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The surgeon states in his report, that the food supplied at the establishment is 'wholesome, and ample;' and the health of the convicts seems very good, for only two had died up to that time, and both of these were landed in a very debilitated condition. He states the number of convicts in January 1851 at 140.

The chaplain's report is interesting and encouraging. He says, that 'the present discipline is well calculated to maintain the habits of industry, order, and cleanliness acquired in preceding prisons;' and he speaks well of the general attention of the convicts to religious exercises. Above all, he strongly and wisely advocates the formation of a library for their use; and hints that the books selected should not merely be religious, but 'entertaining and instructive'—such as history, biography, voyages and travels, scientific books with illustrations, &c. One exceedingly interesting fact mentioned is, that certain of the best educated and most intelligent convicts have been permitted to deliver lectures to their fellow-prisoners on the subjects with which they were best conversant, and with the happiest effects. Thus, a man who had been employed in a large brewery, described the whole 'mystery' in a very able manner; a second, who was by trade a French polisher, did the same; and a third, who had been a sailor, gave two lectures on the art of navigation, and illustrated them in capital style with diagrams drawn on a black-board. We cannot but think that the beneficial tendency of these novel prison recreations will be very great.

The Report of the comptroller-general himself is, on the whole, decidedly cheering; and he says of the convicts, that, 'taken as a body, I am inclined to believe they are anxious to do well, and by honest and steady conduct, to regain here that position they have forfeited in their native land.' When inquiring of government whether the same scale is to be adopted at Fremantle as at Van Diemen's Land, he says, that at the latter place the cost of officers—such as magistrates, superintendents, overseers, storekeepers, religious instructors, medical men, &c.—allowed for each 300 convicts, amounts to L.1337, 3s. 6d. per annum, or L.4, 9s. 2d. for each convict. This seems a large sum, and does not appear to include the heavy additional cost of warders and other prison-officers.

The necessary brevity of this article precludes any allusion to a great variety of curious and instructive details of the Fremantle 'establishment,' as it is called; but if what we have already said interests the reader, and he requires to know more, we can confidently refer him to the bulky Blue Book alluded to, with an assurance that he will there find most ample and authentic information.

THE TRIAL OF ELIZABETH CANNING

In the year 1753, London was so deeply convulsed with a great question at issue in the criminal courts, that the peace of the city was seriously threatened. From the highest to the lowest grades, society was divided into two parties on this question; and it was impossible to speak of it at a dinner-table or in a street assemblage without exciting a dangerous quarrel. This dispute was an extravagant illustration of English zeal for justice and fair play. The real question lay between an old gipsy woman and a young servant-girl. The question at issue was—Had the gipsy robbed and forcibly confined Elizabeth Canning, or had Elizabeth Canning falsely accused the gipsy of these outrages? By the force of incidental circumstances, the question came to be a really important one, in which the statesmen and jurists of the age took a lively interest. In fact, it connected itself with the efficacy of the great judicial institutions of the land, and their capacity to do justice and protect innocence. Hence the several trials and inquiries occupy as much space in the State Trials as three or four modern novels. In giving our readers an outline of the events so recorded, only the more prominent and marked features of them can of course find room.

