IN my notice of the Prison Commission in the preceding article I ought perhaps to have paid a higher tribute to the great ability of Sir Edmund du Cane, the Chairman of the Commission. Indeed, if only he had been a man of wider sympathies, and his care for prisoners had equalled his knowledge of prisons, he would have been a perfect prison administrator. Under his rule very great improvements were effected in prisons and prison administration; and if criminals were mere animals, nothing more need be desired in either sphere. But criminals are human beings, and they ought to be treated as such. Though I say this, I have no sympathy with the professional humanitarians. Their pestilent agitation on behalf of scoundrels who deserve the gallows so offends and irritates all thoughtful and sensible people, that it is not easy to get a hearing for urgently needed reforms in the interests of the mass of the prison population. Their campaign of calumny against me personally, I can treat with contempt, but I deplore and resent their action in hindering reforms with which my name is associated, -reforms which would put an

end to professional crime, and would change a prison into a reformatory in the case of the weak and the unfortunate.

Thanks to the enlightened administration of our present Prison Board, a great advance has been effected in this direction on behalf of the young. But public opinion will not justify kindred reforms in the interests of adult prisoners until the wicked are separated from the weak. Mr Gladstone's Prevention of Crimes Bill would have brought such reforms within the sphere of practical politics; but as the result of an agitation promoted by the professional humanitarians the Bill was turned into a measure for the relief of the professional criminals, who are their special protégés.

But I must not allow my pen to run away with me here, and I will only repeat what I have often said before about prison - cells.

It is not that they are not large enough. They are larger and better ventilated than the "studies" provided for our boys in the older buildings of some public schools. But what distinguishes a prison cell from every other sort of apartment designed for human habitation is that all view of external

nature, such as might soothe and possibly elevate the mind, is, with elaborate care, excluded. The treatment of prisoners in former times was barbarous, but it was at least intelligent. Its whole purpose was punishment, and the punishment was thorough and drastic. But in this shallow and conceited age we pride ourselves that we are not as our fathers were. Our great aim in prison discipline is the reformation of the offender; and with a stupidity that would be amusing if the matter were not so serious, we wantonly deprive a prisoner of the good influences that God's world of nature is so well fitted "The heavens declare His glory, and the firmament showeth His handiwork;" but our prison cells are specially designed to shut out their testimony; and with the smug Pharisaism so characteristic of the age, we pride ourselves on our philanthropy, and boast of supplying our criminals with goody books, and religion (turned on like the water and the gas), to elevate and reform them.

to exert upon him.

But to make this his daily discipline is unworthy of an enlightened age. I suppose there are men so constituted, or so brutalised, that the want of a window would be a matter of indifference to them. As for myself, I think it would drive me mad.

I

As it concerns the public to know the causes that lead to inefficiency in the public service, I will make a further digression here to say something more about the Treasury. When I was invited to enter the Home Office I consulted the Irish Attorney-General, not only as to whether should accede to the wishes of the Government but also as to the remuneration I should claim. I accepted less than half the amount he specified, because, as Mr Gathorne Hardy explained to me, my salary would appear in the estimates, and therefore it had to bear comparison with the other salaries of the Office. But when the change of Government ernment occurred, and Mr Bruce succeeded Mr Hardy as Secretary of State, the Treasury seized the opportunity to reopen the question of my services. Mr Bruce's reply was that my duties in connection with the Secret Service were of the greatest importance to the Government. Then, said the Treasury, my salary must be charged on the Secret Service Fund. In vain did the Home Office protest that this would be a violation of an express prohibition in the statute regulating the administration of that fund. The Treasury cared nothing for an

Act of Parliament if it stood in the way of gratifying their pettifogging meanness toward a public servant. I was extremely indignant, of course, but otherwise I was indifferent; for, as previously mentioned, at that time I intended to return to the Bar. So I contented myself by reopening the question of the amount of my remuneration, and I received an assurance that my pocket would not suffer by the change.

