was 351. 11s. 8d. But, if the accounts are carefully analysed, and if so much of the excess is deducted as arises from special circumstances connected with Pentonville, and not at all essential to the separate system, there will appear, as the chaplain asserts -and we think proves-a balance in favour of the Model Prison exceeding 21. per prisoner. pp. 177-183.

The cost of each prisoner at Pentonville in 1852 is estimated at 247. 2s. 1d.* Compared with the cost in former years, this shows a large reduction. It is stated, however, by Mr. Burt that this reduction arises principally from the lowered prices of provisions; from the prison being kept constantly full, so that the expense of salaries, &c., is distributed over a larger population; from some offices being transferred to another department of the public service; and from other causes not connected with the system. The saving effected by the infringements upon the original discipline is estimated at not more than 17. or 25s. per prisoner (pp. 193, 194). But the saving of a small percentage on our annual gaol expenses will be bought at an immense loss, if, by such economy, an inefficient and nondeterrent discipline is substituted for an efficient and reformatory Crime will be increased, and, with it, all those expenses incidental to the administration of criminal law. Our outlays on the police force, on the conduct of prosecutions, on the convict service, &c., will all receive a serious augmentation. In short, the result will be, that, though our gaol expenditure of 600,0007. per annum may be reduced, yet the three millions which are now paid for bringing our criminals into these gaols will be greatly increased.

one.

The Legislature has always aimed at concentration of punishment, so that, in the shortest possible time, the greatest amount of protection to society might be secured. This fundamental principle has been quite overlooked in the working of the mixed system, and a mitigated punishment, extending over a longer time, is substituted for a severer one, acting in a short time. Colonel Jebb, believing that eighteen months of Separate Confinement is too severe, reduces that term to nine months, and gives as an equivalent three or four years of Associated Labour on Public Works. The country, therefore, has all the difference to pay between the cost of keeping on hand for years criminals who would, or might, be discharged in months. This, the money view of the question, is serious enough without reference to the

*Compare table in Appendix to Col. Jebb's Report for 1851; and observe that in that the item of buildings and repairs' is omitted-whereas in the estimate stated above it is included. This item is usually rather a large one-in 1848 it was 31. Os. 4 d. per prisoner.

main thing-the moral effect of the discipline of the separate as compared with that of the associated system.

But then it may be argued that the associated prisoners work, and that their work will have a moneyed value. Let this be granted: what is that value? Mr. Burt shows that, owing to the longer detention of convicts under the mixed system, there will be an increase of about 4000 prisoners in the United Kingdom above the number retained on hand under the separate system. These additional 4000 prisoners must demand an additional outlay for lodging, feeding, and supervising; the yearly cost of each man of them will be about 307.—or 120,0001. for the whole 4000. Allow that, one with another, the annual value of the labour per man is 107., or 40,000l. for the whole, it follows that 80,0007. will have to be paid yearly by the public under the mixed system, which would not be required under the separate. In other words, the expenditure will be equivalent to a perpetual vote of 80,000l. per annum for public works. Mr. Burt is of opinion that any good contractor would finish the work required as cheaply, in a much shorter time than he now can, when he is encumbered with convict labour, over which he has but a limited and divided control, and the individuals furnishing which are, for the most part, unskilled and unwilling workmen.

We are well aware that we have in this paper been dealing with little more than one branch of a wide subject-but we hope even so we may have done something for the correction of prevailing prejudices;—and as to the fearfully complicated controversy concerning the transportation system itself, we shall only say at present with what pleasure we received the disclaimer of any resolution to part with it utterly, which the Duke of Newcastle lately pronounced in the House of Lords. Every one must feel what a burthen of embarrassment the new Government has inherited as to this and indeed every other question at all connected with our position as the parent and head of a vast Colonial Empire. But we will not believe that as to this specific matter the difficulty is such as would be found insuperable by ministers of clear views and steady decision. If none of the old colonies will now take our convicts, we must found new ones on purpose-and when we look at the map it seems, in fact, almost absurd to doubt that for this purpose we have ample resources and opportunities at our command.

ART.

ART. IX.-1. Le Duc de Wellington. Par Jules Maurel. Bruxelles. 8vo. 1853.

2. Wellington-His Character-his Actions-and his Writings. By J. Maurel. London. Fcap. 8vo.

THIS

HIS is a remarkable work, if it were only for its singularity. It is written by a Frenchman, who appreciates the actions and character of the Duke of Wellington, with not only a degree of care, candour, and justice, of which we know few, if any, instances amongst his countrymen, but with a delicacy, a sagacity, and a discrimination which have certainly not been surpassed amongst ourselves. He has of course no new facts to tell wellinformed people in France, or any one in England, but he presents the subject in a point of view sufficiently novel to excite a considerable interest in both countries. We learn from a short preface which the Earl of Ellesmere has prefixed to an English translation, 'that the name and antecedents of M. Maurel are well known in the highest literary circles of Brussels, where he now resides, and of Paris, where he was formerly connected with that most respectable of sources of public instruction in France, the Journal des Débats. His work (Lord E. continues) will speak for itself; but those who read, while they admire, may be glad to know that the author is a gentleman of high private character, as well as established literary reputation.'

