ere to do anything but live.

The method by which Captain Frere has brought about this repose of
desolation is characteristic of him. He sets every man as a spy upon
his neighbour, awes the more daring into obedience by the display of
a ruffianism more outrageous than their own, and, raising the worst
scoundrels in the place to office, compels them to find "cases"
for punishment. Perfidy is rewarded. It has been made part of a
convict-policeman's duty to search a fellow-prisoner anywhere and at
any time. This searching is often conducted in a wantonly rough and
disgusting manner; and if resistance be offered, the man resisting can
be knocked down by a blow from the searcher's bludgeon. Inquisitorial
vigilance and indiscriminating harshness prevail everywhere, and the
lives of hundreds of prisoners are reduced to a continual agony of
terror and self-loathing.

"It is impossible, Captain Frere," said I one day, during the initiation
of this system, "to think that these villains whom you have made
constables will do their duty."

He replied, "They must do their duty. If they are indulgent to the
prisoners, they know I shall flog 'em. If they do what I tell 'em,
they'll make themselves so hated that they'd have their own father up to
the triangles to save themselves being sent back to the ranks."

"You treat them then like slave-keepers of a wild beast den. They must
flog the animals to avoid being flogged themselves."

"Ay," said he, with his coarse laugh, "and having once flogged 'em,
they'd do anything rather than be put in the cage, don't you see!"

It is horrible to think of this sort of logic being used by a man who
has a wife, and friends and enemies. It is the logic that the Keeper
of the Tormented would use, I should think. I am sick unto death of the
place. It makes me an unbeliever in the social charities. It takes out
of penal science anything it may possess of nobility or worth. It is
cruel, debasing, inhuman.

August 26th.--Saw Rufus Dawes again to-day. His usual bearing
is ostentatiously rough and brutal. He has sunk to a depth of
self-abasement in which he takes a delight in his degradation. This
condition is one familiar to me.

He is working in the chain-gang to which Hankey was made sub-overseer.
Blind Mooney, an ophthalmic prisoner, who was removed from the gang
to hospital, told me that there was a plot to murder Hankey, but that
Dawes, to whom he had shown some kindness, had prevented it.