The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• A View of the Hard-labour Bill; Being an Abstract of a Pamphlet, Intituled, “draught of a Bill, to Punish By Imprisonment and Hard Labour, Certain Offenders; and to Establish Proper Places For Their Reception:” Interspersed With Observations Relative T
• Panopticon; Or, the Inspection-house: Containing the Idea of a New Principle of Construction Applicable to Any Sort of Establishment, In Which Persons of Any Description Are to Be Kept Under Inspection; and In Particular to Penitentiary-houses,
• Preface.
• Letter I.: Idea of the Inspection Principle.
• Letter II.: Plan For a Penitentiary Inspection-house.
• Letter III.: Extent For a Single Building.
• Letter IV.: The Principle Extended to Uncovered Areas.
• Letter V.: Essential Points of the Plan.
• Letter VI.: Advantages of the Plan.
• Letter VII.: Penitentiary-houses—safe Custody.
• Letter VIII.: Uses—penitentiary-houses—reformation.
• Letter IX.: Penitentiary-houses—economy—contract—plan.
• Letter X.: Choice of Trades Should Be Free.
• Letter XI.: Multiplication of Trades Is Not Necessary.
• Letter XII.: Contractor’s Checks.
• Letter XIII.: Means of Extracting Labour.
• Letter XIV.: Provision For Liberated Persons.
• Letter XV.: Prospect of Saving From This Plan.
• Letter XVI.: Houses of Correction.
• Letter XVII.: Prisons For Safe Custody Merely.
• Letter XVIII.: Manufactories.
• Letter XIX.: Mad-houses.
• Letter XX.: Hospitals.
• Letter XXI.: Schools.
• Postscript, Part I. Containing Further Particulars and Alterations Relative to the Plan of Construction Originally Proposed; Principally Adapted to the Purpose of a Panopticon Penitentiary-house. *
• Section I.: Principal Particulars. Principal Particulars Either Settled Or Altered, Since the First Hasty Design, As Described In Letter II. And Imperfectly Represented In Plate I. See Plate II. †
• Section II.: General View of the Whole Edifice. In a General View of the Whole Building, According to Its Present Form, Three Very Different, Though Connected Masses, May Be Distinguished.
• Section III.: Annular Well. Annular Well, Instead of Stories of Intermediate Annular Area.
• Section IV.: Protracted Partitions Omitted. Protracted Partitions Omitted; Or Rather, Taken Into the Cells.
• Section V.: Cells, Double Instead of Single.
• Section VI.: Dead-part.
• Section VII.: Chapel. Chapel Introduced. *
• Section VIII.: Inspection-galleries and Lodge.
• Section IX.: Of the Communications In General.
• Section X.: Communications. Prisoners’ Staircases.
• Section XI.: Communications—inspectors Staircases.
• Section XII.: Staircase For Chapel Visitors, and For the Officers’ Apartments.
• Section XIII.: Cell-galleries.
• Section XIV.: Doors.
• Section XV.: Diametrical Passage.
• Section XVI.: Communications—exit Into the Yards.
• Section XVII.: Exterior Annular Well. ‡
• Section XVIII.: Windows Reaching Low, and Glazed; Instead of High Up, and Open.
• Section XIX.: Materials. Arched Work—much Iron—plaster Floors.
• Section XX.: Outlets, Including Airing-yards.
• Section XXI.: Approach and Fences.
• Section XXII.: Means of Supplying Water.
• Section XXIII.: Of the Mode of Warming the Building.
• Section XXIV.: Of the Economy Observed In the Construction.
• Postscript—part II. Principles and Plan of Management.
• Section I.: Leading Positions.
• Section II.: Management—in What Hands, and On What Terms.
• Section III.: Of Separation As Between the Sexes.
• Section IV.: Of Separation Into Companies and Classes.
• Section V.: Employment.
• Section VI.: Diet.
• Section VII.: Clothing.
• Section VIII.: Bedding.
• Section IX.: Health and Cleanliness.
• Section X.: Of Airing and Exercise.
• Section XI.: Schooling and Sunday Employment.
• Section XII.: Of Ventilation, Shading, and Cooling.
