turpitude, and expose him to the hazard
of being classed with murderers.

With respect to that greater _severity_ of the punishment, on which our
author eloquently enlarges, the only severity which a legislature ought
to seek is that which is available in the shape of _threat_; and no
threat can be more effective than that of taking from a man his life,
since he can always, in his own imagination, commute any other
punishment into that. If it be true, on the one hand, that death is a
mere privation, and not to be compared, in real severity, to very many
of the positive afflictions of life; and if, on the other, it is still
the greatest threat which society can hold out--these two facts together
would go far to prove that it is the very best punishment which could be
devised.

Dismissing this exception of the punishment of death for the crime of
murder, _imprisonment_ at home or abroad, accompanied with hard labour,
or periods of solitary confinement, is the sole threat of any moment
which the law holds out against offenders; and it becomes, therefore, of
infinite importance to establish an effective prison discipline. We look
upon this simplification of our penal operations as an advantage; and we
are by no means disposed to favour those inventive gentlemen who would
devise new punishments, or revive old ones, for the purpose, it would
seem, of having a variety of inflictions corresponding to the variety of
offences. A well-regulated prison, where the severity of the taskwork,
the nature of the diet, the duration and the strictness of the
confinement, all admit of apportionment to the offence, seems to include
all that is desirable in this matter of punishment. Here, if any where,
can plans of reformation be combined with penal inflictions. Such plans
ought, by all means, to be encouraged; but they are not--whatever
Captain Maconochie, and other zealous reformers, say to the
contrary--the first and peculiar object for which a prison is designed.

Captain Maconochie was for some time superintendent of Norfolk Island. A
rough experience. But prison discipline must be much the same in its
elements, in whatever part of the world it is carried on. We are not
about to enter into the variety of questions connected with
transportation, or the management of penal colonies. Wherever
imprisonment or compulsory labour are to be undergone, the same class of
difficulties and dilemmas must arise; and we shall deal only with
Captai