"Could this happen in any other city in Spain? If the inhabitants found themselves rubbing shoulders with the scum of the earth, with the worst malefactors, with criminals guilty of the most heinous offences, would they have enjoyed one moment's peace? Could they overcome the natural repugnance felt by honest and respectable people for those whom the law has condemned to live apart? The fact is that at Ceuta no one objects. The existing state of things is deemed the most natural thing in the world. It has been too long the rule and it is claimed seriously that no evil consequences have resulted. The utmost confidence is reposed in these ex-criminals whose nature has been seemingly quite changed by relegation to the African presidio. They wash and get up linen without losing more pieces than a first class washerwoman, they wait on the children with the tenderest concern, they perform all sorts of household service, go to market, run messages, polish the floors and the furniture with all the zeal and industry of the best servants in the world. The most cordial relations exist between employers and their convict attendants and cases have been known where the former have carried the latter back to Spain to continue their service. One was a Chinese cook who was excused ten years' supervision to go back with his master." It is claimed by the champions of Ceuta that despite the freedom accorded to the convicts their conduct is exemplary. "I can certify," says Relosillas[12] "that during a whole year there were but three or four instances of crime amongst the convicts employed in domestic service." Others however are not so laudatory. An independent witness, Doña Concepcion Arenal, has little good to say of the prisons. "In them justice is punished or rather crucified," she wrote, "and with it hygiene, morality, decency, humanity, all, in a word, which every one who is not himself hateful and contemptible, respects. It is impossible to give any idea of the _cuartel principal_ or chief convict barrack in the place. We can only refer to its terrible and revolting demoralisation." Yet she is inclined to contradict herself and argues that the convict when trusted will behave well. His life on the whole is light and easy; he has sufficient food, congenial company, and can better his position by steady industry; he wears no chains, performs no rude or laborious tasks and is driven neither into insubordination nor crime. [12] "Four Months in Ceuta."