§ MR. CHARLES PEARSONmoved for the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire and report upon the practicability of establishing one uniform system of Prison Discipline, to be applied to all persons sentenced to imprisonment for crime. He said he asked for the appointment of the Committee upon various grounds, either of which would, he apprehended, entitle him to his Motion. The enormous expense of our present prisons, and present systems of prison discipline, demanded inquiry. Nearly 500,000l. a year were expended upon prisoners, besides the extra- 533 vagant cost of the prison palaces in which they were confined; and besides nearly half a million a year expended by Government for the hulks, and the cost of transports and penal establishments at home and abroad.
The incongruity of the various systems practised in different gaols in the united kingdom required immediate correction; they varied as much in principle as in practice and expense. These systems could not be all right. At this moment in some prisons we had the congregated, in some the separate or solitary, system; in some tread-wheel labour, in some productive labour, and in some no labour at all; in some prisons the inmates cost 50l. a year, and in some not 10l. each. He would undertake to prove, if the Committee were granted, that more than half the sums now expended for prisoners might be saved; that with prison farms and prison workshops, instead of prison palaces, convicted prisoners might, as a class, be made to feed and clothe themselves and their guards by the produce of their own labour, without interfering unjustly with the industrious occupations of the honest poor.
The cost of the buildings erected for the confinement of prisoners was as unequal as the cost of their maintenance and management. Millbank Penitentiary was said to have cost the enormous sum of 500l. per prisoner. The prison inspectors said that York gaol had been enlarged at a cost of 1,200l. per prisoner; and Reading prison palace, called the Model County Gaol and House of Correction, cost upwards of 49,000l., though the daily average of prisoners was but 140, being equal to 350l. or at 5l. per cent, 17l. 18s. per annum for the lodging of every prisoner, man, woman, and child, confined within its walls. This was denominated the model goal; and if its expensive construction should be carried throughout the country, it would require six millions of sterling money to furnish the same princely accommodation for the average number of prisoners confined in the various gaols of the kingdom. The increase in the number of commitments for crime in this country, was sufficient to startle every reflective mind; it imposed upon the Government and the country the unavoidable duty of making a searching inquiry into the causes of this increase, and the means of repressing its further augmentation. The number of commitments and recommitments had 534 increased during the last forty years upwards of 400 per cent, while population, during the same period had been augmented only 65 per cent. He did not mean to say that crimes had actually increased in this ratio, either in number or amount during this period. It would be most unfair to measure the comparative morality of the nation at the commencement of the present century, and at the present period, by any such standard; it would be notoriously untrue. In many respects the national character had greatly improved during that period, and a considerable portion of the increase of commitments might be accounted for by circumstances that had occurred in the intervening time which served to influence our criminal statistics, without in any degree showing a corresponding increase in the depravity of the people, or even of the classes which, on account of their poverty and their numbers, furnished the largest portion of our prison population. Amongst these circumstances may be reckoned the disbanding of a large portion of our Army and Navy, and the cessation of impressment and recruiting, which, upon the return of peace, threw hack upon society the portion of loose population which, during the war had been otherwise absorbed. A more effective system of police in both the metropolitan and provincial towns, and in the rural districts, had, at least for a time, increased the number of commitments in a greater ratio than the number of crimes actually committed. The payment of prosecutors' and witnesses' expenses out of the public funds, had led to the same result: the abolition of capital punishments, the diminution of transportation, and the shortening of sentences, had all had a telling effect upon our criminal statistics. There was yet another source of the increase of commitments, which probably produced a greater effect upon the number than all the preceding circumstances put together; he meant the meddling system of legisla-lation—the consequence of a high state of civilisation, which sought to give increased protection to the possessions and the enjoyments of the wealthy classes, by elevating into crimes punishable by imprisonment acts which were not formerly the subject of penal infliction. The" prison inspectors' returns, carefully examined, proved that 80 per cent of all the commitments were for larcenies, misdemeanours, juvenile delinquencies, acts of vagrancy, and other petty offences, the moral and 535 legal gravity of which was fixed at, so low a point, that the punitive and reformatory justice of the country was satisfied by sentences of imprisonment varying from seven days to six months. There was still another mighty cause of the increasing numbers of prisoners, who flocked to our gaols as places of refuge for the lazy and the luxurious, rather than as places of punishment: the increasing comfort of our gaols, coincident with the decreasing comforts of our labouring poor, afforded a direct premium for crime, of which the worthless members of the community, particularly in hard times and hard seasons, were not slow to avail themselves. Prisoners in our modern gaols were better fed, better clothed, better housed, better taught, and their health and comforts better cared for, than the great mass of those classes of the community from which they proceed, and to which at their discharge they must return. In the model prison of Reading, for instance, criminals were not only not compelled to perform any hard labour, as a punishment for their crimes, but they were not even allowed employment for their reformation and improvement in habits of industry, except by way of recreation and relaxation from their principal occupation, mental education. They acquired in that prison a taste for luxurious indolence, which it was impossible for them to gratify by honest means when they quitted the establishment; and they must leave that palace of a prison with less capability of earning their living by honest industry, than when they entered its splendid portal. Thus while they inflict a serious injury upon the struggling ratepayer, whose hard earnings defray the charges of this costly establishment, and while they deteriorate the power and the capacity of the prisoner as a free labourer, they undermine the honest disposition of the industrious poor by teaching them that crime is rewarded with comforts which honest industry cannot procure.
If the reports of our prison inspectors, and the evidence of the chaplains and governors of prisons, the Judges and others engaged in the administration and execution of our criminal laws, were consulted, it would be found that the chief causes of the offences which filled our criminal gaols, were idleness and self-indulgence—an indisposition to continuous industry, and a disregard of the practice of self-control. These were the remote, if not the proximate, causes of crime. He did not mean to say that idleness picked a pocket, or 536 knocked down a peaceful subject, but he did mean to say that if you would nicely examine the history of crime, and the springs and motives of human actions, you would find that these evils were mediately or immediately the great moving causes of crime; and if you desired to arrest its fearful increase, it must be by the inculcation, as part of our prison discipline, of industrial acts confirmed by industrial habits, by the constant exercise of every prisoner while working out the sentence of the law within the precincts of the gaol.