• Section XIII.: Distribution of Time.
• Section XIV.: Of Punishments.
• Section XV.: Mode of Guarding On the Outside.
• Section XVI.: Provision For Liberated Prisoners.
• The Following Note Respecting This Work Was Given By Bentham to Dr. Bowring, 24 Th January 1821.
• Panopticon Versus New South Wales: Or, the Panopticon Penitentiary System, and the Penal Colonization System, Compared.
• A Plea For the Constitution: Shewing the Enormities Committed, to the Oppression of British Subjects, Innocent As Well As Guilty;
• Preface.
• Section I.: Subject Matter—object—plan.
• Section II.: Power of Legislation—its Necessity In New South Wales.
• Section III: Legislation—how Far Lawful In New South Wales.
• Section IV.: American, &c. Legislation No Precedent For New South Wales.
• Section V.: Even In America, the Crown Had No Right to Legislate Without Parliament.
• Section VI.: Nullity of Legislation In New South Wales, For Want of an Assembly to Consent.
• Section VII.: Nullity of Governor’s Ordinances. For Want of a Court to Try Offences Against Them.
• Section VIII.: King’s Law-servants Not Infallible.
• Section IX.: Nullity of New South Wales Legislation, Proved By the Granada Case.
• Section X.: Governor’s Illegal Ordinances Exemplified.
• Section XI.: Governor’s Illegal Ordinances Exemplified.
• Section XII.: Expirees Forcibly Detained.
• Section XIII.: Expirees, During Detention, Kept In a State of Bondage.
• Section XIV.: Statutes Transgressed By the Legislation and Government of New South Wales.
• Draught of a Code For the Organization of the Judicial Establishment In France: With Critical Observations On the Draught Proposed By the National Assembly Committee, In the Form of a Perpetual Commentary.
• Bentham’s Draught For the Organization of Judicial Establishments, Compared With That of the National Assembly, With a Commentary On the Same.
• Emancipate Your Colonies! Addressed to the National Convention of France, Anno 1793.
• Jeremy Bentham to His Fellow-citizens of France, On Houses of Peers and Senates.
• Papers Relative to Codification and Public Instruction: Including Correspondence With the Russian Emperor, and Divers Constituted Authorities In the American United States.
• Part I.—: On Codification.
• No. I.: To the President of the United States of America.
• No. II.: James Madison, Then President of the Congress of the American United States, to Jeremy Bentham, London.
• No. III.: Albert Gallatin, Minister Plenipotentiary From the American United States to the Court of London, to Simon Snyder, Governor of Pennsylvania, Introducing a Letter From Jeremy Bentham to the Said Governor.
• No. IV.: Jeremy Bentham, London, to Simon Snyder, Governor of Pennsylvania.
• No. V.: Simon Snyder, Governor of Pennsylvania, to David Meade Randolph, Esq. Williamsburgh, Virginia, On the Subject of the Above Letter of Jeremy Bentham.
• No. VI.: Extract From a Printed Paper, Signed Simon Snyder, Dated Harrisburg, December 5 Th 1816, James Peacock, Printer, Intituled “ Governor’s Message to the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, ” Containing Seve
• No. VII.: Circular. — to the Governor of the State of
• No. VIII.: Jeremy Bentham, an Englishman, to the Citizens of the Several American United States.
• No. IX.: Jeremy Bentham to James Madison, Late President of the American United States.
• No. X.: Jeremy Bentham to the Emperor of All the Russias.
• No. XI.: Alexander I. Emperor of All the Russias, to Jeremy Bentham, London—written With His Imperial Majesty’s Own Hand, In Answer to the Above, [no. X.]
• No. XII.: Jeremy Bentham to the Emperor of All the Russias.
• No. XIII.: Prince Adam Czartoriski, of Poland, to Jeremy Bentham, London. *
• No. XIV.: Jeremy Bentham, London, to Prince Adam Czartoriski of Poland.
