This was what was called "the grate" of the Fleet Prison, one of the wickedest and most pestilential gaols that ever cursed the earth; and the grimmest satire upon this jail into which men were thrust for not paying money which they owed, was that among these debtors there were many whose absolute inability to pay was demonstrated by the fact that they would, literally, have starved there but for the chance charity of the public. Apropos of this point Dickens, in chapter xiv, volume II, of "Pickwick," says: "The poor side of the debtors' prison is, as its name imports, that in which the most miserable and abject class of debtors are confined. A prisoner, having declared upon the poor, pays neither rent nor chummage. His fees upon entering and leaving the gaol are reduced in amount, and he becomes entitled to a share of some small quantities of food--to provide which a few charitable persons have, from time to time, left trifling legacies in their wills. Most of our readers will remember that, until a very few years past, there was a kind of iron cage in the wall of the Fleet Prison, within which was posted some man who, from time to time, rattled a money box, and exclaimed in a mournful voice: 'Pray remember the poor debtors.' The receipts of this box, when there were any, were divided among the poor prisoners, and the men on the poor side relieved each other in this degrading office. "Although this custom has been abolished and the cage is now boarded up, the miserable and destitute condition of these unhappy persons remains the same. We no longer suffer them to appeal at the prison gates to the charity and compassion of the passers-by; but we still have unblotted on leaves of our statute-book, for the reverence and admiration of the succeeding ages, the just and wholesome law which declares that the sturdy felon shall be fed and clothed, and that the penniless debtor shall be left to die in starvation and nakedness. This is no fiction. Not a week passes over our heads but, in every one of our prisons for debt, some of these men must inevitably expire in the slow agonies of want, if they were not relieved by their fellow prisoners."