up successfully to 15,000, 20,000, 25,000, 30,000, and 35,000 revolutions per hour without the slightest injury to any of its parts. The cylinders are so arranged as to admit of each having one type-column, in addition to the stereotype plate, so that the "latest news" may be set in at any time. To record the number of revolutions, there is a glass tube, with graduated plate like a thermometer inserted in a metal disk or cup, in the sides of which are inserted three small upright iron tubes with enlarged caps on their upper ends. The disk and the tubes are geared up to the driving-shaft, and as it revolves the mercury by centrifugal force is drawn out from the disk and glass tubes into the caps on the upper ends of the iron tubes, causing a corresponding depression in the glass tubes, and indicating on the graduated plate the number of revolutions. This is the recent invention of Edward Brown of Philadelphia. This press was procured for the Evening Journal of Jersey City, and used by Frank Leslie of New York and J. C. Ayer & Co. of Lowell, Mass.

Printing in Colors.-This is accomplished properly by having the page or pages separated into as many forms as there are colors. Presses are adapted to color-printing, but are modifications of the cylinder and Adams.

Polychrome Printing accomplishes the printing of one or more colors at the same time. Several attempts had been made to do this, but Congreve in 1820 was the first to carry it out successfully with metal plates. His plan was to outline the picture on a metal plate. If intended for two colors, the details of the chief color are completed on the plate, and all the parts for the other color are cut out. Into these parts other plates are fitted, like the portions of a child's puzzle-map, and on these the engravings for the parts of the second color are completed. When these are done, a thickness of type-metal is attached to the back of these interior pieces, so that they can be held separately, and pushed forward or drawn backward at pleasure. Then they are so adjusted to the machinery of the press that they are withdrawn when the first color-roller passes over the surface of the main plate, and are pushed forward beyond the face of the main plate so as to receive the color of the second roller, which then passes over them without touching the first or main plate. Having received their colored ink, the secondary plates are again moved back to a level with the other, so as to form an entire plate, carrying two colors, which are thus, in the ordinary way, imprinted on the paper. Many improvements of this have been made, but the principle remains the same, and it has now a wide application.

Laws relating to Printing.-Europe has many restrictive VOL. VI.-29

laws relating to the printing and publication of books and newspapers (for which see PRESS, FREEDOM OF THE). In the U.S. the Constitution by the first amendment prohibits the passage of any laws abridging the freedom of the press, which is sustained by the constitutions of the respective States. The law of LIBEL (which see) defines the limit of privileged communications and reports, and printers are protected in the necessary publication of charges, etc., demanded by Congress. Some States prohibit the publication of lottery advertisements and similar schemes and objectionable drugs or nostrums. Obscene illustrations and books are generally prohibited. It is the policy of the government to free the press from high postal rates for the public benefit, and for a long period newspapers were free through the post-office in the counties where printed. Newspaper exchanges are circulated free of postage to editors. Indeed, the U. S. enjoys the most unlimited free. dom for its press and in the interest of the people. There is a government printer controlled by Congress, the laws relating to which may be found in Brightly's Digest of the U. S. Laws. The history of the patent laws will show that in early times grants were made to persons to print works exclusively. (See PATENT LAWS, HISTORY OF.) For the laws relating to copyright and literary property generally, see LITERARY PROPERTY.

Bibliography.-The bibliography of printing is voluminous, and but a few of the volumes containing lists of works on printing and the more prominent treatises can be given. The first extensive bibliographic publication on printing is the Monumenta Typographica of J. C. Wolfius (Hamburg, 2 vols., 1740), which contains forty-seven treatises and dissertations on the origin, history, and art of printing, nearly all the writings published anterior to that date; Bernard, De l'Origine et des Débuts de l'Imprimerie en Europe (Paris, 1853); Breitkopf, Ueber die Geschichte der Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst (Leipsic, 1779); Dibdin, Bibliotheca Spenceriana (London, 1814-15), Didot (Ambroise), Essai sur la Typographie (in Encyclopédie moderne, Paris, 1851); Falkenstein, Geschichte der Buchdruckerkunst (Leipsic, 1840); Fournier, De l'Origine et des Productions de l'Imprimerie (Paris, 1759); Meerman, Origines Typographics (Hague, 1765); Maittaire (P.), Annales Typographici (Hague, 1819); Ottley, Origin and History of Engraving (London, 1816); Schaab, Die Geschichte der Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst, durch Gutenberg (Mayence, 1830): Sotheby, Typography of the Fifteenth Century (London, 1845); Schoelhorn, De Antiquiss. Latin. Bibliorum Editione, ceu primo Artis Typog. Fetu (Ulm, 1760); Wimpfeling, Catalogus Episcop. Argentin. (Strasbourg, 1660); Thomas, History of Printing in

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America (Albany, 1874); J. F. Marthens, Typographical Bibliography (Pittsburg, 1875), which contains a list of all the works on printing in the English language: T. L. De Vinne, Invention of Printing (New York, 1876). (For materials and information the undersigned is indebted to Messrs. R. Hoe & Co., Mr. A. Campbell, Mr. W. H. Williams of the Bullock Printing Press Co., and Mr. Jonathan S. Green.) WILLIAM S. PATERSON.

