CHAPTER VII.PHILANTHROPISTS.
One conviction forms the basis of all correct admiration for the heroism and intrepidity of scientific discoverers, the marvellous inventions of mechanicians; the sublime enthusiasm of poets, artists, and musicians; the laborious devotion of scholars; and even of the intelligent industry of the accumulators of wealth: it is that all their efforts and achievements tend, by the law of our nature, to the amelioration of man’s condition. In every mind swayed by reflection, and not by impulse or prejudice, the world’s admiration for warriors is regarded as mistaken, because the deeds of the soldier are the infliction of suffering and destruction, spring from the most evil passions, and serve but to keep up the real hindrances of civilization and human happiness. Statues and columns erected in honour of conquerors, excellent as they may be for the display of art, serve, therefore, in every correct mind, for subjects of regretful rather than encouraging and satisfactory contemplation. The self-sacrificing enterprises of the philanthropist, on the contrary, create in every properly regulated mind, still purer admiration, still more profound and enduring esteem, than even the noblest and grandest efforts of the children of Mind and Imagination. TheDivine Exemplarhimself is at the head of their class; and they seem, of all the sons of men, most transcendently to reflect his image, because their deeds are direct acts of mercy and goodness, and misery and suffering flee at their approach. Harbingers of the benign reign of Human Brotherhood which the popular spirit of our age devoutly regards as the eventual destiny of the world, they will be venerated, and their memories cherished and loved, when laurelled conquerers are mentioned no more with praise, or are forgotten. Emulation is sometimes termed a motive of questionable morality; but to emulate the high and holy in enterprises of self-sacrificing beneficence can never be an unworthy passion; for half the value of a good man’s life would be lost, if his example did not serve to fill others with such a plenitude of love for his goodness, as to impel them to imitate him.
It is the example of the philanthropist, then, that we commend, above all other examples, to the imitation of all who are beginning life. We would say, scorn indolence, ignorance, and reckless imprudence that makes you dependent on others’ effort instead of your own; but, more than all, scorn selfishness and a life useless to man, your brother, cleave to knowledge, industry, and refinement; but, beyond all, cleave to goodness.
In a world where so much is wrong—where, for ages, the cupidity of some, and the ignorance and improvidence of a greater number—has increased the power of wrong, it need not be said how dauntless must be the soul of perseverance needed to overcome this wrong by the sole and only effectual efforts of gentleness andgoodness. That wisdom—deeply calculating wisdom—not impulsive and indiscriminate “charity,” as it is falsely named—should also lend its calm but energetic guidance to him who aims to assist in removing the miseries of the world, must be equally evident. To understand to what morally resplendent deeds this dauntless spirit can conduct, when thus guided by wisdom, and armed with the sole power of gentleness, we need to fix our observance but on one name—the most worshipful soldier of humanity our honoured land has ever produced: the true champion ofperseveringgoodness.
Inheriting a handsome competence from his father, whom he lost while young, went abroad early, and in Italy acquired a taste for art. He made purchases of such specimens of the great masters as his means would allow, and embellished therewith his paternal seat of Cardington, in Bedfordshire. His first wife, who had attended him with the utmost kindness during a severe illness, and whom, though much older than himself, he had married from a principle of gratitude, died within three years of their union; and to relieve his mind from the melancholy occasioned by her death, he resolved on leaving England for another tour. The then recent earthquake which had laid Lisbon in ruins, rendered Portugal a clime of interest with him, and he set sail for that country. The packet, however, was captured by aFrench privateer; and he and other prisoners were carried into Brest, and placed in the castle. They had been kept forty hours without food or water before entering the filthy dungeon into which they were cast, and it was still a considerable time before a joint of mutton was thrown into the midst of them, which, for want of the accommodation even of a solitary knife, they were obliged to tear to pieces and gnaw like dogs. For nearly a week Howard and his companions were compelled to lie on the floor of this dungeon, with nothing but straw to shelter them from its noxious and unwholesome damps. He was then removed to another town where British prisoners were kept; and though permitted to reside in the town on his “parole,” or word of honour, he had evidence, he says, that many hundreds of his countrymen perished in their imprisonment, and that, at one place, thirty-six were buried in a hole in one day. He was at length permitted to return home, but it was upon his promise to go back to France, if his own government should refuse to exchange him for a French naval officer. As he was only a private individual, it was doubtful whether government would consent to this; and he desired his friends to forbear the congratulations with which they welcomed his return, assuring them he should perform his promise, if government expressed a refusal. Happily the negotiation terminated favourably, and Howard felt himself, once more, at complete freedom in his native land.
