Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

Captain Maconochie's system may be divided into two distinct and very different parts; namely, the general principles and the details. Concerning the latter, we are unwilling to hazard an opinion, deeming them peculiarly a matter of experiment, and incapable of proof or refutation by any other test than experience. But principles are universal, and, if true, may always be supported by argument, and strengthened by discussion; those of the Mark System, we think, will bear the application of both. No one possessed of the smallest experience of the human mind, will deny that it is utterly impossible to inculcate and fix good habits by a process which is continually distasteful to the patient. With regard to labour, which is compulsory and unproductive, the labourer, so far from becoming habituated to it, loathes it the more the longer he is obliged to continue it. Such labour, moreover, has no good effect upon the mind; it produces nothing but disgust and discontent. A similar result is produced upon the body under similar circumstances. Exercise is only beneficial when taken with a good will, and enjoyed with a zest: a man who should walk but two or three miles, grumbling all the way, would be as tired at the end as though he had walked twenty in a more contented mood. What, then, will some one say, are prisoners not to be punished at all? Is every thing to be made easy to them, and ingenuity taxed for devices to render their sentences agreeable, and to take the sting from imprisonment? The answer is ready. The law is not vindictive, and does not pretend to inflict suffering beyond what is necessary for the security of society. The thief and the homicide cannot be allowed to go at large. They must either be sent out of the country, or shut up within it. By some means or other, they must be deprived of the power of inflicting further injury upon their fellow-creatures. But how long are they to be cut off from the world? For a time fixed and irrevocable, and irrespective of subsequent good conduct, or reformation of character, or any other consideration than only the magnitude of the original offence? Surely neither reason nor humanity can approve such a doctrine; for does it not, in fact, involve the very principle which our law repudiates, namely, the principle that its punishments are vindictive? If a man who steals a horse, and is condemned to three years' imprisonment, be compelled to undergo the whole sentence, without reference to his conduct under confinement, this surely is vengeance, and not, what it assumes to be, a punishment proportioned to the necessity of the case. It is, no doubt, proper that a criminal should be condemned to suffer some loss of liberty, more or less, according to the nature of his delinquency, and a minimum should always be fixed; but it seems equally proper, and consistent with acknowledged principles, that a power should reside somewhere of diminishing the maximum, and where more advantageously than in the criminal himself? If the motives which govern the world at large, and operate upon men in ordinary life, to make them frugal and industrious, and to keep them honest, can be brought to bear upon the isolated community of a jail, why should they not? The object is humane; not injurious, but, on the contrary, highly beneficial to society; and not opposed to any established rule of law or general policy. We can conceive no possible argument against it, save that which we have already noticed, and, we trust, satisfactorily.

It is worthy of notice, as being calculated to satisfy the scruples of those who may be alarmed at the introduction of what they imagine a novel principle into our criminal jurisprudence, that this, the main feature of the Mark System, is not new. It is sanctioned by long usage in our penal settlements. In the Australian colonies, a man under sentence of transportation for years or for life may, by his own conduct, both shorten the duration and mitigate the severity of his punishment. By industry, by a peaceable demeanour, by the exercise of skill and ingenuity acquired in better times, he may obtain advantages which are not accorded to others. By a steady continuance in such behaviour, he may acquire the privilege of working for himself, and enjoying the produce of his labour. In the end, he may even be rewarded by a free pardon. If all these things may be done in Australia, why not also in England? Surely there is more to be said on behalf of convicts sentenced to imprisonment than for those sentenced to transportation. If our sympathy, or, to speak more correctly, our mercy, is to be inversely to the enormity of the offence, then the English prisoner is most entitled to our regard. It is possible that the transportation system may be wrong, but, at least, let us be consistent.

It is not necessary that Captain Maconochie's plan should be adopted in extenso, to the immediate and active subversion of the ancient system. We may feel our way. There is no reason why a single prison should not be set apart, or, if necessary, specially constructed, for the purpose of applying the test of practice to the new theory. A short act might be passed, empowering the judges to inflict labour instead of time-sentences – of course, within a certain limit as to number. Captain Maconochie himself might be entrusted with the superintendence of the experiment, in order to avoid the possibility of a suspicion that it had not received a fair trial. If, with every reasonable advantage, the scheme should eventually prove impracticable, then, of course, it will sink into oblivion, and be consigned to the limbo of impossible theories. The country will have sustained no loss, save the insignificant expense of the model machinery.

