In 1807 the “Livery” of London elected him to the office of High Sheriff of the City and County of Middlesex for the ensuing year. This responsible post put to the proof the sincerity of his professions as a reformer. Nor did he fail in the trial. During his term of power he effected many improvements in the treatment of the real or pretended criminals who, as occupants of the jails, came under his jurisdiction. No one who has read Howard’s _State of the Prisons_, published thirty years before Phillips’ entrance upon his office, or even general accounts of them, needs to be told that they were the very nurseries of disease, vice, misery, and crime of all kinds--one of the many everlasting disgraces of the governments and civilisation of the day. Nor had they been appreciably improved during the interval of thirty years. The new Sheriff daily visited Newgate and the Fleet prisons and, by personal inquiry, made himself acquainted with the actual state of the occupants, and in many ways was able to ameliorate their condition. By his direction several collecting boxes were conspicuously displayed, and the alms collected were applied to the relief of the families of destitute debtors. He further insisted that persons, whose indictments had been ignored by the grand jury, should not be detained in the foul and pestilential atmosphere, as was then the case, but should be immediately released. In his admirable _Letter to the Livery of London_, he begins with an appeal to the common sentiments of humanity which ought to have some influence with those in authority. He reminds his readers that:-- “It is too much the fashion to exclude _feeling_ from the business of public life, and a total absence of it is considered as a necessary qualification in a public man. Among statesmen and politicians he is considered as weak and incompetent who suffers natural affection to have any influence on his political calculations.” In a note to this passage he adds:-- “It appears to me that political errors of all kinds arise, in a great degree, from the studied banishment of feeling from the consideration of statesmen. Reasoning frequently fails us from a false estimate of the premises on which our deductions are founded. But _feeling_, which, in most respects, is synonymous with conscience, is almost always right. Statesmen are apt to view society as a machine, the several parts of which must be made by them to perform their respective functions for the success of the whole. The comparison is often made, but the analogy is not perfect. The parts of the social machine are made up of sensitive beings, each of whom (though in the obscurest situation) is equal, in all the affections of our nature, to those in the most conspicuous places. The harmony and happiness of the whole will depend on the _degree_ of feeling exercised by the directors and prime movers.”