would even take considerably less.

Imprisonment with hard labour will never have the slightest effect in
deterring such men from committing crime. Labour that would soon kill
many other men would not punish them, but they would prefer it even to
sitting in school. Rough fare they can do with, as long as it fills the
belly. They have no other ambition to gratify. With the stomach
distended and a quid of tobacco in their mouths, they are as happy as
kings, and very careless about liberty. Many of them when they leave
the prison, leave home. To such men, and to all the class of vagrant
and pauper criminals, a convict prison means a comfortable home, where
they are fed and clothed, and bathed and physicked, and have all their
wants supplied, without trouble or care, in exchange for their liberty
and such labour as they can easily and cheaply perform. To the
professional thieves a convict prison is a Court of Bankruptcy, to be
avoided if possible, and to be made the most of when unavoidable. A
place of punishment no doubt, but punishment nearly useless and
entirely misdirected. To the man who has wrought for his living at some
honest trade, up to the commission of his first known offence, who has
been accounted respectable by his neighbours, and who belongs to a
class of society with whom loss of character is utter ruin--a convict
prison is a Hell. If he happen also to be a man of thought and
education, it will in addition appear to be an institution for robbing
honest tax-payers, and a nursery of vice and crime, which all good men
should endeavour to reform or destroy.

In the small room to which I was now removed, the lodgers were quiet,
inoffensive men, and in a few cases apparently religious.

During my residence in the prison I was frequently removed from one
room to another, to suit the convenience of the prison authorities.
Fortunately I had no rent to pay, no economy to study, no opportunity
to practice honesty, and my effects were easily carried about.
Obedience--the soldiers' virtue--and civility, were all I had to study,
and these were not difficult to practice in my own case. One class of
prisoners in these rooms were elderly men, who had committed murder, or
manslaughter, and who, from their age and infirmities had missed being
sent to Western Australia. I knew upwards of twenty of them, and
generally speaking, they were quiet, inoffensive men, with no
inclination to steal or to do wrong. Several of them had