Considering the whole subject – its importance, its difficulty, the novelty of the proposed amendments, and their magnitude – we are disposed to agree with the learned Recorder of Birmingham, that "the plan is highly deserving of notice." Objections, of course, might be made in abundance, over and above those we have thought proper to notice. These, however, may be all reduced to one, namely, that the scheme is impracticable. That it may prove so, we do not deny; nor could any one, with a grain of prudence, venture to deny it, seeing how many promising projects are daily failing, not through their own intrinsic defects, but through miscalculation of opposing forces. The test of the Mark System, we repeat, must be experience. All that we seek to establish in its favour is the soundness of its principles. Of these we do not hesitate to avow a perfect approval; and, in doing so, we do not fear being classed among the disciples of the new school of pseudo-philanthropy, whose academy is Exeter Hall, and whose teachers are such men as Lord Nugent and Mr Fox. It is quite possible to feel compassion for the guilty, and a solicitude for their temporal as well as eternal welfare, without elevating them into the dignity of martyrs, and fixing one's attention upon them, to the neglect of their more honest and less protected neighbours. It is no uncommon thing to hear comparisons drawn between the conditions of the prisoner and the pauper – between the abundant nourishing food of the former, and the scanty meagre rations of the latter! There is no doubt that better fare is provided in a jail than in a workhouse. Good reasons, perhaps, may be given for the distinction, but in appearance it is horribly unjust. No system which proposed to encourage it would ever receive our approbation. The Mark System is adverse to the pampering of criminals. It seeks to enforce temperance and frugality, both by positive rewards, and by punishing gluttony and indulgence. Its object is the improvement, not of the physical, but the moral condition of the prisoner. His mind, not his body, is its especial care – a prudent, humane, we will even say, a pious care! Visionary it may be, though we think not – absurd it can never be, except in the eyes of those to whom the well-being of their fellow-creatures is matter of indifference, and who, too frivolous to reflect, or too shallow to penetrate the depths of things, seek to disguise their ignorance and folly under cover of ridicule. To such we make no appeal. But to the many really humane and sensible persons who are alive to the importance of the subject, we recommend a deliberate examination of the Mark System.

M.

LAYS AND LEGENDS OF THE THAMES

Never was there such a summer on this side of the Tropics. How is it possible to exist, with the thermometer up to boiling point! London a vast caldron – the few people left in its habitable parts strongly resembling stewed fish – the aristocratic portion of the world flying in all directions, though there are three horticultural fetes to come – the attachés to all the foreign embassies sending in their resignations, rather than be roasted alive – the ambassadors all on leave, in the direction of the North Pole – the new governor of Canada congratulated, for the first time in national history, on his banishment to a land where he has nine months winter; – and a contract just entered into with the Wenham Lake Company for ten thousand tons of ice, to rescue the metropolis from a general conflagration.

– Went to dine with the new East India Director, in his Putney paradise. Sir Charles gives dinners worthy of the Mogul, and he wants nothing of the pomps and pleasures of the East but a harem. But, in the mean time, he gathers round him a sort of human menagerie; and every race of man, from the Hottentot to the Highlander, is to be found feeding in his Louis Quatorze saloons.

This certainly variegates the scene considerably, and relieves us of the intolerable topics, of Parliament, taxes, the last attempt on Louis Philippe, the last adventure of Queen Christina, or the last good thing of the last great bore of Belgrave Square; with the other desperate expedients to avoid the inevitable yawn. We had an Esquimaux chief, who, however, dwelt too long on the luxury of porpoise steaks; a little plump Mandarin, who indulged us with the tricks of the tea trade; the sheik Ben Hassan Ben Ali, who had narrowly escaped hanging by the hands of the French; and a New Zealand chief, strongly suspected of habits inconsistent with the European cuisine, yet who restricted himself on this occasion to every thing at the table.

At length, in a pause of the conversation, somebody asked where somebody else was going, for the dog-days. The question engaged us all. But, on comparing notes, every Englishman of the party had been everywhere already – Cairo, Constantinople, Calcutta, Cape Horn. There was not a corner of the world, where they had not drunk tea, smoked cigars, and anathematised the country, the climate, and the constitution. Every thing was usé– every soul was blasé. There was no hope of novelty, except by an Artesian perforation to the centre, or a voyage to the moon.

