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Served only to discover sights of woe,

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace

And rest can never dwell."

We transcribe Howard's description of it :—

"Two rooms for felons; and a large room above for debtors. One of the former, the clink, seventeen feet by eight, about five and a half feet high (so that its inmates could not stand upright), with a wicket in the door seven inches by five, to admit light and air. To this, as I was informed, those men who were confined near two months under sentence of transportation, came by turns for breath. The door had not been opened for five weeks when I with difficulty entered to see a pale inhabitant. He had been there ten weeks under sentence of transportation, and he said he had much rather have been hanged than confined in that noisome cell. No water; no sewer; no court. The gaolers live distant: they are the three serjeants at mace. Fees 15s. 10d., no table. Allowance to debtors, none but on application; felons, two pennyworth of bread a day. No straw."

Through Dorsetshire and Hampshire Howard passed into Sussex, and thence retired to Cardington, to enjoy another brief interval of repose, after traversing fifteen counties and painfully inspecting fifty prisons. We are told that a prophet is not honoured in his own country; but Howard's philanthropy, in its utter unselfishness, had moved the admiration of his neighbours, and many of them desired to see him sent to Parliament as their representative. Accordingly, he was induced (in 1755) to stand candidate, in conjunction with Mr. Whitbread, to represent the borough of Bedford. Two worthier or more competent representatives could not have been found; but, after a sharp and spirited contest, their two opponents were returned. Whitbread and Mr. Howard petitioned the House to order an inquiry into the circumstances of the election; and, in the event, Mr. Whitbread and one of the sitting members were declared duly elected. We think, with Dr. Aikin, that Howard's failure on this occasion was a fortunate circumstance for the good cause he had espoused; for if he had obtained a seat in the Commons, his plans of prison reform would have necessarily been limited within a very great measure; and the

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collateral inquiries, which, to the signal gain of humanity, he afterwards adopted, could never have existed.

He now resumed his travels through the counties of York, Lancaster, and Warwick, visiting the Bridewells of Folkingham and Huntingdon on his way, and inspecting that of Aylesbury on his return. Between the 6th and 16th of December he explored many of the prisons in Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and Hertfordshire, and closed the record of charity for 1774. Early in the following year he set off for Scotland; then crossed the Channel to Ireland; and having ascertained, by close personal inspection, the condition of almost every prison in the United Kingdom, he resolved upon giving to the world the results of his long and various experience, and to suggest what seemed to him necessary and essential reforms in the treatment of criminals. But when he began to prepare his notes, it occurred to him that much information useful to his purpose might be collected abroad, and, laying aside his papers, he resolved upon travelling over France, Flanders, Holland, and Belgium.

Leaving England in the middle of April, 1775, he speedily arrived at Paris, where he made an unsuccessful effort to penetrate into the interior of that fortress of tyranny, the Bastile, which, within a few years, was to throw open its gates at the summons of an infuriated populace and disgorge its victims. He gained admission, however, to the Grand Châtelet, the Petit Châtelet, and Fort l'Evêque. From France he crossed into Belgium, and thence proceeded to Holland. He was much surprised and highly delighted by the prisons of Brussels, in which the requirements of humanity had carefully been considered. The management and discipline of the Maison de la Force, at Ghent, surpassed, however, anything he had before seen, and earned his unqualified praise. At Bruges, Antwerp, and Rotterdam he was not less pleased.

At Delft he found some of his visions of prison reform anticipated. "There were nearly ninety," he says, "in the House of Correction; men and women quite separate, all neat and clean, and looking healthy. They told me their allowance was five stivers a day. All employed on a woollen manufacture; women spinning, carding, etc.; some weaving, from coarse to very fine cloth;

IMPROVED CONDITION OF FOREIGN PRISONS. 293

their task, to earn thirty-five stivers a week. Some earn a small surplus, but they have only half of it. A burgomaster, to whom I mentioned that circumstance, said it was the truth. They do not put more than eight or ten men to work in one room; for where large numbers are together one idle person corrupts more; and there is not generally so much work done. Here, also, if a prisoner has behaved well for a few years, and given proofs of amendment, the magistrates begin to abridge the time for which he was sentenced. One whom I saw very cheerful told me the cause of his joy was that a year had lately been taken from his term."

Howard returned to England with his views on prison reform confirmed, and in some directions enlarged. He could not devote such prolonged and assiduous attention to the condition of prisoners without being led to reflect upon the causes which filled them with inmates. Foremost amongst these was the law of imprisonment for debt, which inflicted upon the unfortunate, the careless, and the fraudulent exactly the same punishment; and, when it was most needful that men should labour to retrieve the past, doomed them to compulsory idleness. Next came the Draconian character of the English statute-book, which might almost be said to have been written in blood. "Death" was inscribed upon every page. For the man who steals a purse, death; for the man who took his victim's life, death. Well might Howard speak of them as "sanguinary laws," and express his belief that their revisal and repeal would lead to the diminution of crime. How could men be expected to regard the sanctity of human life, when they saw the same value set on a man and a rabbit? When poor wretches, guilty of nothing more than some petty larceny, were hurried to "Tyburn tree," the spectator could not but feel an emotion of pity. The design of the law was counteracted, because, says Paley, it had a tendency which sinks men's abhorrence of the crime in their commiseration of the criminal. No axiom is more incontestable than that "crime thrives upon severe penalties."

The appalling frequency of death punishments for even trifling offences, and the large number of offenders who died of gaol fever, may be understood from the following table, which is one of Howard's :