Again, the cellular system is ineffectual because the very
isolation which was its original object is incapable of
realisation. Prisoners find a thousand means of carrying on
communication with each other, during their walks, or by writing
on the leaves of books lent to them to read, or by knocking on
their walls according to a conventional alphabet, or by writing in
the sand, or by using the drains as telephonic receivers, as was
done in the cellular prisons of Mazas, Milan, &c. Plain proofs of
this may be found in Lombroso's ``Les Palimpsestes des Prisons.''
``The public, and even well-informed persons, honestly believe
that the cellular prison is a dumb and paralytic thing, without
tongue or hands, simply because the law has ordered silence and
inactivity. But as no decree, however vigorous, can counteract
the nature of things, so this organism speaks, moves, occasionally
wounds or slays, in spite of all the decrees. Only, as always
happens when a necessity of humanity is opposed by a law, it acts
by less known, underground and hidden means.''
Moreover, the cellular system is unequal in its application, for
difference of race has much to say to it, and in fact it is a
clumsy machinery of the northern races, repugnant to those of the
south, more dependent on the open air and light.
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