At last a curious old personage, with a nondescript visage, and who might, from the jargon of his tongue and the mystery of his costume, have been a lineal descendant of the Wandering Jew, asked, had any one at table seen the Thames?

The question struck us all at once. It was a grand discovery; it was a flash of light; it was the birth of a new idea; it was an influx of brilliant inquiry. It was ascertained, that though we had all steamed up and down the Thames times without number, not one of us had seen the river. Some had always steamed it in their sleep; some had plunged at once into the cabin, to avoid the passengers on deck; some had escaped the vision by the clouds of a cigar; some by a French novel and an English dinner. But not one could recollect any thing more of it than it flowed through banks more or less miry; that it was, to the best of their recollection, something larger than the Regent's Canal; and some thought that they had seen occasional masts and smoke flying by them.

My mind was made up on the spot. Novelty is my original passion – the spring of all my virtues and vices – the stimulant of all my desires, disasters, and distinctions. In short, I determined to see the Thames.

Rose at daybreak – the sky blue, the wind fragrant, Putney throwing up its first faint smokes; the villa all asleep. Leaving a billet for Sir Charles, I ordered my cab, and set off for the Thames. "How little," says Jonathan Swift, "does one-half of the world know what the other is doing." I had left Putney the abode of silence, a solitary policeman standing here and there, like the stork which our modern painters regularly put into the corner of their landscapes to express the sublime of solitude – no slipshod housemaid peeping from her window; no sight or sound of life to be seen through the rows of the flower-pots, or the lattices of the suburb gardens.

But, once in London, what a contrast. From the foot of London bridge what a rush of life; what an incursion of cabs; what a rattle of waggons; what a surge of population; what a chaos of clamour; what volcanic volumes of everlasting smoke rolling up against the unhappy face of the Adelaide hotel; what rushing of porters, and trundling of trunks; what cries of every species, utterable by that extraordinary machine the throat of man; what solicitations to trust myself, for instant conveyance to the remotest shore of the terraqueous globe! – "For Calais, sir? Boat off in half-an-hour." – "For Constantinople? in a quarter." – "For Alexandria? in five minutes." – "For the Cape? bell just going to ring." In this confusion of tongues it was a thousand to one that I had not jumped into the boat for the Niger, and before I recovered my senses, been far on my way to Timbuctoo.

In a feeling little short of desperation, or of that perplexity in which one labours to decypher the possible purport of a maiden speech, I flung myself into the first steamer which I could reach, and, to my genuine self-congratulation, found that I was under no compulsion to be carried beyond the mouth of the Thames.

I had now leisure to look round me. The bell had not yet chimed: passengers were dropping in. Carriages were still rolling down to the landing-place, laden with mothers and daughters, lapdogs and bandboxes, innumerable. The surrounding scenery came, as the describers say, "in all its power on my eyes." – St Magnus, built by Sir Christopher Wren, as dingy and massive as if it had been built by Roderic the Goth; St Olave's, rising from its ruins, as fresh as a fairy palace of gingerbread; the Shades, where men drink wine, as Bacchus did, from the bunghole; the Bridge of Bridges, clambered over and crowded with spectators as thick as hiving bees!

But – prose was never made for such things. I must be Pindaric.

London Bridge"My native land, good-night!"Adieu, adieu, thou huge, high bridgeA long and glad adieu!I see above thy stony ridgeA most ill-favour'd crew.The earth displays no dingier sight;I bid the whole – Good-night, good-night!There, hang between me and the skyShe who doth oysters sell,The youth who parboil'd shrimps doth cry,The shoeless beau and belle,Blue-apron'd butchers, bakers white,Creation's lords! – Good-night, good-night!Some climb along the slippery wall,Through balustrades some stare,One wonders what has perch'd them allFive hundred feet in air.The Thames below flows, ready quiteTo break their fall. – Good-night, good-night!What visions fill my parting eyes!St Magnus, thy grim tower,Almost as black as London skies!The Shades, which are no bower;St Olave's, on its new-built site,In flaming brick. – Good-night, good-night!The rope's thrown off, the paddles move,We leave the bridge behind;Beat tide below, and cloud above; —Asylums for the blind,Schools, storehouses, fly left and right;Docks, locks, and blocks – Good-night, good-night!In distance fifty steeples dance.St Catherine's dashes by,The Customhouse scarce gets a glance,The sounds of Bowbell die.With charger's speed, or arrow's flight,We steam along. – Good-night, good-night!The Tower seems whirling in a waltz,As on we rush and roar.Where impious man makes Cheltenham salts,We shave the sullen shore;Putting the wherries all in fright,Swamping a few. – Good-night, good-night!We brave the perils of the Pool;Pass colliers chain'd in rows;See coalheavers, as black and coolAs negroes without clothes,Each bouncing, like an opera sprite,Stript to the skin. – Good-night, good-night!And now I glance along the deckOur own live-stock to view —Some matrons, much in fear of wreck;Some lovers, two by two;Some sharpers, come the clowns to bite;Some plump John Bulls. – Good-night, good-night!A shoal of spinsters, book'd for France,(All talking of Cheapside;)An old she-scribbler of romance,All authorship and pride;A diner-out, (timeworn and trite,)A gobe-mouche group. – Good-night, good-night!A strolling actor and his wife,Both going to "make hay;"An Alderman, at fork and knife,The wonder of his day!Three Earls, without an appetite,Gazing, in spleen. – Good-night, good-night!Ye dear, delicious memories!That to our midriffs clingAs children to their Christmas pies,(So, all the New-School sing;In collars loose, and waistcoats white,)All, all farewell! – Good-night, good-night!

