Convict

“ I was myself beginning to feel a sentiment of pleasure, and to picture to my mind the unfortunate felon, converted, by a few words of counsel, and still fewer dollars of charity, into an honest and worthy member of society, when—oh horror of horrors!—the repenting convict suddenly snatched up a brand from the fire, and discharged it, with a violence that would have felled an ox, full upon the head of his patron. ”

“ Let me tell you, gentlemen of the jury, if you agree with his prosecutors in thinking that there ought to be a sacrifice of such a man, on such an occasion, and upon the credit of such evidence, you are to convict him—never did you, never can you give a sentence, consigning any man to public punishment with less danger to his person or to his fame ”

“ Our convicts are nursed in the lap of luxury as compared with the condition of the prisoners at the beginning of the century. But then the criminal is the spoiled child of the age, to be petted, and pampered, and excused.
A convict with one eye, his nose smashed on one side, with coarse fleshy lips, was accosted by the chaplain. ”

“ The least term which a jury can affix to your crime, will be eighteen years, if you are not sent there for life! For life!—think of that, madam. How very disagreeable it will be! Nothing around you but blank walls; no associates but thieves and murderers—hard labor with these pretty hands—a hard bed for this handsome body—coarse and wretched food for these dainty red lips—the dress, the food, the work, and the treatment of a convict! Disagreeable, is it not, madam? But that is the least that a felon, convicted of an attempt to poison, can expect! ”

“ Commiseration (if I may use the term) towards a prisoner, I never should withhold; and God forbid, Gentlemen, that you should not give to the man at the bar the advantage of every, even the slightest, circumstance of doubt which may arise in his favour. If these doubts also should predominate, it will be your duty to acquit the prisoner; but if, on the other hand, the facts which I have laid before you be substantiated, and you feel in your consciences that the charge is made out, it will then become your painful but bounden duty to convict him. ”

“ There was a moment's pause, then the voice continued:
"It is sometimes inevitable that the law, whose purpose it is to be just, is terribly unjust. Sometimes the sole clue to a situation which seems to spell inevitable guilt lies in a fact, small in itself, whose significance is such that it cannot be brought forward. This was my case. The fact which would have cleared me could not be told. I became a convict. For six months I was an inmate of the Penitentiary. Then—the way opened to freedom, and I took it. What man would not have done so? ”

“ Entrusted to well-instructed and observing men, a general knowledge of the character of each convict could be easily obtained from his conduct on his passage, and of the crime for which he received sentence. ”

“ A man, a convict, a sentenced wretch, is dragged, on a certain morning, to one of our public squares. There ho finds the scaffold! He shudders, he struggles, he refuses to die. He is young yet—only twenty-nine. ”

“ I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge, when a prisoner has been convicted, to pronounce the sentence of the law. I have also understood that judges sometimes think it their duty to hear with patience, and to speak with humanity; to exhort the victim of the laws, and to offer, with tender benignity, their opinions of the motives by which he was actuated in the crime of which he was adjudged guilty. ”

“ A convict who has earned conditional freedom and received a grant of land, may have married, had children and lived quietly for some years, when suddenly some day he will have disappeared, abandoning wife and family, to the stupefaction of everybody. ”

“ Suppose a man to be convicted of a crime of which he is innocent. As he has been convicted, the evidence, though fallacious, is overwhelming. He is sentenced to a term of imprisonment—say penal servitude. He serves his sentence and is in due course discharged. He is now free; but the conviction stands against him. He is a discharged convict. His name is in the prison books, his photograph and his finger-prints are in the Habitual Criminals’ Register. He is a marked man for life. ”

“ But these made no part of the chaine.
The convicts destined for this operation were kept in movement round a post in an adjoining court, and were shouting, rarely in intelligible language, to their companions. Joy was the universal tone, and a sniveller ran imminent danger. One poor fellow I remarked holding down his head, when he was saluted with a kick from him who followed, and the objurgation, Tu es forçat, toi, heim?—"You a convict, and durst be sad." These men were all unmanacled. Methought a general rush on their part both practicable and formidable. ”

