In the letter to Romilly Phillips insists particularly upon the following reforms: (1) No prisoner to be placed in irons before trial. (2) None to be denied free access of friends or legal advisers. (3) None to be deprived of adequate means of subsistence--14 ounces of bread then being the _maximum_ of allowance of food. (4) Every prisoner to be discharged as soon as the grand jury shall have thrown out the bill of indictment. (5) Abolition of payment to jailors by exactions forced from the most destitute prisoners, and of various other exorbitant or illegal fines and extortions. (6) Separation of lunatic from other occupants of the jails. (7) That counsel be provided for those too poor to pay for themselves. In 1811 Phillips published his _Treatise on the Powers and Duties of Juries, and on the Criminal Laws of England_. Three years later _Golden Rules for Jurymen_, which he afterwards expanded into a book entitled _Golden Rules of Social Philosophy_ (1826), in which he lays down rules of conduct for the ordinary business of life--lawyers, clergymen, schoolmasters, and others being the objects of his admonitions. It is in this work that the civic dignitary--so “splendidly false” to the habits of his class--sets forth at length the principles upon which his unalterable faith in the truth of humanitarian dietetics was founded. The reasons of this “true confession” are fully and perspicuously specified, and the first forms the key-note of the rest:--[249] “1. _Because_, being mortal himself, and holding his life on the same uncertain and precarious tenure as all other sensitive beings, he does not find himself justified by any supposed superiority or inequality of condition in destroying the enjoyment of existence of any other mortal, except in the necessary defence of his own life. “2. _Because_ the desire of life is so paramount, and so affectingly cherished in all sensitive beings, that he cannot reconcile it to his feelings to destroy or become a voluntary party in the destruction of any innocent living being, however much in his power, or apparently insignificant. “3. _Because_ he feels the same abhorrence from devouring flesh in general that he hears carnivorous men express against eating human flesh, or the flesh of Horses, Dogs, Cats, or other animals which, in some countries, it is not customary for carnivorous men to devour. “4. _Because_ Nature seems to have made a superabundant provision for the nourishment of [frugivorous] animals in the saccharine matter of Roots and Fruits, in the farinaceous matter of Grain, Seed, and Pulse, and in the oleaginous matter of the Stalks, Leaves, and Pericarps of numerous vegetables. “5. _Because_ he feels an utter and unconquerable repugnance against receiving into his stomach the flesh or juices of deceased animal organisation.