The criminal population were of the age when idleness in a gaol was most dangerous and most pernicious, and when industry might be rendered most productive and most beneficial both to themselves and to the community at large. Eighty per cent of the criminal population were between the ages of 16 and 45, and forty-seven per cent between the ages of 20 and 35; so that while the majority of the offences of the country were of so trivial a character that eighty per cent of the whole number were atoned by short imprisonments, varying from six months to six days, crimes were committed in the same proportion by the youth and strength, the pith and marrow, the muscle and sinew of the nation. If the House would grant him a Committee, he would prove that by introducing continuous industry and productive employment into our gaols, the culprit might be effectually punished, while he was made to support himself without becoming a burden to the honest portion of the community, as was now the case to the extent of between 30l. and 40l. per annum for every prisoner, man, woman, and child within the prisons of England and Wales. In opposition to his proposal to render our prisons self-supporting, it had been said that England was a free country, and that prison labour or slave labour as it was designated, would not be tolerated by the people of England. But he contended that hard labour was the best punishment for crime, and when a culprit forfeited his liberty by crime, the forfeiture of all the rights of freedom should accompany the sentence. The State had a right to exact from each prisoner the utmost amount and value of his labour for his own maintenance, and for the payment of the cost which his imprisonment and punishment had entailed upon the nation. The Mosaic law actually required that a thief should be sold into bondage; our old Saxon laws recognised the same principle, and condemned the criminal 537 to the "thew" work; and numerous were the statutes which, until the separation of the American States from the Crown of England, authorised the gaolers to sell to men-merchants the convicted criminals in their custody, to be conveyed to the colonies, and then to be transferred by deed to purchasers, "their executors, administrators, and assigns." He did not recommend the return to any of these practices, not because he believed they were morally wrong, or that they were beyond the scope of legislative authority to re-enact, but because he believed they were unnecessary, inexpedient, and contrary to the spirit of the age. But to compel criminals by rational means and moral motives to labour for their subsistence, was, in his judgment, both necessary and expedient, and in perfect conformity with the intelligence of the enlightened age in which they had the good fortune to live. In the gaols of Massachusetts, in the United States, the prisoners, out of the produce of their industry, maintained themselves and their keepers, paid for their diet, clothing, and bedding, for the repairs of the prison, and the salary of every officer from the governor down to the lowest turnkey; and by the sale of surplus productions they were enabled to present each prisoner, on his discharge, with four dollars, and a new suit of clothes—to create a sinking fund to liquidate the cost of constructing the building, and to subscribe a considerable sum to that excellent institution, the Boston Prison Discipline Society. He did not introduce this statement respecting the American gaols for the purpose of recommending them as models for imitation in England, but merely as illustrative of the fact for which he contended, and upon the truth of which his proposal must be made to rest, namely, that there existed the means of obtaining such complete power and dominion over the conduct and will of a prisoner, as to evoke into healthy action the full amount of labour and industry he was capable of putting forth, if subjected in gaol to the laws which were propounded in Holy writ without limitation or exception, and were as obligatory upon the bond as upon the free, namely," by the sweat of his face man shall eat the fruits of the earth;" and," if any man will not work, neither shall he eat."
In the principal Belgian and French prisons, the truth of these great principles had been made equally manifest, although the system practised in those gaols was 538 worked by very imperfect machinery; they were made nearly or entirely self-supporting by calling into action the productive powers of the criminal inmates.
["Mr. Pearson read extracts from Mr. Rawson's report to the Statistical Society, describing the Belgian prisons, the reports of the Boston Prison Discipline Society, and also the report to the Chamber of Peers in France, from which it appeared that some of the largest prisons in those countries defrayed nearly or entirely the charges of the establishment by the labour of the prisoners.]
He (Mr. Pearson) had said that he did not offer the American system as a model for imitation; he must say the same of the practices pursued in the Belgian and French prisons.
In America, the prisoners were taught a trade in prison, and were employed as artificers, mechanics, and artisans in various handicraft occupations—those branches of industry were in great demand in those States, and they might, therefore, be carried on with comparatively little injury in the market of industry; but that would not be the case in this country. To prosecute handicraft occuptions in our gaols to an extent and for a lengthened period, which would be indispensable if you desired to make industry reformatory and remunerative, would be productive of the most serious injury and injustice to the humble and honest artisan engaged in the same pursuits. The Belgian and French systems were equally objectionable, though the objections were of another class. The labour prosecuted in those gaols was principally spinning and weaving woollen, cotton, and silk fabrics. Many of the productions of those gaols were of exquisite texture, and realised considerable profits in competition with the productions of free labour. As these operations were conducted through the instrumentality of eon-tractors, who purchased the labour by public tender, some of the objections to this mode of employment upon the score of the competition of prison labour with free industry, were removed; but there remained one great objection to this description of employment—prisoners required the command of machines to prosecute it on their restoration to society. But without means they could not purchase machinery; and what body of operatives would be disposed to receive into their associations competitors in an already overstocked occupation, who had been initiated into the mysteries 539 of their art at the expense of the nation, as the means of punishing a life of crime? By the system pursued in the foreign prisons, they often spoiled a good labourer in their endeavours to make but an indifferent workman. Indisposed to return to a life of more severe manual toil, and unable to obtain a living by the art to which he had been in gaol accustomed, the discharged prisoner, often driven by necessity rather than choice, relapsed into a life of crime, and became again an inmate of the gaol. In some of our English gaols, both the American and the Belgian systems prevailed to an extent which introduced the evils of both systems, without the advantages of either. In Pentonville, Millbank, and some other gaols, weaving, shoemaking, tailoring, and other trades, were taught and practised; but the expense of teaching was so much, and the productive labour so little, that while it disturbed by competition the free-labour market in those departments of industry, it did but little in defraying the charges of the prisons, and left them a serious burden upon the resources of the State. More than half the criminals sent to those prisons were mere unskilled labourers. The attempt to make such men tailors or shoemakers fit to get their living, upon their restoration to society, by competition with the skilled artisan, who in youth had acquired the knowledge of his trade, was, in the great majority of eases, a chimerical expectation. You gave them education enough to spoil them as hardworking labourers, but not sufficient to qualify them as skilled handicraftsmen. Their productions while in prison would sell, it