Happily, although public convenience suffered, public security was not seriously threatened during those eventful days, when, out of sheer jealousy lest the sacred principle of the "liberty of the subject" to do what he likes should be infringed, the authorities, day after day, handed over the principal thoroughfares of the Metropolis to a mob, whose will to create anarchy was probably only checked by its physical inability. Under the same favourable circumstances, a well-fed mob might have placed London, for a time, under a reign of terror. What the intelligent foreign observer thinks about English town loafers, and the indulgent way in which we humour their weaknesses, may be judged from the following reflections of a recent German visitor to London:-- "When the Londoners say, 'These are our unemployed,[40] they do not see what strikes a foreigner at once--that all these dirty, ragged figures do not give the impression of out-of-works at all--that they look rather like people who endeavour to keep miles away from work. No man who really wants work looks like the average London unemployed. He has no time to lounge at street corners or patrol the principal streets--which are certainly not places where work is to be found. Doubtless there are thousands of genuine out-of-works in London, but these are not the people whom the foreigner sees. [Footnote 40: "Berliner Lokalanzeiger," July, 1909.] "The foreigner naturally asks: How do these people live? And the answer makes him acquainted with an English institution which is probably unique of its kind in the whole world--which is certainly unknown to the German: it is the 'workhouse.' The name recalls our own house of correction, but the 'workhouse' is in fact the opposite of that. As a rule, it is a fine building--in Lambeth we might almost call it a palace--to which every man who is out of work has access. There he receives supper, bed, and breakfast, after which he is able to go in search of work again. If he finds none he may return to the workhouse in the evening, and, as one might expect, this is what he generally does. "The workhouses are maintained at enormous cost, and it is characteristic of the good heartedness of the Englishman--for the Englishman is good hearted--that he pays this cost, out of local taxes, without grumbling. That the institution is a wise one, however, I doubt. The man who says to himself that he must have sixpence or he will have nothing to eat to-morrow will go to far more trouble to get these coppers together than the one who says: "At the worst I can go into the workhouse.'"[41] [Footnote 41: "Berliner Lokalanzeiger," July, 1909.] CHAPTER III. DETENTION COLONIES AND LABOUR HOUSES.