Observations on the Philosophy of Criminal Jurisprudence

The last chapter contains some remarks on prisons and prison discipline; and the more I consider these parts of the subject the less I anticipate from any additional assistance to be derived from statute law. If the public are not interested in the fate of prisoners, no law can supply the place of such a defect. Society by its virtues, not by its power, must supply the philanthropists who shall superintend Gaols and correct their maladies. The law can only sanction the principles which shall direct them; it cannot devise the plans of reformation or infuse the principles themselves.

Those who are in the habit of considering these subjects will be most disposed to pardon the deficiencies of a work, which has been written, calamo currente, for a particular occasion. However satisfactory and coherent an author may regard his opinions while they remain floating in his mind, the transferring of them to a substantial and condensed vehicle by the art of printing enables him

to discover many defects which before escaped him. No one can be more sensible of these than the writer of this volume; and it only remains for him to regret that the urgency of the question forbad him to adopt the maxim, nonumque prematur in annum, and to supplicate the indulgence of the reader for those errors which are attributable to hasty composition. The sentiments themselves are not adopted without mature consideration, but he believes they will afford materials for very important reflection.