Another philosophical crotchet did no small mischief.  It was alleged that hard labour on the tread-mill would do harm:  knowing that the labour tended to no useful purpose but merely the turning of a wheel, prisoners would feel degraded, and this feeling would prevent their reclamation!  The error here consisted in imagining that the criminal class possessed the feelings of gentlemen; whereas the real thing to be thought of, was to give them labour so excessively toilsome and irksome as to be remembered with salutary horror all the days of their life.  For example, no kind of punishment, we believe, has proved so sure a terror as that of the shot-drill in the military prisons.  This consists in lifting a cannon-ball of perhaps twenty pounds’ weight; marching with it for a dozen yards; then laying it down; and so on, repeating the same thing for an hour.  Now this is clearly a useless and most degrading species of labour; yet it is a terrible infliction, and we are told seldom fails in its effect—­that is to say, it deters from the commission of crime.

The experience of the last few years would shew that much is still to be learned in the art of criminal discipline; and indeed the whole question of what is to be done with our criminal population is becoming daily more perplexing.  Mere confinement is found to be of small avail.  Transportation is exploded; for it improves the circumstances of criminals instead of making them worse.  Capital punishment has also had its day, and, excepting for a very few offences, is abandoned as useless, independently of being revolting to humanity.  One writer proposes to work convicts in gangs at out-door labour, such as mining, and making railways; but the public would never tolerate the spectacle of this worst species of slave-labour; and besides, the employment of honest workers would be ruined.  We are inclined to think that imprisonment, in a severe form, is after all the only practicable means of dealing with criminals.  If anything be urgently wanted, it is a plan for preventing the growth of the criminal class; and this probably is not so difficult as it may appear.  Of course, till there be a far broader system of public education than now prevails, the criminal population will never want recruits.  Nevertheless, even with our present imperfect educational arrangements, something might be done.  The criminal class is discovered to be on the whole a narrow class.  The practice of living by depredation runs in families, and clings to individuals.  The police of any given town could put their hand on almost every person who lives by fraud, theft, and robbery.  They could at a day’s notice secure nearly every one of them.  A knowledge of this fact has suggested to Mr Matthew Hill a plan for capturing the whole criminal class, and obliging them to give security for their good behaviour; failing which, they should suffer incarceration as notoriously dangerous and troublesome to society.  A fear