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    Untitled Article

    # ie kingdom , the want of education is severely felt while in ( he agricultural districts a large proportion of the working classes are in a state of profound ignorance and great moral debasement . But a slight consideration of the subject will show that the moral and religious education of the people is an object too vast in its importance to the well-being of the state _ , to be left to the voluntary exertions of benevolent individuals and charitable

    associations . An Education Act , framed on broad and liberal principles , and securing the concurrence of all sects and parties , would pe one of the greatest blessings which the legislature could confer ; and it is earnestly hoped that the period has at length arrived when a national measure of this high character will provide for every child throughout the kingdom an education comprising the elements of useful knowledge , and based on the solid foundation of Christian principles , '—p . 85-87 .

    Our business ^ then , is to favour infant and other schools to the utmost , and to go on thanking government for the Irish ( School Bill , and reminding it that we want more , till general education becomes the law of our English land . Then there will be , among an incalculable number of other advantages ^ a wide opening for an improvement in our penal government .

    The second great object , that of rendering our penal institutions no worse than they need be , is that which the Prison Discipline Society espouses . None of the objects , with a view to which imprisonment should be conducted , can possibly be answered by the methods which

    prevailed before the Society began its exertions , and which have riot yet given place sufficiently to the better system of discipline which they have partially introduced and are striving to make general . Those objects are , 1 st . The security of the community . 2 d . The reformation of the offender .

    3 d . — ( a subordinate , though still important object )—That the resources of the community should not be uselessly consumed by its criminals . The security of a community is little promoted by a system Which lodges a man in prison a debtor and brings him out a ruffian ; which imprisons him erring and discharges him depraved ; or turns a merely suspected man into a guilty one . Of the 120 , 000 prisoners yearly contained within the jails of the United

    Kingdom , a very large number must have gone in in a moral condition less threatening to society than that of many whom they were ; about to join . Thousands of them were only debtors , thousands were young , many guilty of a first offence only , many innocent . For the short protection afforded to society by the temporary confinement of these J . 20 , 000 , how dearly rnust it pay on their return tq it ! Some of its foes are removed by the -gallows / pthers are sent abroad to spread the contagion of { heir

    Untitled Article

    Prison Discipline . 581

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1832, page 581, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1820/page/5/