was true, but at prices so low that no self-supporting workman could compete with the prison tariff. The consequence was, as the annals of the Mansion House, and other police courts, often showed, that by attempting to make thieves into tailors, you only succeeded in making tailors into thieves; for it was impossible for the most industrious to live honestly, by working at prices so ruinously low as the prisons turned out their work. But if the fact were the reverse of what it actually was, and if by instruction in a gaol for a few months, or a year or two, a criminal labourer could be elevated—by learning at the public expense—into an accomplished artisan, it would be most unjust to reward crime by raising its perpetrator from the power to earn eighteen pence or two shillings a day, and placing him in the social scale upon a 540 footing with the honest workman whose early years as an apprentice had been sacrificed in acquiring the skill requisite to earn double the amount. If he (Mr. Pearson) objected to the American system, and the Belgian and French systems of prison discipline, which were based upon industry and productive labour, and yet insisted upon labour—continuous and productive labour—as essential, indispensable conditions of any sound system combining punitive with reformatory discipline, it might be fairly asked, what was the system upon which he relied to carry out this object? He did not hesitate to affirm that, as the great mass of the criminal population of this kingdom were of the unskilled labouring classes, and were of an age when the greatest power to labour existed, it was to unskilled labour, to hard labour, and constant labour, they must look as the great engine of a punitive, reformatory, and self-supporting system of prison discipline. In making this broad assertion, he did not propose to exclude skilled industry from the business of the gaol; on the contrary, as in every community a proportion of criminals of every trade, and every class, would be found included in the catalogue, he proposed that the utmost amount of each prisoner's powers should be called into action, in the department of industry in which they might be made most profitably available. The criminal shoemakers, the criminal tailors, the criminal spinners and weavers, might all be constantly employed in making shoes, and shirts, and coats for the criminal labourers, who, in their turn, would be employed with equal propriety in raising food for the use of those who clothed them. Even unskilled labourers, during the long evenings of winter, and the days and hours when, from frost and rain, the land was closed against outdoor employment, might be engaged in mending and patching their clothes, or even, if necessary, in making them—a course of industry which, without pretending to send them out to compete with skilled artisans, would, by giving them facilities for useful objects, render them better fit for a life of emigration, and more likely to render them companions of their homes and their hearths, than the haunters of beershops, the common receptacle for the idle, and those who will do nothing, or have nothing to do. But though other descriptions of industrious occupation would find a place within the precincts of a prison farm, it 541 was to the productive powers of their mother earth they must chiefly look for both the means and the produce of prison labour. He undertook to prove to the satisfaction of any Committee the House might think proper to appoint, that if one thousand convicted criminals, of the average age and strength of any class of prisoners—say those who were under sentence of one or two years' confinement—were placed in a prison upon one thousand acres of land, walled in, they might be made to work the land by means of spade husbandry and garden cultivation—by deep digging and trenching, combined with the abundance of manure which the refuse of the establishment would afford, so as to yield a produce of bread, meat, potatoes, and oatmeal, sufficient, by the coarsest and plainest fare, to sustain the hardworking prisoners to the complement of health and strength requisite on their discharge, to enable them to maintain themselves as honest labourers when thrown upon their own resources, by their daily toil, to gain their daily bread.
The experience of a lawyer as to the productive powers of land, when subjected to the continuous industry of man, would in that House pass for no more than it was worth, although it should be remembered that Tull, who had done more for agriculture than any other man, was himself a lawyer. He (Mr. Pearson) could boast of no patrimonial acres, and had no personal or hereditary experience of their productive powers; but he was backed up in the statements he had made by the testimony of above one hundred of the most eminent agriculturists, and of the largest tenant farmers in the land. He had, during the last Christmas agricultural show, discussed this subject at the Farmers' Club, of which they were pleased to elect him a member; and having sent printed letters to above 400 of the most eminent members of the club, scattered over all parts of the country, requesting to be informed as to the powers of the land to produce the specified supplies, calculated by the standard of the existing prison dietaries, he had received answers, giving in detail the proper rotation of cropping, the mode of treating the land, so as to tax it to its highest productive powers without exhaustion, and showing the quantity of labour it could be made profitably to absorb, and the amount of produce it might be made to yield. The conclusion at which they had arrived was, 542 that the land, combined with labour equal to 500 labourers, with the manure of the establishment, might be made to produce wheat, oats, potatoes, and meat sufficient for the consumption of the whole establishment, prisoners and keepers, and leave a money surplus variously estimated at from 1,500l. to 4,000l. per annum towards the interest on the outlay, and the wages of the establishment.
Labour on land might be recommended as the best occupation for criminals, because it did not interfere unjustly with free labour; for there was no dogma of political economy, no canon of our social institutions, which could forbid an establishment of criminals from making their own clothes and their own food, to relieve the taxpaying portion of the community from the burden of supporting them. But this occupation had other recommendations; it was the original occupation of the majority of criminals. The process of digging did not, like handicraft and mechanical pursuits, require a lengthened apprenticeship to qualify persons for profitable employment; a few days' instruction and diligent exertion would soon bring the thews and sinews of a young or middle-aged London pickpocket into harness, and in a few months he would be qualified to wage war with the forests of Canada, or to earn his living as a free emigrant in any part of the colonial world. Labour on land also afforded the best means of noting the quantity of each man's exertions, and it provided work suitable to each man's strength and capacity; for while to punish one man with fatiguing labour, ten, twelve, or fourteen hours out of the twenty-four ought to be employed in deep digging and trenching, other prisoners of impaired strength would be subjected to an equivalent infliction if compelled to work the same number of hours in the lighter employments of husbandry, suited to their inferior strength. Labour on land was, moreover, a healthful occupation, and would enable the conductors of prisons to maintain the prisoners with coarser and less expensive, less stimulating, and less palatable diet, than was required to counteract the effects of the depressing indolence and relaxation superinduced by the unnatural atmosphere of the separate cells in our modern gaols. It would be readily seen that all these calculations were built upon the assumption that there existed means and motives which, if properly called into action, would draw out from the prisoner the full amount of his working powers, He 543 (Mr. Pearson) was prepared to prove before any Committee the House might appoint, that the entire bodily powers of the prisoners might be evoked by moral means, without the application of the lash, or any other soul-degrading and body-tormenting infliction.
