“And what is the nature of the punishments inflicted in the country of your Royal Highness’s adoption?” enquired Sir John Lascelles.
“I will tell you,” said the Prince. “In the first place we have abolished the punishment of death, as barbarian, un-Christian, and demoralizing. Murder is punished by imprisonment for life; and imprisonment, fine, confiscation of property in the cases of single men having no persons dependent on them, and the loss of civil rights--these are the penalties used amongst us. The individual who is condemned to imprisonment, is not on that account rendered an useless member of society. Every criminal gaol is an assemblage of workshops where all trades and manufactures are carried on; and each prisoner must work at his own trade, or be taught one. If he have a family out-of-doors, his earnings go to support that family: if he have none, they accumulate until the day of his release. Should he refuse to work, he is put upon bread and water; and this fare soon compels him to adopt habits of industry in order to obtain plentiful and wholesome meals. Castelcicalan prisons resemble vast factories rather than gaols; and so admirable--so salutary--so reformatory is the discipline maintained in them, that a prisoner on his emancipation finds no difficulty in obtaining work again. Employers consider, in such a case, that he has expiated an offence which should not be remembered to his prejudice; and he begins the world again with a new character. He has, as it were, passed through a criminal bankruptcy court, and obtained his certificate. Should he, however, experience any difficulty in finding employment, the local authorities are bound to supply him with work at the average rate of wages. The results of all these arrangements are striking. In the first place, a Castelcicalan prison is reformatory instead of being a sink of contaminating iniquity: secondly, a man on leaving a criminal gaol, is not forced back into the ways of vice. If he relapse, it must be through determined wickedness: but relapses are very, very rare in the Grand Duchy--for happily those individuals are few who remain in the ways of crime for crime’s sake! And now, my lord, you will perceive how far the framers of all these salutary enactments respecting prisoners and prison discipline, were indebted to the following passage in your speech:--‘The criminal laws of England are only calculated to produce widely spread demoralization--to propagate vice--to render crime terribly prolific. A man no matter what his offence may have been--should be deemed innocent and untainted again, when he has paid the penalty of his misdeeds; because to brand a human being eternally, is to fly in the face of the Almighty and assert that there should be no such thing as forgiveness, and that there is no such thing as repentance. But the nature of punishments in England is so to brand the individual, and so to dare the majesty of heaven. For the gaols are perfect nests of infamy--sinks of iniquity, imprisonment in which necessarily fastens an indelible stigma upon the individual. He either comes forth tainted; or else it is supposed that he must be so. Under these circumstances, he vainly endeavours to obtain employment; and, utterly failing in his attempt to earn an honest livelihood, he is compelled perforce to relapse into habits of crime and lawlessness. This fact accounts for an immense amount of the demoralization which the Bishops so much deplore, but the true causes of which they obstinately refuse to acknowledge. The criminal gaols are moral pest-houses, in which no cures are effected, but where the contagious malady becomes more virulent. Society should not immure offenders solely for the sake of punishment--but with a view to reformation of character.’”