Appendix IV 449 



should not all the convicts be thus provided? It should be no part of the 

 prison system to degrade, even while it punishes the most severely. 



Beyond and above this class of the hardened criminal, there need, I 

 think, be two classes only — the one which should be in the nature of a 

 reformatory rather than of what are now the second and third divisions, 

 and the other identical with what is now the first division. 



My second class, which is by far the most important, should be treated 

 in some sort as a school, of which the warders should be the teachers, as 

 well as guardians. This would, of course, require a quite different class 

 of guardian from that from which our present warders are drawn and one 

 much more highly paid. The kind of men for the work should be that 

 which is found in Soctland Yard, and the result, I am convinced, would be 

 well worth the cost. These should control the working shops by day and 

 preside over the common midday meal, and the common recreation hour 

 in the evening. The men would still be locked up in their separate cells at 

 night, and also for one whole day in the week so as to give the warders 

 their Sunday holiday, but it should be with books, writing materials, and 

 some solitary game to play, a cup and ball, a box of wooden bricks or one 

 of moveable letters. 



With regard to the hour of recreation I have just mentioned, nothing 

 struck me more strongly in prison than the immense waste of opportunity 

 displayed — an opportunity of good, whether religious or of instruction, 

 which nobody made use of. It has been said that " a prison is a convent 

 without God" — and such is the fact. Gaol life has the austerity without 

 the sanctifying motive. Yet it might easily be made, at least in Ireland, 

 into a nursery of saints. In England, where we do not ask for saints, it 

 might be turned to intellectual profit by any zealous humanitarian who 

 would give his evening hours to the work of penny reading and lecturing. 

 At present the English prison is a school without a teacher. I throw out 

 this idea believing that devoted men would not be wanting for the work of 

 instruction were it officially encouraged. 



My first and highest class of all would be what is now the first division 

 of misdemeanants. This should include, with others already enjoying it, 

 all who for their opinion's sake have disobeyed the law. The prisoners 

 under this head should be treated more or less as prisoners of war are 

 treated, honourably, that is, and as opponents whom the law has captured. 

 England, I believe, is the only country of Europe where no distinction is 

 made between political and ordinary offenders. It is time the two classes 

 should be recognized as separate and the distinction legally drawn. The 

 absence of it brings the law into contempt through the impossibility of 

 persuading the public that a conscientious breaker of the law is a real 

 criminal. And this leads me to what is the most important part of what I 

 set myself to write, the position of the Government where it finds itself, as 

 now, determinedly opposed by a small party of religious or political 

 reformers who persist in infractions of the law to further their opinions. 



As the law at present stands, it is probably impossible to deal satisfac- 

 torily with cases where assaults are committed or damage done to property 

 so as to draw public attention to a public grievance; and until the magis- 



