The Saturday Advertiser. SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1876. THE STONE JUG.

Saturday Advertiser, Issue 52, 8 July 1876, Page 9

The Saturday Advertiser. SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1876.

THE STONE JUG.

" King out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; King in tlie nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws.” —Tennyson.

Can’st thou not minister to a mind diseased? — Macbeth.

NE of our Dunedin morning contemporaries hazarded the statement that the new Governor of the new Central Penal Establishment —a military man —had arrived in the Colony from England. This state-

ment has been contradicted. It is well it should be so. Owing to circumstances, New Zealand has been flooded with militaiy men, numbers of whom still serve the State in various capacities in the North Island. As a rule, old soldiers do not make good colonists. The soul has been knocked out of them by drill and subordination to others, and as a class they are not well suited for a young country, where, if justice is done to the rest of the community, they should be left to their own resources. Where are all the military settlers about whom we heard so much in years past ? Echo answers, Where ? Their land scrip remained behind, and was picked up by petty Auckland capitalists, at half-a-crown an acre. We do not need any further help from stereotyped soldiers. Their failings, the result of a training opposed to that of enterprising civilians, are too well known to need a word more to be said. We have no reason to believe that the Government ever contemplated the appointment of a

retired military officer as a prison Governor. Such an appointment would be worse than a mistake, it would be a mischievous blunder. Criminality is now viewed as springing in some respects from mental disease. Mr. Taliack, the active secretary of the Howard Association, compares the predicament of the criminal to that of a madman. It is moral discipline which is required for amendment —such a discipline as permits the careful diagnosis and treatment of each individual case, and not the crowding together indiscriminately a number of prisoners under cast-iron rules. A writer in the Lancet thus deals with this part of the subject:—“ W e “have recently had occasion to protest against the mistaken practice “of crowding together cases of mental “ disease. The obvious objections to this “ short-sighted and unscientific system- “ apply with equal force to the aggrega- “ tion of minds debauched by crimi“nality. The evil acquires new power “of mischief by concentration, just as “ contagious or infectious diseases gain “ greater virulence by the aggregation of “ cases. The mischievous influences are, “ so to speak, focussed, and acting and “ reacting mutually, they develop with “ augmented energy, and bear bad fruit “ multiplied a hundredfold.” There is little doubt that year by year, as experience is gathered, the conclusion will be ultimately come to that proper prison, discipline must be one dealing with a perverted, weak, or diseased mental condition. The whole of our legislation regarding punishment will be altered. It may be found necessary to retain in custody for life a prisoner guilty of comparatively venial offences, but who is hopelessly weak and unable to live without erring from the straight path. As it is the mind which is in fault in a criminal, it is this which is the pivot on which everything turns. Erom his education, the military prison Governor necessarily drills the bodies of his prisoners. Everything is like clockwork. Pipe clay is triumphant, and visitors are pleased with the cleanliness of the cells, but the minds of the unfortunates are left unheeded. Never swept and garnished in his inner man, the liberated prisoner, uncured, seeks his old resorts, and rarely is converted into a deserving member of society. To quote the Lancet again : “ As a matter of fact, “ soldiers are not the most suitable persons “to deal with criminals. They are so “ entirely imbued with the belief that a “ man is so much raw material to be “ kneaded and beaten into a required “ shape, that they overlook the -fact of “ his being a machine worked by a mind. “ There is no place for mind in the “ military system, and it is left out of “ the account by military men in dealing “ with convicts.” It is to be hoped that our Government will consider this important matter in accordance with the spirit of the age, and avoid the blunders of importing a military man to preside over our penal system.