• Part II.: Public Instruction.
• No. I.: ( Circular. )— Letter From His Excellency Wilson Cary Nicholas, Governor of Virginia, On the Subject of Public Instruction.—addressed (the Copy of Which This Is a Transcript) to His Excellency John Quincy Adams, Minister Plenipotentiary From the U
• No. II.: ( Circular. )— to the Governor of the State of
• No. III.
• No. IV. Notice Concerning Chrestomathia, By the Paris Lancasterian Instruction Society. Report of the British and Foreign School Society to the General Meeting, Dec. 12, 1816.—EXTRACT.
• Codification Proposal, Addressed By Jeremy Bentham to All Nations Professing Liberal Opinions; Or Idea of a Proposed All-comprehensive Body of Law, With an Accompaniment of Reasons, Applying All Along to the Several Proposed Arrangements:
• Advertisement.
• Part I.—ARGUMENTS.: Positions, With Reasons For Proofs.
• Section 1.: In Every Political State, the Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That It Be Provided With an All-comprehensive Body of Law. All-comprehensiveness, Practicable, and Indispensable.
• Section 2.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That Such Body of Law Be Throughout Accompanied By Its Rationale: an Indication of the Reasons On Which the Several Arrangements Contained In It Are Grounded. Rationale, Though Unex
• Section 3.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That Those Reasons Be Such, Throughout, As Shall Show the Conduciveness of the Several Arrangements to the All-comprehensive and Only Defensible End Thus Expressed. Rationale, Indicat
• Section 4.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That, of This Rationale, the Several Parts Be Placed In the Most Immediate Contact With the Several Arrangements to Which They Respectively Apply. Rationale, Interwoven, Not Detached.
• Section 5.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That For the Function Exercised By the Drawing of the Original Draught of Such a Code, the Competitors He As Many As, Without Reward At the Public Expense, Can Be Obtained: and So, For T
• Section 6.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires—that, For the Drawing of Any Such Draught, No Reward At the Public Expense Be Given. At Additional Expense, Reward None.
• Section 7.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires—that Every Draught, So Given In, Be, From Beginning to End, If Possible, the Work of a Single Hand. Hands Not More Than One.
• Section 8.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires—that Such Original Draught, Being the Work of a Single Hand, Be Known to Be So. Hand, Known to Be But One.
• Section 9.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That the Work, Being the Work of a Single Hand, and Known to Be So, It Be Known Whose the Hand Is. Hand, Known Whose It Is.
• Section 10.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That, For the Drawing of the Original Draught, All Foreigners Be Admitted Into the Competition: and That, In So Far As Applicable, Unless It Be In All Particulars Taken Together Decid
• Section 11.: On the Part of an Individual, Proposing Himself As Draughtsman For the Original Draught of a Code of Laws, Willingness Or Unwillingness to Interweave In His Draught a Rationale As Above, Is the Most Conclusive Preliminary Test, and That
• Section 12.: On the Part of a Ruler, Willingness Or Unwillingness to See Established an All-comprehensive Code, With Its Rationale As Above, and to Receive Original Draughts From All Hands, Are Among the Most Conclusive Tests of Appropriate Aptitude,
• Part II.—TESTIMONIALS.
• I. England
• II. Geneva
• III.: Spain.
• IV.: Portugal.
• V.: Italy.
• VI.: France.
• VII.: Anglo-american United States.
• VIII.: Greece.
• IX.: South America.

