ce and
cupidity made the incentives to his baseness. I only wonder how the
interview ended as it did; but I knew I was a prisoner, and
self-respect preserved my patience and secured his safety. Great, my
lords, as have been my humiliation in prison, hard and heart-breaking
as have been the ordeals through which I have passed since the 1st of
December last, there was no incident or event of that period fraught
with more pain on the one hand, or more suggestiveness on the other,
than this sly and secret attempt at improvising an informer. I can
forget the pain in view of the suggestiveness; and unpleasant as is
my position here to-day, I am almost glad of the opportunity which
may end in putting some check to the spy system in prisons. How many
men have been won from honour and honesty by the stealthy visit to
the cell is more of course than I can say--how many have had their
weakness acted upon, or their wickness fanned into flame by which
means I have no opportunity of knowing--in how many frailty and folly
may have blossomed into falsehood it is for those concerned to
estimate. There is one thing, however, certain--operating in this way
is more degrading to the tempter than to the tempted; and the
government owes it to itself to put an end to a course of tactics
pursued in its name, which in the results can only bring its
humiliation--the public are bound in self-protection to protect the
prisoner from the prowling visits of a too zealous official.

"I pass over all these things, my lords, and I ask your attention to
the character of the evidence on which alone my conviction was
obtained. The evidence of a special, subsidized spy, and of an
infamous and ingrate informer.

"In all ages, and amongst all peoples, the spy has been held in
marked abhorrence. In the amnesties of war there is for him alone no
quarter; in the estimate of social life no toleration; his
self-abasement excites contempt, not compassion; his patrons despise
while they encourage; and they who stoop to enlist the services
shrink with disgust from the moral leprosy covering the servitor. Of
such was the witness put forward to corroborate the informer, and
still not corroborating him. Of such was that phenomenon, a police
spy, who declared himself an unwilling witness for the crown! There
was no reason why in my regard he should be unwilling--he