Upon this subject he pretended to be some authority. For nearly the third of a century his mind had been devoted to the contemplation of these subjects; he had sat at the feet of the Romillys, the Benthams, the Mackintoshes, the Buxtons, and the great and good men who had now passed away; he had visited most of our English and many of our Continental gaols; he had read every work upon the subject of prison discipline which came within his reach, and had communicated with many of the distinguished men of the present day in our own and in foreign countries, upon this most interesting subject of social improvement; but above all things, he had enjoyed opportunities, from his official appointments, of studying and observing the criminal character in all its forms and phases. He had filled the office of under-sheriff of London and Middlesex during the years 1832, 1833, and 1834, and had thus possessed opportunities of studying these subjects with the aid of the intelligent chaplain and governor of the gaol of the Central Criminal Court, which contained prisoners who had been confined in all our metropolitan and many of our provincial gaols; besides which, for the last nine years he had been City Solicitor, one portion of the duties of the office being, to act as public prosecutor by order of the magistrates within the city of London. Possessing all these combined advantages for judging of the matter in hand, he must indeed be dull of comprehension if he were not some authority as to the mode of dealing with our criminal population; and he had no hesitation in saying that there were few prisoners so fallen in the scale of human degradation as to be incapable of restoration, if subjected to a proper system of punitive, reformatory, and probative discipline. Such a system would blend kindness with firmness, and would couple with moral instruction and religious exercises, continuous labour and industry, called into action by the free will of the prisoner himself, stimulated and sustained in healthy exercise by rendering the duration of his confinement, and the quantity and quality of his diet, dependent upon his labour and conduct in gaol; always 544 taking care that it shall be one fundamental and essential condition of the system, that a prisoner shall have less time for sleep or relaxation—less bodily comforts of every kind—to be purchased by more bodily labour than would suffice to procure a greater amount of bodily comfort for a labourer unconvicted of crime. Such a system as he proposed was in direct conformity with the word of God, and with the dispensations of His will, as they might be read in all his works. He proposed to subject the actions of the prisoner to the government of his own will moved only by the same motive power that governed all mankind in a free condition. To supply men's daily bodily wants, and to make some provision for future independence, were the mainsprings of human action. "If any man will not work, neither shall he eat," was the Divine law by which the universal world was to be governed; and yet, without producing any patent of exemption from its obligation, the criminal class were permitted to evade its injunctions, and to cast the burden of their maintenance upon the honest, industrious portion of the community. This absurd and wicked mode of dealing with the criminal class, prevailed to a considerable extent in all our gaols; so much so, that while the expense of maintaining our prisoners in England and Wales amounted to upwards of 450,000l. per annum, exclusive of the enormous cost of the mansions in which they reside, their entire productive labour did not exceed 20,000l., and the greater part of that sum was realised in the Government and metropolitan prisons. It appeared by the Prison Inspectors' Returns that at the model gaol of Reading, while the annual cost of each prisoner, besides the expense of his palace residence, was upwards of 30l his productive labour only amounted to 2s. 8d. for the entire year's work, which the magistrates say is not enforced, but only allowed for the prisoner's recreation and relaxation from his mental and moral studies. In support of the position which he had assumed, he (Mr. Pearson) could adduce high authorities: the philanthropic Howard, Archdeacon Paley, and Archbishop Whateley, were in favour of stimulating the mind and body of prisoners to healthful and vigorous action, by rendering their position in prison, and their future release, dependent upon their conduct and industry, while suffering the sentence of the law. Archbishop Whateley had said with equal beauty and truth, that if the prisoner 545 had even no labour but a treadwheel, and the duration of his captivity were made dependent upon the number of thousands of revolutions he would daily make, a disposition to labour would be excited, for he would feel that every step he took was a step towards liberty; and if digging were his employment, he would dig with a hearty good-will, feeling that each stroke of the spade was the means, and the only means, of cutting his way out of prison to a state of freedom. But they had not only the judgment of philosophers, who had reasoned from the nature and constitution and natural dispositions of man, in favour of these views; but they had abundant practical experience to justify their conclusions. America, and Belgium, and France, as had been stated, were exponents of the principle, although the details of the means by which they brought it into practical operation were imperfect and defective, and admitted of great improvement. Captain Maconochie had at Norfolk Island systematised the principle, in a manner which had been eminently successful, even with such unpromising materials, and with such limited powers as had been placed at his command. He (Mr. Pearson) humbly and respectfully, but firmly and confidently, asked leave to co-operate with Her Majesty's Government in their avowed determination to endeavour to discover an improved system of secondary punishment. If they would give him a Committee, he pledged himself to show that they might solve the problem with certainty and success; and he called upon the present Government to lead the van in this important movement in the improvement of penal science, which it was worthy of the Government of this great nation to undertake. Her Majesty's Ministers were at liberty to call his declaration by the name of presumption, or any other name they pleased; but if they would give him a fair and impartial Committee, he would stake his seat in that House on the result of the Committee's report. If they did not report the plan to be practicable as a most valuable and important agent of prison discipline and social progress, he would resign his seat, confident that the measure had failed, not from its own defects, but from the defects of the humble individual who had been chosen as its exponent and advocate by a constituency which, for numbers and intelligence, was surpassed by few, if any, in the nation.
It had been assumed by some persons 546 who were willing to admit the economy and efficiency of the system he proposed, that the construction of the prisons, and the purchase of the land for carrying it into execution, would entail upon the public a large original outlay. Nothing could be more unfounded than such a supposition. It was the unnecessary beauty, and strength, and ornament, and comfort, and convenience of existing prisons, that created such an enormous cost. There was no necessity for a palace like Reading, or a fortress like York, to immure the petty larceners, and vagrants, and pickpockets, and misdemeanants, who crowded their gaols, and were more likely to break lamps or windows to get into them, than to break walls or bolts to get out. He undertook to prove, by the evidence of the most eminent architects and the most experienced contractors, that a prison for one or two thousand prisoners might be erected sufficiently strong to ensure perfect safety, and sufficiently large and convenient for the purposes of health, with chapel, workshops, and apartments for the keepers, and separate sleeping rooms for every prisoner, at 40l. each. A wall round the land might be erected as lofty and as strong as the wall round Millbank Penitentiary, at an expense, for 1,000 acres, of 45,000l., and of course for a larger quantity at a proportionately smaller sum. At 40l. per acre, agricultural land might be purchased in the open market, fit, with the amount of labour and manure, to produce in rotation every species of grain, root, and grass crops; so that, upon this calculation, the cost of a prison for 1,000 prisoners, including land enough, combined with labour, to support the establishment, would not amount to anything like half the cost of each prisoner's lodging only at Mill-bank or Reading, without any land, either for healthful labour or productive use. He (Mr. Pearson) should call upon the Government to relieve the counties altogether from the expense of convicted prisoners, by themselves erecting labour gaols for their reception. There were many thousand acres of land near to the great trunk railroads, belonging to the Crown, that did not produce a shilling per acre per annum, though they were of a staple quality equal to the highest powers of production, if properly drained and cultivated by the spade in the way proposed. The Legislature had recently passed an Act, taking from larceny the punishment of transportation. The effect of this enact- 547 ment would be to fill to overflowing all existing gaols; and, if they were to be enlarged, or others built to meet the increasing demand for prison accommodation, and the Reading system were adopted as a model, the first outlay cast upon the countries would far, very far, outweigh the cost of construction which the self-supporting prisons would entail upon the nation.