SECTION XXIV.

OF THE ECONOMY OBSERVED IN THE CONSTRUCTION.

It may be reduced to three principal heads: 1. Making the same apartment serve for every thing; 2. Making the cells capable of serving for two, three, or four inhabitants, instead of one; 3. Making them no larger than is necessary.

1. Six several modes of action or existence are incident to the persons for whose reception the building is particularly designed: to work, to eat, to sleep, to pray, to be punished, and to be nursed. One and the same place serves my prisoners for all of them. If the restriction is severe, it is not unexampled. In our own three kingdoms, it is the lot of many hundred thousands, perhaps of some millions, of better men.

I see nothing that should hinder a man from working where he eats, working where he sleeps, eating where he works, eating where he sleeps, sleeping where he works, or sleeping where he eats. All this, and more, it has more than once happened to myself to do in the same room for a considerable time together, and I cannot say I ever found any bad consequence from it.

I conceive it not altogether impossible for a man, nor even for a Christian, to pray where he does all this: Christ and his apostles did so. Synagogues excepted, neither Christ nor his apostles knew what it was to pray in any consecrated place.

Not that for all this I have any objection to that rite. It seems neither difficult to show that it does service to religion, nor easy, if possible, to show that it does disservice.

In my plan, I accordingly admit a consecrated space, and that by no means a confined one—a place in which no operation that does not minister to religion shall be carried on. All I contend for is, that it is not necessary that the prisoners should themselves be situated in that place—that it is sufficient to every purpose, if, without being situated there, they see and hear what passes there. The place where the minister is situated, and where the more considerable part of the auditory are situated, the place to which the eyes and the thoughts of the prisoners are turned, is holy ground.

As little reason do I see why the same place should not serve them for being punished in. Separate apartments for this purpose are surely, of all luxuries, one that can best be spared.‡

As to nursing, whether, upon the common plans of construction, separate rooms for that use were necessary, is not strictly to the purpose here. The bed-chambers being all single ones, I do not immediately apprehend what advantage the patients were to get by being removed out of those rooms into others, unless it were that of having fires in their rooms—a benefit which, without shifting their quarters, they might have received from portable stoves. A portable stove not only costs less than a room, but is sooner made. Were the infirmary-rooms at any time to be filled, it would be rather an awkward circumstance for a patient in a high fever to wait for attendance, till an additional infirmary could be built and in readiness to receive him. At Moser and Jackson’s, a good portable stove may be had upon the purest principle for 3½ guineas, ready made; stoves of inferior quality, and less elaborate contrivance, probably at a still cheaper rate.

But be this as it may in the Penitentiary-town designed by the act, in a Panopticon Penitentiary-house nursing-rooms on purpose would be unnecessary beyond dispute. Rooms better adapted to that use than every cell is of itself, or even so well, can hardly be shown anywhere. By nursing-rooms on purpose, I mean rooms which, when they are not put to this use, are not put to any other. For as to particular cells, more particularly well suited to the purpose of an infirmary than other cells, such have already been pointed out, and under that very name;* but the convenience they would afford to the sick is no reason why, when there are no sick, they should remain unoccupied. Indeed the whole of the upper story of cells is peculiarly well adapted to this use. None of the air that has visited any one of these cells, ever visits any other part of the whole building; and being so much nearer than any others to the roof, they can receive a portable stove and its chimney, with so much the less inconvenience and expense.†

All these different sets of apartments the Penitentiary act supposes—all but one, the dining-rooms, it expressly orders.‡ I see no mention in it of powdering-rooms.∥

On the common penitentiary plans, each prisoner must at any rate have a sleeping-room to himself. Why? Because, being under no sort of inspection or controul during the hours allotted for sleep, which under the common management occupy the greatest part of the twenty-four, even two, much more any greater number, might prompt and assist one another in plotting to escape. But the rooms they sleep in might at some times be too cold for working in, or they would not hold the machines which it is thought advisable to employ—or their work requires that they should be under the eye of an inspector, which they cannot be in these rooms: therefore there are to be other rooms for working in.