Printing, Laws Relating to. See PRINTING. Pri'or [Lat. prior, the "first" of two], in the Augustinian and Benedictine orders of monks, a prelate of the second rank, one who is either the second officer of an abbey under the abbot, or the first officer of a priory, which is a monastery of the second class. The corresponding officer among nuns is the prioress.

Prior (MATTHEW), b. at Wimborne-Minster, Dorsetshire, England, July 21, 1664, the son of a joiner; was sent by an uncle to Westminster School, and gained the favor of the earl of Dorset, by whom he was enabled to complete his education at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship and formed an intimacy with Charles Montagu, afterward earl of Halifax, and with him wrote a poem, The City Mouse and Country Mouse (1687), intended as a travesty upon Dryden's Hind and Panther. Introduced at court by his patron, Prior was appointed in 1690 secretary to the embassy at the Hague; became a favorite with William III., by whom he was made gentleman of the bedchamber; was secretary of the commissioners who concluded the Treaty of Ryswick 1697; secretary of embassy at Paris 1698; under-secretary of state 1699; commissioner of trade 1700, in which year he published his Carmen Seculare, in praise of King William; entered Parliament 1701; became soon afterward a vehement Tory; was sent to Paris with Bolingbroke 1711 to make private proposals for peace; was charged with treason for his conduct in this negotiation on the accession of the Whigs to power in 1714; was imprisoned two years in his own house, during which time he wrote Alma, or the Progress of the Mind; gained 4000 guineas by the publication of his poems by subscription, and was presented by Lord Harley with a life-interest in the estate of Down Hall, Essex. D. at Wimpole, Cambridgeshire, a seat of the earl of Oxford, Sept. 18, 1721, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The best edition of his poems, now little read, is that of Mitford (2 vols., 1835), preceded by a memoir.

Pripet, a river of European Russia, rises in the government of Volhynia, flows first N. E., then E., forms the boundary between the governments of Grodno and Minsk, traverses the immense swamps of Pinsk, enters the government of Kiev, becomes navigable at the city of Kiev, and joins the Dnieper after receiving the waters of the Vijovka, Styr, Pina, Morotch, Plitch, etc.

Pris'cian, surnamed CESARIENSIS, probably because he was born at Cæsarea, flourished about 450 or 500 A. D., and was a teacher of Latin at Constantinople, where he received a salary from the court. Of his works are still extant Commentariorum Grammaticorum Libri XVIII., of which the first sixteen books treat upon the eight parts of speech recognized by the ancient grammarians, and the last two on syntax, edited by Krehl (Leipsic, 1819) and Hertz (Leipsic, 1855), and some minor essays and poems, among which are a grammatical catechism on parts of the Eneid, a treatise on the symbols used to denote numbers and weights, an essay on accents, another on the metres of Terence, etc., edited by Lindemann (Leyden, 1818) and by Keil (Leipsic, 1856-60). Priscianus (THEODORUS), a celebrated physician, a pupil of Vindicianus, lived at the court of Constantinople in the fourth century A. D., and is the author of a Latin work, Rerum Medicarum Libri Quatuor, first printed in 1532 at Strasburg, in which he tries to combine the ideas of the methodical and dogmatical schools with those of the empirical.

Priscillian, belonging to a noble family of Cordova, Spain, founded a set whose doctrines were a blending of Manichæism and gnosticism. In 379 the existence of the sect became known, and in 380 the Council of Saragossa condemned its doctrines and banished its founder. The influence of Priscillian was too powerful, however, and his most zealous adversary, Bishop Ithacius of Assonuba, was compelled to fly. He sought refuge with the usurper, Maximus, who had Priscillian brought to trial before the Council of Treves, condemned, and put to death in 385. It was the first instance of a Christian being put to death for heresy, and it aroused the indignation of St. Martin of Tours, St. Ambrose, and others. The sect spread subsequently from Northern Spain to Languedoc, and even into Northern Italy, but disappeared entirely in the sixth century, after the synod of Braga in 563. (See Lübkert, De Haresi Priscilliani (Hafnia, 1840), and Mandernach, Geschichte des Priscillianism (Treves, 1851).)

