Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/349

 broken wall, and how slender a boundary conduct and character brought to strengthen this defence was illustrated by the deplorable fact that among the wet nurses at the hospital there was scarely one who was a wife. There was a training-ship used as a reformatory for boys where it had been designed to make them skilled sailors, and I found that after years of apprenticeship to the business of the sea, nineteen-twentieths of them instead of being employed in our commercial navy, were hired out for agricultural or domestic work. I visited the principal jail to determine how far I might count on getting effectual work out of the prisoners. The unfortunate men expressed their willingness to try what I proposed, but they besought me to make one concession—that they might be permitted to make complaints of wrongs they suffered to me personally, not through the governor of the jail as heretofore, or in his presence. I promised to send one of my colleagues to hear the prisoners' complaints. There was a feeble system of prison labour already in operation, and they positively alleged that the principal part of their work was appropriated by the governor to his own use, and that they were punished if they did not fall in with this system. The governor of course denied the allegation, and found Members of Parliament to declare that it was an unpardonable offence to interfere with his salutary system of discipline. But I found that under fatal neglect of Ministerial control this officer had grown into something like a responsible minister. He amalgamated dissenting congregations without their consent, and in one instance took the amazing liberty of suspending a clergyman with whom he came into conflict.

The immense interests at stake in the question of who should possess the public territory, and the interest of wealthy importers, disguised under a zeal for Free Trade, created classes ready to spend profusely, and to exhaust their very