Upon these various grounds he was, he contended, entitled to expect Her Majesty's Government would consent to a Committee to inquire into the whole subject of prison discipline, in connexion with the plans he had submitted for consideration. He, however, perceived from the silence of the hon. Baronet the Secretary of State for the Home Department, that it was not his intention to grant a Committee. He (Mr. Pearson) should therefore take a course which under other circumstances he would desire to avoid: he should open somewhat at large his objections to the existing systems of prison discipline, which he believed had caused the increase of crime—not only the demoralising system of unrestricted association which had prevailed in English gaols, but the lazy, idle, luxurious system practised in the Reading gaol, recently established under the auspices of Government, to serve as a model for county gaols and houses of correction, throughout the country. The enormous expense of original outlay, and of annual charge which the universal adoption of this cellular system would entail upon the country, afforded in itself an available objection; but he confessed that if it could be proved that it operated as a reformatory agent, through the instrumentality of religious conversion, he should consider that the increase of expense would be outweighed by its beneficial results; but he was prepared to prove that this was not the case; that the supposed subjects of religious conversion—however specious appearances at the commencement might have been—had not stood the test of temptation when returned to society. The cellular system, from the bodily comforts it afforded, was, moreover, attractive to criminals at large. It appeared by a comparison of the reports of the chaplains of Newgate and Reading, that the recommitments from other gaols in the former prison, was not greater than in the latter, although Newgate might be considered as the common receptacle of the crime of the nation; and although from the circumstance of its being a mere transit gaol for untried prison- 548 ers, it was impossible to maintain in it a discipline equally stringent to that which could be upheld in county gaols. The great corrective principle sought to be maintained in Reading gaol was solitary reflection, combined with religious instruction by means of scripture reading, if the prisoner could read on entering the prison, or if he remained there long enough to learn. The system inculcated and practised at this prison consisted of education, reading, writing, and arithmetic, religious instruction, separate reflection, knitting stockings, and other amusing work for those who liked to engage in a light occupation, to relieve them from the fatigues of study, and the tedium of ennui, idleness, high diet, enervating warmth, and ten hours' sleep. As to their diet, to use the language of one of the magistrates, some of them ate till they were ready "to burst." By way of illustrating its character, he might say from his own observation, that the bread was of the finest description, and the quantity weekly given to the prisoners was twice as much as that given to the first-class paupers in the opulent parish in which he was then speaking. [The hon. Member then read extracts from the visiting magistrates' evidence before the Committee in the Lords, and copies of thep rison regulations, showing the manner in which the prisoners spent their time at Reading, and pointed out the injurious effects, mental, moral, and physical, which, he believed, the system must necessarily produce.] He said it evinced but a slight knowledge of the human heart, to assume that stone walls with bolts and bars could shut out sinful thoughts, which in the mind of a depraved and profligate prison population would be found struggling for the ascendancy—if accompanied with luxurious indolence and the hours of dreamy sleep, with the other creature comforts with which the prison abounded. Solitude had its vices, as well as society; and no medical work upon prisons could be consulted, but referred to prisons as the hotbed of vices which could be read in the countenance and appearance of the victims of the solitary system. If the separate system were applied with parsimony and severity, idiocy or lunacy would be the consequence in many cases; if applied with liberality, as at Reading, the expense would be enormous, and the enervating influence upon the habits of the prisoner would be detrimental to him when sent back to the world to get his 549 living by the sweat of his brow; but it was possible to combine severity with expense, as had been proved at Reading, for there was now in Bedlam a lunatic, who had enjoyed all the bodily luxuries of that prison, whose mind had been broken down under the system of mental infliction which there prevails, apparently from the want of those mitigating means of association which the strongest advocates of the system say should be applied so soon as the symptoms of mental decay exhibit themselves in any one subjected to cellular confinement. His (Mr. Pearson's) objections to the system were various under its various aspects; it was always unnecessarily costly; it was always injurious to the physical condition of the prisoner, and destructive of the habits of labour upon which he could alone depend for an honest maintenance on his discharge. By the reverend chaplain himself it was admitted to be utterly useless, and worse than useless, as a reformatory agent upon prisoners confined for less than three months—a class of offenders which constituted the great bulk of their prison population. But even upon prisoners for a lengthened period the effects of this process of reform appeared to be of the most transient description: out of the 3,000 prisoners who had been subjected to the new treatment in Reading gaol, for a greater or shorter period, only three had been introduced to the world by name, as selected specimens of the reformatory effects of the system. These three prisoners had been subjected to eight or ten months' imprisonment, and had profited to such an extent by the religious instruction they had received from the excellent chaplain of the prison, and by their mental studies in the quietude of their cellular retirement, that they had committed to memory the New Testament as far as the Ephesians, and had written themes upon religious subjects illustrated by parallel texts from the Old and New Testaments, and had, in fact, rendered themselves complete peripatetic concordances. These young men had the remainder of their sentences commuted by the visiting justices on account of their thorough reform, and great proficiency in the studies of the gaol: good places were procured for them on their discharge, and they were chronicled to the world in the bulletins at subsequent sessions, as standing stedfast in their reform. But, alas! a reformatory conversion, produced in a hotbed of idleness, could not withstand the rude assaults 550 of external temptation: two have been returned to Reading to conclude their course of study, and the other has fled the country on a charge of felony. He (Mr. Pearson) did not mean to say that many of those who had passed through the prison were not now living in the pursuit of honest industry: that fact might happily be predicated of a large proportion of those who had been the inmates of every gaol in the kingdom; but he contended, that in this respect the Reading system was less likely to prove successful than other prisons where the practice of hard labour and well-regulated employment were enforced. The lazy cellular system was directly contrary to the laws of God; it was contrary to the laws of nature, and even to the laws of the land in which it was now being carried into operation. Upon what principle was it that there was no hard labour provided in the model prison, when the statute of the 4 George IV., c. 64, required that in every gaol there should be hard labour provided? The Act, moreover, required that in every prison in this country, where hard labour was not a part of the sentence, the prisoner should be made to labour towards his own support. The enforcement of hard labour was not permissive, but obligatory. Now, the prison inspectors had reported to Her Majesty that there was no treadmill, nor anything approaching to the hard-labour system, in the Reading