re-committals, with an increasing population. The following extracts from the Governor's report to the Michaelmas Court of Quarter Sessions, 1865, will show how beneficially the industrial system has worked economically :

For the year ending Michaelmas, 1865, the sale of articles manufactured and work done amounted to £1,552. 16s. 11d., being an increase of £452. 1s. 3d. as compared with 18 4, and the profits, after paying all expenses, were £530. 7s. 5d. This is exclusive of the value of stock in hand, amounting to £484. 169. 8d.

Of 564 prisoners (including 70 Government convicts) who have passed through the prison during the year, only 163 were imprisoned for longer periods than three months-the remainder, 401, being sentenced to periods of three months and under, consequently they were not employed at industrial labour; indeed, it is the rule of the prison that no prisoner be so put to work until after he has passed the first three months of his imprisonment, and has shown by his good conduct and respectful obedience to the rules that he is deserving such indulgence, and when so employed a small amount is placed to his credit every week out of his earnings, which he receives on quitting the prison.

In Michaelmas, 1866, the Governor again reported :—

I have the satisfaction of again reporting that the industry of the prisoners ha been more profitable this year than at any like period since I first introduced it, whilst the discipline of the prison has been fully maintained. It may also be of interest to know the extent of work done during the year just closed. There have been made

In addition to this the whole of the tailoring, shoemaking, and repairs of the establishment, including the officers' uniform, is done within the prison. Sale of manufactured goods and other work done for the year ending

was £350.

The amount of cash paid to County Treasurer as profits for

1864. 1865.

1866.

From Michaelmas, 1853, to Michaelmas, 1866, the results of the industrial labour, have been as follows:-for sale of articles manufactured, £12,415. 16s. 3d., yielding a profit of £4,286. 1s. 9d., and this is exclusive of £3,195. 13s. 2d. for work done in and about the prison for which no charge is made to the country.

From Michaelmas, 1848, to Easter, 1853, an attempt was made to carry out industrial employment; it was, however, a failure, and for that period in the experiment a loss was sustained of £336. 7s. 2d.

The average annual number of committals for 1848 to 1852,

inclusive, was 677, and of re-committals 213; but during the five years from 1858 to 1862 inclusive, the industrial system being in full working, the committals have averaged only 503, and the re-committals 158.

These facts tell an important tale; and we may inquire, why should not prisoners generally be made to contribute by their labour to their own maintenance, instead of being wholly burdensome to the community? An inquiry may also be suggested, why prisoners for short as well as for long periods should not be employed usefully? If they were, they would earn something towards their sustenance-would advance somewhat towards improved habits- and would acquire a degree of knowledge and dexterity that might be afterwards serviceable. Giving them a portion of their earnings as a reward for assiduity must act favourably, for it would tend to encourage good conduct, and would supply a fund to enable them, after leaving gaol, to subsist while seeking for employ

ment.

A notion prevailed at one time that prisoners feel the punishment of performing unproductive labour to be more irksome than that connected with productive employment, and on that account unprofitable labour had many advocates, as they believed that the extra repulsiveness of the method of correction would deter many from the perpetration of offences. This was a most extraordinary delusion, for it gave the criminal classes credit for higher sentiments than are possessed by many people even in the more respectable classes of society. It supposed that the criminal would be anxious to produce something to benefit his punishers; that although he had no personal gain from his labour, he was desirous that it might be of some advantage to the community; that of all people he was influenced by the most purely patriotic motives. When a criminal is undergoing the sentence of the law, he may be pleased to acquire skill or knowledge that may be serviceable to himself after the term shall have expired; but he is not likely to have any particular wish that his industry should be

beneficial to others.

There can scarcely be a good or judicious measure proposed but it will meet with objectors. It is well that it is so, as opposition leads to investigation, and investigation probably to improvement. It has been objected to productive employment in workhouses and gaols, that it interferes with the occupation of the honest; but this consideration in the present time can have but little influence, when it is well understood that the wealth of a nation depends upon the industry of its inhabitants; and that the more fully the people are occupied

usefully, the more they must increase in prosperity. The persons confined in prisons, if they were at liberty and employed, would so far tend to overstock the labour market, and, however usefully engaged, can do no more when under confinement.

The inconvenience suffered by society from vagrancy is of serious consequence. The laws for its suppression have hitherto been ineffectual in their operation, as is clearly manifested by the number of persons without any settled habitations who are continually wandering about the country, or who infest our populous towns and cities. Their pilfering and irregular habits are fully shown by the number of committals to the provincial gaols of strangers to the locality where they become offenders against the laws. There can be no doubt that people wandering about the country, with no legitimate means of obtaining a living, propagate not only moral but physical contamination, and are media for conveying and spreading infectious diseases. Ought not, then, some stringent regulations to be enforced for the suppression of such a pernicious practice?

