"The workhouse! it's a second jail: I would nearly as soon be in prison, and when you have a chance of getting off without being caught, it's better to run the risk and chance it, for all the difference there is or ever can be between the workhouse and the prison. They can't make a man work unless they feed and clothe him, any more than they can make a steam engine go without fuel. Well, give me food and I'll work; work is no punishment to me, if I can get meat to support it, and if I don't I can't, that's all about it. But what's the good of making me work for years, at work that will not be of any use to me when I get out? I have only learnt one trade, there are only a very few men in that trade, they won't employ me; then what am I to do? Starve in a Christian country? It isn't likely; and as for the workhouse, I shall never go to it as long as I can be fed in prison, with the chance always of keeping out of both?" "Suppose they should flog you next time?" "In the first place, I have a disease on me now that would prevent me from being flogged, so that I have no fear of flogging. But, even if I was able to stand flogging, all the difference it would make to me, would be to make me keep a sharper eye after the 'coppers.' Small game would not then tempt me so much. I should look after larger stakes, go in at heavier jobs, and calculate well my chances of escape before going to work. Once I had made up my mind to commit a crime, and saw the coast clear, the chance of all the floggings in the world would not deter me. I'll find you fellows in the prison to-day who will take a good round flogging for a pound of tobacco! now do you think that the mere chance of the lash would hinder these men from attempting to get hold of a few hundred pounds' worth of jewellery? It's not likely. Thieves weren't frightened into honesty by the gallows, nor would they be now, if they were to be cut into mince-meat. Thousands might be led into honest ways if suitable work was found for them, but it would require to be very different work from that of the 'navvy,' and then many of them have to be _learned_ to work before they could make a living at all." "Then you don't think flogging did you any good at all?" "Certainly it did not; and what's more, you will never find a man doing much good after being flogged. It either makes him an invalid, or a desperado. It may make him quiet under authority, but it ensures the very opposite when he is free."