gaol. The number of prisoners, whose names were on the printed calendar as having been sentenced to imprisonment in Reading gaol, with hard labour, from 1844 to 1849, was 1,625; and yet in that gaol the provisions of the statute were utterly disregarded. Notwithstanding the inspector's report, the Home Office had taken no steps to enforce obedience to the law. Many of those prisoners had been committed again and again to the soft and effeminate indulgence of that gaol. Who could say, if the law had done its office to those individuals, that the county would have had again to pay for their support while suffering imprisonment? If they had not been reformed, they might have been deterred, by the severity of the punishment, from subjecting themselves to it a second time. He thanked the House for having afforded so patient a hearing to a long address upon a very unpromising subject. His presence in that House as the representative of a large constituency, anxious to see the principles of a reformatory self-sup- 551 porting system of prison discipline receive a fair trial, under the authority of a legislative enactment, must plead his apology for the pertinacity he had manifested in pressing his opinions upon the attention of the House. Had it not been for his advocacy of these opinions, he should not have found favour with the constituency of Lambeth; for he had distinctly told that independent body of electors, although he should maintain by his votes the consistency of his early political opinions, he should take no active share in the party discussions which at times agitated the House. Had it been his fortune to have attained a seat at an earlier period of his life, the excitement of young ambition might have tempted him to peril the breakers of that stormy sea. His only desire now was, that the remnant of his public life should be devoted to the improvement of their social institutions; and he knew of no object more worthy of a man's best efforts than the endeavour to devise and establish a sound reformatory system of prison discipline. The noble Lord at the head of Her Majesty's Government had, in his address to the electors of London, stated, that one of his objects in taking the reins of Government was to endeavour to solve the difficult and important problem of secondary punishment and prison discipline. He (Mr. Pearson) had sought a seat in Parliament to co-operate with the noble Premier in endeavouring to solve the important question. Having devoted more than a quarter of a century, with extended means of information possessed by few, to the consideration of the question, he thought he ought not to be deemed presumptuous in imagining himself capable of contributing his contingent of facts and opinions to aid in its solution. He again repeated, that he felt confident a sound system might be devised, founded upon the principles propounded by Howard, and practically illustrated by the experience of the prisons in America, France, and Belgium, and improved by the additional light and knowledge which subsequent inquiry had cast upon the subject. Let them deal with a man in gaol according to the same precepts of religion, and the same laws of political economy, by which he was governed in a free condition. Let him have nothing but water and coarse bread until he had earned better fare by hard and continuous labour, except in cases where from age, infirmity, or sickness, a just exception might be made to 552 the otherwise edict of the divine law, that if "a man will not work, neither shall he eat." The number of criminals would then be soon reduced by the operation of a system which would prove itself at once punitive, reformatory, and economical. Stimulate convicted prisoners by adequate motives to habitual labour and industry—by making the quantity and quality of their food and the duration of their imprisonment dependent upon the gravity of their crimes outside the prison, and by their conduct and the amount of their work and labour within it—they would be found as a class able and willing to provide themselves and their keepers with food and clothing, without unjustly interfering with the rights of free labour, and without subjecting the revenues of the nation or the rates of the county to one single shilling of expense. The hon. Gentleman concluded by proposing his Motion.
§
Motion made and Question proposed—
That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire and report upon the practicability of establishing an uniform system of Discipline, punitive, reformatory, and self-supporting, to be applied to all persons sentenced to imprisonment for crimes.
§ MR. OSBORNEseconded the Motion.
§ SIR G. GREYgave every credit to the hon. Gentleman for the attention and pains which he for many years had bestowed upon this subject; and he hoped the hon. Gentleman would not suppose, because he did not assent to the Motion without requiring the hon. Gentleman to make a speech, that he at all undervalued its importance. With many of the opinions which the hon. Gentleman had expressed, he (Sir G. Grey) perfectly agreed, and he had no doubt they would meet with the concurrence of all persons who had had their attention called to prison discipline; but from many other opinions delivered by the hon. Gentleman he entirely disagreed. If the House were to enter upon an inquiry according to the terms of the resolution, the Session would expire long before their investigation could be brought to a close. If any inquiry were to be instituted into the existing system of prison discipline, it ought to be of a much more limited and specific character than that now proposed. It was true, by the important alteration which the hon. Gentleman had just made, he excluded from his inquiry the prisons at Millbank, Pentonville, and Portland, and also the hulks, which were appro- 553 priated to persons sentenced to transportation. These the hon. Gentleman now-left out, although a great part of his speech did apply to those prisons. The hon. Gentleman dwelt upon the importance of penal labour as connected with imprisonment, and contended that we ought not to allow prisoners to remain in a state of idleness, which was the practice under the old system. Before the great experiment which had recently been attempted to be carried into effect, prisoners were associated together without any order, decency, or control, and were allowed to spend their time in complete idleness, without anything approaching to a good system being adopted, whether in a moral, a social, or a religious point of view. But the hon. Gentleman had not done justice to the great improvements which had been introduced in recent times in the system of prison discipline. In the latter part of his speech the hon. Gentleman advised a uniform system in the erection of prisons, and also some uniformity in the cost. In a resolution which the hon. Gentleman had moved elsewhere, he stated that there ought to be no needless expense in the construction of a prison; that not one shilling should be expended on the beauty or ornament of the building, but that all that was required was convenience and security, and such arrangements as were necessary to health. In that opinion he (Sir G. Grey) entirely concurred; and if these things had not uniformly been attended to, the fault was not with the Government, which had no controlling power over the expenditure beyond that which was involved in the approval of the plans. The hon. Gentleman had referred to a passage in the report of the inspector of prisons for the northern district, containing an extraordinary statement, which he (Sir G. Grey) could neither verify nor contradict, to the effect that a portion of the prison in York had recently been enlarged at an expense of 1,200l for each prisoner. Now, he understood that the part of the prison to which the hon. Gentleman's reference applied was built 25 years ago, before the introduction of the modern improvements, which had tended rather to reduce than increase the expense of erection. [Mr. PEARSON said, he had quoted the passage from the last year's report, which said" recently."] He repeated that he understood it was built 25 years ago. The hon. Gentleman had also alluded to the 554 increase which had taken place in the number of commitments. He (Sir G. Grey) understood him at first, when he alluded to that point, as