"I think that under present conditions the sending of vagrants to gaol is utterly useless. They want to go to gaol; the conditions in gaol are better than those in casual wards, and particularly in bad weather they prefer going to gaol. Over and over again it has come before us: a man commits some petty offence in order to go to gaol for a short period."[43] [Footnote 43: I take the following from a newspaper (January 1, 1904):--"At the Grantham Borough Police Court two vagrants, were sent to gaol for twenty-one days, with hard labour, for refusing to work whilst inmates of the casual ward at the Grantham Workhouse. One of the magistrates said this appeared to be the only way to deal with the question, but the Chief Constable remarked that such men were too comfortable in prison, and that was the reason why they liked going there so much. The master at the workhouse said he heard two others wish they were going with them to gaol."] What are needed in this country are the Detention Colonies and Labour Houses[44] which have long been provided in Continental countries for this type of offender. To these institutions, differentiated according as they were intended for hopeful or for incorrigible cases, all vagrants and loafers should, after due warning, be committed for a period sufficiently long for disciplinary purposes. [Footnote 44: The terms Detention Colony and Labour House are here, for convenience, used synonymously, though strictly speaking, a colony is an establishment in the country to which land for farming and for improvement is attached, while the Labour House may be located in a town.] Besides being penal in character, these institutions might also offer, under suitable conditions, a temporary home to unemployed persons of all kinds. It might be objected that this would be a practical admission of the principle of the Right to Work. For myself I do not care much for phrases, but even if this should be the case, I would reply that the Right to Work is an infinitely better and wiser and safer principle to concede to the masses than the Right to be Idle. And yet the admission of the Right to Work would be no new thing in this country. It was enacted as early as the fourteenth century, in a Poor Law of 12 Richard II. That law drew a distinction between "beggars impotent to serve" and "beggars able to labour." The former were "continually to abide during their lives" in their native towns, or wherever else the enactment of the statute happened to find them, and the latter were to be given work suited to their strength and capacity. It may be recalled, too, how this same principle was carried further by the Poor Laws of Elizabeth's reign.