n authority which it was
impossible to discredit.

As we have said, however, the rules of the prison are framed with a view
to the welfare of the convicts, with the exception that nothing is done
to educate them. But there are no harsh punishments; if a man misbehaves
himself, his chains are shortened, and very bad conduct is punished with
solitary confinement. The prisoners, we were told, are never whipped nor
otherwise ill-treated; and if it be true that men who are sent there for
robbery are themselves often the victims of plunder at the hands of
officials, the minister who is at the head of the department involved
will no doubt take measures to prevent the continuance of such an
iniquitous example.

And after all there is another phase of this question which must not be
lost sight of when we criticise the institutions of a young nation which
has only just achieved its independence, and whose first step was to
abolish the vindictive capital sentence of 'a life for a life.' The
first law of nature is self-preservation, and Roumania is still obliged
to economise in all departments of the State in order to place her
national police--her army--on a sound footing. It is wonderful how she
is able to conduct her department of justice even as she does. Her
convict labour is so well utilised that it leaves her a handsome profit.
Her total expenditure on all judicial and penal matters in 1880 was
under 170,000_l._ with a population of 5,000,000, whilst with only seven
times that number of inhabitants the Government outlay of Great Britain
in the same year amounted to the enormous sum of 5,922,443_l._, without
reckoning the heavy local burdens for the protection of life and
property. And yet both life and property are certainly as secure in
Roumania as in England, without the halter or the cat, two of the
barbarous expedients for the prevention of crime which are still
employed in our boasted Western civilisation.

[Footnote 73: Obedenare names four, but we believe he has coupled two
neighbouring mines together as one.]

[Footnote 74: This does not, however, keep the water effectually out of
the mine, for, from whatever source, one portion of it was partially
flooded whilst we were there. Some of the prisoners had struck and
refused to enter the shaft, and the chief inspector who had come from
Bucarest to enquire into the cause of the _emeute_ said the men were
justified in their refusal to work, considering the condition o