We have to admit that the psalmists, like all their contemporaries, 'never freed their religion completely from national influences and local limitations.' Yet 'even at this distance of time our hearts are moved by the enthusiastic reverence of the patriot for the ancient city of God.' And one psalmist at least there was for whom Zion was especially holy and blessed, because she should be, in a still wider sense, a spiritual metropolis, because the widespread votaries of the One and only God would regard Jerusalem as their true religious 'Glorious things are spoken of thee, Zion, the city of God. Rahab and Babel I mention among those that know me, But Zion-she shall be called Mother, For each and all were born in her.' † Not physically born there, not resident there, not even 'for sorrows endured and services rendered, not as a monopoly Art. 2.-AN ENGLISH PRISON FROM WITHIN. THE aim of this article is to give the reader a record of the writer's impressions of our prison system, and, in particular, of its moral and mental effect upon convicted prisoners. It is based upon some twelve months' experience of prison life, of which four months were spent in a large London prison, and nearly eight months in a smaller county gaol.* My offence happened to be that of disobedience' to military orders on the ground of conscientious objection to all war; but I do not wish to lay any stress on the nature of the offence, or on the justice of the two successive sentences imposed, except in so far as these considerations gave us a different outlook from the ordinary 'criminals' occupying the adjoining cells. We objectors to conscription were not conscious of any guilt involved in the act for which we were committed to gaol; on the contrary, we were, more or less powerfully, sustained in our endurance by a faith in the righteousness, and, in many cases, in the supremely Christian character of the cause for which we conceived ourselves to be suffering loss of liberty and a measure of persecution. Rightly or wrongly, this was our conviction, and it reacted, of course, upon our impressions of prison, and differentiated them in some important respects from those of a hardened or a penitent 'offender.' But the main tendencies of the system, its general effects on character and mentality, seemed to me to be sufficiently clear, and to be of a similar nature for all prisoners involved. Almost all conscientious objectors courtmartialled have received sentences of 'hard labour' (which may be repeated indefinitely) varying from 112 days to two years; and, until the last week of my imprisonment, we were treated, with a few unimportant exceptions, in the same way as other prisoners undergoing * In addition, I had two periods of some five weeks each in a regimental detention room. The conditions here were far preferable to prison. The only way in which they concern the subject of this article is that we had opportunities of talking freely to men who had done time' for burglary and other offences. Their conversation and bearing helped us to look at prisons from the point of view of the class of offender for whom they are primarily intended. I was discharged in December 1917, as the result of the Government's undertaking to release men suffering materially in health. hard labour in the third division. At the end of 1917, a few privileges were accorded to objectors who had been at least twelve months under sentence; of these the only ones of value are the permission to have books sent in from the outside, and the provision daily of two periods of exercise, at which talking in pairs is allowed. Each generation of mankind is only too apt to imagine that the particular social conditions under which it happens to live have persisted with but small changes from remote antiquity; and it is well to emphasise the essentially modern and novel character of the prison system, as it exists to-day, with but slight variations, throughout the British Isles. This system seems to have been inaugurated during the second half of the 18th century in one or two local experiments that came to nothing, and to have been given a partial trial at the famous Millbank Penitentiary opened in 1816, but only to have been really developed in the forties of the last century, when the principle of entire separation was adopted by the Government as the result of a Commission of enquiry into the methods of American penitentiaries. During the period 1840-60 some sixty new 'cellular' prisons were built, beginning with the 'model' institution at Pentonville as we have it to-day. Only from 1877, when the Prison Act placed all gaols under the newly-formed board of Prison Commissioners, has the present uniformity of discipline held sway. Before the opening of Millbank, with its 1000, and Pentonville, with its 520 separate cells, indiscriminate herding together of offenders was the general rule. Practically, therefore, the present régime of silence and solitude is less than eighty years old. Have its results in any way justified even this term of existence? It may be premised that the usual hard-labour sentence begins with