whether he is to live or die, it is at once decided for him that his counsel are to be dumb! And yet, so ignorant are men of their own interests, that there is not a single man tried who would not think it a great privilege if counsel were allowed to speak in his favour, and who would not be supremely happy to lay aside the fancied advantage of their silence. And this is true not merely of ignorant men; but there is not an Old Bailey barrister who would not rather employ another Old Bailey barrister to speak for him, than enjoy the advantage (as the phrase is) of having the Judge for his counsel. But in what sense, after all, is the Judge counsel for the prisoner? He states, in his summing up, facts as they have been delivered in evidence; and he tells the jury upon what points they are to decide: he mentions what facts are in favour of the prisoner, and what bear against him; and he leaves the decision to the jury. Does he do more than this in favour of the prisoner? Does he mistake? does he mislead? does he bring forward arguments on one side of the question, and omit equally important arguments on the other? If so, he is indeed counsel for the prisoner; but then who is Judge? who takes care of the interests of the public? But the truth is, he does no such thing; he does merely what we have stated him to do and would he do less, could he do less, if the prisoner's counsel spoke for him? If an argument were just, or an inference legitimate, he would not omit the one, or refute the other, because they had been put or drawn in the speech of the prisoner's counsel. He would be no more prejudiced against the defendant in a criminal than in a civil suit; he would select from the speeches of both counsel all that could be fairly urged for or against the defendant, and he would reply to their fallacious reasonings. The pure administration of justice requires of him, in either case, the same conduct. Whether the whole Bar spoke for the prisoner, or whether he was left to defend himself, -what can the Judge do, or what ought he to do, but to state to the jury the facts as they are given in evidence, and the impression these facts have made upon his own mind? In the meantime, while the prisoner's counsel have been compelled to be silent, the accuser's, the opposite party, have enjoyed an immense advantage. In considering what bears against the prisoner, the Judge has heard, not only the suggestions of his own understanding, but he has been exposed to the able and artful reasoning of a practised advocate, who has been previously instructed in the case of which the Judge never heard a syllable before he came into court. Suppose it be a case depending upon circumstantial evidence; in how many new points of view may a man of genius have placed those circumstances, which would not have occurred to the Judge himself! How many inferences may he have drawn, which would have been unnoticed, but for the efforts of a man whose bread and fame depend upon his exertions, and who has purposely, and on contract, flung the whole force of his understanding into one scale! In the meantime, the prisoner can say nothing, for he has not the gift of learned speech; his counsel can say nothing, though he has communicated with the prisoner, and could place the whole circumstances, perhaps, in the fairest and clearest point of view for the accused party. By the courtesy of England this is called justice-we in the North cannot admit of the correctness of the appellation.

It seems utterly to be forgotten, in estimating this practice, that two understandings are better than one. The Judge must inevitably receive many new views against the prisoner by the speech of one counsel, and lose many views in favour of the prisoner by the silence of the other. We are not to suppose (like ladies going into court in an assize town) that the Judge would have thought of every thing which the counsel against the prisoner has said, and which the counsel for the prisoner would have said. The Judge, wigged and robed as he is, is often very inferior in acuteness to either of the persons

who are pleading under him—a cold, slow, parchment and precedent man, without passions or præcordia,-perhaps a sturdy brawler for Church and King, or a quiet man of ordinary abilities, steadily, though perhaps conscientiously, following those in power through thick and thin-through right and wrong. Whence comes it that the method of getting at truth, which is so excellent on all common occasions, should be considered as so improper on the greatest of all occasions, where the life of a man is concerned? If an acre of land is to be lost or won, one man says all that can be said on one side of the question-another on the other; and the jury, aided by the impartiality of the Judge, decide. The wit of man can devise no better method of disentangling difficulty, exposing falsehood, and detecting truth.

"Tell me why I am hurried away to a premature death, and no man suffered to speak in my defence, when at this very moment, and in my hearing, all the eloquence of the Bar, on the other side of your justice-hall, is employed in defending a path or a hedge? Is a foot of land dearer to any man than my life is to me? The civil plaintiff has not trusted the smallest part of his fate or fortune to his own efforts; and will you grant me no assistance of superior wisdom, who have suffered a long famine to purchase it; who am broken by prison; broken by chains; and so shamed by this dress of guilt, and abashed by the presence of my superiors, that I have no words which you could hear without derision, that I could not give way for a moment to the fulness and agitation of my rude heart without moving your contempt?"

