I remember how, at that meeting, he told me in his paternal manner, as an instance of the advantages of not advocating “extreme” measures of reform, that he enjoyed the privilege of being able, now and then, to have a personal talk with the Home Secretary. “What would humanitarians think of that?” The old gentleman was evidently unaware that if he was a _persona grata_ at the Home Office, it was precisely because he was known to be a “tame” reformer, a parasite of the old system, not a champion of the new, and therefore useful to those who wished to let matters go on as before. In a prison-play “The Home Secretary’s Holiday,” which was acted before the Humanitarian League at one of its social gatherings, Mr. Tallack was glanced at in the character of Mr. Prim, a Visiting Justice, who dwells on the value of “segregation,” “introspection,” “self-questioning,” and “remorse,” as heaven-sent means by which the convicted sinner may be awakened to a sense of his guilt. Our other critic, of whom I must say a brief word, was Sir Robert Anderson, then an ex-Assistant Commissioner of Police; who, being of a choleric and over-bearing nature, was consumed with wrathful indignation at the activities of the Humanitarian League. In his book on _Criminals and Crime_, vengeful tirades against the professional criminal were accompanied with scarcely less violent abuse of “professional humanitarians”--a strange term this, to be applied to honorary workers in an unpopular cause, and by one who had himself been for many years a salaried official at Scotland Yard! In the same work we figured variously as “humanity-mongers,” “agitators,” “fools,” “hysterical faddists,” “doctrinaire philanthropists,” “spurious philosophers,” “maudlin sentimentalists,” and so on. Authors sometimes describe their books as “a labour of love.” Sir Robert’s was certainly a labour of hate, and among the punishments which he indicated as suitable for an impenitent thief were the gallows, crucifixion, thumb-screws, and the rack; he added that it was consideration for the community, not for the thief, that prevented the use of them. It is not pleasant to have to speak of such a man; one would rather forget him. But in estimating the savagery of the age, the fact that his most vindictive proposals met with a good deal of public support is one which cannot be left out of account.