It has often struck me that the monotony of occupation is a heavier
infliction than the monotony of reflection. The same dull round of
duty, which while it demands a certain amount of labour, excludes
all opportunity of thought, making man no better than the piston of a
steam-engine, is a very frightful and debasing process. Whereas,
however much there may be of suffering in solitude, our minds are not
imprisoned; our thoughts, unchained and unfettered, stroll far away to
pleasant pasturages; we cross the broad blue sea, and tread the ferny
mountain-side, and live once more the sunny hours of boyhood; or we
build up in imagination a peaceful and happy future.
That the power of fancy and the play of genius are not interrupted by
the still solitude of the prison, I need only quote Cervantes, whose
immortal work was accomplished during the tedious hours of a captivity,
unrelieved by one office of friendship, uncheered by one solitary ray of
hope.
Taking this view of the matter, it will be at once perceived how much
more severe a penalty solitary confinement must be, to the man of
narrow mind and limited resources of thought, than to him of cultivated
understanding and wider range of mental exercise. In the one case, it is
a punishment of the most terrific kind--and nothing can equal that awful
lethargy of the soul, that wraps a man as in a garment, shrouding him
from the bright world without, and leaving him nought save the darkness
of his gloomy nature to brood over. In the other, there is something
soothing amid all the melancholy of the state, is the unbroken soaring
of thought, that, lifting man above the cares and collisions of
daily life, bear him far away to the rich paradise of his mind-made
treasures--peopling space with images of beauty--and leave him to dream
away existence amid the scenes and features he loved to gaze on.
Now, to turn for the moment from this picture, let us consider whether
our government is wise in this universal application of a punishment,
which, while it operates so severely in one case, may really be regarded
as a boon in the other.
The healthy peasant, who rises with the sun, and breathes the free
air of his native hills, may and will feel all the infliction of
confinement, which, while it chains his limbs, stagnates his faculties.
Not so the sedentary and solitary man of letters. Your cell becomes
_his_ study: the window may be somewhat narrower--the lattice, that was
wont to open to the climbing honeysuckle, may now be barred with its
iron stanchions; but he soon forgets this. “His mind to him a palace
is,” wherein he dwells at peace. Now, to put them on something of a par,
I have a suggestion to make to the legislature, which I shall condense
as briefly as possible. Never sentence your man of education, whatever
his offence, to solitary confinement; but condemn him to dine out, in
Dublin, for seven or fourteen years--or, in murder cases, for the term
of his natural life. For slight offences, a week's dinners, and a few
evening parties might be sufficient--while old offenders and bad cases,
might be sent to the north side of the city.
It may be objected to this--that insanity, which so often occurs in the
one case, would supervene in the other; but I rather think not. My own
experience could show many elderly people of both sexes, long inured to
this state, who have only fallen into a sullen and apathetic fatuity;
but who, bating deafness and a look of dogged stupidity, are still
reasoning beings--what they once were, it is hard to say.
But I take the man who, for some infraction of the law, is suddenly
carried away from his home and friends--the man of mind, of reading, and
reflection. Imagine him, day after day, beholding the everlasting saddle
of mutton--the eternal three chickens, with the tongue in the midst
of them; the same travesty of French cookery that pervades the
side-dishes--the hot sherry, the sour Moselle: think of him, eating out
his days through these, unchanged, unchangeable--with the same _cortege_
of lawyers and lawyers' wives--doctors, male and female--surgeons,
subalterns, and, mayhap, attorneys: think of the old jokes he has been
hearing from childhood still ringing in his ears, accompanied by the
same laugh which he has tracked from its burst in boyhood to its last
cackle in dotage: behold him, as he sits amid the same young ladies,
in pink and blue, and the same elderly ones, in scarlet and purple;
see him, as he watches every sign and pass-word that have marked these
dinners for the long term of his sentence, and say if his punishment be
not indeed severe.
Then think how edifying the very example of his suffering, as, with pale
cheek and lustreless eye--silent, sad, and lonely--he sits there! How
powerfully such a warning must speak to others, who, from accident or
misfortune, may be momentarily thrown in his society.
The suggestion, I own, will demand a much more ample detail, and
considerable modification. Among other precautions, for instance, more
than one convict should not be admitted to any table, lest they might
fraternize together, and become independent of the company in mutual
intercourse, &c.
These may all, however, be carefully considered hereafter: the principle
is the only thing I would insist on for the present, and now leave the
matter in the hands of our rulers.