Prism [Gr. #pioua], a polyhedron two of whose faces are equal polygons, having their sides parallel and all the remaining faces parallelograms. The first-named faces are called bases, and the remaining ones make up what is called the lateral surface of the prism. The distance between the bases is the altitude of the prism.

Pris'moid [Gr. #pioua and eldos], a polyhedron resembling a prism. It is a frustum of a wedge. The volume of a prismoid is equal to the sum of its parallel bases plus by one-sixth of the altitude. four times the section midway between the bases multiplied

Pris'on [Fr.], primarily, a place of detention for debtors or persons charged with political or other crimes until they were tried or adjudged guilty or innocent of the offences for which they were committed; later, and for the most part within 150 years, the prison has come to be, to some extent, the place and instrument of punishment. The idea of punishment by imprisonment itself does not seem to have entered into the minds of the rulers of ancient times, though the prison was often, from its crowded and filthy condition, its want of ventilation, the foul fevers and plagues engendered there, and the starvation inflicted on its hapless inmates, a place of cruel torture and often of speedy death; but the ancient idea of punishment was embodied in the stocks, scourging, beating with rods, the bastinado, the knout, the wheel, the rack, the thumb-screw, the iron boot, mutilation of the eye, the ear, the nose, the hand, the foot, etc.; the crown of thorns, walking over hot irons or coals, branding, whipping at the whipping-post or the tail of a cart, the pillory, the ball and chain, the treadmill, or the galleys; or, where the punishment was intended to be death, the stake, the terrible death by crucifixion, beheading, stoning, the administration of poison, or, in more modern times, hanging, the guillotine, or the gar

rote.

Detention of debtors and of political and other offenders was very early an admitted necessity. The earliest instances of its use are found among the Egyptians, whose superior civilization led them to devise measures of police of which other nations, less advanced, had not yet felt the want. Thus, we find in Gen. xxxix. 20 that " Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison, a place where the king's pris oners were bound; and he was there in the prison." This was primarily a place of confinement for political prisoners, and to it were committed such offenders as the chief butler and baker of Pharaoh, important officers of the royal household; and it was only because of the high position of Potiphar, Joseph's master, and perhaps also from some doubts of his guilt, that Potiphar committed him to this prison instead of putting him instantly to death on the grave charge preferred by his wife. There are numerous references to prisons in the Old Testament, as well as among always as a place of detention simply, though in the case profane writers contemporary with its later books, but of Jeremiah the dungeon connected with the prison (Jer. xxxviii. 6), from the depth of its miry bottom and its filthiness, seems to have been intended for the destruction of the prisoners who were cast into it. All the Oriental monarchies had their prisons; but though these were, as they which it would seem to be impossible to support life, and are to this day, wretched, ill-ventilated, and filthy dens, in where the poor culprit who had no money or friends was welcome to die of starvation and foul air as soon as he liked, still, the only theory of the prison was that it was simply a place of detention, and no length of endurance of its horrors was allowed to mitigate in any way the severity of the physical tortures or punishments inflicted on him if he was adjudged guilty of the offence with which he was charged. A recent description of several Chinese prisons demonstrates that they have changed very little in the last 3000 years. Debtors and criminals sentenced to death are their principal inmates, the latter usually wearing a cangue or broad heavy yoke around their necks, the head and neck being drawn forward in these by the executioner as he is about to behead them. The squalor of these prisons is said to be beyond all description.

Among the Greeks and Romans the prison, though more cleanly, was generally only a place of detention, though the inner prison," low, close, and hardly ventilated at all, and containing often the stocks or other instruments of torture, was occasionally made a place of temporary torture. By the laws of Rome, a Roman citizen could not be east into prison except by the direct command of the emperor and for some very grave offence; and the violation of this law was severely punished. The usual method of detention for Roman citizens was to chain their right arm to the left arm of a soldier, who was made responsible for their safe keeping; sometimes each arm was chained to a soldier; this guard was changed every twelve hours. In the first century after Christ there was at Rome one prison,