Have any notions about health and airiness contributed to this opinion about the necessity of different rooms for the different parts of the twenty-four hours? I am not certain, though something to this effect I think I have observed in the publications of Mr. Howard. But even under the common Penitentiary discipline, I should not think any such multiplication necessary, much less under the plan of management here proposed. To how many hundred thousands of his Majesty’s honest subjects is such luxury unknown! Even among persons somewhat above the level of the lowest class, what is more common than to have but one room, not only for one person, but for a whole family—man, wife, and children? and not only working, and sleeping, and eating, but cooking to be performed in it? Among the Irish cottars, as we learn from Mr. Arthur Young, that is, among the bulk of the Irish people, one room is the only receptacle for man, wife, children, dog, and swine. Has that one room so much as a single window in it, much less opposite windows, or any aperture but the door? In towns where one room forms the sole dwelling-place of a whole family, has not that room closed windows in it? Is there any commanding power to enforce the opening of any of those windows? does not the aversion to cold forbid it? Are they so much as capable of being opened, if at all, for more than half their length, and that the lower half?*

Let me not be mistaken. Far be it from me to propose the manner in which the common people live through ignorance, as a proper model to be pursued by those who have the good fortune to be possessed of more intelligence;—far be it from me to insinuate that a bad regimen ought to be prescribed, only because it is practised;—all I mean is, that the degree of airiness most frequent in the dwellings of the greater part of the people is inferior, and much inferior, to that which might be obtained without multiplication of rooms, even according to the hitherto received mode of construction for penitentiary-houses, and according to the mode of management hitherto pursued in them. In prisons even so managed, the inhabitants would not, in this respect, be worse off, but much better off, than the common run of men at liberty. Yet even in this respect, how inferior are some of the most approved plans of construction, in comparison of the one now proposed!† There, when you shut out rain or snow, you shut out air: here, rain or not rain, windows open or not open, you have fresh air in plenty—in much greater plenty than is usual in a palace.

2. Of such part of the saving as results from the substituting a steady plan of mitigated seclusion in small apartments, to an alternation of solitude and promiscuous intercourse, nothing farther need be said here: it has been fully vindicated in a preceding section.

3. Of the waste of room observable in the common plans, a great part is to be placed to the account of height. Not more than eleven feet, but not less than nine, is the height prescribed by the Penitentiary act.‡ The Wymondham-house takes the medium between these two extremes.∥ Waste it may well be called. I suspected as much at the time of writing the letters: I speak now with decision, and upon the clearest views. In respect of health, height of ceiling is no otherwise of use, than as a sort of succedaneum to, or means of, ventilation. In either view, it is beside the purpose: as a succedaneum, inadequate; as a means, unnecessary. If your air, indeed, is never to be changed, the more you have of it, the longer you may breathe it before you are poisoned: this is all you get by height of ceiling. But so long as it is undergoing an incessant change, what signifies what height you have? Take a Panopticon penitentiary-house on one hand, and St. Paul’s employed as a penitentiary-cell, on the other: let the Panopticon, aired as here proposed to be aired, and warmed as here proposed to be warmed, contain 4 or 500 prisoners; let St. Paul’s, hermetically closed, have but a single man in it; the Panopticon would continue a healthy building as long as it was a building; in St. Paul’s, the man would die at the end of a known time, as sure as he was put there.§

In this one article we may see almost a half added to the expense in waste. Ten feet from floor to ceiling, when less than seven feet would serve!—when less than seven feet does serve, and serves to admiration! I am almost ashamed of the eight feet I ask: it is for the mere look’s sake that I ask it. The experiment has been tried: the result is known, though not so well known as it ought to be. Have the hulks ten feet of height?—have they eight feet?—have they seven? I look at Mr. Campbell’s hulks, and to my utter astonishment I see that nobody dies there. In these receptacles of crowded wretchedness, deaths should naturally be more copious than elsewhere. Instead of that, they are beyond comparison less so. I speak from the reports. I know not the exact proportion; my searches and computations are not yet complete; but as to so much I am certain. I speak of the ordinary rate. Now and then, indeed, there comes a sad mortality—Why?—because where pestilence has been imported, hulks neither do nor can afford the means of stopping it. But, bating pestilences, men are immortal there. Among 200, 300, quarter after quarter, I look for deaths, and I find none—Why?—because Mr. Campbell is intelligent and careful, Pandora’s cordials unknown there, and high ceilings of no use.