The charming author of that most charming of all brochures, Le Voyage autour de ma Chambre, says, that the less a man has to write about, the better he writes. But this charming author was a Frenchman; he was born in the land where three dinners can be made of one potato, and where moonshine is a substantial part of every thing. He performed his voyage, standing on a waxed floor, and making a circuit of his shelves; the titles of his books had been his facts, and the titillations of his snuff the food of his fancy. But John Bull is of another style of thinking. His appetite requires solid realities, and I give him docks, wharfs, steam-engines, and manufactures, for his powerful mastication. – But, what scents are these, rising with such potentiality upon the morning breeze? What sounds, "by distance made more sweet?" What a multitude of black, brown, bustling beings are crushing up that narrow avenue, from these open boats, like a new invasion of the pirate squadrons from the north of old. Oh, Billingsgate! – I scent thee —

– "As when to them who sailBeyond the Cape of Hope, and now are pastMozambic, far at sea the north winds blowSabæan odours from the spicy shoreOf Araby the Blest. With such delayWell-pleased, they slack their course, and many a league,Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles."

The effect was not equally rapturous in the Thames; but on we flew, passing groups of buildings which would have overtopped all the castles on the Rhine, had they but been on fair ground; depots of wealth, which would have purchased half the provinces beyond the girdle of the Black Forest; and huge steamers, which would have towed a captive Armada to the Tower.

The Tower! what memories are called up by the name! How frowning are those black battlements, how strong those rugged walls, how massive those iron-spiked gates! Every stone is historical, and every era of its existence has been marked by the mightiest changes of men, monarchs, and times; then I see the fortress, the palace and the prison of kings!

But, let me people those resounding arches, dim passages, and solemn subterraneans, with the past. Here, two thousand years ago, Julius Cæsar kept his military court, with Quæstors, Prefects, and Tribunes, for his secretaries of state; Centurions for his chamberlains; and Augurs for his bishops. On this bank of the stately river, on which no hovel had encroached, but which covered with its unpolluted stream half the landscape, and rolled in quiet majesty to meet the ocean; often stood the man, who was destined to teach the Republican rabble of Rome that they had a master. I leave antiquarians to settle the spot trodden by his iron sandal. I disdain the minute meddling of the men of fibulæ and frustums of pitchers. But I can see – "in my mind's eye, Horatio" – the stately Roman casting many an eager glance eastward, and asking himself, with an involuntary grasp of his hilt, and an unconscious curl of his lip, how long he was to suffer the haranguers of the populace, the pilferers of the public, the hirelings of Cinna and Sylla, and of every man who would hire them, the whole miry mass of reformers, leaguers, and cheap-bread men, to clap their wings like a flight of crows over the bleeding majesty of Rome.

Then the chance sound of a trumpet, or the tread of a cohort along the distant rampart, would make him turn back his glance, and think of the twenty thousand first-rate soldiers whom a wave of his finger would move across the Channel, send through Gaul, sacking Lutetia, darting through the defiles of the Alps, and bringing him in triumph through the Janiculum, up to the temple of the Capitoline Jove. Glorious dreams, and gloriously realised! How vexatious is it that we cannot see the past, that we cannot fly back from the bustle of this blacksmith world, from the jargon of public life, and the tameness of private toil; into those majestic ages, when the world was as magnificent as a theatre; when nations were swallowed up in the shifting of a scene; when all were fifth acts, and when every catastrophe broke down an empire!