and possibly more, intended for the confinement of prisoners condemned to death or awaiting a final hearing before the emperor. This was the Mamertine prison, or rather the Mamertine vaults-for there were two, and possibly three, distinct vaults, one below the other-to which Juvenal is supposed to refer in his third Satire as, in the good old time, having been sufficient to contain all the criminals in Rome. The two principal dungeons are constructed of huge blocks of tufa, and the lower is supposed to be of Pelasgic architecture and the oldest building in Rome. The upper is 16 feet in height, 30 in length, and 22 in breadth; the lower is smaller and lower, and the only access to it is by a hole in the middle of the ceiling, through which the prisoners were let down. This was originally the case also with the upper vault, called the dungeon of Ancus Martius. Many noted persons were imprisoned here, and some, as the Catiline conspirators, Jugurtha, Vercingetorix, Sejanus, and Simon Bar Gioras, were put to death. Tradition says that Sts. Paul and Peter were confined in this lower dungeon till their execution, but this is uncertain. There were houses of detention in Rome which were used for the safe-keeping of slaves. But even at a later period, the Code Justinian has very little to say of prisons; its penalties were scourgings, tortures, mutilations, and death. The punishments of the Roman empire for crimes were not wanting in severity, even to those who enjoyed the great privilege of citizenship; but they were either physical, like those just enumerated, or moral and political, such as the loss of family authority and position, the loss of citizenship and of liberty-i. e. compulsory enslavement-and did not ordinarily include, except for a brief period, incarceration. With the downfall of the Roman empire. and the assumption of power over small districts of territory by the feudal barons, there came a change. Constantly in conflict with each other, and holding their castles only by superior bravery or the right of the strongest, these doughty barons could not let their unsuccessful rivals or their captive foes escape from their hands. The great tower of every castle, the donjon, had its keep or strong-room, often underground, to which foe or rival was forthwith consigned, if he fell into the hands of his enemy. Our word dungeon" is said to come from these donjon-keeps; and well it may, for more horrible places than some of them it would be hard to find. Damp, filthy, with no means of lighting, warming, or ventilating, and usually without egress or ingress except by being let down from or drawn up to an opening at the top, they were utterly unfit for the confinement of human beings, and the names oubliettes ("little places of the forgotten") or rade-in-pace ("go in peace") by which they were designated in grim jest by their builders or owners indicated but too truly their murderous purpose. Of a somewhat better character, though still cheerless and almost hopeless prisons, were those isolated fortresses where chiefs, nobles, and kings in the Middle Ages were so often incarcerated. Richard of the Lion Heart, as well as several other European monarchs, and nobles without number, languished in these prisons; and the Tower of London, which belonged to the same class, had its long succession of noble prisoners, many of whom went thence to the stake or the headsman's block. The prisons of the Inquisition in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, and Austria, though not in the main intended so much for punishment as for detention-the punishment (often within the prisonwalls) consisting mainly in the racks, wheels, boots, thumbscrews, and other instruments of torture which a fiendish ingenuity exhausted itself in contriving, and in the autosda-fe and other modes of inflicting the death-penaltywere yet, in some cases, places of protracted and cruel punishment, in which every idea of horror and apprehension which could torture the mind of the victim was suggested, to aggravate the distress of confinement. Even during the present century, the victims of this cruel imprisonment have died by slow torture. On the Continent, however, and even in Great Britain, the idea that imprisonment, except in the case of political offenders, constituted any part of the punishment of crime does not seem to have dawned upon the minds of statesmen, political economists, or penologists-if the latter class could be said to have existed -till within the last 150 years. There were jails, houses of detention, prisons-if they might be called such-both in Great Britain and on the Continent, but they were filled with debtors, persons arrested for crime and awaiting trial, and those who had been sentenced to banishment or transportation, to slavery, to the galleys, or to execution. The jails and prisons were so filthy and ill-ventilated that deadly fevers, the plague, and the black death would occur in them, and frequently spread over the adjacent country. At what was known as the Black Assize" in England, in the seventeenth century, over 300 perBons, including judges, jury, lawyers, and spectators, fell

