Among other friends to whom this department of the League was much indebted were Mr. George Ives, author of _A History of Penal Methods_; Mrs. H. Bradlaugh Bonner; Mr. Carl Heath; Mr. H. B. Montgomery; Mrs. L. T. Mallet; Dr. T. Baty, the distinguished authority on International Law; and Mr. Joseph Collinson, who for some years acted as its honorary secretary. Mr. Collinson was a young north-countryman, self-taught, and full of native readiness and ingenuity, who at an early age had developed a passion for humanitarian journalism, and whose press letters became as well known as those of Mr. Algernon Ashton, while he had a marked advantage over that gentleman in having an ethical purpose and something definite to write about. Any one who should glance over the files of the chief London and provincial journals, between the years 1895 and 1910, could not fail to see a number of letters signed “Joseph Collinson,” or to admire the pertinacity with which the humanitarian view of a host of controversial subjects, in particular those relating to criminal law and prisons, was brought to the notice of the public. Especially in regard to the flogging question Mr. Collinson’s services were of great value. Thus supported, the Humanitarian League had no cause to fear any reasoned opposition: our difficulty, rather, was to meet with any; for our antagonists were mostly anonymous and often abusive correspondents of newspapers, and the real obstacle with which we had to cope was the crass weight of prejudice and the immense stability of old institutions. Two of our adversaries, however, must not go without mention. One was Mr. William Tallack, then Secretary of the Howard Association, whose hostility was dangerous because it lurked under the guise of philanthropy. He was an old gentleman of benevolent demeanour, whose method it was to sit astutely “on the fence,” making oracular utterances, now on that side, now on this, so that, like the writer of an astrological almanack, he might be able in any event to run in and cry: “I told you so.” In his _Penological Principles_, a work much advertised in those days, there was plenty of penology, but very little principle, much more of the Tallack than of the Howard: it was, in fact, a farrago of platitudes and pieties, which said many things without ultimately meaning anything at all. Yet, in spite of his much verbiage and many estimable sentiments, Mr. Tallack was a reactionist; he belonged to an antiquated school of thought, quite out of sympathy with the new style of prison reform; and as he lost no opportunity of disparaging the work of the League, we showed him somewhat emphatically that that was a game at which two parties could play. This he did not relish, especially as we were strongly backed up by Mr. Passmore Edwards in his paper, the _Echo_. A conference was accordingly proposed by Mr. Tallack, where it was agreed that in future there should be a friendly arrangement of “hands off” on either side.