which
will do it, and you must swallow it."

This is the perfection of penal legislation at which, after many royal
commissions, and much parliamentary eloquence, we have arrived! One
would have imagined that a gigantic quackery and multitudes of quack
doctors could have been procured and set in motion with less trouble
and at less expense! Only on one point there is universal agreement,
let the machine be working either in the right direction or the
wrong--so long as it is working it must be oiled, that is a necessity
of machine-life, so to speak--the man or convict must be _fed_. But how
feed him? To you, my reader, and I, the natural answer would be that
the machine must be oiled, or the man fed, in greater or less
proportion to the power and capacity of the machine or man, and to the
amount of work we require from it or him. But we are both wrong. Our
prison authorities say, "Machine, big or little, you shall all have
exactly the same quantity of oil, neither more nor less. You little
machines there, with oil running all over you, how smoothly and
uncomplainingly you work! You big machines, you may creak as you
please, your journals may get hot, blaze up and produce universal
smash: but you can't get any more oil; we can't allow you to lick up
any of that which is running over your little neighbour there--that is
for the pigs, and for _us_." Is not this amazing folly? Or again,
suppose we were to take a race-horse, a dray-horse, a farmer's horse, a
broken-down hack, and a Shetland horse--for these more nearly resemble
the various classes of convicts--and say to them, "Horses, you have all
offended the laws of horsedom, and stand fully convicted of clover
stealing. For this most heinous crime you are each condemned to draw a
load, one ton weight, fifteen miles every day--Sundays excepted--for
five years, and your allowance of food will be two feeds of oats, and
one allowance of hay per diem;" and what would be the result, supposing
that the allowance of hay and oats was just barely sufficient for the
average--say the farmer's horse?

First of all the race-horse, able to eat his oats and a portion of the
hay, could do with some additional dainty bits, perhaps, but on the
whole he has his stomach filled and can live. He is yoked to his load,
and being a spirited animal, he goes at it very hard, succeeds for a
time; at last he sticks in a rut, puts on a "spurt," and breaks down.
He can't do the work. He is put down at