Elizabeth Canning, a young woman between eighteen and nineteen years of age, had borne an unexceptionable character, and was a domestic servant in the house of a gentleman living in Aldermanbury, named Edward Lyon. On the 1st of January 1753, she obtained liberty to pay a visit to her uncle, who lived at Saltpetre Bank. As she did not return at the specified time, Mr Lyon's family made inquiry of her mother about her, and learned that she had not made her appearance among her other relations after the visit to her uncle. Days and weeks passed, in which every inquiry was unavailingly made after her, and her mother suffered intense anxiety. Public notice had been taken of the mystery; it was commented on in the newspapers, and much talked of. At length, at the end of January, Elizabeth entered her mother's house in a wretched condition—emaciated and exhausted, and with scarcely a sufficiency of clothes on her person for mere decorum. She was, of course, asked eagerly to give an account of her misfortunes. Her narrative by degrees resolved itself into this shape: She set out on her visit at eleven o'clock in the day, and stayed with her uncle till nine o'clock in the evening. Her uncle and aunt accompanied her as far as Aldgate. Then setting off alone, as she crossed Moorfields, and passed the back of Bethlehem Hospital, two stout men seized her. 'They said nothing to me,' she said, 'at first, but took half a guinea, in a little box, out of my pocket, and three shillings that were loose. They took my gown, apron, and hat, and folded them up, and put them into a greatcoat pocket. I screamed out; then the man who took my gown put a handkerchief or some such thing in my mouth.' They then tied her hands behind her, swore savagely at her, and dragged her along with them. She now, according to her own account, swooned, and on recovering from her fit, she felt herself still in their hands; they were swearing, and calling on her to move on. Partly insensible, she was conveyed for a considerable distance, but could not say whether she was dragged or carried. When she found herself at rest, it was daylight in the morning. She remembered being in a disreputable-looking house, in the presence of a woman, who said if she would accompany her, she should have fine clothes. Elizabeth refused, and the woman taking a knife from a dresser, cut open her stays, and removed them. The woman and the other people present then hustled her up stairs into a wretched garret, and locked the door. She found here a miserable straw-bed, a large black pitcher nearly full of water, and twenty-four pieces of bread, seeming as if a quartern-loaf had been cut in so many pieces. Her story went on to say, that she remained in this place for four weeks, eating so much of the bread and drinking a little water daily, till both were exhausted. She then succeeded in making her escape, by removing a board which was nailed across a window. 'First,' she said, 'I got my head out, and kept fast hold of the wall, and got my body out; after that, I turned myself round, and jumped into a little narrow place by a lane, with a field beside it. Having nothing on but 'an old sort of a bedgown and a handkerchief, that were in this hay-loft, and lay in a grate in the chimney,' she managed to travel twelve miles through an unknown country to her mother's house, not daring, as she said, to call at any place by the way, lest she should again fall into the hands of her persecutors.

If Elizabeth's absence created excitement, her reappearance in the plight she was in, and with such a story to tell, increased it tenfold. She was an attractive-looking girl; and seeing the sympathy she excited, had no objection to assent to the theory formed by her friends, that the people in whose hands she had fallen had the basest designs upon her; that they had resolved to conquer her virtue by imprisonment and starvation; and that she had magnanimously and patiently resisted all their efforts. The story was hawked about everywhere. It was spoken of in every tavern and at every dinner-table. The indignation of many respectable citizens was roused. They were parents, and had daughters of their own, who might be made the victims of the diabolical crew from which this poor girl had escaped. Many of them resolved to rally round her—avenge her wrongs, and punish the perpetrators. Elizabeth found herself one of the most important people in London. She received many presents, and considerable funds were raised to prosecute the inquiry. In these circumstances, she was bound of course to assist her friends by remembering every little incident that could lead them to the place of her sufferings. She believed that it must have been on the Hertford road, for in looking from the window, she had caught sight of a coach on that road with which she was familiar, as a former mistress had been accustomed to travel in it. This circumstance, with the distance travelled by the girl, afforded her champions a clue, and they concentrated their researches at Enfield Wash. There they found a questionable-looking lodging-house kept by a family of the name of Wells, which seemed to answer to Elizabeth's description. It had a garret with an old straw-bed, and a black pitcher was found in the house.