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victims to a malignant jail-fever which was communicated by the prisoners brought out of the jail for trial. The moral pollution of these jails was as great as the physical: the grossest intemperance and licentiousness prevailed in all of them, and the fee for the prostitution of the female prisoners was a recognized perquisite of the keepers. No confinement in these pest-houses, however protracted, was accepted as in any degree diminishing the severity of the sentence to the galleys, the mines, to the treadmill, or the whipping, pillory, branding, ear or nose slitting, cropping, or transportation to distant colonies. Attempts were made to reform and improve the jails in England, as well as on the Continent, by John Howard in the latter part of the eighteenth century; they were attended with some success, though not so great as his philanthropic efforts and his final sacrifice of his life to the cause warranted. The reformation of great and old abuses is difficult, and makes slow progress at first; still, something was accomplished, and Beccaria in Italy, and Sir William Blackstone, Jeremy Bentham, and Mr. Eden took up the work and went forward with it. At this time, however, Great Britain was largely engaged in schemes of transportation, which her statesmen believed would rid them of their vicious population, and they were not inclined to give much heed to measures of prison reform. They had sent convicts to Virginia from 1619 to 1770, until they would no longer be received, and, after the beginning of settlements in Australia and the adjacent islands, had forwarded thousands to Botany Bay, Sydney, Tasmania, North and West Australia, and to British Guiana, till about 1850; but, contrary to their expectations, the number of criminals at home did not decrease. Most of the continental states had tried the same experiment of transportation, and with about the same success. France, while sending off large numbers of criminals, consigned very many to the galleys, where they learned only evil, and at their discharge became leaders in crime. Russia sent the greater part of her criminals, as well as her political offenders, to the mines in Siberia, and most of the other powers rid themselves of their criminals by transportation wherever they could find the opportunity, sometimes sending them to our frontier territories, to Mexico, and to South America. These efforts did not lessen the number of actual criminals. As yet the possibility of the reformation of criminals was not conceded. All efforts to keep down the number by transportation having failed, and the benevolent labors of John Howard, of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, and of the aldermanic committee of London having proved ineffectual to remedy the evil, Sir T. Fowell Buxton, a member of Parliament, published in 1818 an Inquiry whether Crime and Misery are produced or prevented by the Present System of Discipline. In this work he laid down certain principles concerning the relative rights of prisoners and of society, and boldly took the ground that a majority of prisoners might be reformed and restored to society by a proper method of discipline. After a conflict of nearly thirty years the prisons and prison-systems of Great Britain and Ireland have been very thoroughly reformed; transportation has ceased, and the convict prisons, though more expensive than they should be, are on the whole well managed, and many of their prisoners are reformed. Many of the convicts are employed in the great naval shipyards at Dartmouth and Portsmouth. The jails are cleanly, well-ventilated, and for the most part have some employment for the prisoners, which keeps them from mischief and contributes a small sum toward the expense of their support. The reformatories for young offenders, which are generally well conducted, have, by reforming the young criminals, prevented the increase of the criminal class, and greatly diminished the number and magnitude of crimes in the country. Scotland and Ireland, by a different application of the same principles, a still greater measure of success has been attained. What is known as the Crofton or Irish system of prison discipline has proved very successful in Ireland (more so, perhaps, than it would in some other countries), and the diminution in the number of great crimes has been highly gratifying.

In

In the U. S. transportation has never been attempted as a means of ridding the community of the dangerous classes. Before the Revolution the criminal code was very severe; death was the penalty of a great number of crimes; in one of the States 115 crimes punishable by death were enumerated; in other States the number was from 80 to 100. Burglary, horse-stealing, highway robbery, and even grand larceny, as well as forgery, counterfeiting, and many other crimes now punishable by a moderate term of imprisonment, subjected the criminal to the death-penalty. At the same time the prisons were in a wretched condition, hardly better than those of Great Britain. In 1786, Pennsylvania made the first effort at improvement of her prisons by the