So spoke a wretched creature to a judge in our hearing! and what answer could be given, but "Jailer, take him away ?"

We are well aware that a great decency of language is observed by the counsel employed against the prisoner, in consequence of the silence imposed upon the opposite counsel; but then, though there is a decency, as far as concerns impassioned declamation, yet there is no restraint, and there can be no restraint upon the reasoning powers of a counsellor. He may put together the circumstances of an imputed crime in the most able, artful, and ingenious manner, without the slightest vehemence or passion. We have no objection to this, if any counter statement were permitted. We want only fair play. Speech for both sides, or speech for none. The first would be the wiser system; but the second would be clear from the intolerable cruelty of the present. We see no harm that would ensue, if both advocates were to follow their own plan without restraint. But, if the feelings are to be excluded in all causes of this nature (which seems very absurd), then let the same restraint be exacted from both sides. It might very soon be established as the etiquette of the Bar, that the pleadings on both sides were expected to be calm, and to consist of reasoning upon the facts. In high treason, where the partiality of the Judge and power of the court are suspected, this absurd incapacity of being heard by counsel is removed. Nobody pretends to say, in such cases, that the Judge would be counsel for the prisoner; and yet, how many thousand cases are there in a free country which have nothing to do with high treason, and where the spirit of party, unknown to himself, may get possession of a Judge? Suppose any trial for murder to have taken place in the Manchester riots, will any man say that the conduct of many judges on such a question ought not to have been watched with the most jealous circumspection? Would any prisoner-would any fair mediator between the prisoner and the publicbe satisfied at such a period with the axiom that the Judge is counsel for the prisoner? We are not saying that there is no Judge who might not be so trusted, but that all Judges are not, at all times, to be so intrusted. We are not saying that any Judge would wilfully do wrong; but that many might be led to do wrong by passions and prejudices of which they were unconscious; and that the real safeguard to the prisoner, the best, the only safeguard, is full liberty of speech for the counsel he has employed.

What would be the discipline of that hospital, where medical assistance

was allowed in all trifling complaints, and withheld in every case of real danger? where Bailey and Halford were lavished upon stomach-aches and refused in typhus fever? where the dying patient beheld the greatest skill employed upon trifling evils of others, and was told, because his was a case of life and death, that the cook or the nurse was to be his physician?

Suppose so intolerable an abuse (as the Attorney and Solicitor General would term it) had been established, and that a law for its correction was now first proposed, entitled an Act to prevent the Counsel for Prisoners from being heard in their defence!!!

What evil would result from allowing counsel to be heard in defence of prisoners? Would too many people be hung from losing that valuable counsellor, the Judge? or would too few people be hung? or would things remain much as they are at present? We never could get the admirers of this practice to inform us what the results would be of deviating from it; and we are the more particularly curious upon this point, because our practice is decidedly the reverse, and we find no other results from it than a fair administration of criminal justice. In all criminal cases that require the intervention of a jury in Scotland, a prisoner must have a copy of the indictment, which must contain a minute specification of the offence charged; 2ndly, a list of witnesses; 3rdly, a list of the assize; and, 4thly, in every question that occurs, and in all addresses to the jury, the prisoner's counsel has the last word. Where is the boasted mercy of the English law after this?

The truth is, it proceeds from the error which, in all dark ages, pervades all codes of laws, of confounding the accused with the guilty. In the early part of our State trials, the prisoners were not allowed to bring evidence against the witnesses of the Crown. For a long period after this, the witnesses of the prisoner were not suffered to be examined upon oath. One piece of cruelty and folly has given way after another. Each has been defended by the Attorney and Solicitor General for the time, as absolutely necessary to the existence of the state, and the most perfect performance of our illustrious ancestors. The last grand hope of every foolish person is the silence of the prisoner's counsel. In the defence of this, it will be seen what stupidity driven to despair can achieve. We beg pardon for this digression; but flesh and blood cannot endure the nonsense of lawyers upon this subject.

