[92] Here and in the following lines I am quoting from Mr. Charles Cook of Hyde Park Hall, London, whom Mr. Spurgeon has called “the Howard of the present day.” Mr. Cook deserves all honour for his visits (primarily with a religious object) to some of the worst prisons of the world--visits for which he has paid the old penalty of “gaol fever.” With reference to Ceuta, I should add that Mr. Cook’s impressions are not altogether confirmed by competent Spanish prison reformers. Ceuta, which dates from the seventeenth century, is a kind of criminal Gheel, its chief peculiarity being the close relationship between the free and the convict population. It is, as Salillas, from whose _Vida penal en España_ I take the following remarks concerning it, observes, a convict city. There is not strictly any isolation as in the other prisons of the Peninsula or the Balearic Isles; nor is it an extraneous focus of moral infection, as at Saragossa or Valladolid; nor a merely economic supplement, like that of Alcala and some others; nor, in short, a centre of inaction or of artificial life. The convicts are an integral part of the population, sharing in the economic, social, urban, military, administrative, industrial, and agricultural order of its life, and fulfilling a great variety of functions. They obtain and carry the materials for constructing the fortifications and buildings, make and repair the roads, erect forts and houses, work in timber and in iron, cultivate the field. They are painters, photographers, shoemakers, tailors, servants fulfilling confidential domestic duties; they are clerks, even professors lecturing on arts, sciences, and philosophy. Between the free and the convict population, Salillas says, there is more than affinity; there is a kind of organic dependence. Convicts enter the houses without hindrance; no one regards them with dread, or fears to meet them. Who is the coachman who is driving? A convict. Who is the lad serving at table? A convict. And the cook who prepared the meal? A convict. And who takes care of the children? A convict. And all the chief families, having servants belonging to the prison, do they not fear robbery, rape, murder, poisoning? No. This custom, founded in necessity, has its credit in experience. An eyewitness, Juan Relosillas (_Catorca Meses en Ceuta_, 1886), says--“Everyone calls them ‘good prisoners’; they are so, faithful, sober, hard-working, respectful, and intelligent.” [93] The impartial Moorish method of administering justice may be gathered from the following example mentioned by Mr. Cook. One Mogador Jew recently brought another before their Governor to recover a sum equal to about 6¼d. Both were thrown into prison, from which they were released on paying the following little bill:--