legions of gaunt, hungry men, women and children, who would greedily
accept your offered regimen to-morrow, if you could only discover the
wherewithal for obtaining the same, and who would gladly _pay for it
with the hardest and most disagreeable description of labour._

Take for instance the prison diet, where the food is given by weight,
and where it is purposely of the coarsest description consistent with
health. That the quantity is insufficient to satisfy the cravings of
hunger I can myself testify, having spent a month inside one of Her
Majesty's best appointed Bombay prisons, and having noted with painful
surprise the eagerness with which every scrap of my own coarse brown
bread, that I might leave over, was claimed and eaten by some of my
hungry, low-caste fellow prisoners!

The clothing and the blankets are also of the very cheapest description.
Of course it must be remembered too, that the food and materials being
bought in large quantities, are obtained at contract prices which are
considerably less than the usual retail rates in the bazaar. And yet
notwithstanding these facts it costs the Bombay Government on an average
Rs. 2/4 per month for each prisoner's food, and close upon Rs. 2 a year
for clothing, besides the cost of establishment, police guard, hospital
expenses and contingencies. Altogether according to the figures given in
the Jail Report of 1887 for the Bombay Presidency, including all the
above mentioned items, I find that the average monthly cost to
Government for each prisoner is a little over Rs. 6 a head.

Now it is a notorious, though almost incredible, fact, that in many
parts of India, men will commit petty thefts and offences on purpose to
be sent to jail, and will candidly state this to be their reason for
doing so. Many Government Officials will, I am sure, bear me out in