The Society have some very proper remarks upon the religious instructions of the chaplain-an appointment of vast importance and utility; unfortunately very ill paid, and devolving entirely upon the lower clergy. It is said that the present Bishop of Gloucester, Dr. Ryder, goes into jails, and busies himself with the temporal wretchedness and the eternal welfare of the prisoners. If this be so, it does him great honour, and is a noble example to all ranks of clergy who are subject to him. Above all, do not let us omit the following beautiful anecdote, while we are talking of good and pious men.

"The Committee cannot refrain from extracting from the Report of the Paris Society the interesting anecdote of the excellent Père Joussony, who being sent by the Consul at Algiers to minister to the slaves, fixed his residence in their prison; and, during a period of thirty years, never quitted his post. Being compelled to repair to France for a short period, he returned again to the prison, and at length resigned his breath in the midst of those for whose interests he had laboured, and who were dearer to him than life."-(Report, p. 30.)

It seems to be a very necessary part of the prison system, that any poor person, when acquitted, should be passed to his parish; and that all who are acquitted should be immediately liberated. At present, a prisoner, after acquittal, is not liberated till the Grand Jury are dismissed, in case (as it is said) any more bills should be preferred against him. This is really a considerable

hardship; and we do not see, upon the same principle, why the prisoner may not be detained for another assize. To justify such a practice, notice should, at all events, be given to the jailer of intention to prefer other charges against him. To detain a man who is acquitted of all of which he has been accused, and who is accused of nothing more, merely because he may be accused of something more, seems to be a great perversion of justice. The greatest of all prison improvements, however, would be, the delivery of jails four times in the year. It would save expense; render justice more terrible, by rendering it more prompt; facilitate classification, by lessening numbers; keep constantly alive, in the minds of wicked men, the dread of the law; and diminish the unjust sufferings of those who, after long imprisonment, are found innocent.

"From documents," says Mr. Western, " upon the table of the House of Commons in 1819, I drew out an account, which I have already adverted to in part, but which I shall restate here, as it places in a strong point of view the extent of injustice, and inconsistency too, arising out of the present system. It appeared that at the Maidstone Lent Assizes of that year there were one hundred and seventy-seven prisoners for trial; of these seventeen were in prison before the 1st of October, eighty-three before the 1st of January, the shortest period of confinement before tria lbeing six months of the former, three months of the latter. Nothing can show us more plainly the injustice of such confinement than the known fact of six months' imprisonment being considered a sufficient punishment for half the felonies that are committed; but the case is stronger when we consider the number acquitted; seventeen of the twentyseven first mentioned were acquitted, nine of the seventeen were discharged, not being prosecuted, or having no bill found against them. On the other side, it appeared that twentyfive convicted felons were sentenced to six months' imprisonment, or under, the longest period of whose confinement did not therefore exceed the shortest of the seventeen acquitted, or that of the nine against whom no charge was adduced; there were three, who, after being about seven months in prison, were then discharged, whilst various convicted felons suffered sixsevenths only of the punishment, including the time before trial as well as after condemnation. By the returns from the Lent Assizes at Chelmsford, the same year, the cases were not less striking than those of Maidstone: the total number was one hundred and sixty-six; of these, twenty-five were in prison before the 1st of October, of whom eleven were acquitted; and of these eleven, six were discharged without any indictment preferred; two were in prison eight months; three, seven months and fifteen days; three, six months and fifteen days. On the other hand, sixteen convicted of felony were considered to be sufficiently punished by imprisonment under six months. Upon the whole, it appeared that four hundred and five persons had been in jail before the ist of October, whilst eight hundred convicted felons were sentenced to a lighter punishment, to a shorter duration of imprisonment, than these four hundred and five had actually undergone.

"It is a curious fact that upon an average, more than one-third of the total number committed for trial are acquitted. In the seven years ending 1819, seventy-two thousand two hundred and sixteen persons were committed; of these, fourteen thousand two hundred and ninety-one were acquitted on trial; eleven thousand two hundred and seventy-four were discharged, there being no prosecutions, or no bills found against them. This large proportion of acquittals aggravates the evil and injustice of long confinement before trial; but were it otherwise, what possible right can we have to detain a man in custody six months, upon any charge exhibited against him, before he is brought to trial? What excuse or palliation can be found for so barbarous a violation of all the principles of justice and humanity? How contemptible it is, by way of defence, to talk of the inexpediency of increasing the number of judges, the expense, inconvenience, trouble, &c. ! It is wrong to contend with such arguments against the unanswerable claims of justice, as it is only to admit they are entitled to weight. The fact is, we are so completely under the influence of habitual respect for established practice, that we do not stop to question the possibility of the existence of any serious defects in the administration of the law that can be capable of remedy. The public attention has never been earnestly and steadily fixed and devoted to the attainment of a better system.”— (Western, pp. 80-83.)

