Thoughts on Convict Management: And Other Subjects Connected with the Australian Penal Colonies

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J.C. Macdougall, 1838 - 222 pages
 

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Page 115 - That he might render the execution of justice strict and regular, he divided all England into counties ; these counties he subdivided into hundreds ; and the hundreds into tithings. Every householder was answerable for the behaviour of his family and slaves, and even of his guests, if they lived above three days in his house.
Page 216 - State themselves; and thus the many have been immolated to the few, and have even believed that this was their highest destination. These views cannot be too earnestly withstood. Nothing seems to me so needful as to give to the mind the consciousness, which governments have done so much to suppress, of its own separate worth. Let the individual feel that through his immortality he may concentrate in his own being a greater good than that of nations. Let him feel that he is placed in the community,...
Page 216 - ... is a part of a machine, intended only to contribute to some general, joint result. He was created, not to be merged in the whole, as a drop in the ocean, or as a particle of sand on the sea-shore, and to aid only in composing a mass.
Page 216 - God in his own secret conscience. Rulers have called the private man the property of the state, meaning generally by the state themselves, and thus the many have been immolated to the few, and have even believed that this was their highest destination. These views cannot be too earnestly withstood. Nothing seems to me so needful...
Page 20 - ... order to counteract the inherent dilemma of trying to 'socialize' human beings by means of an abnormal social matrix such as a prison. In a word, he regarded the true function of a prison to be a 'moral hospital'. 'Vice,' Maconochie wrote in his first pamphlet in 1838, 'is a disease and penal science just moral surgery. The means it employs must often be painful; but its object should always be benevolent— always the speedy discharge of the patient.
Page iv - ... When a man breaks his leg, however rashly or carelessly, we have him into a hospital, and cure him as speedily as possible, without ever thinking of modifying his treatment so as to make his case a warning to others. We here think of the individual, not of society. But when a poor fellow creature becomes morally dislocated, however imperious the circumstances to which he may have fallen a victim, we abandon all thought of his welfare, and seek only to make 'an example
Page 115 - By this institution, every man was obliged, from his own interest, to keep a watchful eye over the conduct of his neighbours; and was, in a manner, surety for the behaviour of those who were placed under the division to which he belonged : whence these decennaries received the name of frank-pledges.
Page 181 - ... assiduously imitated. That manner is gone; the French, so far from being a polite people at the present day, want that easiness of behaviour which is the first essential to politeness. Every man you meet is occupied with maintaining his dignity, and talks to you of his position. There is an evident effort and struggle, I will not say to appear better than you are, but to appear all that you are, and to allow no person to think that you consider him better than you. Persons, no longer ranked by...
Page 219 - I know; but not more corrupt than some who walk at large, and who are not excluded from our kindness. The rich man who defrauds, is certainly as criminal as the poor man who steals. The rich man who drinks to excess, contracts deeper guilt than he, who sinks into this vice under the pressure of want. The young man who seduces innocence, deserves more richly the house of correction, than the unhappy female whom he allured into the path of destruction.
Page 182 - There is no rock, they say, to which the ship can be moored; nothing to prevent the wild surges of public opinion from sweeping it from the shore, and exposing it to all the tempests of an angry ocean. It is so. THERE is NONE. We depend not for security on any resistance to this opinion, but from the correctness of a public sentiment that can need no resistance. So long as our people are well informed and intelligent, there is no danger. The little occasional variations of the public mind are temporary...

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