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Colonial Government and the Secretary of State is the retention of the penal settlement at Massaruni. I am not prepared at present to urge its removal, but I continue keenly alive to the dangers of aliuse incident to its remote situation.

I agree with you that the fundamental condition for ensuring the maintenance of good order and management at a penal establishment so remote from the seat of Govern- ment, must be frequent and efficient supervision. I approve your having specially confided the duties of supervision to one responsible officer of high position, but I hope that this arrangement will not conflict with the continued inspection of the settlement by other public officers; and I trust you yourself may find it in your power to pay it frequent visits, say once in two months. All inspections by whomsoever unertaken should be thorough inspections. Even with every precaution the dangers of abuse are only too imminent.

It may be said, perhaps, that so long as official inspections are frequent and efficient, remoteness and isolation will make no difference, inasmuch as mere vicinity to a prison does not enable its neighbours to know what is going on within it. But the neighbour- hood may know something about it from the persons employed within it, who are not imprisoned the warders and inferior officers; and if proper regulations are established respecting visits to prisomers and communications with them by their friends (such as are contemplated in 28 and 29 Vict., cap. 126, schedule 1, sec. 54) there would be much more likelihood of abuses transpiring in a peopled neighbourhood than in a remote wilderness.

Prisoners of the races and classes confined in the prison at Massaruni might be visited by their friends or others (though of course under rigorous conditions as to frequency and mode) if the prison were situated in their native place; whereas the diffi- culty and cost of reaching a remote prison will probably deprive the prisoners at Massaruni of any but a very few such visits.

With regard to your objections to the appointment of a director or inspector as proposed by the Committee of the Court of Policy, I have to observe that similar objec- tions might probably be urged with equal force to the consolidation of other departments besides that of the prisons under one chief, who, though he can only visit particular stations at intervals, is, nevertheless, held responsible for the general efficiency of the service over which he presides. But if you see serious reason to object to the change, I am willing that the prisons of the Colony should remain as heretofore, under the super- vision of the Governor acting through the Colonial Secretary's office.

I have, &c. (Signed) CARNARVON.

No. 5.

BAHAMAS.

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חווּי

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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