gain; and when they had served
the time of their sentences and were discharged, they had a trade to
fall back on, and, what was still more important, the _habit_ of
working.

Besides this, the method of 'hard labour' carried out in the Ghent
prison had another great advantage for the prisoners. Every day each
person's work, which would take him a certain number of hours to finish,
was dealt out, and when it was done, and done _properly_, the prisoners
were allowed, if they chose, to go on working, and the profits of this
work were put aside to be given them when they were discharged. And in
Ghent the criminals were not left, as in England, to the mercy of the
gaoler, nobody knowing and nobody caring what became of them, for the
city magistrates went over the prison once every week, and also arranged
what meals the prisoners were to have till the next meeting.

In a gaol in the beautiful old city of Bruges, the contrast between the
care taken of the sick criminals and the numberless deaths from gaol
fever in his own country filled Howard with the deepest shame. In
Bruges, the doctors did not make stipulations that they should not be
expected to visit infectious patients, but they wrote out their
prescriptions in a book for the magistrates to read. Thus it was
possible for the rulers of the city to judge for themselves how ill a
man might be, and how he was being treated; and as long as the doctor
considered him in need of it, fourteen pence daily--a much larger sum
then than now--was allotted to provide soup and other nourishing food
for the sick person.

* * * * *

When Howard passed from Belgium to Holland he found the same care,
though here the rules respecting the gaolers were stricter, because
they were responsible for the orderly state of the prison and the
conduct of the prisoners.

The gaolers were forbidden, on pain of a fine, to be seen drinking in
public-houses, to quarrel with the prisoners, and to use bad language to
them, and, greatest difference of all from the prisons he was accustomed
to, no strong drink was allowed to be sold within the walls! Debtors
were few, while in England they were more numerous than the criminals;
and in Amsterdam not a single person had been executed for ten years,
whereas in Britain sheep-stealing and all sorts of petty offences were
punished by hanging.

From Holland Mr. Howard travelled to Germany, where, as a whole, the
same sort of rul