nt to the office of
High Sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1774 drew his attention to the state of
the prisons which were placed under his care; and from that time the
quiet country gentleman, whose only occupation had been reading his
Bible and studying his thermometer, became the most energetic and
zealous of reformers. Before a year was over he had personally visited
almost every English gaol, and in nearly all of them he found frightful
abuses which had been noticed half-a-century before, but which had been
left unredressed by Parliament. Gaolers who bought their places were
paid by fees, and suffered to extort what they could. Even when
acquitted, men were dragged back to their cells for want of funds to
discharge the sums they owed to their keepers. Debtors and felons were
huddled together in the prisons which Howard found crowded by the
legislation of the day. No separation was preserved between different
sexes, no criminal discipline was enforced. Every gaol was a chaos of
cruelty and the foulest immorality, from which the prisoner could only
escape by sheer starvation or through the gaol-fever that festered
without ceasing in these haunts of misery. Howard saw everything with
his own eyes, he tested every suffering by his own experience. In one
prison he found a cell so narrow and noisome that the poor wretch who
inhabited it begged as a mercy for hanging. Howard shut himself up in
the cell and bore its darkness and foulness till nature could bear no
more. It was by work of this sort and by the faithful pictures of such
scenes which it enabled him to give that he brought about their reform.
The book in which he recorded his terrible experience and the plans
which he submitted for the reformation of criminals made him the father,
so far as England is concerned, of prison discipline. But his labours
were far from being confined to England. In journey after journey he
visited the gaols of Holland and Germany, till his longing to discover
some means of checking the fatal progress of the Plague led him to
examine the lazarettos of Europe and the East. He was still engaged in
this work of charity when he was seized by a malignant fever at Cherson
in Southern Russia, and "laid quietly in the earth," as he desired.

[Sidenote: Trial of Hastings.]

In Howard's later labours the new sentiment of humanity had carried him
far beyond the bounds of national sympathy; and forces at once of pity
and religion told more and more in be