“ Already a conviction has been obtained against me for my opinions on this same event; for it is not one arrow alone that has been shot from the crown office quiver at me—at my reputation, my property, my liberty. In a few hours more my voice will be silenced; but before the world is shut out from me for a term, I appeal to your verdict—to the verdict of my fellow-citizens—of my fellow-countrymen—to judge my life, my conduct, my acts, my principles and say am I a criminal. Sedition, in a rightly ordered community, is indeed a crime. ”

“ By eloquence, readiness of wit, and adroit flattery of the jury he contrived to secure his acquittal in the face of the open hostility of the judge—a unique achievement at a time when the condemnation of prisoners whom the authorities wished to convict was a mere matter of course. ”

“ When a criminal is set before him proved guilty and convicted of crime, who does not frame for himself pleas of defence, but prays for pardon, and prostrates himself at the knees of his judge, the judge answers him, Of myself I can do nothing, it is my justice not my power which I exercise in judgment. ”

“ The jury might convict, the judge sentence, the President issue his warrant, and the man be hanged in twenty-four hours, for doing a deed which the Constitution itself allows, and Christendom daily practises, and the convictions of two hundred million men require! ”

“ The convict has made use of certain expressions which leave no doubt that the worst part of his criminal career dates more than ten years back, probably fifteen, and though he is reticent on this point, it is believed that one of the greatest reasons for his disquietude of mind is the knowledge that more than one has suffered innocently because of his misdeeds. ”

“ One may, but without passion, bear testimony against the accused. If he is convicted, justice condemns him. But the judge, in describing the crime and pronouncing sentence, never forgets the duty due to the creature of God on whom the punishment is about to fall. Here I see nothing but fury and jealous rage. They are devoured by their thirst for blood, and equity is not the basis of their judgments. ”

“ For certain, if your judges were sensible of the shocking treatment of the convicts here, they would hang every one of them, as infinitely less punishment; and transport only those, whose crimes deserve the severest death. ”

“ And if the person that shall offend and be convict in form aforesaid, concerning any of the premisses, shall not be beneficed, nor have any spirituall promotion: that then the same person so offending, and convict, shall for the first offence suffer imprisonment during one whole year next after his said conviction, without bail or mainprise. ”

“ Permit me, however, to remark in reply, that in a sense so plain, so obvious, so unequivocally true, that it would lead an intelligent jury, impannelled in the case, conscientiously to convict, and a wise judge righteously to condemn, all that is evil in the present state of things man may as certainly have wrought out for himself, as the criminals whom we see sentenced at every justiciary court work out for themselves the course of punishment to which they are justly subjected. ”

“ All who are not convicts, whoever they are, from those who have the most contact with them such as guards, soldiers on duty, down to all who have ever had any connexion with prison life, have an exaggerated idea of convicts. ”

“ So might a convicted criminal stand, feeling himself innocent of wrong in intent, beaten down under a combination of circumstances too strong to combat, awaiting the words of his sentence, and yet determined that there should be something more of dignity in his reception of the last blow than there had ever been in any previous action of his life. ”

“ But as we do not think it just to beg to be acquitted on account of the name, if we be convicted as evil-doers, so, on the other hand, if we be found to have committed no offence, either in the matter of thus naming ourselves, or of our conduct as citizens, it is your part very earnestly to guard against incurring just punishment, by unjustly punishing those who are not convicted. ”

“ No more can it be explained than can a human judge, sentencing a convicted criminal and imposing eight years imprisonment instead of the five or nine years that also at the same time floated upward in his brain, explain why he categorically determined on eight years as the just, adequate punishment. ”

“ This, again, is an unnecessary piece of assumption on the part of the prison authorities when dealing with an unconvicted person—​one, indeed, for aught they know, may be as innocent of the crime laid to his charge as they are themselves. ”

