Many of the rogues among us are not of our own growth, but are drawn hither, as in London, to shelter in a crowd, and the easier in that crowd to pursue their game.  Some of them fortunately catch, from example, the arts of industry, and become useful:  others continue to cheat for one or two years, till frightened by the grim aspect of justice, they decamp.

Our vile and obscure prison, termed The Dungeon, is a farther proof how little that prison has been an object of notice, consequently of use.

Anciently the lord of a manor exercised a sovereign power in his little dominion; held a tribunal on his premises, to which was annexed a prison, furnished with implements for punishment; these were claimed by the lords of Birmingham.  This crippled species of jurisprudence, which sometimes made a man judge in his own cause, from which there was no appeal, prevailed in the highlands of Scotland, so late as the rebellion in 1745, when the peasantry, by act of parliament, were restored to freedom.

Early perhaps in the sixteenth century, when the house of Birmingham, who had been chief gaolers, were fallen, a building was erected, which covered the east end of New-street, called the Leather-hall:  the upper part consisted of a room about fifty feet long, where the public business of the manor was transacted.  The under part was divided into several:  one of these small rooms was used for a prison:  but about the year 1728, while men slept an enemy came, a private agent to the lord of the manor, and erazed the Leather-hall and the Dungeon, erected three houses on the spot, and received their rents till 1776, when the town purchased them for 500_l_. to open the way.  A narrow passage on the south will be remembered for half a century to come, by the name of the dungeon-entry.

A dry cellar, opposite the demolished hall, was then appropriated for a prison, till the town of all bad places chose the worst, the bottom of Peck-lane; dark, narrow, and unwholesome within; crowded with dwellings, filth and distress without, the circulation of air is prevented.

As a growing taste for public buildings has for some time appeared among us, we might, in the construction of a prison, unite elegance and use; and the west angle of that land between New-street and Mount-pleasant, might be suitable for the purpose; an airy spot in the junction of six streets.  The proprietor of the land, from his known attachment to Birmingham, would, I doubt not, be much inclined to grant a favour.—­Thus, I have expended ten score words, to tell the world what another would have told them in ten—­“That our prison is wretched, and we want a better.”

CLODSHALES CHANTRY.

It is an ancient remark, “The world is a farce.”  Every generation, and perhaps every individual, acts a part in disguise; but when the curtain falls, the hand of the historian pulls off the mask, and displays the character in its native light.  Every generation differs from the other, yet all are right.  Time, fashion, and sentiment change together.  We laugh at the oddity of our fore-fathers—­our successors will laugh at us.