intending to adduce it as a proof of the inefficiency of prison discipline; but the hon. Gentleman had been candid enough to admit that the increase had been owing to various causes, such as an improved system of police, which had led to the better detection of crime, and to modern legislation, which had constituted various new offences. The hon. Gentleman had fairly admitted that a great improvement in the general state of society had taken place. Therefore, the inference, if any, which should be drawn from the statistics quoted by the hon. Gentleman, was rather in favour of the efficiency of the present system than otherwise. The hon. Gentleman had left the House in the dark as to the system which he proposed for the prisons with 1,000 prisoners, which he wished to see erected. When he complained of the system at present in operation, and when he spoke of the expense which was incurred in the erection of existing prisons, he ought to have given the House a little more information about the accommodation of the prisons which he proposed to erect, and whether all the prisoners were to be furnished with separate sleeping places—as almost all persons who had studied the subject considered to be indispensable—or whether the prisoners were to be forced to associate together day and night. The hon. Gentleman stated, that in these days we thought only of the comfort of the prisoners, and he had drawn a picture of a prison which was extremely well regulated. He (Sir G. Grey) had not, like the hon. Gentleman, had an opportunity of seeing that prison, and he was not prepared to say that Reading gaol was perfectly administered; but he must say, from his experience of the prisons on the separate system at Pentonville and elsewhere, that he believed no system was so effectual both for the repression of crime and the improvement of the criminal. The hon. Gentleman had also affirmed that the philanthropic Howard had never contemplated the adoption of the system of separate imprisonment. He (Sir G. Grey) would read a passage from the third report of the inspectors of prisons, which contradicted that opinion. [Here the right hon. Gentleman quoted the passage to which he referred, and also an extract from Paley's Moral Philosophy, showing that he too 555 was in favour of the separate system.] He quite agreed with the hon. Gentleman, that there ought to be labour associated with imprisonment; and he believed, in every well-regulated system of imprisonment it was so. No doubt it would be a great advantage to have a sufficient space for the occasional employment of prisoners in the open air; but when the hon. Gentleman proposed to have 1,000 acres appropriated to spade labour for the prisoners, he (Sir G. Grey) must appeal to the county Members whether they were prepared to build prisons in every county of the kind which the hon. Gentleman had described? He certainly considered that the first outlay for such buildings would form a serious obstacle to the general adoption of the hon. Member's plan, whatever its results might be as regarded industrial labour—respecting which, however, he was not so sanguine as the hon. Gentleman. With respect to the profitable employment of prisoners, he begged to tell the hon. Gentleman, that, in the Government prisons, the practice was to do precisely what the hon. Gentleman had recommended, namely, to cause the tailors to make the clothes, and the shoemakers to make the shoes, of the prisoners, so as to prevent the necessity of paying for that work out of doors. No doubt there was considerable difficulty in finding profitable employment for prisoners, without interfering with the industrial occupation of others; and that was a very formidable objection to the scheme of the hon. Member. With regard to that plan, he begged to say he did not see what a Committee was to inquire into. He was not prepared to say, that an inquiry might not usefully be instituted into the system of prison discipline. An inquiry into that subject had taken place before a Committee of the House of Lords not long ago. There had been inquiries at previous periods from time to time into the same subject; and he was not prepared to express a final opinion that another inquiry might not be instituted with advantage; but he objected to inquire into a speculative plan like that proposed by the hon. Member. When the hon. Gentleman talked of stimulating the minds of the prisoners by means of compulsory labour—or rather by labour which in one sense was not compulsory, because it was the result of their own will-he (Sir G. Grey) presumed he meant the system advocated by Captain Maconochie, of substituting labour 556 sentences for time sentences. The Government were at one time anxious to introduce that principle; but, after communicating with persons whose opinions were entitled to great weight, they found there were very obvious objections to the adoption of any alteration of the law on that subject. The plan of labour sentences was founded on the supposition that all ablebodied men were capable of performing the same amount of labour, whereas it was obvious that that must necessarily vary with the health, skill, age, and physical circumstances of each individual, which it was impossible for any judge to know at the time of passing the sentence, so as to enable him properly to apportion the punishment upon each prisoner. Now, under the existing system, the sentences both of persons transported and persons imprisoned might be abridged in cases of good conduct, without involving the obvious difficulties he had pointed out. He repeated, that he did not see what advantage was to be gained by appointing a Committee to inquire into the hon. Gentleman's plan, because it was not a matter of fact which could be settled by a Committee. A prison of the kind described by the hon. Gentleman might cost double the amount in one situation from what it would do in another. The price of a site, for instance, would be materially affected by being near a large town, and the price of building materials in one place might be higher than in another. The hon. Member was mistaken, also, in assuming that every acre of land would produce the same amount of profit. In these circumstances he did not think that so far as the hon. Gentleman had developed his plan, he had made out any case to justify the House in appointing a Committee to inquire into the plan and estimates which he proposed to lay before them. With respect to the existing system of separate imprisonment, he believed that the more it was inquired into, the more efficient it would be found; for, although it would require to be watched with great care and vigilance, it was a system which had not only been recommended by persons of great philanthropy and enlightened and enlarged views, but by experience. The hon. Gentleman had talked of its expense; but the fact was, that the expence of erecting a prison with separate cells and sleeping places was not materially higher than the expense of other prisons. In the diet of the prisoners there might be additional expense. He 557 understood the hon. Gentleman to advocate only such diet as was necessary for health, and nothing beyond, and to contend that there should be nothing attractive in a prison; and he agreed so far with the hon. Gentleman; but it should be borne in mind, that when a man was shut up in prison he did require more to sustain him than when he was in the open air and following his usual occupations. The dietaries in force were adopted after considerable inquiry, not by himself, but by his right hon. predecessor in office, the Member for Ripon. In several cases they had been dispensed with, and lower dietaries adopted on the recommendation of the magistrates, when those lower dietaries were found consistent with the maintenance of the health of the prisoners; and certainly beyond that point the dietaries ought not to go. Consistently with the maintenance of health, which was an object always to be kept in view, the more severe the punishment, and the more distasteful it was rendered, the more likely was it to deter from crime; and the next object was the reformation of the criminal. With respect to separate imprisonment, the right hon. Gentleman, in addition to the other authorities he had quoted in its favour, here referred to the authority of Sir S. Romilly; and in proof that it was not calculated to produce insanity, he referred to the report of the inspector of prisons in the western district, contending that it did not tend more to that result than any other system of imprisonment. The hon. Gentleman had alluded to a prisoner at Reading, who, he said, had insanity brought on by his imprisonment; but it did not follow that that individual might not have become insane by imprisonment in any other gaol. The hon. Gentleman had made an attack on Reading gaol, and had observed that the recommittals to that gaol proved the in-efficacy of the system adopted; but he (Sir G. Grey) would read a statement on the subject, made by the chaplain of Reading gaol:—