Elizabeth was taken to examine this house in a sort of triumphal procession. Her friends went on horseback, making a complete cavalcade; she and her mother travelled in a coach. As many as could find room seem to have simultaneously rushed into the squalid lodging-house, and the natural astonishment and confusion of its inmates on such an invasion were at once assigned as the symptoms of conscious guilt. Elizabeth seemed to be at first somewhat confused and undecided; these symptoms were attributed to the excitement of the moment on recollection of the horrors she had endured, and to a feeling of insecurity. She was told to take courage; she was among her friends, who would support her cause; and she at last said decidedly, that she was in the house where she had been imprisoned. A gipsy woman of very remarkable appearance was present. One of the witnesses recognised her, from her likeness to the portraits of Mother Shipton the sorceress. She sat bending over the fire smoking a pipe, and exhibiting through the hubbub around the imperturbable calmness peculiar to her race. Elizabeth immediately pointed to her, and said she was the woman who had cut her stays, and helped to put her in her prison-room. Even this did not disturb the stolid indifference of the old woman, who was paying no attention to what the people said. When, however, her daughter stepped up and said: 'Good mother, this young woman says you robbed her,' she started to her feet, turned on the group her remarkable face, and said: 'I rob you! take care what you say. If you have once seen my face, you cannot mistake it, for God never made such another.' When told of the day of the robbery, she gave a wild laugh, and said she was then above a hundred miles off in Dorsetshire. This woman was named Squires. Her son, George Squires, was present. Elizabeth did not seem completely to remember him at first, but she in the end maintained him to be one of the ruffians who had attacked her in Moorfields. Her followers were now eminently satisfied. All the persons in the house were seized, and immediately committed for examination. The strange, wild aspect of the gipsy seems to have added an element to the horrors of the affair; and in the afternoon, when two of Elizabeth's friends were discussing the whole matter over a steak in the Three Crowns at Newington, one of them said to the other: 'Mr Lyon, I hope God Almighty will destroy the model that he made that face by, and never make another like it.' It was found that Mrs Wells, who kept the lodging-house, belonged to a disreputable family, and she admitted that her husband had been hanged. If Elizabeth had given a false tale to hide the questionable causes of her absenting herself, she had probably found that it took a much more serious turn than she intended, and she must now make up her mind to recant her tale or go through with it. She resolved on the latter course, to which she was probably tempted by having all London to back her. She could not well have carried on the charge alone, but the popularity of her cause brought her unexpected aid. A woman named Virtue Hall, who lived in Mrs Wells's lodging-house, thought it would be a good speculation to be partner with Elizabeth Canning, and she gave testimony which corroborated the whole story.

On the 21st of February, Mary Squires and Susannah Wells were brought to trial for a capital offence. The evidence adduced against them was the story just told. When Mrs Squires was called on for her defence, she gave a succinct account of how she had from day to day gone from one distant place to another during the time when Elizabeth said she was in confinement. Two or three witnesses came forward somewhat timidly to corroborate her statement; and it is a melancholy fact, that others would have appeared and offered convincing testimony of the innocence of the accused, but were intimidated by the ferocious aspect of the London populace from venturing to give their evidence. That it was not very safe to contradict the popular idol, Elizabeth Canning, was indeed experienced in a very unpleasant way by the witnesses John Gibbons, William Clarke, and Thomas Greville, who came forward in favour of Squires. Money was collected to prosecute them for perjury. Dreading the strength of the popular current against them, they had to incur great expense in preparation for their defence. Before the day of trial, however, some of Canning's champions began to feel a misgiving, and no prosecutor appeared. The counsel for the accused complained bitterly of the hardship of their position. They had incurred great expense. They felt that it was necessary for the complete removal of the stain of perjury thrown on their character, that there should be a trial. They said they had witnesses 'ready to give their testimony with such clear, ample, convincing circumstances, as would demand universal assent, and fully prove the innocence of the three defendants, and the falsity of Elizabeth Canning's story in every particular;' whereas, without a trial, all would be virtually lost to the accused, who, instead of obtaining a triumphant acquittal, might be suspected of having agreed to some dubious compromise.

Mrs Squires was at length convicted, and had judgment of death. But Sir Crisp Gascoyne, the lord mayor of London, who was nominally at the head of the commission for trying Squires, believed that she was the victim of falsehood and public prejudice. He resolved to subject the whole question to a searching investigation, and to obviate, if possible, the scandal to British institutions, of perpetrating a judicial murder, even though the victim should be among the most obscure of the inhabitants of the realm. In the first place, an inquiry was instituted by the law-officers of the crown, the result of which was, that the woman Squires received a royal pardon. The lord mayor, however, having satisfied himself that this poor woman had but narrowly escaped death from the perfidious falsehood of Elizabeth Canning, aided by an outbreak of popular zeal, was not content with the gipsy woman's escape, but thought that an example should be made of her persecutor. Accordingly, although he was met with much obloquy, both verbal and written—for controversial pamphlets were published against him as an enemy of Elizabeth Canning—he resolved to bring this popular idol to justice.