a month of strict confinement to one's cell (apart from exercise and chapel), accompanied by a fortnight's plank bed and other disabilities, while, after the first month, good conduct secures one the privilege of 'associated' but silent labour during part of the day. The characteristics of the system, as impressed upon me by many dreary weeks of experience, seemed to group themselves around three main heads, which I propose to illustrate successively: firstly, discomfort for the body and starvation for the soul; secondly, the attempt to crush out the sense of individuality and the instinct to serve others; and, lastly, entire absence of trust, and government by fear. These characteristics are dominant enough to give the impression that they represent the guiding objects of the system, and they seem to stamp it as essentially deterrent and punitive, without the reformative elements that one would hope to find there. As might be expected, the most obvious feature of prison is the disappearance of every kind of luxury and comfort, and the restriction of 'supplies' to those required to satisfy the most elementary needs of food, clothing, housing, and cleanliness. To the general principle of this the idealist can take little exception; and, though unpleasant and, in some respects, damaging to health, it need have no terrors to a man who is robust in body and determined in will. But, unfortunately, months of forced abstemiousness seem unable to kill a man's desire for self-indulgence. We found that the solitude and monotony, combined with other circumstances, led us to devour our food with a greed of which we should have been heartily ashamed elsewhere; and a typical inscription on doors or walls was: Roll on, another week, and then I'll have a good smoke outside.' The insistence upon the daily cleaning of cell and utensils tends, doubtless, towards good habits; but, to one accustomed to a daily bath, the hurried weekly prison bath, and the wearing of the same underclothing day and night for a fortnight, seemed a mockery reminiscent of whitewashed sepulchres' when associated with the requirement of a constant and scrupulous daily polish of the 'tins' which form the cell's chief furniture. as While, however, bodily needs are cared for up to a certain point, social and spiritual needs, so essential for the purposes of reformation, are almost completely neglected. To those of us who were registered Quakers, our fortnightly half-hour of united worship, and our fortnightly ten minutes with our visiting minister, were brief glimpses of Heaven; and other prisoners who were Catholics or Nonconformists may have had advantages of a similar kind, though far too fragmentary to be of much avail. But the usual prisoner, nominally Church of England,' is supposed to subsist hard labour in the third division. At the end of 1917, a few privileges were accorded to objectors who had been at least twelve months under sentence; of these the only ones of value are the permission to have books sent in from the outside, and the provision daily of two periods of exercise, at which talking in pairs is allowed. Each generation of mankind is only too apt to imagine that the particular social conditions under which it happens to live have persisted with but small changes from remote antiquity; and it is well to emphasise the essentially modern and novel character of the prison system, as it exists to-day, with but slight variations, throughout the British Isles. This system seems to have been inaugurated during the second half of the 18th century in one or two local experiments that came to nothing, and to have been given a partial trial at the famous Millbank Penitentiary opened in 1816, but only to have been really developed in the forties of the last century, when the principle of entire separation was adopted by the Government as the result of a Commission of enquiry into the methods of American penitentiaries. During the period 1840-60 some sixty new 'cellular' prisons were built, beginning with the 'model' institution at Pentonville as we have it to-day. Only from 1877, when the Prison Act placed all gaols under the newly-formed board of Prison Commissioners, has the present uniformity of discipline held sway. Before the opening of Millbank, with its 1000, and Pentonville, with its 520 separate cells, indiscriminate herding together of offenders was the general rule. Practically, therefore, the present régime of silence and solitude is less than eighty years old. Have its results in any way justified even this term of existence? It may be premised that the usual hard-labour sentence begins with a month of strict confinement to one's cell (apart from exercise and chapel), accompanied by a fortnight's plank bed and other disabilities, while, after the first month, good conduct secures one the privilege of 'associated' but silent labour during part of the day. The characteristics of the system, as impressed upon me by many dreary weeks of experience, seemed to group themselves around three main heads, which I propose to illustrate successively: firstly, discomfort for the body |