Speaking of the conduct of warders generally towards prisoners in the close prisons, one of the governors said they were not cruel as a rule, but that the difficulty is to get them to regard convicts as human beings at all. An iron rule has no sanction but itself and always tempts its subjects to evade it when they may; and so men at Spike will talk corruptly when they can, who at Lusk would be abashed by the public opinion of the place. Of course I do not mean that the great gangs at the public works could be allowed the relaxations of Lusk; I but argue for classification and modification in which the humanizing influences may have a place, and that thus working parties less unwieldy and more portable than those described by Mr. Bernays may be practicable. For example, I spoke of public schools. We all know the salutary results of the prefect system in these, by which a couple of trustworthy lads in each form officer the rest, and thus a self-working disciplinary system, quite apart from the government of the masters, operates amongst the boys inter se and effectuates a public opinion which no master rule could enforce. Might not this be imitated by a system of good conduct badges—"G. C." worn on the coat sleeve by prisoners who had earned it, one or two of whom should be told off to each working party, acting in harmony with the trade warder, not to enforce an iron silence, but to discountenance talk unnecessary or vile? Would not this tend to facilitate the acquisition of labour skill, and might not the gangs be thus made susceptible of subformation and portability according to the exigencies of the work, and so made to fit in with or supplement free labour in tidal works or otherwise? At least it would not be necessary that the whole gang should stand still as we have seen, because no one could be trusted to take a message to the absent foreman.
Sir W. Crofton very strikingly exemplifies what response even convicts can make when feelings higher than fear are enlisted. In Q. 12,797 he tells how in the now disused Smithfield Prison, the convicts were habitually told off by roster for the duty of carrying official letters backwards and forwards to the other prisons and the castle in the years from 1856 to 1869. These messengers were sometimes entrusted with as much as fifteen shillings of their fellow prisoners' gratuities to spend for them. In all these years there was but one instance in which this trust was abused by a prisoner, who retruned half drunk. Yet many of these. Sir Walter states, were men who afterwards relapsed. The more relaxed discipline would doubtless entail selective classification, varying with the varying circumstances of each prison. From the freer working parties the desperadoes would* be excluded, or perhaps admission should be on a progressive principle, depending on time and conduct: as now the public works and intermediate detention successively follow the separate discipline of Pentonville and Mountjoy.
The evidence as to tobacco trafficking almost provokes a smile, Introduced by connivance of warders bribed by outside friends, it is a standing burning question, leading to the dismissal of warders and remittals to bread and water, and a search system of fiercer minuteness than any foreign customs practise: one would almost
