gentlemen; whereas the real
thing to be thought of, was to give them labour so excessively
toilsome and irksome as to be remembered with salutary horror all
the days of their life. For example, no kind of punishment, we
believe, has proved so sure a terror as that of the shot-drill in
the military prisons. This consists in lifting a cannon-ball of
perhaps twenty pounds' weight; marching with it for a dozen yards;
then laying it down; and so on, repeating the same thing for an
hour. Now this is clearly a useless and most degrading species of
labour; yet it is a terrible infliction, and we are told seldom
fails in its effect--that is to say, it deters from the commission
of crime.

The experience of the last few years would shew that much is still
to be learned in the art of criminal discipline; and indeed the
whole question of what is to be done with our criminal population is
becoming daily more perplexing. Mere confinement is found to be of
small avail. Transportation is exploded; for it improves the
circumstances of criminals instead of making them worse. Capital
punishment has also had its day, and, excepting for a very few
offences, is abandoned as useless, independently of being revolting
to humanity. One writer proposes to work convicts in gangs at
out-door labour, such as mining, and making railways; but the public
would never tolerate the spectacle of this worst species of
slave-labour; and besides, the employment of honest workers would be
ruined. We are inclined to think that imprisonment, in a severe
form, is after all the only practicable means of dealing with
criminals. If anything be urgently wanted, it is a plan for
preventing the growth of the criminal class; and this probably is
not so difficult as it may appear. Of course, till there be a far
broader system of public education than now prevails, the criminal
population will never want recruits. Nevertheless, even with our
present imperfect educational arrangements, something might be done.
The criminal class is discovered to be on the whole a narrow class.
The practice of living by depredation runs in families, and clings
to individuals. The police of any given town could put their hand on
almost every person who lives by fraud, theft, and robbery. They
could at a day's notice secure nearly every one of them. A knowledge
of this fact has suggested to Mr Matthew Hill a plan for capturing
the whole criminal class, and obliging them to give security fo