-that debtors shall be kept separate from those accused or convicted of crimes the accused from convicts minors from notorious offenders - those accused or convicted of mere offences, from those accused or convicted of infamous crimes-that no two of these various classes shall ever meet, except for labor or for moral or religious instruction, and that no communication shall be allowed between prisoners of the different classes. Whether any further provisions may be necessary in relation to these matters need not now be discussed.

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The British government, enlightened by experience, has determined to make an important change in its whole system of secondary punishments; and last June, a plan was submitted to Parliament for this purpose, which will undoubtedly be definitively acted on at the next session. It proposes, that convicts under sentence of transportation, shall pass from six to eighteen months, one year on an average, under a system of discipline like that established at Pentonville, and shall afterwards labor together in gangs on the public works in Gibraltar, or Bermuda, or in the new harbors of refuge in England. The time fixed for their labor is to bear some relation to the length of their sentences, so that one condemned to seven years transportation will after four years of labor be, in case of good conduct, entirely discharged, whereas the greater criminals, sentenced to much longer terms of transportation, after laboring on the public works for the time allotted to them, would be

they never return at any time, or in any event to her own shores. Better recall the "wolves, her old inhabitants."

It is worthy of notice, that in the debates in the House of Commons, on the third and tenth of June last, Sir George Grey, expressed his concurrence in the opinion of Sir Benjamin Brodie and Dr. Ferguson, who had both been on the commission for the management of Pentonville prison, that the utmost watchfulness and discretion on the part of the governor, chaplain and medical attendants, would be requisite in order to administer the system established there with safety, and Sir James Graham repeated the same sentiment. Now, why urge the necessity of extreme caution, if there is not extreme danger? We hear nothing of this necessity with relation to Parkhurst or to Charlestown. And if there is great danger that the bodily and mental health will in many cases be so deranged as to require medical interference, is there not a certainty, that in many more there will be a degree of debility and depression not amounting to positive disease, which no vigilance can detect; in which the intellect will be enfeebled without being prostrated, and the nervous system seriously impaired, though not absolutely shattered? These effects when perceived, may perhaps be deemed hereafter, as they have been heretofore, to be evidences of reformation. But it is a capital error to suppose that they promote or indicate any real improvement of the morals or of the intellect.

As the British government, however, already proposes to reduce the average time of confinement at Pen

tonville from eighteen months to twelve, and appears to be aware of the necessity of the utmost watchfulness in this matter, it may be presumed that it will exercise such watchfulness, and if further experience should recommend it, will confine the application of this system of social separation and laborious idleness, to three months or three weeks; the less the better; though it cannot be expected entirely to abandon an establishment, which was built at so great a cost, and with such lofty predictions.

But there is surely nothing in this model system, which we need wish to imitate. Their daily walks are unnecessary here, for vigorous toil is exercise enough. We need not set apart two days in the week for the moral and intellectual culture of our prisoners, for their labor is not so oppressive and exhausting as to prevent their having the strength, as they have the time for it every day; and this daily variety of occupation seems to us better than to give the whole day to one pursuit alone; far better than one whole year of Pentonville education followed by four years of unmitigated toil.

It is not pretended, that the system established here is perfect. Far from it. It is hoped that it may go on improving from year to year, and still be regarded as an experiment, a system upon trial; and not one whose invariable success we are willing to vouch for, or to the future support of which we are in any manner pledged. The system which will produce a complete reformation in all convicts, or in most of them, is yet to be discovered.

Still less is it presumed to urge its adoption on other countries, or to express the slightest regret or astonishment, that they do not prefer it to their own. It may well be, that a mode of prison discipline fitted for Massachusetts, with its few hundred convicts, is inapplicable to England with her thousands. It may be that France, with her immense resources, and her sisters of charity and her brothers of charity, can furnish every one of her convicts with a constant succession of virtuous companions; and that other nations of Europe may have special reasons unknown to us for establishing different systems. Of these things they must judge for themselves. But without the slightest disposition to dictate to them, we do not feel called upon in relation to this subject to submit to their dictation.

Considering, then, that from the experience of our own country hitherto, it appears that the system of constant separation as established here, even when administered with the utmost humanity, produces so many cases of insanity and of death as to indicate most clearly, that its general tendency is to enfeeble the body and the mind;-considering that the results of labor under our different systems, where both are best enforced, abundantly show, that habits of industry and skill in laborious occupations, may be more speedily and effectually acquired by working in company with others under the constant inspection of a master, than they usually are in entire solitude; - considering that our system of social labor is found to afford suffi