“Have you? We have, you see, no means of knowing; and you must prove it if you wish for the luxury of having attention paid to you when you make light of suffering for others. But if indeed you have, are you not a most unhappy person in that you do not let a fellow-feeling make you wondrous kind?”
“Ah! I thought that was coming. Shall I tell you my opinion of you, sir? You are a sickly sentimentalist.”
“My feeling about you, is not so hackneyed. With your philosophy of: ‘I am all right. Let them suffer!’—you are—the Modern Stoic.”
ON PRISONS AND PUNISHMENT
I
Solitary Confinement
(1)
(An Open Letter to the Home Secretary—at that time, May, 1909, the Right Hon. Herbert John Gladstone, M.P.—printed in The Nation.)
Sir,—In addressing you, I desire to say that I do so with a gratitude and respect that must be shared by those who know how much you have already done for the improvement of our prison system.
I head this letter “Solitary Confinement” because, though the expression has long been officially abandoned in favour of the term “Separate Confinement,” it more adequately defines the seclusion undergone by prisoners in closed cells, and distinguishes that system from a practice obtaining in local prisons of setting prisoners to work separately in their cells with open doors (when it is impossible to find them work in association).