It is to this event, comprising much personal suffering for himself, and the grievous spectacle of so much distressendured by his sick and dying fellow-countrymen in bonds, that the first great emotion in the mind of this exalted philanthropist must be dated. Yet, like many deep thoughts which have resulted in noble actions, Howard’s grand life-thought lay a long time in the germ within the recesses of his reflective faculty. He first returned to his Cardington estate, and, together with his delight in the treasures of art, occupied his mind with meteorological observations, which he followed up with such assiduity as to draw upon himself some notice from men of science, and to be chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society.
After his second marriage, he continued to reside upon his estate, and to improve and beautify it. The grounds were, indeed, laid out with a degree of taste only equalled on the estates of the nobility. But it was impossible for such a nature as Howard’s to be occupied solely with a consideration of his pleasures and comforts. His tenantry were the constant objects of his care, and in the improvement of their habitations and modes of life he found delightful employment for by far the greater portion of his time. In his beneficent plans for the amelioration of the condition of the poor he was nobly assisted by the second Mrs. Howard, who was a woman of exemplary and self-sacrificing benevolence. One act alone affords delightful proof of this. She sold her jewels soon after her marriage, and put the money into a purse called, by herself and her husband, “the charity-purse,” from the consecration of its contents to the relief of the poor and destitute.
The death of this excellent woman plunged him again into sorrow, from which he, at first, sought relief in watching over the nurture of the infant son she had left him, having breathed her last soon after giving birth to the child. When his son was old enough to be transferred entirely to the care of a tutor, Howard renewed his visits to the continent. His journal contains proof that his mind was deeply engaged in reflection on all he saw; but neither yet does the master-thought of his life appear to have strengthened to such a degree as to make itself very evident in the workings of his heart and understanding. His election to the office of high sheriff of the county of Bedford, on his return, seems to have been the leading occurrence in his life, judging by the influence it threw on the tone of his thinkings and the character of his acts, to the end of his mortal career. He was forty-six years of age at the time of his election to this office, intellectual culture had refined his character, and much personal trial and affliction had deepened his experience: the devotion of such a man as John Howard to his great errand of philanthropy was not, therefore, any vulgar and merely impulsive enthusiasm. We have seen that the germ of his design had lain for years in his mind, scarcely fructifying or unfolding itself, except in the kindly form of homely charity. The power was now about to be breathed upon it which should quicken it into the mightiest energy of human goodness.
He thus records the grievances he now began to grow ardent for removing: “The distress of prisoners, ofwhich there are few who have not some imperfect idea, came more immediately under my notice when I was sheriff of the county of Bedford; and the circumstance which excited me to activity in their behalf was, the seeing some, who by the verdict of juries were declarednot guilty—some, on whom the grand jury did not find such an appearance of guilt as subjected them to trial—and some whose prosecutors did not appear against them—after having been confined for months, dragged back to gaol, and locked up again till they could paysundry feesto the gaoler, the clerk of assize, &c. In order to redress this hardship, I applied to the justices of the county for a salary to the gaoler in lieu of his fees. The bench were properly affected with the grievance, and willing to grant the relief desired; but they wanted a precedent for charging the county with the expense. I therefore rode into several neighbouring counties in search of a precedent; but I soon learned that the same injustice was practised in them; and looking into the prisons, I beheld scenes of calamity which I grew daily more and more anxious to alleviate.” How free from violence of emotion and exaggerated expression is his statement; how calmly, rationally, and thoughtfully he commenced his glorious enterprise!
He commences, soon after this, a series of journeys for the inspection of English prisons; and visits, successively, the gaols of Cambridge, Huntingdon, Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Stafford, Warwick, Worcester, Gloucester, Oxford, and Buckingham. In many of the gaols he found neither court-yard, water,beds, nor even straw, for the use of the prisoners: no sewers, most miserable provisions, and those extremely scanty, and the whole of the rooms gloomy, filthy, and loathsome. The greatest oppressions and cruelties were practised on the wretched inmates: they were heavily ironed for trivial offences, and frequently confined in dungeons under ground. The Leicester gaol presented more inhuman features than any other; the free ward for debtors who could not afford to pay for better accommodation, was a long dungeon called a cellar, down seven steps—damp, and having but two windows in it, the largest about a foot square; the rooms in which the felons were confined night and day were also dungeons from five to seven steps under ground.
