felt very sad and dispirited for a
time, and wrote to my friends that I should like to have a visit from a
clergyman of my own persuasion who resided in London. I got for a reply
a visit from some of my own friends, who mentioned that the gentleman
whose visit I desired was too much occupied with his own flock to look
after a lost sheep like me. I notice this chiefly in order to remark
that this was a kind of turning point in my prison career: the point at
which the generality of prisoners turn from bad to worse, and when long
imprisonment ceases to be an instrument for good; when human sympathy
is sought, and by the great majority of prisoners sought in vain, and
when in consequence they seek to obtain the sympathy of their evil
companions, and begin in earnest that downward career which knows no
shame, and finds its goal in the convict's grave.

CHAPTER XI.

INDISCRIMINATE ASSOCIATION OF PRISONERS--TRANSPORTATION, AND THE
CAUSE OF ITS FAILURE--A GUNSMITH.

As I have already said in a previous chapter, one of the most glaring
defects in our present system of penal servitude, viewed as a means of
reformation as well as of punishment, is the indiscriminate association
of all classes of criminals, or rather all criminals with a certain
sentence, irrespective of the nature of the crime they have committed,
the previous character of the criminal or the probability of his
re-admission into society as an honest and useful member of it. I have
met in the same ward prisoners of widely different characters and
antecedents, whose crimes afforded conclusive proofs that in habits,
disposition, and general conduct, they would never, in the natural
order of things, become associates, compelled by law to mate with each
other as equals, and to learn of each other how to injure, not how to
benefit society and themselves. There are, for instance, certain crimes
which a man may commit under the influence of strong passions, aroused
in moments of great temptation, such as rape; or of great provocation,
such as manslaughter; or committed under the pressure of misfortune, or
to avoid, impending ruin, such as forgery or embezzlement, which do not
necessarily prove the criminal to be of habitually depraved habits, or
generally of a violent and vicious disposition. I found as a rule
prisoners guilty of these crimes undergoing their first sentences.
Prison life and prison associations were new to them as to me. They had
no inclinatio