same

tions. Adams was active on behalf when asked whether the English were of the Company, now overhauling not also Christians, that all friars and ships, now buying and selling, now Jesuits had been turned out of Engserving as diplomatist, and in this land before he was born, and related last capacity sometimes displeasing the story of the Gunpowder Plot. Cocks by pro-Dutch proclivities. Thus Renewed efforts for a full license had in 1615 he bought a junk and, after no success, the official answer being refitting her, took command for a that nothing could be done that year. voyage to Siam. This was against

At the end of 1616 Adams's enthe wish of Ieyasu, who wanted him gagement with the Company expired, to remain in Japan and offered him and for the future he was engaged a larger estate if he would do so. partly in private trading, partly in But Adams stuck to the Company, diplomatic missions. For his political seeing in that the chance of an ulti. efforts there was an opportunity on mate return to England. The cruise the arrival of another missive from of the Sea ADVENTURE, as the junk King James, armed with which he was called, was unsuccessful. After set off with Cocks to seek concessions nearly foundering in a gale, she took from Hidetada. The

weary refuge at the Loo Choo Islands, process of waiting and bribing went whence, owing to & mutiny of the on, and with the same lack of success. crew, Adams had to put back to The English were now to be restricted Japan.

to Hirado, and Adams was entrusted In the following year (1616), on with the task of winding up the his return from another and more branch factories. Meanwhile the profitable voyage to Siam in the same authorities had been exercising strict junk, he found that Cocks had been supervision over the Hirado establishawaiting him to go to court for the re- ment and hampering its sales. Since newal of trading privileges, since Ieyasu's death there had been a Ieyasu had died and Hidetada now change in their attitude to the reigned alone.

Procuring the new English traders; the latter no longer license was a long and tiresome busi- dreamt of appealing to the native ness. For a month they lingered in judges in any dispute. Nor was Yedo, wasting their days in ante- there trouble with the Japanese only; chambers and trying to interest offi- a serious incident led to a rupture cials in their cause. It was a time with the Dutch, which had hitherto of change, and Hidetada’s dislike of been avoided. There was plenty of aliens was notorious. When finally trade-rivalry, but relations, if not he got his charter, Cocks apparently cordial, had been courteous, Adams, examined it with no great care, for on hand in glove with both nationalities, his homeward journey he was being the go-between. The Dutch, prised to hear from Hirado of serious moreover, who carried on a brisk restrictions being put on trade by the piracy, had hitherto left English authorities. Referring to his license, vessels unmolested. But great he found that the article formerly humiliation had now to be endured, permitting the English to trade where the ship ATTENDANCE being brought they would, now confined them to into Hirado harbour by a Dutch Hirado and Nagasaki. The reason for privateer with much firing of salutes. these shrunken rights he took to be Cocks, indignant at this affront, sent the Shogun's dislike of the Spanish å message to the Chinese trading missionaries, though he had explained, colony at Nagasaki, asking it to join

sur

was

He was

now

on

in an appeal for justice to Yedo, and of his last recorded actions another to Adams, then at court with assisting two Englishman to escape a Dutch embassy, begging him to from Dutch captivity. The news of withdraw from association with the his death reached England in the enemies of his countrymen.

following words of good Mr. Cocks, not to be appeased by a call from the a forgiving soul, for the departed had Dutch chief merchant, who came to sometimes been a thorn in his side. express his regrets and hand over the ATTENDANCE, out of which, however,

Our good friend Captain William all that could be removed had been Adams, who was so long before us in taken. “I answered," says Cocks, Japan, departed out of this world the they might show themselves friends 16th of May last [i.e. in 1620] and made

Mr. Wm. Eaton and myself his overseers, to the English if they liked, either

giving the one half of his estate to his or hereafter, but for my part wife and child in England, and the other I did not care a halfpenny whether half to a son and a daughter he hath in they did or no." To his disappoint Japan... I cannot but be sorrowment Adams did not wish to inter

ful for the loss of such a man as Captain

William Adams was, be having been in vene in this feud, and advised him

such favour with two Emperors of Japan, against going to court with his

as never was Christian in these parts of grievance; but Cocks, determined to the world, and might freely have entered see it through, set out. After all

and had speech with the Emperors, when

many Japan kings stood without and Adams met him the way and

could not be permitted. And this accompanied him, but the Shogun Emperor hath confirmed the lordship to declined to meddle in the affair, his son, which the other Emperor gave saying he was only lord of Japan, to his father. not lord of the sea.

Poor Cocks returned crestfallen to The cause of Adams's death is unHirado, and things went from bad to known, as well as the age at which worse with the factory.