But, what sounds are these? The steamer had shot along during my reverie, and was now passing a long line of low-built strong vessels, moored in the centre of the river. I looked round, and here was more than a dream of the past; here was the past itself – here was man in his primitive state, as he had issued from the forest, before a profane axe had cropped its brushwood. Here I saw perhaps five hundred of my fellow-beings, no more indebted to the frippery of civilisation than the court of Caractacus. – Bold figures, daring brows, Herculean shapes, naked to the waist, and with skins of the deepest bronze. Cast in metal, and fixed in a gallery, they would have made an incomparable rank and file of gladiatorial statues.

The captain of the steamer explained the phenomenon. They were individuals, who, for want of a clear perception of the line to be drawn between meum and tuum, had been sent on this half-marine half-terrestrial service, to reinforce their morals. They were now serving their country, by digging sand and deepening the channel of the river. The scene of their patriotism was called the "hulks," and the patriots themselves were technically designated felons.

Before I could give another glance, we had shot along; and, to my surprise, I heard a chorus of their voices in the distance. I again applied to my Cicerone, who told me that all other efforts having failed to rectify their moral faculties; a missionary singing-master had been sent down among them, and was reported to be making great progress in their conversion.

I listened to the sounds, as they followed on the breeze. I am not romantic; but I shall say no more. The novelty of this style of reformation struck me. I regarded it as one of the evidences of national advance. – My thoughts instinctively flowed into poetry.

Song For The Million"Mirth, admit me of thy crew."Song, admit me of thy crew!Minstrels, without shirt or shoe,Geniuses with naked throats,Bare of pence, yet full of notes.Bards, before they've learn'd to write,Issuing their notes at sight;Notes, to tens of thousands mounting,Careless of the Bank's discounting.Leaving all the world behind,England, in thy march of Mind.Now, the carter drives his cart,Whistling, as he goes, Mozart.Now, a shilling to a guinea,Dolly cook, sol-fas Rossini.While the high-soul'd housemaid, Betty,Twirls her mop to Donizetti.Or, the scullion scrubs her ovenTo thy Runic hymns, Beethoven.All the sevants' hall combined,England, in thy march of Mind.Now, may maidens of all agesLook unharm'd on pretty pages.Now, may paupers "raise the wind,"Now, may score the great undined.Now, unblamed, may tender pairsGive themselves the tenderest airs.Now, may half-pay sons of MarsLook in freedom through their bars,Though upon a Bench reclined,England, in thy march of Mind.Soon we'll hear our "London cries"Dulcified to harmonies;Mackerel sold in canzonets,Milkmen "calling," in duets.Postmen's bells no more shall bore us,When their clappers ring in chorus.Ears no more shall start at, Dust O!When the thing is done with gusto.E'en policemen grow refined,England, in thy march of Mind.Song shall settle Church and State,Song shall supersede debate.Owlet Joe no more shall screech,We shall make him sing his speech.Even the Iron Duke's "sic volo"Shall be soften'd to a solo.Discords then shall be disgrace,Statesmen shall play thorough base;Whigs and Tories intertwined,England, in thy march of Mind.Sailors, under canvass stiff,Now no more shall dread a cliff.From Bombay to Coromandel,The Faqueers shall chorus Handel.Arab sheik, and Persian maiden,Simpering serenades from Haydn.Crossing then the hemisphere,Jonathan shall chant Auber,All his love of pelf resign'd,England, to thy march of Mind.

– Still moving on, still passing multitudinous agglomerations of brick, mortar, stone, and iron, rather than houses. – Docks crowded with masts, thicker than they ever grew in a pine forest, and echoing with the sounds of hammers, cranes, forges and enginery, making anchors for all the ships of ocean, rails for all the roads of earth, and chain-cables for a dozen generations to come. In front of one of those enormous forges, which, with its crowd of brawny hammerers glaring in the illumination of the furnace, gave me as complete a representation of the Cyclops and their cave, as any thing that can be seen short of the bowels of Ætna; stood a growing church, growing of iron; the walls were already half-way grown up. I saw them already pullulating into windows, a half-budded pulpit stood in the centre, and a Gothic arch was already beginning to spread like the foliage of a huge tree over the aisle. It was intended for one of the colonies, ten thousand miles off.