GUARDING AGAINST TEMPTATION.

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is no scope for burglary, highway robbery, rape, forgery, picking pockets, or even sheep-stealing; for every man of the forty or fifty prisoners at work on that flat space of ground, is under the eyes of warders through the day, and securely locked up at night.

There are no canteens, ale-houses, or whiskyshops, dancing saloons, or cigar divans at Lusk.

The same guarding against temptation prevailed at Camden Fort, when the Intermediate Prison was there. A prisoner now and then was allowed to go into the neighbouring village of Crosshaven, about half a mile from the late convict depôt, but the beer and whisky-shops had been previously closed. No maternal hen ever guarded a brood of ducklings with greater care from a mill-stream than Sir Walter Crofton guarded his intermediate prisoners from temptaevery kind.

tions of

We commend him for this; but to call the discipline temptation, after the removal of the temp

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INTERMEDIATE TEMPTATIONS.

tation, was very wrong. To parade, under such circumstances, before the world, the prisoners' powers of resisting temptation, was more than absurd. It was a sham.

The temptations to which mankind are subject, as classified in Scripture, come under the three heads of the " World, the Flesh and the Devil." We have the world in towns and villages, from which the Intermediates are carefully removed, with one or two exceptions; the flesh in the shape of women, who are debarred, by a director's order, from entering a convict prison, or a prison-boat, although the boatmen are exemplary" prisoners.

It

would therefore appear as if the intermediate temptations, over which Sir Walter Crofton

especially presided, were of a purely Satanic character. He took the intermediates "into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil."

How pious people can say the Lord's prayer, and then say "Amen" to Sir Walter Crofton's theory of temptation, or wish him success in the application of it, we cannot imagine. Granting

SIR W. CROFTON'S INCONSISTENCY.

95

that temptations are necessary for poor mortals, on what authority does the chairman of a convict prison assume the high office of that august personage who is supposed to preside over this department of morals? Where are his marks and signs of office-the hoof and horns?

He

But Sir Walter Crofton is not consistent. contradicts himself, and practically places the intermediate prisoners out of the reach of those "temptations that are common to all men.' Our Lord commands his disciples to let the tares and wheat grow together till the harvest." Sir Walter Crofton says, "No, let us pluck up the tares, separate the good from the bad, and place the good in reformatories." This is a most original mode of subjecting prisoners to temptation.

If it be a sound and good practice to keep the intermediate and advanced men in classes by themselves, as is the case in Irish convict prisons, why not carry it out through all the classes?

We confess that we do not approve of separating

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SYSTEMATIC TEMPTATION.

the good from the bad in this way. While our prayer should be, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," we believe that God's arrangement of allowing the good and bad to mingle in this world, is wiser than that of Sir Walter Crofton. I am always glad to see the yellow, red, blue, and plain frieze mingling together; for I think that the advanced and wellconducted prisoner imparts more good by his contact with a prisoner in an inferior class, than he receives evil.

But there is one department in which Sir Walter's theory of temptation has come into active operation, the success of which has elicited the laudations of the author of a pamphlet styled the Purgatory of Prisoners. The temptation consists in allowing a prisoner to spend sixpence a week, out of his gratuity, which may or may not be expended on tobacco or snuff. Here Satan makes the assault on the "City of Man's-Soul" at Nose-Gate, and enters through the two sally-ports, commonly called "the nostrils." We have a

THE DEVIL IN THE TOBACCO BOX.

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graphic account of the siege in the Purgatory of Prisoners, which was intended to glorify the discipline of Lusk.

The Chairman, who presided over this department of temptation, is represented as coming forward and interrogating a prisoner in this sort of style :

What!

"Now my good man, you are under no temptatation to buy drink with that sixpence I have placed at your disposal, for there is no drink to be had in this neighbourhood; but what about the snuff and tobacco, for as it regards these you are a free agent? Let me have a look at your book." The Chairman looks, and is horrified. Spent the whole sixpence on tobacco in one week! This is about a penny a day! This will never do, my good fellow. If you cannot conquer the little devil in your tobacco-box, or keep the tempterwho comes to you in the shape of that silver sixpence safely buttoned up in your breeches pocket, and not allow him, like our Irish cluricaune, or that

VOL. II.

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