No moro it took place. Probably he was from ships arrived for it, though the Dutch fifty-seven to sixty. Despite his traagain insulted it by bringing in ditional burial near Yedo, Professor two more English prizes ; brawls Riess conjectures that he died at between the English and other Hirado, as his inventory was drawn nationalities were frequent, and the up in the English factory within six former had rank injustice if they days of his death.

bis death. That factory appealed to law. To increase Cocks's was not destined to survive for long. worries, there were no profits to be After a period during which Dutch made, and, owing to the illness of his and English worked harmoniously in subordinates, his books had got into Japan, the massacre at the Spice a muddle. “God send us well out of Islands in 1623, for which Cromwell Japan, for I doubt it will be every later exacted an indemnity, brought day worse than ever," is one of the about a final rupture. Soon aftergloomy entries in his diary.

wards the English Company withdrew It was during this time of British entirely from Japanese trade, having decadence in Japan that William in ten years incurred a net loss of Adams died. He had all along about £40,000. played for his own hand, but one

WILLIAM G. HUTCHISON.

PRISONERS ON PRISONS.

A

IN England the study of crime, its nal notoriety; while, if of finer causes and its cure, is the hobby of a feeling, he may be moved to pity for few, but it should be, and is, the the sufferings which he imagines are business of many outside the ranks being borne by fellow-creatures within of those officially engaged in the its walls. To satisfy the appetite of detection and punishment of criminals. such a public, there has of recent Of this study the prison is an impor- years been a steady flow of books on tant department, though by no means prisons by ex-prisoners and others. so important as is generally imagined. Nearly thirty years ago FIVE YEARS' Discipline is maintained in the State, PENAL SERVITUDE had more than a no less than in the army and in temporary success, for it was one of schools, not so much by fear of the causes which gave birth to Lord punishment, as by educating the Kimberley's Commission on the Penal common-sense of the many to the Servitude Acts. Later came Mr. knowledge that submission to Michael Davitt's LEAVES FROM authority is the best policy for the Prison Diary, a book which gratified individual, as it is for the community. the taste for morbid things, and is, The forces arrayed against each other furthermore, full of curious studies of are, then, on the one hand the baser criminal types; while of another class and more short-sighted instincts of is the series of SCENES FROM A SILENT human nature, which, in an environ- WORLD, sketches depicting the prison ment of bodily and mental disease, and the prisoner as seen by an intellipoverty, drunkenness, insanitary gent visitor, drawn with a delicate dwellings and evil tradition, tend touch, and alive with sympathy for towards crime; on the other hand, human suffering and human weakness. medical science, religion, domestic The vogue of this personal and deties, philanthropy, and all

the scriptive class of reading shows the machinery of local government. To hold that the prison has on the these latter the prison, -that is to popular imagination, and accounts for say, punishment-is but a humble

the multiplication of books of prison ally.

experiences during the last few years; In the mind of the casual observer, by the appearance, for example, of however, the position that the prison PENAL SERVITUDE by an ex-convict, holds is something very different. whose identity was hardly concealed For him an atmosphere of romance under the initials W. B. N., of is created by the stories of Chillon, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS IN SEVENTEEN of Bruce and the spider, and of the PRISONS by a gaol-bird of wide experiprison-breaking exploits of Jack ence, and by a series of articles in a Sheppard. His cariosity is aroused popular magazine, the work of another by its apparent mystery, by the ex-convict, which he entitled Five reticence of the officials, by its very YEARS PENAL. form, and by the idea that it may Everything depends upon the point be the temporary home of some crimi- of view, and later on I shall have something to say about that taken by sidering the surroundings of the writers from the outside, men of letters writers, the fact that they are cut off and officials. For the moment, how- from communication with the world ever, it is necessary, in order to assess at large, these apparent peculiarities the value of the descriptions and are not unnatural. criticisms set forth in these three In a community of which everyone works, to examine the point of view is a member against his will, in which of the ex-convict. Circumstances everyone is suffering under a sense have given to me the opportunity of of gross injustice (for convicts, we read, seeing something of a sufficient num- have the gift of persuading themselves ber of men who have served their that either their conviction was untime to gain a fair insight into the merited or that the sentence was out salient characteristics common to the of all proportion to the crime), where members of the class,-a temperament, men have to be kept in hand by strict self-conscious, vain, credulous, and discipline, who are accustomed to act

