rson and traitors. All the
persistent criminals of the petty class, I would consign to the
workhouses; but the character of our workhouses would require to be
altered. There are three distinct classes of paupers. (1) Those who
have become paupers through no fault of their own. (2) Those who have
become paupers through vice; and (3) The vagrant class. I would refuse
admission to the workhouse to the first class, just as I would refuse
admission to the prison in the penal workshops to first offenders
against property. I would treat them, on the family system of
out-of-door relief, as the deserving poor. The second class I would
admit into the workhouse, and the vagrant class as well, but on the
understanding that they did not get out again till they had paid their
bill. In short we ought to make our prisons and our workhouses paying
concerns, and with the former there need be no difficulty whatever;
above all we ought to keep the deserving poor from the other classes,
and the regular thieves from those who have only erred once. Every man
found guilty of crime who can prove that he has been working at an
honest calling up to the time he committed it, should be prevented from
mixing with confirmed criminals, or even from going into prison, unless
for some great crime against the person for which enforced restitution
would not be a sufficient atonement.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE NEW ARRANGEMENTS AS TO REMISSIONS--ARTIFICIAL LEGS--ANOTHER
INTERVIEW WITH THE VISITING DIRECTOR--COMPOSE VERSES--HOSPITAL
ONCE MORE--FENIANS--PRISONERS' LETTERS.

Asking pardon of my readers for the rather serious digressions I have
made in the preceding chapter, I now return to my narrative.

Shortly after the new regulations were made known to the prisoners, I
wrote a letter to my brother, and in this solitary instance I confess
in a somewhat ironical strain, and as a matter of course the letter was
suppressed. I remember one passage in it was to the following effect:
"A new arrangement has lately taken place, which grants to all
frequently-convicted prisoners with the same sentence as myself, two
years of unexpected remission, so that if they should deal as leniently
with me, I shall soon be home." This was an allusion to the repeal of
an old regulation whereby convicts who had revoked a former licence
were thereby disqualified for receiving any remission from a subsequent
sentence. Prisoners, therefore, who had so disqualified themselves, a