This experiment is new matter: it is no fault of the legislators, of whom I speak, not to have made use of it. In their time it did not exist: how should it? It was this very statute of theirs that produced it. While they were building their penitentiary-castle with one hand, they little thought how with the other they were cutting the ground from under it. The information does exist now: the fault will be not theirs, but that of their successors, if, like the Wandsworth purchase, the knowledge thus acquired lies in waste.

Mention not the mortalities: it is impossible they can have had the low ceilings for their cause. The mortalities have been rare: for these three or four years none; from that period immortality begins. Have the ceilings been higher since that time? Had Captain Cook ten feet, eight feet, seven feet between decks?—Captain Cook, under whom, in a voyage that embraced all the climates of the globe, out of 80 men not a single one died in a space of between four and five years?* Out of 112, in the same time, but five, nor of those more than two in whom the seeds of death had not been sown before their embarkation?

What was your National Penitentiary-house to have cost? £120,000.—How many was it to have holden? 960.—What did your Liverpool Jail cost? About £28,000.—How many will that hold? 270.—What! make the nation pay £120 for what you have done for £100? How comes that about?—How? Why, from the Act: the Act will have high ceilings—how could I lower them?—the Act will have spacious rooms—how could I narrow them? The King was to pay for every thing: every thing was accordingly to be upon a royal scale. At Liverpool it was otherwise: those who ordered were to pay.—Such was the purport of a conversation I had with Mr. Blackburne.

POSTSCRIPT—PART II.

PRINCIPLES AND PLAN OF MANAGEMENT.

[‡ ]At Westminster school, two brothers once upon a time were caught straggling out of bounds. For their chastisement, their father, a character not unknown in those days, caused two ferulas to be made on purpose.The scene of each culprit’s transgression was inscribed upon the instrument of his punishment; and care was taken, that in the correction of him who had strayed to St. John’s, the ferula should not be employed which was destined to wipe out the guilt that had been contracted in Tothill-Fields. I remember the boys, the father, and the sticks. The mode of chastisement was, it must be confessed, striking enough: but was it a necessary one? As necessary, at least, as it would have been to have built rooms to punish them in. And of the two contrivances, building a room, and engraving a couple of words upon the head of a stick—which is the most expensive?

[* ]Section 6, Dead-part.

[† ]A separate infirmary for a Panopticon Penitentiary-house? I would not desire such a thing even for the plague. Guarded by proper regulations, I should not have the smallest apprehension of inhabiting the inspection-tower, while the cells were filled by patients dying of that disease. How much less would there be to fear, where the only danger is a possibility of its importation by goods or passengers on account of the country from which they come! A Lazaretto may accordingly be added to the number of the establishments to which the panopticon principle might be applied, under some variations, to signal advantage. On casting an eye over the Table of ends and means at the end of this volume, the reader will easy distinguish such of the latter as are applicable to this purpose: he will also distinguish with equal facility such of the expedients as, being adapted to opposite purposes would require to be discarded or changed. As to comfort, amusement, luxury in all its shapes, it is sufficient to hint that there is nothing of that sort that need be excluded from such an hotel, any more than from any other. But everything of luxury apart, what would not Howard have given for a cell in a Panopticon Penitentiary house as here described, instead of the apartment in the Venetian Lazaret, the stench of which had so nearly cost him his life?a

I must not dwell in this place on a subject of so confined a nature, and so foreign to the present purpose. I will only just add, that the plan of warming, as here described, would afford a method peculiarly advantageous of airing the cotton wool, which is the great and dangerous article in the Levant trade. Laying the cotton in light strata upon numerous and shallow stages, in sheltered warehouses, occupying the ground-floor of the cellular part of the building, it might easily be so ordered, by flues or pipes leading from the back part of those stages to the stoves in the inspection-tower, that not a particle of air should visit the fire in the stoves, that had not made its way through the cotton on the stages. The ventilation, besides being so much more perfect, not depending, as it must otherwise, upon the uncertainties of the weather, the continuance of this irksome and expensive probation might be so much the shorter.