All this was before Mr Cross when he offered me the Secretaryship of the Prison Commission. The position, he told me, was not what he had intended, but it was the best the Treasury would allow him to give me, and he would get me something better later on. And in his last year at Whitehall he tried to make good his words, but his efforts only brought a typical Treasury epistle to the effect that I had "no qualifications beyond what were usually found in the public service.' My clerks were the pick of the whole prison service, and so I came down to their level, and no longer attempted anything that they could not do for me. And on these terms I not only secured the friendship of my official chief in the Prison Department but became much more free for work of a more important and interesting kind.

No one need suppose that I was personally obnoxious to the Treasury. The whole point of my story is to show how that department demoralises the public service. Its duties in relation to the budget and

the revenue may be admirably performed, but its influence in regard to the Government offices is most pernicious. The pay and pension in every department are fixed, and therefore the staff are independent of the Treasury unless when exceptional circumstances are held to entitle some individual to some special indulgence or favour. And then it is that the Treasury declares itself. Its ways are those of the lowclass moneylender who ignores all appeals to justice and fair dealing. There is this difference, however. Treasury officials are gentlemen in private life, and while a poor devil who has no social influence need expect nothing but a snub, anybody who is somebody may get what he wants.

The position which the Home Secretary had claimed for me would have carried with it the right to reckon five or seven years' extra service in computing my pension on retirement. I decided to do still better for myself in this respect. The day of the change of Government in 1880 I went to the Treasury about it, and put my case before the Parliamentary Secretary (Sir Henry Ibbetson - afterwards Lord Rookwood). I had come too late, he told me; he had just received orders to consider himself functus officio at four o'clock. At that moment Big Ben struck three; and playing on the word "minute," I said, "But you have got a whole hour, and I only want minute." With a laugh he replied that he could not take the initiative in such a matter:

if I had brought him an official letter from the Secretary of State he would gladly have helped me, for he was fully aware of my services to Government. "I'll bring you the letter," I said. I hurried back to the Home Office; and at ten minutes to four o'clock I handed him the letter, and there and then-it was his last official act-he wrote the minute which made my service for pension date from the day of my coming to London in December 1867.

Let no one dismiss this as mere egotistical gossip. My object is to exemplify the baneful influence of the Treasury in the public service. On a later occasion a visit to the Chancellor of the Exchequer secured for me a much more important benefit than that which I have just described.

Dr Johnson held that no one but a scoundrel would write except for profit. And a contemporary genius lately declared that it is only donkeys and fools who ever work; but this philosopher propounded his thesis to the unsympathetic ears of a Police Magistrate, who sent him to "hard labour" under the Vagrant Act. Though it is only in late years that I have joined the "unemployed," I have always felt a sneaking sort of agreement with their principles. And though I have never acted on them, I thoroughly believe in idleness—not change of work, but sheer idleness as & temporary relaxation from work; and I took advantage of the change of

Government in 1880 to act on that belief. The six months that followed were indeed the nearest approach to an adequate holiday that I ever enjoyed in my official life. I was careful not to offend Sir Edmund du Cane by displaying any zeal in the business of his Department, and my deep and growing distaste for Secret Service work led me to contemplate withdrawing from it altogether. As a matter of fact, I had openings for other work which would have made me independent of it.

Having these ends in view, I refused the usual introduction to the new Secretary of State. But "the best laid schemes o' mice and men," &c.! On the 3rd November Sir William Harcourt sent for me. No man could say kinder things than he when in that mood; and telling me that he was fully aware of my past services to Government, he appealed to me to give him the same help I had rendered to his predecessors. He there and then sent for the Commissioner of Police and the head of the Criminal Investigation Department, and bespoke the goodwill of Scotland Yard for me in the duties he was entrusting to me.

In so far as I may venture to speak on such a delicate subject, I will deal presently with those duties and the Secret Service generally. But before I do so, I had better clear the ground by referring to some other matters that fall chronologically in the interval between this and my move to