sanguine ; and although, without a either on the impulse of passion or personal knowledge of the writers in with calculation for their own interquestion, it is impossible to describe ests, without any regard to the loss or their several characteristics, it is not suffering enjoined on others,-in such unfair to assume that they possess & community one should not be dis. those which are common to the ex- appointed at finding the ethical and convicts whom one has studied. And social standards set rather low down. the assumption is justified by an For reading between the lines one examination of the books. Moreover discovers that there is a standard of the abnormal atmosphere of convict, public opinion in a convict prison, and as of monastic, life tends to produce that there are many who do not act a form of hysteria which, in the case up to its level. The anti-social inof the monk, induces a state of spiritual stinct of some of these men is such exaltation, and in the case of the that they are incapable of living prisoner, who lacks the monkish ideals, even with their fellow-sinners without shows itself in an exaggeration of his scheming for their own aggrandisetemperamental defects. So much for ment at a comrade's expense. In the psychology of the point of view. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS IN SEVENTEEN As to its material side, one need not Prisons there is an account of a be a criminal to sympathise with the quarrel between two convicts, originprisoner, who, naturally, is not pre- ating in one suspecting the other of judiced in favour of the authority having betrayed him to the authori. holding him in check ; in fact, it is ties in the matter of some contraband this sympathy which in weaker mem- article, which ended in the weaker bers of the community is liable to be man being thrown into a brick-kiln. perverted by the class of literature W. B. N. recounts several incidents under review into that dangerous of a similar nature, as does the author channel of humanitarianism which is of Five YEARS PENAL. The proverb cruel in its kindness. In reading which implies the existence of honour these books by ex-convicts one is struck among thieves would seem to receive with the way in which trivial incidents its quietus in prison, if we are to are exaggerated, with the generalisa- believe the stories told in these books ; tions deduced from isolated facts, and and, perhaps, it is as well for the with the narrowness and the distorted authorities that it should be so, for perspective of the outlook. But con- it appears that a combination of

any

importance among prisoners is always gratification at the cost of reminding betrayed before the climax arrives. relatives and friends of his moral

Another feature of prison life seems downfall shows a want of self-respect to be its gossip and its credulity. bordering on vain-gloriousness. The One roads of an incident quickly be- line taken by one of these writers coming known all over the prison, who palliates his crime at the expense and one wonders mildly why the rule of the man whom he defrauded, of of silence exists; but keeping in the judge who sentenced him, and of view the circumscribed outlook of the the Press which approved his sengossipers, one does not wonder at tence, is rather depressing, but is their abnormal credulity. An essen- typical of the whole. In fact, the tial to the enjoyment of gossip, only real interest of these books lies whether in the cathedral close or the in the sidelights which they throw wards of a prison, is the capacity for on the psychology of criminals, and, accepting it as truth, and the degenera- indirectly, on the effect which im

, tion of the critical powers which makes prisonment has on the character and this capacity is, in both places, a temperament of those who have been result of monotonous surroundings, through it. When we come to search and lack of interest in the doings of for suggestions as to improvements in the world outside. But in the con- the system, the field is found to be vict prison this lack of interest is barren, for the prisoner's view is caused by the enforced absence of necessarily narrow. The detail which news; it is not inherent. On the offends him fills his mental vision, contrary, next to an illicit supply of whether it be a question of diet or tobacco, a page of newspaper of discipline; and these two features, surreptitiously introduced would com- in one form or another,

would

appear mand the greatest price; and accord- to obscure all others. From the ing to the writer of FIVE YEARS PENAL praise bestowed on the medical desuch luxuries are all too common, partment, and knowing the supreas, consequently, must be the venal macy of the doctor on questions of warder. But the stories of this man, food in all public institutions, it is who, by the way, has also contributed difficult to believe that any prisoner prison experiences to weekly and daily suffers in consequence of the insuffipapers, are so surprising that they ciency of his rations, or from their poor must be taken with a grain of salt, quantity. One need not be a great more especially as he is at pains to administrator, or even an experienced record the statement that he has housekeeper, to see that sufficiency

, suffered from the morphia habit, a without waste can only be attained if habit which does not, to say the least the members of the community mess of it, exercise a restraining influence together. Then an average of conon the imagination of its victims.

sumption can be arrived at and there I have hinted earlier at the vanity will be no waste; but for disciplinary and self-consciousness of the criminal reasons we may take it that prisoners' type, and they are well illustrated in messes would be impracticable. At prison literature. The fact that a all events they have to take their man should find satisfaction in seeing meals apart, each in his own cell, and his name on the title-page of a book a fixed ration must be issued to each as its author is in ordinary circum- man. This, we understand, can be stances natural and by no means supplemented by the doctor, so none blameworthy; but to obtain such can be said to go hungry. On the