In the course of another tour he visited the gaols of Hertford, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Hampshire, and Sussex; set out again to revisit the prisons of the Midlands; spent a fortnight in viewing the gaols of London and Surrey; and then went once more on the same great errand of mercy into the west of England. Shortly after his return he was examined before a Committee of the whole House of Commons, gave full and satisfactory answers to the questions proposed to him, and was then called before the bar of the House to receive from the Speaker the assurance “that the House were very sensible of the humanity and zeal which had led him to visit the several gaols of this kingdom, and to communicate to the House the interesting observations he had made upon that subject.”
The intention of the Legislature to proceed to thecorrection of prison abuses, which the noble philanthropist might infer from this expression of thanks, did not cause him to relax in the pursuit of the high mission he was now so earnestly entered upon. After examining thoroughly the shameless abuses of the Marshalsea, in London, he proceeded to Durham, from thence through Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, and inspected not only the prisons in those counties, but a third time went through the degraded gaols of the Midlands. A week’s rest at Cardington, and away he departs to visit the prisons in Kent, and to examine all he had not yet entered in London. North and South Wales and the gaols of Chester, and again Worcester and Oxford, he next surveys, and discovers another series of subjects for the exertion of his benevolence.
“Seeing,” says he, in his uniform and characteristic vein of modesty, “in two or three of thecounty gaolssome poor creatures whose aspect was singularly deplorable, and asking the cause of it, I was answered they were lately brought from theBridewells. This started a fresh subject of inquiry. I resolved to inspect the Bridewells; and for that purpose I travelled again into the counties where I had been, and indeed into all the rest, examininghouses of correction and city and town gaols. I beheld in many of them, as well as in county gaols, a complication of distress; but my attention was particularly fixed by the gaol-fever and small-pox which I saw prevailing to the destruction of multitudes, not only of felons in their dungeons, but of debtors also.”His holy mission now comprehended for the philanthropist the enterprise of lessening the disease as well as unjust and inhuman treatment of prisoners.
The most striking scene of wrong detailed in any of his narratives is in the account of the “Clink” prison of Plymouth, a part of the town gaol. This place was seventeen feet by eight, and five feet and a half high. It was utterly dark, and had no air except what could be derived through an extremely small wicket in the door. To this wicket, the dimensions of which were about seven inches by five, three prisoners under sentence of transportation came by turns to breathe, being confined in that wretched hole for nearly two months. When Howard visited this place the door had not been opened for five weeks. With considerable difficulty he entered, and with deeply wounded feelings beheld an emaciated human being, the victim of barbarity, who had been confined there ten weeks. This unfortunate creature, who was under sentence of transportation, declared to the humane visitor who thus risked his health and was happy to forego ease and comfort to relieve the oppressed sufferer, that he would rather have been hanged than thrust into that loathsome dungeon.
The electors of Bedford, two years after Howard had held the shrievalty of their county, urged him to become a candidate for the representation of their borough in Parliament. He gave a reluctant consent, but through unfair dealing was unsuccessful. We may, for a moment, regret that the great philanthropist was not permittedto introduce into the Legislature of England measures for the relief of the oppressed suggested by his own large sympathies and experience; but it was far better that he was freed from the shackles of attendance on debates, and spared for ministration not only to the sufferings of the injured in England but in Europe.
He had long purposed to give to the world in a printed form the result of his laborious investigations into the state of prisons in this country; but “conjecturing,” he says, “that something useful to his purpose might be collected abroad, he laid aside his papers and travelled into France, Flanders, Holland, and Germany.” We have omitted to state that he had already visited many of the prisons in Scotland and Ireland. At Paris he gained admission to some of the prisons with extreme difficulty; but to get access to the state prisons the jealousy of the governments rendered it almost impossible, and under any circumstances dangerous. The intrepid heart of Howard, however, was girt up to adventure, and he even dared to attempt an entrance into the infamous Bastille itself! “I knocked hard,” he says, “at the outer gate, and immediately went forward through the guard to the drawbridge before the entrance of the castle; but while I was contemplating this gloomy mansion, an officer came out of the castle much surprised, and I was forced to retreat through the mute guard, and thus regained that freedom, which, for one locked up within those walls, it would be next to impossible to obtain.” In the space of four centuries, from the foundation to the destruction of the Bastille, it hasbeen observed that Howard was the only person ever compelled to quit it with reluctance.