Perhaps effectual measures for restraining vagrancy are withheld from a dread of interfering with the liberty of the subject; but, however jealous we may be in the cause of freedom, a class of useless persons ought not to be permitted to lead unrestrained a vagabond life, to the injury and annoyance of the well-regulated members of society. Some severe rule ought to be established for the suppression of vagrancy, but it is useless to pass laws or regulations for the purpose, unless they include some means of providing for the vagrant.

Why might not public institutions be founded to which persons might be committed who were detected in any act of vagrancy? Lame, blind, imbecile, and infirm persons, devoid of friends who will take charge of them, might be treated as their cases seem to require, and the institution would be to them a place of refuge, in which they might be employed usefully, as far as their circumstances would permit. The able-bodied might be trained to habits of industry, and be taught some art by which on being liberated they might obtain a livelihood elsewhere, or be qualified for emigration.

Institutions of this kind would be clearly not self-supporting; they would, on the contrary, be apparently a considerable burden on the nation; yet from the advantages that would accrue from their establishment, they would really effect a considerable saving to the public, as all vagrants draw their support in some way from the community, either by begging, pilfering, or by some fraudulent practices. Persons

124 Reformatory Effect of Remunerative Prison Labour.

travelling in search of employment might be allowed to pursue their object by being furnished with a certificate from their last employers, or from some trade society; such certificate should be available for a reasonable period only, so that idle and worthless individuals might not make a living by imposing upon the respectable members of their own class.

Into gaols or institutions for vagrants a considerable variety of handicraft employment might be introduced. Each institution might have its separate and distinct kinds of trade or occupation, which could be adopted in conformity with the habits of the neighbourhood where it might be situated. A considerable market for the various productions would be obtained by such establishments supplying each other in an interchange of their several manufactures. A mutual trading might be instituted among them, which, as far as it went, could not be obnoxious to the charge of injuring out-of-door employment.

If we could induce industrial habits among the criminal and vagrant classes, we should no doubt promote therewith a general moral improvement. For the honour of humanity we must believe that the incorrigibly vicious are but few, and that many whom circumstances have rendered injurious to society are reclaimable, if we could only give them the means of proceeding in a decent and respectable course of life. If we wish for the reformation of those who have gone wrong, we must teach them to work, and afford them the means of obtaining honest occupation; and an important step for this laudable purpose will be to make our gaols, workhouses, and vagrant institutions in reality, not merely in pretence, schools of industry.

LIGHT AND HEALTH.

1. Light: Its Influence on Life and Health. By Forbes Winslow, M.D., D.C.L., &c. London: Longmans and Co. 1867.

2. Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion. By John Tyndall, F.R.S., &c. Second Edition. London: Longmans

and Co. 1865.

3. The Physiology of Common Life. By George Henry Lewes. Two vols. Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood and Sons. 1859.

L'

IGHT and life are complemental mysteries, and fill the earth, and possibly the skies, with their ineffable effulgence. Every step in the science of the one is a step towards an explanation of the science of the other, and neither is, or can be, humanly complete. They have the beauty of some grand Greek statue, which always seems to be becoming something which it is not-a rare chemistry of marble and vitality. It would seem as though we never could surprise either at the moment of creation, or that what we take for creation is but a vast cycle of transference. Life we know we cannot create, but we are often foolish enough to think that we can make light. We do no such thing; we simply unchain the hidden chemistries of the ages. Yet life and light are so ordinary and familiar, that every one thinks he knows what they are until he is asked by another; but they become so marvellous under the piercing gaze of the intellect, that we wonder they can ever have been commonplace. We are spellbound in reverent silence. Life trembles in the leaf, glows in the flower, feels about blindly in the animal, and flashes into intellect and love in the man. Light throbs and wheels in the great sun, 'plays i' the pighted clouds,' and breaks itself over the world in multitudinous waves of beauty, colour, and joy. It is our highest scientific embodiment of the great Life of Deity, and stands so closely related to all life as to be one of the surest revealers of the wonders of our own.

But as yet we stumble on the very threshold, and are puzzling ourselves with problems that belong to the innermost. How the sun is fed? is a question of as much interest as, How the sun feeds life? Strange secrets may come out of the solution of the problem, whether we take Mayer's theory of constant meteoric showers, or Helmhotz's one of nebulou condensation, or a more satisfactory one than either; but one