Excerpt from Some Account of the State of the Prisons in Spain and Portugal

Besides the sale. Of various articles of food within the prison, the convicts confined for minor offences are allowed, on their parole, and on the gaoler's responsibility, to leave the prison on general errands for the rest. Wine and Spirituous liquors are sold by the gaoler, and form one great item of his profits. Though drunkenness is a very rare vice in Spain, yet the exceeding cheap. Ness of fermented liquors makes their introduction a very serious calamity, and often leads to disputes and bloodshed. There is no provision for the cleanliness of the prisoners, who shave only when they' can afford to pay a barber. On their discharge, there is an exaction for prison-fees, the amount of which I could not ascertain but I was assured that no prisoners had ever been~detained for their non-payment.

The moral effect of such a* system as this can but be fatal. Instead of reformation, more confirmed pro¿igacy - virtue itself could hardly resist the contagion of such an atmosphere, and to this atmosphere are to be introduced, and in it are to be con founded, the young and the old, the innocent and the guilty, . The public writer and the bandit, those who have erred but once, and those whose lives are but the records of crime. I saw in the same apartment Mejia, an eminent political journalist, confined for a libel, the noted Abuelo, chief of one of the southern hordes of banditti, several assassins, and criminals of every degree, from tri¿ing fraud, up to. The most atrocious enormities.

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