Page:Elizabeth Fry (Pitman 1884).djvu/123



opinions on prison discipline and management were necessarily much opposed to those which had obtained prior to her day. No one who has followed her career attentively, can fail to perceive that her course of prison-management was based upon well arranged and carefully worked out principles. In various letters, in evidence before Committees of both Houses of Parliament, and in private intercourse, Mrs. Fry made these principles and rules as fully known and as widely proclaimed as it was possible to do. But, like all reformers, she felt the need of securing a wider dissemination of them. Evidence given before Committees, was, in many points, deferred to; private suggestions and recommendations were frequently adopted, but a large class of inquirers were too far from the sphere of her influence to be moved in this way. For the sake of these, and the general public, she deemed it wise to embody her opinions and rules in a treatise, which gives in small compass, but very clearly, the rationale of her treatment of prisoners; and lays down suggestions, hints, and principles upon