Another incident appears to me sufficient not only to corroborate my doubt, but to annihilate the official presumption in England. Recently there have been those very important extensions of the Convict Prison at Woking, to which Sir Joshua Jebb alludes in the statement I have embodied. The work was carried on, in part at least, by convicts from another prison—from Portland, I believe. The men were not taken from those on special service; they were not selected even from those accustomed to labour out of bounds; they were, I have been told, “just the ordinary prisoners.” I have not visited Woking, but I am also informed that they were diligent at their work; and that there was no escape, nor any serious attempt at escape, if any at all. The prisoners were fifty in number; and, again, I was not told that they were all selected from the unmarried class. It appears to me, therefore, that this imputed family _storge_ is a myth. I have bestowed great attention and pains on the endeavour to find out if the leading objectors in the English system had actually made themselves masters of the Irish system in its details, even so far as I have done myself. I have sometimes feared that I pressed my questions upon them further than was courteous; though I must confess that I have uniformly been met with a frankness as candid as it was kind. I have not only found that the study of the Irish system has been very partial, and that the judgment against it has been formed on arguments in the subjunctive mood and the most arbitrary assumptions, but I have also observed that even with regard to the English system, there is not the same mastery of the whole process in detail that I noticed in Ireland. For instance, I am not aware that the leading authorities of the English system have personally examined the working of the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society, or have in many instances personally traced the behaviour of discharged convicts out in employment.