Transcriber's notes: Minor typographical errors have been corrected. Table of contents has beengenerated for HTML version. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the articles.
| On Punishment. | 129 |
| Púshkin the Russian Poet. Concluded. | 140 |
| Marston; or, The Memoirs of a Statesman. Part XVIII. | 157 |
| A Letter from London. By a Railway Witness. | 173 |
| Priests, Women, and Families. | 185 |
| My College Friends. No. II.--Horace Leicester | 197 |
| Zumalacarregui. | 210 |
| North's Specimens of the British Critics. No. VII. Mac-Flecnoe and the Dunciad | 229 |
How to punish crime, and in so doing reform the criminal; how to upholdthe man as a terror to evil-doers, and yet at the same time beimplanting in him the seeds of a future more happy and prosperouslife—this is perhaps the most difficult problem of legislation. We arefar from despairing of some approximation to a solution, which is theutmost that can be looked for; but we are also convinced that even thisapproximation will not be presented to us by those who seem willing toblind themselves to the difficulties they have to contend with. Without,therefore, assuming the air of opposition to the schemes ofphilanthropic legislators, we would correct, so far as lies in ourpower, some of those misconceptions and oversights which energeticreformers are liable to fall into, whilst zealously bent on viewingpunishment in its reformatory aspect.
We have selected for our comments the pamphlets of Captain Maconochie,not only because they illustrate the hasty and illogical reasonings, theutter forgetfulness of elementary principles, into which such reformersare apt to lapse; but also for the still better reason, that theycontain a suggestion of real value; a contribution towards an efficientprison-discipline, which merits examination and an e