[‡ ]Not exactly so. Meals, for aught I see, might be made in the working-rooms: they cannot, however, in the sleeping-rooms.—§ 33. I am not certain whether Mr. Blackburne put dining-rooms in his plans: I think I have heard he did. Two chapels I know he had put in for the National Penitentiary-house—one for each sex—but struck out one of them upon its being suggested to him that it was possible for the two sexes to be in the same place at different times.

[∥ ]I was once much pressed to put a tennis-court in my plan; for felons have not less need of exercise than honest men. Powdering-rooms are more common, and would be less expensive.

[* ]Were ventilation the object, the upper sash would be the one to open in preference, especially where the highest part of the lower one is not above the level of the organs of respiration. Were it not for accidental gusts, so much of the air as is above the aperture might remain for ever unchanged. It may perhaps have been partly on this consideration, that in Mr. Howard’s and the Wymondham plans, the holes serving for windows are placed so high.

[† ]Supra, p. 96.

[‡ ]Sect. 33.

[∥ ]Supra, p. 96.

[§ ]In the Letter on Hospitals, the reader may recollect what is said in commendation of an idea of Dr. Marat’s with respect to ventilation, and the form of construction proposed by him in consequence. What he says is very just, as far as it goes: but the truth is, that so long as proper air-holes are made, and proper means employed for determining the air to pass through them, there is no form but may be made as ventilative, and by that means as healthy as his. At that time I had never experienced the heartfelt satisfaction I have since enjoyed, of visiting a London hospital. I had not then seen either St. Thomas’s or Guy’s. I had no idea of the simple yet multiplied contrivances for ensuring an unremitted yet imperceptible change of air, nor the exquisite purity and salubrity that is the result of them. If I had, I should little have thought of sending Englishmen to France, or any other country, for hospital practice or theories of ventilation.

[* ]Four years, two months, and 22 days. See Cook’s Second Voyage, Introduction.

[† ]A separate infirmary for a Panopticon Penitentiary-house? I would not desire such a thing even for the plague. Guarded by proper regulations, I should not have the smallest apprehension of inhabiting the inspection-tower, while the cells were filled by patients dying of that disease. How much less would there be to fear, where the only danger is a possibility of its importation by goods or passengers on account of the country from which they come! A Lazaretto may accordingly be added to the number of the establishments to which the panopticon principle might be applied, under some variations, to signal advantage. On casting an eye over the Table of ends and means at the end of this volume, the reader will easy distinguish such of the latter as are applicable to this purpose: he will also distinguish with equal facility such of the expedients as, being adapted to opposite purposes would require to be discarded or changed. As to comfort, amusement, luxury in all its shapes, it is sufficient to hint that there is nothing of that sort that need be excluded from such an hotel, any more than from any other. But everything of luxury apart, what would not Howard have given for a cell in a Panopticon Penitentiary house as here described, instead of the apartment in the Venetian Lazaret, the stench of which had so nearly cost him his life?a

I must not dwell in this place on a subject of so confined a nature, and so foreign to the present purpose. I will only just add, that the plan of warming, as here described, would afford a method peculiarly advantageous of airing the cotton wool, which is the great and dangerous article in the Levant trade. Laying the cotton in light strata upon numerous and shallow stages, in sheltered warehouses, occupying the ground-floor of the cellular part of the building, it might easily be so ordered, by flues or pipes leading from the back part of those stages to the stoves in the inspection-tower, that not a particle of air should visit the fire in the stoves, that had not made its way through the cotton on the stages. The ventilation, besides being so much more perfect, not depending, as it must otherwise, upon the uncertainties of the weather, the continuance of this irksome and expensive probation might be so much the shorter.

[a]Howard on Lazarettos, p. 11.