45° Appendix IV 



trates who judge such cases are empowered to decide upon the motive of 

 the act, whether it is public or private, there will always be confusion. A 

 man resists the police in the execution of their duty, he breaks a plate 

 glass window or he strikes a Prime Minister with a cane. He is arrested. 

 His motive may be anything. It may be political, or it may be a personal 

 grievance, or that he is hungry and wants to be lodged in prison, or 

 merely that he is a drunken rowdy. The magistrate already possesses a 

 certain option in these cases, but I think it should be obligatory on him, 

 where the evidence is that the motive is honestly a public one, that he 

 should send the prisoner to the first division. The argument put forward 

 in recent cases by the Government, that political propaganda should not be 

 allowed to be carried on in prison, and therefore that the second division 

 should be enforced seems to me an unwise one, and one which has defeated 

 its own end. The Government cannot stop the advertisement, and would 

 do better in its own interests to give it full scope by allowing all the 

 privileges accorded to first division prisoners. The public would not for 

 more than a very short time interest itself in letters or interviews written 

 in prison, unless indeed the political grievance was a just one, in which 

 case it ought to be attended to and remedied. The Government has no 

 right to order the seclusion of the second division merely to save itself 

 from inconvenience. 



As to more serious political cases which amount to crime, assassination, 

 armed assault and the rest, they need not be considered here. The magis- 

 trate would refer the accused to the Assizes as untried prisoners. I am of 

 opinion all the same that the nature of the sentences imposed requires 

 special legislation. The Government has every right to inflict death on 

 political assassins, or to detain them for life or for shorter periods in 

 prison so as to prevent a recurrence of their acts, but not, I think, to 

 confound them with ordinary criminals under penal servitude. They 

 should be confined as State prisoners, or prisoners of war, under special 

 conditions not personally degrading. 



There remains the question of how to treat those prisoners who for 

 political or other reasons refuse to conform to prison rules, with the mass 

 of prisoners. Under the reformatory system I have proposed it would, I 

 think, be found that refusals would seldom occur, and, if they did, that 

 they could be dealt with by deprivation of privileges and relegation to a 

 separate class for punishment. I do not believe in the continuation of the 

 hunger strike to the point of death, or permanent injury to health, by any 

 but political or religious fanatics. I would, however, risk that rather than 

 continue the practice of forcible feeding, which is a form of torture no 

 civilized Government has a right to inflict. As applied to political pris- 

 oners, it seems to realize the ideal of the mediaeval torturers, that of 

 inflicting the maximum of pain without touching any vital organ, and with 

 the least risk to life or health. For the case of the suffragette ladies, I 

 consider that the proper treatment would be to give them the fullest 

 privileges of the first division, with leave to see their friends daily, and 

 to provide their own food and their own medical attendance. If, under 



