English Treatment of Political Prisoners. with political offenders. But to us, at least, it seems clear that there is nothing reason able to be said for the hashing up in one system of Michael Davitt and Bill Sykes. The criminal laws of England stand in immense need of emendation. They press with terrible force on one class of offenses, and they deal very lightly with another class. The rights of property are main tained even now with a ferocious vigor, and •a poor man or a woman stealing a loaf of bread is punished with what might be called in proportion an extraordinary severity. On the other hand, we read every day in the papers of a drunken scoundrel who has kicked his wife almost to death getting off with something like six months' imprison ment. The whole general system needs a parliamentary review; but, unfortunately, Parliament is busied mostly with foreign affairs, and gives itself little time to look into the concerns of the inhabitants of these islands. When we get time enough — if we ever do — to think of domestic affairs, we may come to form, and act upon, some defi nite opinion as to the scale of punishment for offenses against life, and likewise to ar range for some difference being made be tween the treatment of a high-minded and virtuous man who starts a rebellious move ment against the existing authorities, and a man who amuses himself after the fashion of Jack the Ripper. The second question which came up concerned the general deal ings of the authorities in the English prisons. To that we have already made some refer ence. The English prison system is beyond all question — and we are not now speaking of the relative guilt of the offenders — much more severe than that of the United States. In the American Republic there is every chance given to the convicted criminal to reform and become a better man. An Eng lish visitor to one of the State prisons in the American Republic is sometimes amazed at the sort of advantages placed within the reach of the convict.
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In some of the State prisons in America there is, no doubt, a stern severity in deal ing with serious breaches of discipline or with attempts at escape or mutiny. In many of these prisons measures of punishment for such offenses are allowed which would not be endured by public opinion in Eng land. But, on the other hand, the ordi nary life of a prisoner is in most of these States made much more endurable than the ordinary life of a prisoner in England. The idea in the United States is to give the imprisoned man or woman a fair chance of becoming reformed, and returning to so ciety a better citizen. Of course it may be said, and it is said here every day, that we must not make prison life an agreeable ex perience for criminal offenders, and that if a man ought to be punished he ought to be punished, and there is an end. That argu ment, of course, however it may be ex pressed, is an argument pure and simple for the principle of torture. The man has done wrong; he ought to be sent to prison; he is sent to prison; his life ought to be made miserable for him in prison, in order that when he comes out of prison he may take care not to go into prison again. As a matter of fact, it is quite certain that in no country in the world is there created a reg ular jail-bird class as much as in Great Brit ain. Men and women pass their whole lives in getting into prison and getting out of it. Some of the restrictions imposed in the Irish prisons were positively grotesque, and especially grotesque when they applied to political offenders. A short-sighted man was not allowed to wear spectacles; a man with a severe cold in his head was not al lowed the use of a pocket-handkerchief, lest, perchance, he should make use of it as a rope and hang himself; and this in the case of men whose lives, as soon as they came out of prison, would be comfortable, happy, and even honored. But to return to the mere question of the common criminal, it is greatly to be doubted whether the severity
