LABOURING POPULATION. 175 



within their prison walls. In the event of his getting a 

 glimpse of the interior of these convict establishments, he 

 had steeled his mind to support the sight of the 

 excruciating sufferings supposed to accompany Siberian 

 exile. He was agreeably surprised to find that in 

 neither respect were his expectations fulfilled. The 

 prison authorities were most courteous and complacent 

 in encouraging his evangelistic labours ; and all that 

 need be said of these is, that Mr Lansdell succeeded 

 in accomplishing the object of his ambition, which was 

 " to put at least a copy of the New Testament, or of the 

 Gospels, in every room of every prison, and every ward of 

 every hospital, throughout Siberia." At the same time, 

 the widest facilities were given him of informing himself 

 regarding the arrangement of the Siberian prisons. These 

 institutions are far from being perfect; it is hardly in the 

 nature of things that they should be. But no such "horrors" 

 as certain English politicians and journals are accustomed 

 to expatiate upon were to be seen. On the contrary, the 

 great and characteristic fault of the Siberian prisons is 

 the laxity of the discipline. Most of the "Russian bar- 

 barities " that are connected, in the popular mind, with the 

 Siberian penal colonies refer to a day now long past, and, 

 as Mr Lansdell says, are not more just, as a picture of the 

 present condition of things in Russian prisons, than it 

 would be a description of the pillory and ear-cropping as 

 among the judicial punishments of England. Other stories 

 are pure inventions, apparently set afloat to make 

 political capital of. As an illustration of this, Mr Lansdell 

 mentions the circumstantial account brought before 

 Parliament by Mr Joseph Cowen, of the dreadful fate of 

 " 700 persons, mostly men and women of education, 

 packed in the hold of a small ship," and despatched by 

 sea from Odessa to Saghalien, " the service for the ordi- 

 nary transportation of criminals to Siberia," as a London 

 paper explained, "being already overtaxed." Of these 

 unfortunates, it was said, " 250 had died on board, 150 

 were landed in a dying state," &c. The facts are, as Mr 



