The writer suggested that it should be made felony to assist a prisoner to escape, but the difficulty in the way of this was that juries were well known to lean towards the accused. In the same year, 1812, however, this came about. A Bill passed the Commons, the proposition being made by Castlereagh that to aid in the escape of a prisoner should cease to be misdemeanour, and become a felony, punishable by transportation for seven or fourteen years, or life. Parole, he said, was a mere farce; bribery was rampant and could do anything, and an organized system existed for furthering the escape of prisoners of rank. Within the last three years 464 officers on parole had escaped, but abroad _not one British officer_ had broken his parole. The chief cause, he continued, was the want of an Agent between the two countries for the exchange of prisoners, and it was an extraordinary feature of the War that the common rules about the exchange of prisoners were not observed. The most famous escape agent was Thomas Feast Moore, _alias_ Maitland, _alias_ Herbert, but known to French prisoners as Captain Richard Harman of Folkestone. He was always flush of money, and, although he was known to be able to speak French very fluently, he never used that language in the presence of Englishmen. He kept a complete account of all the dépôts and parole places, with the ranks of the principal prisoners thereat, and had an agent at each, a poor man who was glad for a consideration to place well-to-do prisoners in communication with Harman, and so on the road to escape. Harman’s charge was usually £100 for four prisoners. As a rule he got letters of recommendation from the officers whose escapes he safely negotiated, and he had the confidence of some of the principal prisoners in England and Scotland. He was generally in the neighbourhood of Whitstable and Canterbury, but, for obvious reasons, owned to no fixed residence. He seems to have been on the whole straight in his dealings, but once or twice he sailed very closely in the track of rascally agents who took money from prisoners, and either did nothing for them, or actually betrayed them, or even murdered them. On March 22, 1810, General Pillet, ‘Adjudant Commandant, Chef de l’État-Major of the First Division of the Army of Portugal,’ and Paolucci, commander of the _Friedland_, taken by H.M.S. _Standard_ and _Active_ in 1808, left their quarters at Alresford, and were met half a mile out by Harman with a post-chaise, into which they got and drove to Winchester, alighting in a back street while Harman went to get another chaise. Thence they drove circuitously to Hastings via Croydon, Sevenoaks, Tunbridge, Robertsbridge, and Battle, Harman saying that this route was necessary for safety, and that he would get them over, as he had General Osten, in thirty-four hours.