erection of the Walnut street prison and the adoption of the solitary plan of discipline. The cell was larger than usual, but the prisoner was compelled to remain in it without work or books, and during his whole period of confinement was allowed to see no human face, to hear no human voice. The result was terrible. The prisoner, deprived of all opportunity of occupying either inind or body, and shut up to his own thoughts, soon became insane or fatuous, and the really humane men who had devised this system found that they had made a frightful blunder. The system was modified about forty years later by the adoption of what has since been known as the "separate plan." In this the prisoner, while still isolated from the sight or hearing of his fellow-prisoners, has a large cell and a small yard for exercise opening out of it; he has work, books, and moral and religious instruction from an instructor whom he can hear, but not see. He is allowed to converse in regard to his work with the instructor in that work. The two penitentiaries of the State are conducted on this plan, and we believe one or two local prisons have also adopted it. It is very expensive; the work is unprofitable, the proceeds of it not defraying more than one-sixth of the expenses of the prison; and, though there is not so much insanity or fatuity as under the solitary system, the prisoners fail in self-reliance, and are very seldom of any service to the community after their discharge. All the zeal of its advocates has failed to induce any other State to attempt it. The "solitary system" was tried in several States, but with uniformly disastrous results. In 1821-23 the "congregated or silent system" was adopted at Auburn, N. Y. (it had been previously tried in Holland), and soon attained such a reputation that it was adopted by other States, and with various modifications is now the prevalent system in the U. S. Since the first experiment of Capt. Elam Lynde at Auburn, the system has been so much modified that, as practised in some of the States, it is hardly recognizable. The original plan required congregated labor, but in perfect silence; no word inust be uttered by the convict, nor must his eye ever be lifted to a human face. At night he was locked into his cell, the corridors watched, and no communication permitted with any one. No lights were allowed after going to his cell. These severities are now greatly mitigated; the cells are lighted at night, books allowed to the prisoner and instruction by the chaplain; he may converse with his keepers, his instructor, and the chaplain; as a matter of fact, he does converse with his fellow-prisoners; in many of the prisons an allowance is made of from one to five days on each month of good behavior, and thus the term of the sentence may be materially shortened; the avails of overwork are in some prisons allowed to the prisoner at his discharge, or are sent to his family at his request. In many of the congregate prisons the labor of the prisoners is let to contractors at a given sum per day; in several of the States the whole expenses of the prison are thus defrayed, and in some a surplus is paid into the State treasury. In some cases the State employs the convicts and disposes of the products of their labor, but these generally fail to defray the entire expenses. The number of prisoners who, on their discharge, prove to be really reformed varies greatly in different States. Where zealous effort is made by such agencies as the prison associations, to aid discharged prisoners in leading honest and upright lives, the number reformed is much greater than elsewhere. What is needed in the management of convict prisons in the U. S. is not so much the adoption of any new system as the entire divorce of the prisons from partisan politics; the appointment of honest, upright, and competent men, after a severe competitive examination, as wardens, keepers, inspectors, and other officers, and their retention in their places during good behavior; the inculcation of moral and religious, but not sectarian, principles to the prisoners in such a way as to reach their hearts; and the presentation of such motives to good conduct as shall make them more desirous of being good than of merely seeming to be so. If to these modifications in the present management of prisons there is added an efficient agency for aiding and directing them to employment on their discharge, there is no good reason why at least 70 per cent. of the convicts should not be reformed. Many objections have been made to the contracting of the labor of prisoners. If properly and honestly managed, it is hardly more objectionable than the employment of the prisoners by the State. Labor is a necessity both for the health and the reformation of prisoners, and the chief problem to be solved is so to regulate it that it shall do no injustice either to the prisoners or to the community.

The jails throughout the country need a radical reform. Very few of them are well or honestly managed, and they exert a deadly influence on young offenders, brought by their means into contact with older and depraved crimi

nals. They, also, should be entirely divorced from partisan politics, and classification, labor, and moral instruction should be required to the utmost possible extent. But, after all, the great source of the increase of crime is in the demoralization of the young. The juvenile delinquents and vagrants make up in their turn the great mass of older criminals, and the increase and improvement of our reformatories, and if necessary-as it will probably be found to be the gathering up, by some forcible legal process, of these viciously-inclined children, and placing them in institutions under circumstances favorable to their reformation and improvement, will prove the key to our greatest success in diminishing crime. L. P. BROCKETT.

Pris'on Dis'cipline, as a science, is, so to speak, but of yesterday. For ages public punishment appears to have had but one object-to terrify and deter through torture. The cruelties and horrors of the prison-house were almost past belief. It would seem as if the terrifie personification of punishment in the Hindoo code had become there a living reality: "Punishment is the inspirer of terror; with a black aspect and a red eye, it terrifies the guilty." But Christianity has at length wrought a change which, sooner or later, was inevitable under its benign and refining influence; and the merciless scourgings, ponderous irons, torturing thumbscrews, underground dungeons, and chainings to dead bodies once inflicted on prisoners have given place, if not wholly, at least in great part, to looks and tones and acts of sympathy and kindness. Two eminent men, friends and colleagues in one of the most noted literary enterprises of modern times, in writings separated from each other by only a quarter of a century, have aptly given us the salient characteristics of the two systems. In an article printed in the Edinburgh Review in 1821, Sydney Smith maintained that for the looms then just introduced into Preston jail should be substituted the crank, the treadmill, or some other species of toil whose product the prisoner could not see; that this toil should be made as monotonous, irksome, and distasteful as possible; that irons and a particolored dress should be employed as instruments of disgrace and humiliation; that terror, pain, suffering-wanton, wasted, useless suffering-should be the foundation of every penal system; that reformation was not to be thought of; and that a prisoner committed for not more than three months should pass a part of that period in complete darkness, and the whole of it in complete solitude and idleness, because, forsooth! solitary idleness tends to repentance. In a paper communicated in 1856 to a meeting of prison reformers in Bristol, Henry Brougham, per contra, used this language: "The result, then, of our inquiry has led to this proposition, which I venture to lay down as resting on arguments wholly irrefragable-viz. that all punishment should be conducted mainly with a view to reforming the offender. I regard the culprit as our patient; I consider the judge who consigns him to punishment as the parent, or guardian, or master, who sends his child, or ward, or workman to a hospital; I look upon the state as the superintendent of that infirmary, and the governor with his assistants as the physician with his helpers occupied in bringing about a cure. The malady is rather chronic than acute, and it is always infectious; but the treatment is to be regulated by principles, guided by knowledge, tempered with kindness and tenderness, yet administered with a firm and unflinching hand. There is occasionally a fatal result, sometimes a long-protracted cure; but in the vast majority of cases the skill and the care of the physician prevail, and the result is happy for both the patient who recovers his health and the community which avoids the contagion."