“ Be assured that every guilty man will be convicted at the bar of public opinion, and from that conviction there will be no appeal and no escape; they will be known and branded for life, each and every one. ”

“ Imagine a grey-headed judge, frill of years and honours, owning with tears, with pathetic assurances of his penitence and of his sincerity, that he has been guilty of shameful mal-practices, repeatedly asseverating the truth of his confession, subscribing it with his own band, submitting to conviction, receiving a humiliating sentence and acknowledging its justice, and all this when he has it in his power to show that his conduct has been irreproachable! ”

“ These penalties are no less than the following:—From the moment of conviction, the defendant is out of the king’s protection, his body remains in prison during the king’s pleasure, and all his goods, real or personal, are forfeited to the Crown. He can bring no action, nor recover damages, for the most atrocious injuries, and no man can safely give him comfort, aid, or relief. ”

“ One could not flog a hundred and eighty men, and it was impossible to distinguish any particular offender. So, in virtue of this last appeal, convictism had established a tacit right to converse in whispers, and to move about inside its oaken cage. ”

“ So dreadful a list, instead of diminishing, increases the number of offenders. The injured, through compassion, will often forbear to prosecute : juries, through compassion, will sometimes forget their oaths, and either acquit the guilty or mitigate the nature of the offence : and judges, through compassion, will respite one half of the convicts, and recommend them to the royal mercy. ”

“ The other man he quarrelled with has to give evidence against him; whole families come down to the court and swear against each other till they become bitter enemies. If there is a conviction the man who is convicted never forgives. ”

“ There was a story of a successful advocate who was troubled on his death-bed by the thought of having got innocent men convicted, but at last found comfort in the thought of having also got guilty men acquitted, so that, upon the whole, he had got justice done. ”

“ Convicts represent those wrong-doers who have taken to a particular form of wrong-doing punishable by law. Of the larger army of bad men they represent a minority, who have been found out in a peculiarly unsatisfactory kind of misconduct. ”

“ Convictions are prisons. They never see far enough, they do not look down from a sufficient height: but in order to have any [Pg 210] say in questions of value and non-value, a man must see five hundred convictions beneath him,—behind him.... ”

“ They are first selected for their sentence; men imprisoned for life, or for twenty years, are sure to go. Next we take them for re-conviction; we want to send away as many professional criminals as possible. ”

“ and although the condition of the convicts was a good deal like that of the inhabitants of Vesuvius, they never murmured at the punishment inflicted for these peccadilloes. ”

“ The stranger laid his hand on Captain M----'s arm, and said, "In the fallibility of human judgment, in the difficulties of proof, and in the imperfection of law, it must often happen, and does often happen, that a man perfectly innocent is condemned with the guilty. ”

“ In war-time on the field or in the fleet, a mortal punishment decreed by a drum-head court--on the field sometimes decreed by but a nod from the General--follows without delay on the heel of conviction without appeal. ”

“ Still less would the careful doctor who examined the convicts consider himself guilty. He had performed his duty accurately, and had separated the weak. How could he have foreseen this terrible heat, or the fact that they would start so late in the day and in such crowds? The prison inspector? But the inspector had only carried into execution the order that on a given day a certain number of exiles and convicts--men and women--had to be sent off. ”

“ Note, As soon as ever God by his Spirit convinces our consciences of any sin or duty we must immediately set in with the conviction, and prosecute it, as those that are not ashamed to own our former mistake. ”

“ Take the chain off the dog; he indulges in a variety of pranks, and all his former ferocity deserts him. I have more than once referred to the present system of prison discipline, and to the employment of convicts in the police force and wherever the public safety required activity, diligence, patient endurance, courage, and even daring. In this connection I will mention a curious and significant incident. Prior to my receiving a pardon, I had fearlessly plunged into rushing torrents with a knapsack on my back weighing from 60 to 70lbs On resuming my quest of the blacks, I proceeded to Mr. ”