On the 29th of April 1754, she was brought to trial for wilful and corrupt perjury. Her trial lasted to the 13th of May. It is one of the longest in the collection called the State Trials, and is a more full and elaborate inquiry than the trial of Charles I. The case made out was complete and crushing, and the perfect clearness with which the whole truth connected with the movements from day to day, and from hour to hour, of people in the humblest rank was laid open, shews the great capabilities of our public jury-system for getting at the truth. One part of the case was, the absurdity of Elizabeth Canning's story, and its inconsistency, in minute particulars, with itself and with the concomitant facts. When her first description of the room, in which, she said, she was shut up, was compared with the full survey of it afterwards undertaken, important and fatal discrepancies were proved. She professed to have been unable to see anything going on in the house from her place of confinement, but in the room at Enfield Wash there was a large hole through the floor for a jack-rope, which gave a full view of the kitchen, where the inmates of the house chiefly resorted. She professed to describe every article in the room she was confined in, but she had said nothing of a very remarkable chest of drawers found in that which she identified as the same. That this piece of furniture had not been recently placed there was made evident, by the damp dust gluing it to the wall, and the host of spiders which ran from their webs when it was removed. She had escaped by stepping on a penthouse, but there was none against the garret of Mrs Wells's house; the windows were high, and she could not have leaped to the ground without severe injury. She stated that no one had entered the room during the four weeks of her imprisonment, but it was shewn that, during the period, a lodger had held an animated conversation from one of the windows of the identical garret with somebody occupied in lopping wood outside. Nay, a person had seen a poor woman, with the odd name of Natis, in bed in that very room. His reason for entering it was a curious one, which has almost a historical bearing. He went to try the ironwork of a sign which had once hung in front of the house, and lay in the garret. The sign had been taken down when the Jacobite army penetrated into England in the Rebellion of 1745. Probably it had been of a character likely to be offensive to the Jacobites, and its removal is a little incident, shewing how greatly the country apprehended a revolution in favour of the Stuarts.

These discrepancies were, however, far from being the most remarkable part of the evidence. Not content with shewing that Elizabeth Canning had told falsehoods, the prosecutor set to the laborious task of proving where the gipsy woman had been, along with her son and daughter, charged as her accomplices, during the time embraced by the mere active part of Elizabeth's narrative. From the vagrant habits of the race, evidence to the most minute particulars had thus to be collected over a large range of country; and the precision with which the statements of a multitude of people—of different ranks and pursuits, and quite unknown to each other, as well as to the person they spoke of—are fitted to each other, is very striking and interesting. The most trifling and unconsequential-looking facts tell with wonderful precision on the result. Thus a lodging-house keeper remembered the woman Squires being in her house on a certain day, and she made it sure by an entry in an account-book, as to which she remembered that she had consulted the almanac that she might put down the right day. The day of the woman's presence in another place was identical with the presence of an Excise surveyor, and the statements of the witnesses were tested by the Excise entry-books. The position of the wanderers was in another instance connected with the posting of a letter, and the post-office clerks bore testimony to the fact, that from the marks on the letter it must have been posted on that day. It was, as we have seen, on the 1st of January that Elizabeth Canning said she was seized. The journey of the gipsy family is traced from day to day through distant parts of England, from the preceding December down to the 24th of January, which was the day of their arrival at Enfield Wash. Thus fortified by counteracting facts of an unquestionable nature, the counsel for the prosecution felt himself in a position to turn the whole story into ridicule, and shew the innate absurdity of what all London had so resolutely believed.

He proceeded in this strain: 'Was it not strange that Canning should subsist so long on so small a quantity of bread and water—four weeks, wanting only a few hours? Strange that she should husband her store so well as to have some of her bread left, according to her first account, till the Wednesday; according to the last, till the Friday before she made her escape; and that she should save some of her miraculous pitcher till the last day? Was the twenty-fourth part of a sixpenny loaf a day sufficient to satisfy her hunger? If not, why should she defer the immediate gratification of her appetite in order to make provision for a precarious, uncertain futurity? Shall we suppose some revelation from above in favour of one of the faithful? Perhaps an angel from heaven appeared to this mirror of modern virtue, and informed her, that if she eat more than one piece of bread a day, her small pittance would not last her till the time she was to make her escape. Her mother, we know, is a very enthusiastical woman—a consulter of conjurors, a dreamer of dreams; perhaps the daughter dreamed also what was to happen, and so, in obedience to her vision, would not eat when she was hungry, nor drink when she was thirsty. However that was, I would risk the event of the prosecution on this single circumstance, that, without the interposition of some preternatural cause, this conduct of the prisoner's must appear to exceed all bounds of human probability.'