446 Appendix IV 



loss of liberty which I do not think society has any right to inflict for less 

 than the most serious crimes, while its effect on the sufferers is wholly 

 evil. Judges who pass long sentences on comparatively innocent breakers 

 of the law, and visiting justices who go the rounds of cells periodically 

 and find all neat and clean, do not understand the severity of the suffering 

 inflicted by leaving the minds of prisoners for long periods of months and 

 years deprived of any spiritual sustenance whatever. It is starvation of a 

 kind quite as real as the cutting off of meat and drink and more enduringly 

 pernicious. 



Perhaps I am the better qualified to speak on this head because my experi- 

 ence in the two gaols, Galvvay and Kilmainham, is diverse in regard to it. 

 Galways gaol was an old-fashioned, rambling place, with cells of various 

 sizes, and the one I was given was well-lighted, showing a good patch of 

 sky and the windows of a building opposite, so that there was some 

 pleasure to be got from watching the sea-gulls as they hovered overhead, 

 and the jackdaws and sparrows, to which it was even possible to throw 

 bread crumbs. The discipline was lax and the warders, most of them 

 Nationalists, were entirely friendly. I was allowed to do many small 

 things contrary to strict regulation, such as to sit on my blanket on the 

 floor, instead of perched on a stool, to have a Bible with good print instead 

 of the hardly readable regulation Bible, and even to scribble verses on its 

 fly leaves. These small infractions of the prison code were connived at, if 

 not permitted, and they mitigated the rigour of the cast-iron laws which 

 rule gaol life, and so made it tolerable. The warders always stopped on 

 their rounds for a few minutes to chat with me ; they were polite and 

 kind ; the Governor of the gaol paid me a daily visit of a quarter of an 

 hour; the chaplain brought me little packets of snuff besides his spiritual 

 consolation. I was not unhappy. In the first fortnight I read the whole of 

 the historical books of the Old Testament, which for a political prisoner 

 and for one who, as in my case, was acquainted with the East are most 

 consolatory reading from their description of free life in the desert and 

 the trust they inspire in a final justice for the oppressed and the promises 

 they hold out of vengeance on the wicked. " Thou shalt bring my soul 

 out of trouble, and in Thy mercy Thou shalt destroy my enemies." Thus 

 Galway gaol was for me a house of penance rather than of punish- 

 ment, and my time in it, for the first fortnight, a kind of spiritual retreat. 

 I still look back on it with affection as a softening influence in my life. 



A change, however, came with the visit of the Official Inspector of 

 Prisons from Dublin. He happened to be a connection of my own, Charlie 

 Bourke, a brother of the late Lord Mayo, and being a violent Unionist, he 

 made it his business to put a stop to the irregularities he detected in the 

 treatment accorded me. My quarto Bible was taken from me and a regu- 

 lation one with small print, which hurt my eyes, was substituted. The 

 friendly warders were reprimanded and eventually dismissed, not nomin- 

 ally on my account but later on, as occasion offered, on charges of drunk- 

 enness (all prison warders in Ireland at that time were addicted to drink, 

 and so easily dismissable) and the small amenities of my life were stopped. 

 Nevertheless, as long as I remained at Galway, things went fairly well. 