I will first disprove the statement by correcting the table given by Mr. Pearson, and then by referring to some facts which contradict the representations made. In the eighth page of the Synopsis we have a table which gives the number of commitments during eight years; and, taking the average of the first five years, we observe 1,078 under the old system—taking the four succeeding years under the separate system, the average is 990. But from the last number must be subtracted 65 convicts, committed from different parts of the kingdom, and sent by Government to be subjected to the discipline of the 558 Berkshire gaol. Again, the new class of criminal debtors, sentenced to imprisonment by the county courts, amounting to 48 during the last two years must be deducted, and thus the average number under the separate system is 962, being an annual decrease of 116. Mr. Pearson says the adoption of the system has led to 'numerous committals,' A very indefinite expression and, reverting to the diminution I have noticed, certainly as strange and unwarranted an inference as could have been deduced. The separate system at Reading has lessened the number of committals by 116—more than 10 per cent—therefore, the separate system attracts IThat rev. gentleman referred to the report of the inspector of prisons for the northern district, who stated—On the general subject of recommitals, it may be remarked, that the present mode of ascertaining the proportion of recommitted prisoners is very unsatisfactory; and, moreover, that this proportion, even if correctly ascertained, affords but little indication, unless others be also taken into account, of the comparative efficacy of the system of discipline in different prisons, in reforming offenders, or deterring from crime. At present, some of the worst prisons have the fewest recommitments.He (Sir G. Grey) would not read other extracts which went to prove, what many Members in that House acting in their magisterial capacity, were able to bear testimony to, that there was a tendency in the separate system to prevent recommittals; and at that late hour he would not go more fully into the subject. He must, however, say, that whatever system was adopted, it ought to be a deterring system; and he thought that this object was better attained under the system coming now into operation through the country—namely, the separate system, than under any previous system which had existed. If the hon. Gentleman intended to substitute the prisons he had spoken of for the existing county prisons, an enormous expenditure would be occasioned. What would the hon. Gentleman do with untried prisoners? The hon. Gentleman's system was applicable to tried prisoners; but there must also he prisons in which persons committed for trial could be kept, and these added to the others would entail a very heavy expense on the counties. Having stated the grounds on which he thought that the general Motion of the hon. Gentleman should not be adopted, he would add, that if there were a wish on the part of the House to have a Committee of Inquiry next Session respecting the building of prisons and the treatment of prisoners, he was not prepared to say that he should have any objection to its appointment. 559 Since he had been in the House, he had received information from a friend of his, a magistrate of Berkshire, that, so far as Reading gaol was concerned, the magistrates courted inquiry, not being disposed to shrink fron investigation to the fullest extent, and being prepared to abide by the result, as from their experience they believed that the system adopted tended to diminish crime. Under all the circumstances, he hoped that the hon. Gentleman would not press for a decision of the House on the Motion he had brought forward.
§ MR. ROBERT PALMERsaid, that though he had no connexion with Reading gaol beyond that which arose from the circumstance of his belonging to the general body of the county magistrates, yet, as that establishment had been very much attacked by the hon. Gentleman who brought forward the present Motion, he would state in a few words the view he took on the subject. With respect to Mr. Merry, who had been alluded to, he was most zealous in the discharge of his duty as a magistrate, and he expressed a wish for the fullest inquiry into the circumstances of Reading gaol, stating that there was not a record or an account which would not bear the strictest investigation. He (Mr. Palmer) apprehended that the great distinction of this new system was the separation of prisoners from one another; and when Reading gaol was fust built, and that system was proposed to be carried out, he had great doubts whether it would answer; but, having carried on the system now for some time in Reading gaol, he believed that those who opposed it the most when first introduced, were now inclined to believe that it had effected considerable good. The chaplain of Reading gaol could not be too highly praised for his zeal, and for his attention to the prisoners under his charge; and he stated, that greater effect was produced on the prisoners under the new system than under the old. Under the old system twelve or fifteen prisoners were locked up in a ward without any one to overlook them, and the consequence was, they were at liberty to concoct any sort of mischief. Now they were placed in separate cells. And it must be observed there was great difference between separate and solitary confinement. The latter was almost the greatest punishment that could be inflicted; the former, one under which the prisoners could have frequent visits from those who could afford them instruction. He could not but think 560 there were errors in the statement of the hon. Gentleman as to the number of recommittals, and indeed the observations of the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary seemed to bear out that impression. With respect to the expense of constructing the new gaol, it had been admittedly very great; but it should be remembered that it was built under the advice, and almost superintendence, of the inspectors of prisons—that the contracts were open, and that several architects had competed for the honour and profit of its construction, and that the Committee of Management had the authority of the inspectors of prisons to say that the cost would come to a certain sum per man. The original expense was calculated at 35,000l.; but a considerable increase had certainly taken place in consequence of several additions, and of plans for warming and ventilating the building. With respect to the expenses of prosecutions, he could inform the hon. Gentleman that they had been much diminished, and the county rate proportionably lightened. The plan of Reading gaol, and the system adopted there, had been approved of by more than one Government. The hon. Gentleman spoke of the use of hard labour there. Now, it was excessively difficult to determine what different persons called hard labour. When Acts of Parliament specified hard labour, it was necessary of course to inflict it; but he could inform the hon. Member that the treadmill, which had formerly been in use, was now abandoned, and other modes of punishment resorted to. There was no doubt that the prisoners received better diet than many men who had only their own earnings to depend upon; but he had been told that those in confinement, particularly under the separate system, required more food than prisoners under other circumstances.
§ MR. BROTHERTONmoved the adjournment of the debate, as it was after twelve o'clock, and the subject could not possibly be concluded that night.
§ Debate adjourned.
§ The House adjourned at half-after Twelve o'clock.