The public cannot be too grateful to Mr. Western for his labours on this subject. We strongly recommend his tract for general circulation. It is full of stout good sense, without one particle of nonsense or fanaticism-good English stuff, of the most improved and best sort. Lord Londonderry has assented to the measure; and his assent does him and the Government very great credit. It is a measure of first-rate importance. The multiplicity of imprisonments is truly awful.

Within the distance of ten miles round London, thirty-one fairs are annually

held, which continue eighty days within the space of seven months. The effect of these fairs, in filling the prisons of the metropolis, it is easy to imagine; and the topic is very wisely and properly brought forward by the Society.

Nothing can be so absurd as the reasoning used about flash-houses. They are suffered to exist, it seems, because it is easy to the officers of justice to find, in such places, the prisoners of whom they are in search! But the very place where the thief is found is most probably the place which made him a thief. If it facilitate the search, it creates the necessity for searching, and multiples guilt while it promotes detection. Wherever thieves are known to haunt, that place should be instantly purged of thieves.

We have pushed this article to a length which will prevent us from dwelling upon that part of the plan of the Prison Society which embraces the reformation of juvenile delinquents, of whom it is calculated there are not less than 8,oco in London who gain their livelihood by thieving. To this subject we may perhaps refer in some future Number. We must content ourselves at present with a glimpse at the youthful criminals of the metropolis.

"Upon a late occasion (in company with Mr. Samuel Hoare, the Chairman of the Society for the Reform of Juvenile Delinquents), I visited, about midnight, many of those receptacles of thieves which abound in this metropolis. We selected the night of that day in which an execution had taken place; and our object was to ascertain whether that terrible demonstration of rigour could operate even a short suspension of iniquity, and keep for a single night the votaries of crime from their accustomed orgies. In one room, I recollect, we found a large number of children of both sexes, the oldest under eighteen years of age, and in the centre of these a man who had been described to me by the Police as one of the largest sellers of forged Bank-notes. At another part we were shown a number of buildings, into which only children were allowed to enter, and in which, if you could obtain admission, which you cannot, you would see scenes of the most flagrant, the most public, and the most shocking debauchery. Have I not, then, a right to say that you are growing crimes at a terrible rate, and producing those miscreants who are to disturb the public peace, plunder the public property, and to become the scourge and disgrace of the country?"-Buxton, pp. 66, 67.

Houses dedicated to the debauchery of children, where it is impossible to enter !!! Whence comes this impossibility?

To show that their labours are not heedlessly continued, the Society make the following statement of the present state of prisons:

"But although these considerations are highly encouraging, there is yet much to accomplish in this work of national improvement. So extensive are the defects of classification, that in thirty jails, constructed for the confinement of 2,985 persons, there were, at one time in the last year, no fewer than 5,837 prisoners; and the whole number imprisoned in those jails during that period amounted to 26,703. There are yet prisons where idleness and its attendant evils reign unrestrained-where the sexes are not separated-where all distinctions of crime are confounded-where few can enter, if uncorrupted, without pollution; and, if guilty, without incurring deeper stains of criminality. There are yet prisons which receive not the pious visits of a Christian minister-which the light of knowledge never enters-and where the truths and consolations of the Gospel are never heard. There are yet prisons where, for the security of the prisoners, measures are resorted to as revolting to British feeling as they are repugnant to the spirit and letter of English law.”—Report, pp. 63, 64.

With this statement we take our leave of the subject of prisons, thoroughly convinced that, since the days of their cleanliness and salubrity, they have been so managed as to become the great school for crimes and wretchedness; and that the public, though beginning to awake, are not yet sufficiently aware of this fact, and sufficiently alarmed at it. Mrs. Fry is an amiable, excellent woman, and ten thousand times better than the infamous neglect that preceded her; but hers is not the method to stop crimes. In prisons which are really meant to keep the multitude in order, and to be a terror to evil doers, there must be no sharing of profits--no visiting of friends-no education but religious education-no freedom of diet-no weavers' looms or carpenters'