Armadale.

BOOK THE FIFTH.

1819

CHAPTER III.-continued.

THE DIARY BROKEN OFF.

HE doctor repeated the servant's message in a tone which betrayed unmistakable irritation at finding himself admitted no farther than the door.

"Your mistress is not well enough to see visitors? Give her that card,' said the doctor, 6 and say I expect her, the next time I call, to be well enough to see me.'

"If his voice had not told me plainly that he felt in no friendly mood towards Mrs. Oldershaw, I daresay I should have let him go without claiming his acquaintance. But, as things were, I felt an impulse to speak to him or to anybody who had a grudge against Mother Jezebel. There was more of my small spitefulness in this, I suppose. Anyway, I slipped downstairs; and, following the doctor out quietly, overtook him in the street.

"I had recognized his voice, and I recognized his back as I walked behind him. But when I called him by his name, and when he turned round with a start and confronted me, I followed his example, and started on my side. The doctor's face was transformed into the face of a perfect stranger! His baldness had hidden itself under an artfully grizzled wig. He had allowed his whiskers to grow, and had dyed them to match his new.head of hair. Hideous circular spectacles bestrode his nose in place of the neat double eyeglass that he used to carry in his hand; and a black neckerchief, surmounted by immense shirt-collars, appeared as the unworthy successor of the clerical white cravat of former times. Nothing remained of the man I once knew but the comfortable plumpness of his

natural open enemy, is indulged by being associated with his old friends and men of his own tastes and habits. The working man who has been led into some one crime, is made to live with others who, considerate as they may be to his personal feelings when addressing or speaking close to him, are constantly filling his mind with images of which he may never rid himself all his life. Besides, it is absurd to talk about reforming criminals when you ruthlessly corrupt those with whom lies your only chance. For charity's sake these men, at least, should be kept " in separates," or only associate with each other. For professional thieves I conceive the best system would be the separate for a short sentence, transportation for a long one. I see no use in applying two systems to any one sentence. If it is a first offence, the separate plan might, and I think should, be followed for the whole term of imprisonment. In the case of a second offence, or a long sentence, I would transport the offender at once. There is no reformation (proper) to be expected from transportation, nor perhaps from any other system, but it gives a chance to a man to take up a respectable life and to keep within the law. But it is quite useless to make men "good" in separates and then "bad" by bringing them together. As to the best mode of carrying out transportation, or the best place to transport criminals to in future, it is not for me to say; but the shorter the time the men are together, and the sooner the transported criminal merges into the exile, the better. The men should, moreover, be sent to some country where they can make themselves a home, and which they may hope eventually to make prosperous. Western Australia would have been an excellent

place, had it not been for the strange fancy of making a system of prison regulations the law of a people, and transforming a whole country into a convict establishment, and virtually working the finest part of the population in irons.