Prison discipline, the science of public punishment, the philosophy which investigates the proper treatment of criminals, must have a profound interest for all lovers of the human race. It goes down to the foundations of public order. It touches the stability and security of the public peace. It affects the sacredness of human life. It is concerned with the protection of property and the safety of our homes and persons. It has a vital relation to the material well-being of communities, and a yet more vital relation to the purity of public morals and the redemption of multitudes of human beings, our brothers and sisters, from sin and suffering. In all the wide range of social science, in all the varied fields of inquiry which command the study of the friends of human happiness and progress, there is scarcely one more comprehensive, more complex, more important, or more abundant in the fruits which a wise culture will be likely to yield than this. We have neither time nor space to traverse the history of the past, but at the present moment three general systems of prison discipline divide the study and the suffrages of the civilized world-viz. the Auburn, or congregate silent system; the Philadelphia, or separate cellular system; and the system of progressive classification-sometimes called the

Irish system, because first applied in Ireland-sometimes the Crofton system, from the name of the gentleman who devised and applied it in the form it has there, though it might, perhaps, be more properly named the Maconochie system, from Capt. Alexander Maconochie of the British navy, the real author of the system and the most original, profound, and philosophical of all prison reformers. The essential principle of the Auburn system is that of absolute separation of the prisoners by night and associated silent labor by day. Outside of Philadelphia this system is found everywhere in the U. S., and has also a foothold, more or less extensive, in various European countries, where, too, the old system of common dormitories has far too wide a prevalence, though it has no defenders, and is destined, certainly, to give way, sooner or later, before the progress of sounder thought and wiser methods. One limitation, however, needs to be made here. We have characterized the Auburn system in the U. S., looking to one of the leading elements in the theory of the system, as that of "associated silent labor." The last of these epithets has become, in a degree, inapplicable. Some of our convict prisons do not even claim to conduct their discipline upon the strictly silent principle; in others, where the claim is made, the rule of silence has but a partial enforcement; while in comparatively few is the rigidity of the old discipline of absolute non-intercourse maintained in full force. The essential principle of the cellular system is that of a complete bodily separation of the prisoners in labor, recreation, and rest. In the U. S. this system is restricted to the State penitentiary in Philadelphia and a very few of the county prisons of Pennsylvania. In Belgium it has been adopted as the national system of prison discipline, and it is there applied under conditions suited to bring out all the reformatory and healing power which it is capable of exerting. In Holland there is a prevailing public opinion in its favor, but with many dissentients, and the system is steadily gaining ground. A strong, though perhaps not predominant, public opinion favors it in Germany, and in many other European states, particularly France, the cellular system has its partisans and supporters-enlightened, earnest, and able men. The two systems of prison discipline briefly characterized above are marked by important diversities; nevertheless, they have a common basis. Isolation lies at the foundation of both. It is a fundamental principle of both. The difference is one of application, not of essence-of mode, rather than principle. In one, the isolation is effected by an absolute physical separation by day as well as by night, and the labor is performed in the cell; in the other, the labor is done in common workshops, and the isolation, which is simply moral during the day, is effected by the enforcement of an unbroken silence. The bodies of the prisoners are together, but their souls are apart, and while there is a material society, there is a mental solitude. Such is the theory on which the two systems are founded, but in neither do the facts ever fully correspond to the ideal. truth, if the congregate system could be carried out according to its ideal, it would be worse than the cellular, even in the point to which exception is chiefly taken to the latter; for nothing could be so torturing as for two men to stand or sit side by side for five, ten, twenty years, and never, by word, note, act, look, or token of any sort, exchange a thought or a sentiment; yet such is the theory of the Auburn system. This consideration called into action some forty years ago a rare and noble genius. Capt. Alexander Maconochie, whose name has already been mentioned above, was, on his own application in 1840, invested with the governorship of the British penal colony of Norfolk Island, at that time containing a criminal population of 1500 souls, made up of the worst convicts ever sent out by the mother-country. This great man (for such he truly was) there became the originator and founder of the system of progressive classification as an agent in prison discipline and the reformation of prisoners. The discipline inaugurated by him was called by its author the "social system of prison treatment," because of the play therein given to the social instincts of humanity; but it is commonly known among penologists as the "mark" system, because of the use which it makes of marks in recording the progress of the prisoner in industry, education, order, and virtue. His system rests on four fundamental principles: (1) Instead of a time-sentence, it imposes a labor-sentence, thus setting the prisoners to earn back their freedom by the sweat of their brow. (2) It teaches them self-denial, by enabling them to purchase a speedier liberation through the sacrifice of present gratification. (3) It appeals to their social nature, giving them an interest in each other's good conduct, and thus making them helpers in the maintenance of discipline. (4) It prepares them for a return to society by gradually relaxing restraint and strengthening their powers of self-control.

