13th Apri. Ly the latest minutes of meeting of the Municipal Council, published in another column, the question of the establishmeut of a municipal gaol is brought up again by a letter from Mr, Hughes, enclosing a report from Mr. Carles. Dhis topic is a specialty of Mr. Carles in principle he is no doubt perfectly right: if the municipality undertakes the care of prisoners, it ought to provide a prison to keep them in, In practice, however, there are several points of which neither Mr. Carles nor Mr, Hughes take any notice. The municipality is not under any obligation to provide a prison: it is undoubtedly the duty of the Chinese to take care of Chinese prisoners, and the municipality has volunteered from time to time to take change of some of the criminals convicted at the Mixed Court, in order to make sure that they are punished at all, and that the punishment is not exteniated or unduly aggravated. "The abuses of the Chinese prison system are so notorious, that it is to the interest of the foreign community that some of the local criminals at least should be kept under our own supervision; but Mr. Hughes is hardly correct in saying that we are "obliged to provide prison accommodation " for them nor is it obvious that there is any obligation on the community to set "an example to the Chinese of the civilised method of treating prisoners." Granting for the sake of argument that these obligations are laid upon us, we can then fairly argue that the municipal cells and the treatment of prisoners in them, are so far superior to anything Chinese, that a sufficient example is set already. That there should be vermin, and even beri-beri, among those confined in the Municipal cells is not to be wondered at, considering what dregs of humanity many of the prisoners are. We are not even clear what Mr. Carles means by his airy statement that "abolition of torture, a precise statement of the charge on which prisoners are arraigned, and prompt trial are privileges, the fruits of civilisation, which have been introduced through the Mixed Court into this Settlement he can hardly mean that torture, etc., were the rule en the Settlement wutil the Mixed Court was founded; that the Mixed Court, in fact, is our Magna Charta and Bill of Rights. If inclusion in the chain-gang is not such a wholesome discipline as will deter from crime later on, that is because soft-hearted Consuls from time to time have insisted on mitigations of the severity of this discipline, until it has become almost a farce. 'The Council, says Mr. Macgregor, is giving its careful consideration to Mr. Carles' suggestions; but it will probably come to the same conclusion as previous councils, that it is not the business of the community to estab li a model prison for Chinese, and that if the community were weakly persuaded into doing it, the result would be perfectly useless as an example to the Chinese, who would simply regard it as one of the costly eccentricities iv which the foreign devil delights tu waste his money.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.