By taking advantage of some regulations of the Paris Parliament, he succeeded in gaining admission to other prisons, and found even greater atrocities committed there than in the very worst gaols in England. Flanders presented a striking contrast. “However rigorous they may be,” says he, speaking of the regulations for the prisons of Brussels, “yet their great care and attention to their prisons is worthy of commendation: all fresh and clean, no gaol distemper, no prisoners ironed. The bread allowance far exceeds that of any of our gaols; every prisoner here has two pounds of bread per day, soup once every day, and on Sunday one pound of meat.” He notes afterwards that he “carefully visited some Prussian, Austrian, and Hessian gaols,” and “with the utmost difficulty” gained access to “many dismal abodes” of prisoners.
Returning to England, he travelled through every county repursuing his mission, and after devoting three months to a renewed inspection of the London prisons again set out for the continent. Our space will not allow of a record of the numerous evils he chronicles in these renewed visits. The prisoners of Switzerland, but more than all, of Holland, afforded him a relief to the vision of horrors he witnessed elsewhere. We must find room for some judicious observations he makes on his return from this tour. “When I formerly made the tour of Europe,” are his words, “I seldom had occasion to envy foreigners anything I saw with respect to theirsituation,theirreligion,manners, orgovernment. In my late journeys to view theirprisonsI was sometimes put to the blush for my native country. The reader will scarcely feel, from my narration, the same emotions of shame and regret as the comparison excited in me on beholding the difference with my own eyes; but from the account I have given him of foreign prisons, he may judge whether a design for reforming their own be merely visionary—whetheridleness,debauchery,disease, andfamine, be the necessary attendants of a prison, or only connected with it in our ideas for want of a more perfect knowledge and more enlarged views. I hope, too, that he will do me the justice to think that neither an indiscriminate admiration of every thing foreign, nor a fondness for censuring every thing at home, has influenced me to adopt the language of a panegyrist in this part of my work, or that of a complainant in the rest. Where I have commended I have mentioned my reasons for so doing; and I have dwelt, perhaps, more minutely upon the management of foreign prisons because it was more agreeable to praise than to condemn. Another motive induced me to be very particular in my accounts offoreign houses of correction, especially those of the freest states. It was to counteract a notion prevailing among us that compelling prisoners to work, especially in public, was inconsistent with the principles of English liberty; at the same time that taking away the lives of such numbers, either by executions or the diseases of our prisons, seems to make little impression upon us; of such force are custom and prejudice in silencing thevoice of good sense and humanity. I have only to add that, fully sensible of the imperfections which must attend the cursory survey of a traveller, it was my study to remedy that defect by a constant attention to the one object of my pursuit alone during the whole of my two last journeys abroad.”
He did not allow himself a single day’s rest on returning to England, but immediately recommenced his work here. He notes some pleasing improvements, particularly in the Nottingham gaol, since his last preceding visit; but narrates other discoveries of a most revolting description. The gaol at Knaresborough was in the ruined castle, and had but two rooms without a window. The keeper lived at a distance, there being no accommodation for him in the prison. The debtors’ gaol was horrible; it consisted of only one room difficult of access, had an earthen floor, no fire-place, and there was a common sewer from the town running through it uncovered! In this miserable and disgusting hole Howard learned that an officer had been confined some years before, who took with him his dog to defend him from vermin: his face was, however, much disfigured by their attacks, and the dog was actually destroyed by them.
At length he prepared to print his “State of the Prisons of England and Wales, with preliminary observations, and an Account of some Foreign Prisons.” In this laborious and valuable work, he was largely assisted by the excellent Dr. Aikin, a highly congenial mind; and it was completed in a form which, even in a literary point of view, makes it valuable. The following verybrief extract from it, is full of golden reflection: “Most gentlemen who, when they are told of the misery which our prisoners suffer, content themselves with saying, ‘Let them take care to keep out,’ prefaced, perhaps, with an angry prayer, seem not duly sensible of the favour of Providence, which distinguishes them from the sufferers: they do not remember that we are required to imitate our gracious Heavenly Parent, who is ‘kind to the unthankful and the evil!’ They also forget the vicissitudes of human affairs; the unexpected changes, to which all men are liable; and that those whose circumstances are affluent, may, in time, be reduced to indigence, and become debtors and prisoners.”
As soon as his book was published he presented copies of it to most of the principal persons in the kingdom,—thus devoting his wealth, in another form, to the cause of humanity. When it is recounted that he had not only spent large sums in almost incessant travelling, during four years, but had paid the prison fees of numbers who could not otherwise have been liberated, although their periods of sentence had transpired, some idea may be formed of the heart that was within this great devotee of mercy and goodness—the purest of all worships.