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To carry out these principles, Capt. Maconochie sought to make prison life an image of free life, as far as that could be done in consistency with its objects; in other words, to work with nature instead of against it, as most prison systems have hitherto done. He treated the convict as a labor

er, with marks for wages. His marks were made to play the part of money, for with them the prisoner was required to purchase his food, clothes, schooling, etc., while only the surplus of these earnings counted toward his liberation. Under this system the prisoner is not to be sentenced to a certain number of months or years, but to earn a certain number of marks over and above his keep. Maconochie fixed on ten marks as a fair day's wages, the men being paid by piece-work, and not by time, and for every ten marks saved the convict shortened his imprisonment by a day. At the stores he purchased his daily supplies, paying for them in marks. The rations were served out at three rates. The coarsest cost three marks per day, the next four, and the best five. The self-denying prisoner might thus save seven and the self-indulgent five marks each day for the purchase of his liberty. As extra marks were allowed for overwork, it was possible to hoard at the rate of eight or ten a day as the fruit of diligence and self-denial. Moreover, the marks furnished the means of disciplinary punishment, a proportionate fine in marks being the penalty for every act of disobedience or failure in duty. And while, by this machinery of marks, Capt. Maconochie trained his convicts to habits of industry and frugality, he adopted different means to accomplish his other objects. He divided the convicts' sentences into three periods. During the first or penal stage the men worked under a sharp and stringent discipline. At the conclusion of this they were allowed to form themselves into companies of six each the members of each company being left to choose their own companions-and then they entered into the second or social stage. In this stage the six prisoners forming a company had a common fund of marks, into which common stock the daily earnings of each member were paid, and from which the supplies and fines for the whole company were deducted. They were thus made responsible for each other's conduct, and naturally became watchful both over themselves and their companions; themselves, lest others should suffer through their faulttheir companions, lest they should suffer through theirs. By this means, also, Capt. Maconochie, who knew the intense selfishness of criminals, hoped to implant kindly and generous feelings; that is, to cultivate their social affections. In the last or individualized stage the companies were broken up, and, though every man was still kept at work to earn his daily tale of marks, he was in other respects comparatively free. He had his own hut and garden, his own piggery and poultry-yard, the products of which he might sell to the officers of the colony or the ships that touched at the island. By thus giving the probationer property and rights of his own, Maconochie hoped to teach him respect for those of other people. Such is a brief sketch of this remarkable man's system of penal discipline. He was four years on Norfolk Island. He threw himself, heart and hand, into the work of regenerating the degraded beings who formed its population. He built a church, founded schools, imported a catechist, and on Sundays toiled as ministering deacon himself. Day and night his brain was busy devising new expedients to lift his fallen charge out of bestial lust and demoniacal malignity into self-respect, loyalty, and human affection. His success was wonderful, though he was never allowed by the British government to bring all the principles of his system into play, and so give it a full and fair trial. Nevertheless, his own testimony, confirmed by numerous witnesses, is: "I found the island a turbulent, brutal hell; I left it a peaceful, well-ordered community." A truly heroic soul! A few years after Maconochie's retirement from Norfolk Island, Capt. (now Sir) Walter Crofton, following in his footprints, though possessing a far higher organizing and executive genius, devised and established the new system of convict prisons for Ireland, now called after his own name; and rightly so called, for he took his predecessor's principles and moulded them into a practical scheme of prison discipline, capable of being successfully applied by the average grade of official intelligence. Sir Walter, in founding his prison system, adopted the mark system of Maconochie, with modifications which improved it in many important respects, but with curtailments also-resulting, no doubt, from restrictions imposed on him by the law-which in some measure detracted from its completeness and weakened its force. The Crofton system consists of three stages: A penal stage of separate imprisonment, continuing eight months; a reformatory stage, longer or shorter according to the length of the sentence, with separation at night and associated labor by day, in which the principle of progressive classification is applied with a gradual lifting of restraint and