M. Maurel is ashamed of the low-minded, and indignant at the suicidal injustice of his countrymen, who endeavour to diminish a glory to which it would be more reasonable, and in fact more patriotic, to allow its fullest measure, since they cannot deny the great FACT, that it had outshone and finally extinguished that of the Idol of their adoration. But the idol himself it was who bequeathed them the example of this inconsistent and ignoble feeling. Whenever he spoke of the Duke at St. Helena, it was in such paroxysms of rage and rancour that even Las Cases seems ashamed of repeating them. After making an apology for exhibiting his hero in one of these disgraceful fits of fury and falsehood, he thus naïvement accounts for their not being more frequent :—

:

'I remarked,' says he, that the Emperor had an extreme repugnance to mention Lord Wellington's name: to be sure he must have felt awkward at publicly depreciating HIM under whom he had fallen!' (il se trouvait gauche à ravaler publiquement celui sous lequel il avait succombe).-Las Cases, vii. 209.

The alternative of getting rid of the awkwardness, by speaking with common decency and truth of the Duke of Wellington,

does

does not seem to have occurred to either Las Cases or his Master:-nor in truth to any French writer that we have seen, except to M. Lamartine,* feebly, and more fully to M. Alphonse de Beauchamp, in their respective histories-the author of an article on the Duke's Dispatches in the Revue des Deux Mondes for September, 1839 (said to be M. Loëve Weimar), who seemed willing to treat it as fairly as the prejudices of his readers would allow and now M. Maurel, who, bolder than the reviewer, examines it more frankly, and from a wider and higher point of view, as a statesman and a moralist. Fortune, Luck, Accident— such, in the philosophy of all other French historians is the chief, and in most of them the only explanation of a gradual and unbroken series of successes which--not merely by their number and continuity, but by their concatenation and the obvious identity of the principle that pervades them-could no more be the effect of mere chance than the great operations of the natural world-which offer, as we see, various phases and are subject to occasional disturbances-but, on the whole, bear unquestionable evidence of one great and invariable principle of order and action.

In the very motto of his work M. Maurel protests against this flattering unction for the amour propre blessé of his countrymen,

'Nullum numen abest si sit PRUDENTIA: sed te

Nos facimus, FORTUNA, deam, cœloque locamus.'

Which may be rendered,

'FORTUNE's an idol, to whose share is given

Results that PRUDENCE draws, in truth, from heaven.'

Even M. Thiers, who has something of a name to risk, and who labours to make an étalage of his candour, cannot get out of that vulgar ornière, and in the face of those immortal Dispatches which he pretends to have read, he persists in placing chance as the first ingredient of the Duke of Wellington's successes. We need not go far for examples. In the first three passages of his so-called 'History' in which the Duke makes his appearance, he is accompanied by this imaginary deity-who predominates over all the other elements of success which M. Thiers condescends to allow him.

This was Sir Arthur Wellesley-since celebrated as much for his good Fortune as for his great military qualities.'-Hist. du Con. et l'Emp., ix. 172.

Sir Arthur's expedition to Portugal in 1808 was, it seems, intended at first for Spain, but, on consideration, he resolves to disembark near the Tagus

* See Quarterly Review,' vol. xc., p. 562.

'to

'to avail himself of the occasions which Fortune might offer him, and of the chance of striking some lucky stroke,' &c.—ib. 175.

To this, like the pedant who lectured Hannibal on the art of war, M. Thiers adds that Sir Arthur's military movements were all rash and wrong, but that he was induced to hazard them from a jealous impatience to do something brilliant before he should be superseded by the senior officers that were daily expected (ib. 175); and these assertions he ventures to accompany with distinct professions of familiarity with the Dispatches, in which, had he read them,* he must have seen the clearest proofs that Sir Arthur's disembarkation in Portugal was no result either of accident or of second-thought-that the first object of the instructions under which he himself sailed from Ireland, and the rendezvous prescribed from the outset for all the different detachments that were to compose his army, was the Tagus; and that, as to his having rashly hurried into action from selfish jealousy, the very same Dispatch, from the Government at home, which announced that he might be superseded by a senior officer, directed him

'to carry his instructions into execution with every expedition that circumstances will admit, without awaiting the arrival of the LieutenantGeneral.'-15th July, 1808, Desp. iv. 18.

Again when Wellesley wins the battle of Vimieiro-entirely -as Field-Marshal Thiers thinks-through the rashness and blunders of Junot, who ought to have thrown him into the sea' and 'precipitated him over the cliffs into the abyss' (le jeter dans la mer-précipité dans les flôts de l'abîme, ib. 182) in front of which he had taken up his very injudicious position-when, we say, he had won this battle, which he ought to have lost, M. Thiers's only remark is, that

'he was always lucky throughout his brilliant career.'-ib. 185. Thus, on his very first appearance on the scene, prejudgingand by anticipation discolouring-the whole of that brilliant career' which the reluctant Historian must by and bye deal with in detail, as being from first to last the creature of patronizing Luck. If his wry-mouthed candour allows Wellesley certain

We have heard, indeed (though we cannot ourselves vouch for the fact), that M. Thiers, when last in England, confessed that his acquaintance with the Dispatches was but slight, and even recent. Its slightness we never doubted, and that. such as it may be, he acquired it recently, is additionally confirmed by his long and pompons narration of the affair at Roliça, in which he asserts that the English lost from 1200 to 1500 men killed-tués. The Duke's official return, which we need not say is scrupulously correct, and accounts for every man, is 71 men and 4 officers killed. There is not a page of all this portion of M. Thiers' work that does not exhibit the same style of fanfaronnade, on which we think even he could not have ventured if he had read the Dispatches.

'great