The spirits of all reflecting men were roused by this book: the Parliament passed an act for the better regulation of the “hulk” prisons; and on Howard’s visiting the hulks and detecting the evasions practised by the superintendents, the government proceeded to rectify the abuses. Learning that government projected furtherprison reforms, he again set out for the continent to gain additional information in order to lay it before the British Parliament. An accident at the Hague confined him to his room for six weeks, by throwing him into an inflammatory fever; but he was no sooner recovered than he proceeded to enter on his work anew, by visiting the prison at Rotterdam,—departing thence through Osnaburgh and Hanover, into Germany, Prussia, Bohemia, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and back through France, again reaching England. Not to enumerate any of his statements respecting his prison visits, let us point the young reader to the answer he gave to Prince Henry of Prussia, who, in the course of his first conversation with the earnest philanthropist, asked him whether he ever went to any public place in the evening, after the labours of the day were over. “Never,” he replied, “as I derive more pleasure from doing my duty than from any amusement whatever.” What a thorough putting-on of the great martyr spirit there was in the life of this pure-souled man!
Listen, too, to the evidence of his careful employment of the faculty of reason, while thus enthusiastically devoted to the tenderest offices of humanity: “I have frequently been asked what precautions I used to preserve myself from infection in the prisons and hospitals which I visit. I here answer once for all, that next to the free goodness and mercy of the Author of my being, temperance and cleanliness are my preservatives. Trusting in Divine Providence, and being myself in the way of my duty, I visit the most noxious cells, and whilethus employed ‘I fear no evil!’ I never enter an hospital or prison before breakfast, and in an offensive room I seldom draw my breath deeply.”
Mark his intrepid championship of Truth, too, as well as of Mercy. He was dining at Vienna, with the English ambassador to the Austrian court, and one of the ambassador’s party, a German, had been uttering some praises of the Emperor’s abolition of torture. Howard declared it was only to establish a worse torture, and instanced an Austrian prison which, he said, was “as bad as the black hole at Calcutta,” and that prisoners were only taken from it when they confessed what was laid to their charge. “Hush!” said the English ambassador (Sir Robert Murray Keith), “your words will be reported to his Majesty!” “What!” exclaimed Howard, “shall my tongue be tied from speaking truth by any king or emperor in the world? I repeat what I asserted, and maintain its veracity.” Profound silence ensued, and “every one present,” says Dr. Brown, “admired the intrepid boldness of the man of humanity.”
Another return to England, another survey of prisons here, and he sets out on his fourth continental tour of humanity, travelling through Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Poland, and then, again, Holland and Germany. Another general and complete revisitation of prisons in England followed, and then a fifth continental pilgrimage of goodness through Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Holland. During his absence from England this time, his friends proposed to erect amonument to him; but he was gloriously great in humility as in truth, benevolence, and intrepidity. “Oh, why could not my friends,” says he, in writing to them, “who know how much I detest such parade, have stopped such a hasty measure?... It deranges and confounds all my schemes. My exaltation is my fall—my misfortune.”
John Howard.
He summed up the number of miles he had travelled for the reform of prisons, on his return to England after his journey, and another re-examination of the prisons at home, and found that the total was 42,033. Gloriousperseverance! But he is away again! having found a new object for the yearnings of his ever-expanding heart. He conceived, from inquiries of his medical friends, that that most dreadful scourge of man’s race—the plague—could be arrested in its destructive course. He visits Holland, France, Italy, Malta, Zante, the Levant, Turkey, Venice, Austria, Germany, and returns also by Holland to England. The narrative glows with interest in this tour; but the young reader—and how can he resist it if he have a heart to love what is most deserving of love—must turn to one of the larger biographies of Howard for the circumstances. Alas! a stroke was prepared for him on his return. His son, his darling son, had become disobedient, progressed fearfully in vice, and his father found him a raving maniac!
Howard’s only refuge from this poignant affliction was in the renewal of the great mission of his life. He again visited the prisons of Ireland and Scotland, and left England to renew his humane course abroad, but never to return. From Amsterdam this tour extended to Cherson, in Russian Tartary. Attending one afflicted with the plague there, he fell ill, and in a few days breathed his last. He wished to be buried where he died, and without pomp or monument: “Lay me quietly in the earth,” said he; “place a sun-dial over my grave, and let me be forgotten!” Who would not desire at death that he had forgone every evanescent pleasure a life of selfishness could bring, to live and die like John Howard?