ty; it is our jails which are the
hotbeds and nurseries of crime. Reform them--separate the hardened
criminal from the apprentice to crime--let solitary confinement teach
its impressive lessons, and confer its regular habits; and vice, with
all its concomitant evils, will disappear from the land. At the same
time a great impression was made on the legislature by a graphic, and,
in some respects, just description of the suffering in the penal
colonies of New South Wales; and the result has been a general adoption,
over the whole empire, of the system of long imprisonment instead of
transportation, to an extent previously unknown since the system of
forced convict-labour in the colonies was introduced. All persons
practically acquainted with the subject were aware of the result in
which their experiment would terminate, and the fearful multiplication
of irreclaimable criminals to which it would lead in the heart of the
empire. But unfortunately the persons practically acquainted with the
subject had scarcely a voice in the legislature--the current ran strong
in favour of lengthened imprisonment, and the abolition, except in very
bad cases, of transportation. The judges gave ample scope to the new
system, and it received in every point of view a fair experiment.
Highway robbers, housebreakers, and habitual thieves, received, in great
numbers of cases, sentences of imprisonment, instead of transportation
for life or fourteen years. The jails at the same time were every where
improved; a general system of prison discipline was adopted and
enforced; and solitary confinement, with hard labour, became almost
universal. And what has been the result? Why, that it has been now
demonstrated by experience, that even the longest imprisonments, and the
best system of prison discipline, have no effect, or scarce any, in
reclaiming offenders; and that the only effect of the new system has
been, to crowd the jails with convicts and the streets with thieves; to
load the counties with assessments and the calendars with prisoners; to
starve New South Wales for want of compulsory labour, and oppress Great
Britain by the redundance of hardened idleness. We speak of a matter the
subject of universal notoriety: ample proof of it will be furnished in a
future Number.

But, what is most alarming of all, it has now been completely
demonstrated, that we are not to look even to the general spread of
religious instruction for any immediate or even ra