CO885(1-2) — Page 557

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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C.O.885

2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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But although I thus consider the views of Captain Maconochie speculative, I have read them with the highest degree of interest, and I hope with profit. I think very much that is useful and valuable may be adopted from his suggestions, and engrafted by degrees on existing systems of convict management.

I think the principle of a small working pay, paid or credited in the money of the realm, as is done here by the naval and military depart- ments, is preferable to the Mark System of Captain Maconochie.

At Bermuda the convict system has been nearly altogether a coercive one. Owing to the purposes for which convicts are sent, to carry on the public works, the system must continue to be what has been termed gregarious; for if separated in prison, the men must be associated in their labour. Under such circumstances, without great care, criminals must become worse, and the evils must be greatly aggravated if there is laxity of discipline, or over-severity, or the corrupt practice of employing the labour of the prisoners for private purposes.

The first step seems to be to take care to place over them the best men that can be found to accept such situations, and then a reformatory system, although necessarily an imperfect one, may step by step be established.

Proceeding in the direction suggested in my despatch No. 6, 24th February, 1846. I propose to submit a further list of convicts for the Queen's gracious pardon, upou two different forms, copies of which forms I inclose with this despatch. The first form applies to well-conducted convicts, who have performed the greatest quantity of work, as proved by the engineer pay-lists, which is a very near approach to a fixed measure of industry, and which is incapable of abuse.

The second form applies to well-conducted convicts, to whom an exact measure of labour cannot be applied, from their want of bodily strength, or from the nature of their employments at Bermuda.

am quite aware that this second form might be abused, and favouritism be shown to individual convicts, and therefore one of the columns in the form is made with a view to check this abuse.

The renewal of the practice of granting_conditional pardons on the spot has, I am told, already had a beneficial effect upon the convicts here. The two inclosed forms would of course be applicable to Gibraltar as well as to Bermuda; and at Gibraltar there must be more opportunities for pardoned men to find employment in merchant shipping.

The last paragraph of your Lordship's despatch No. 3, refers to the convict guards, and requires me to point out what are the remedial measures I would myself recommend, so as to prevent any portion of the regular army coming into contact with the convicts.

I should much prefer maintaining the principle of having the convict guard entirely a civil guard. With a garrison to support the civil guard as at Bermuda, civilians may be made sufficient for the management of the convicts without requiring the military to escort them to their work, or to stand over them when there. Although I have made no alteration, in diminishing the military convict guards at Bermuda, for these services, I have invariably refused to increase them, nor have I ever allowed the military to be called in aid, unless the civil authority was overawed.

The present convict guards at Bermuda are already a special body of civil guards. They consist chiefly of discharged soldiers and Seamen, and of inhabitants. Their duty is severe, as they have to be on the public works by day and to take watch at night, and they are much too uncom- fortably lodged in the lower-deck of the hulks. Such men as are desirable to be retained are apt soon to quit the employment; but this follows as a consequence of the generally low organization of the hulks. If this con- dition be improved, then I think that a better and more trustworthy class of men may be expected to offer themselves as convict guards, and to remain in the service. For the sake of the convicts, and with a view to introduce a reformatory system in combination with a penal one, I think it will be necessary that the character both of officers and guards should be raised. One important step towards that will, in my opinion, be made. if permission is given for the whole of the officers to be removed out of the

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prison-hulks, as proposed in my despatch No. 42, dated 3rd August, 1846. This measure, after further consideration, I recommend to be extended to all the hulks now at Bermuda, as well as to any new hulks to be sent out.

I am far from considering hulks ill suited for prisons, when they are not over-crowded or ventilation stopped by the erection of partitions. The larger the hulk-prison the better it may be organized, in proportion to the expence. A Reformatory System, as your Lordship is well aware, requires accommodation which a mere penal prison dispenses with. Want of space in the hulks here has been one of the causes which has impeded attempts I wished to make for the improvement of the prisoners, and almost wholly forbids classification. For these reasons, I think the largest line-of-battle hulk would make the best as well as least expensive prison hulk.

Not the least of the difficulties which I foresee is that of convict offi- cers, long accustomed to a purely penal system, being induced to engraft upon it a reformatory one. A new feeling has to be created with many of those persons here who have the management of convicts, not only within the hulks but upon the public works. Reformation of criminals may, to many of them, appear hopeless; but in this and in all other systems of punishment, it should be strenuously although discreetly attempted; and my despatches 5, 6, and 8, of 1846 are based on this view of the subject.

Among the evils of the Bermuda convict system has been that of exiling the officers to live in hulks in an oppressive climate, for many years together. In the position they are in at a small island at the dockyard they are doubly cut off from society. Thus Lieutenant Hire, who most earnestly intreats me to endeavour to get him relieved to some position at home, has lived in the "Dromedary" hulk at Bermuda for twenty-two years. I annex a copy of a letter which I wrote on the subject in 1844.

I have long thought that it would be desirable, could an arrangement be effected, to connect the convict establishment at Bermuda, or other foreign possessions of the Crown, with the officers of the model prisons in England, so as to have a system of foreign reliefs at short intervals; and new ideas be obtained, and instruction be given in improved prison disci- pline. I am sure that it would be a great advantage to the convict establishment at Bermuda, if the officers were each in their turn to serve for a time at the prisons of Parkhurst or Pentonville, and that the overseers of hulks at Bermuda should be by degrees exchanged for other overseers trained at these model prisons.

The chaplaincies to the convicts at Bermuda should not, I think, be permanent appointments. This opinion I strongly hold. A Chaplain who accepts the situation as a living, and does little more than go through the prescribed duties, as forms, in order that he may obtain his salary, is but of little use. He may perhaps sometimes even stand in the way of other men, zealous in the cause of moral reformation of criminals. Could it be brought about, I would have the Chaplains changed every year, or at most every two or three years They should rather be mis- sionaries than chaplains, in the sense in which that office has been hitherto held.

I have, &c.,

My Lord,

(Signed)

Inclosure in No. 4.

Governor Reid to Lord Stanley.

WM. REID,

Governor.

Bermuda, November 19, 1844.

THE inclosed letter is from Lieutenant Hire, R. N., who has been for twenty years in the service of the Home Department, as overseer of convicts at Bermuda. He is now desirous, I think not unreasonably, of being removed to some other employment than the hulks, under the same department at home,