ubject to regular inspection, and that it was scarcely
possible to bring them to justice for their treatment of those
committed to their charge. It was argued, that it is impossible to
depend upon the lenity of men who have such powers over their
fellow-creatures, and that these officers must be supposed more than
human if they did not occasionally abuse their authority. Of their
having actually done so, many rumours had from time to time reached
parliament. But in making out a case for inquiry, its strongest
supporters had but a very slight forecast of the horrors it was to
divulge. It may here be remarked, that before the proper arrangements
for official responsibility and regular systematic management in such
matters as prison discipline or the custody of the insane were
devised, our free parliament did incalculable service by its inquiries
and exposures. In that august assembly, every tale of formidable
injustice or oppression was sure to receive a ready auditory; and its
power was so transcendent, that every door flew open at its command,
and no influence could protect the wrong-doer from its sweeping
vengeance. With such a body in existence, even the worst governments
which Britain has known could not keep up those mysterious agents of
tyranny, secret state-prisons, which continue to be the curse of every
despotic country. Yet it will be seen, that for want of some more
immediate and direct responsibility, the abuses in the prisons even of
this country had risen to a very dreadful height.

The member who headed the inquiry was Colonel Oglethorpe. He was a man
of literary talent--a dashing and intrepid soldier, but still more
renowned for his wide and active benevolence. It is to him that Pope
alludes in the lines:

One driven by strong benevolence of soul,
Shall fly like Oglethorpe from pole to pole.

A committee obtained by his influence, did not conduct its inquiry in
easy state in St Stephen's, but appalled the guilty parties by
immediately repairing to the prisons, and diving to the furthest
recesses of their dungeons. In the Marshalsea, it found that even
those who paid excessive fees for their lodgings, were laid in lairs
above each other on boards set on tressels, where they were packed so
close together, that many were believed to have died from mere
deficiency of air. There was no doubt that many others, debtors, had
come to a miserable end by starvation. Some were found in the last
stage of a