prison, that he was suffered to sell spirituous and other liquors, and to serve the prisoners with their allowance of bread; that his fees were high, and that' he had no salary. I added, that in the House of Correction there were forty-seven women in three close rooms, some of them lying sick," that no magistrate ever looked in upon them, and that no clergyman ever attended them, or used any endeavours to reclaim them. He replied, They were so hardened, it would have no effect.' I differed in opinion from his lordship, and told him, that on seriously conversing a few minutes with several of them, I saw tears in their eyes. L further took the liberty of observing, that the splendid improvements carrying on in their places of entertainment, streets, squares, bridges, and the like, seemed to occupy all the attention of the gentlemen in office, to the total neglect of this essential branch of the police; for although, as a private person, I might not expect their regard to the remarks I had made on my repeated visits and publications, yet I hoped they would have paid some deference to the opinion of the Legislature, expressed in the humane and salutary clauses of the Acts of Parliament, which, from the unaltered state of the prisons of this city, they seemed entirely to have disregarded."

Such were the last words of Howard on his last visit to Glasgow. What have been the fruits of his labours? Amidst the prejudices, ignorance, and apathy of justices and magistrates, he found a Judge Blackstone to advise and encourage him.

firm," said Blackstone," and keep to your own opinions." He was firm as a rock: he kept to his opinions with all his characteristic tenacity of purpose. Parliament took up the matter even in his own day. Judges and magistrates awakened to understand and reflect on their duties. New laws and regulations were enacted, and the old were better executed. The oldest jailer in Scotland cannot now remember the jail-fever. Our Scottish jails, if not yet what they ought to be, are no longer what they were in Howard's day. The Bridewell of Glasgow is held up by Mr. Hill, the Government Inspector of Prisons, as a model of arrange