encounter out of prison; and as he professes to be very well pleased with
waiting upon me, he dreads the approach of his release. Every person in
the jail has the same allowance, and if they choose to work, the Governor
enables them to earn from threepence up to one shilling a-day over.

Now, my good friends of Kirkeaton, although I will not recommend you to do
any thing to get sent to jail, yet, I will tell you what I would do if I
were in your situation. I would work hard from Monday to Saturday, and at
the end of the week if I found that my wages were not sufficient to
support myself, my wife, and children, in the common necessaries of life,
I would, on the following Monday, try a fresh plan. Instead of going to
work, I would go to a neighbouring magistrate, Lord Milton, or Lord
Fitzwilliam, for instance, if they were within reach, and I would tell him
that I had left my wife and family chargeable to the parish, as I was
unable to support them by my labour; but as I knew the leaving of my
family as an incumbrance upon the parish was an offence against the laws,
for which I was liable to be committed to prison, and as I did not wish to
give the parish officers more trouble than was absolutely necessary, I had
come to request his lordship to make out my mittimus, that I might go to
jail as soon and as peaceably as possible. I know what the corrupt knave
of the Morning Post will say, "Ha! he is in a prison himself, and he wants
now to get all his followers there also." But suppose this were the case,
which it is not, you would not, could not, be worse off than Lord Milton's
constituents are. But I have said this a thousand times within the last
five years; nay, I always said this, seeing that a poor labouring man is
twice as well off in a jail as he is out of it, as to meat, drink,
washing, and lodging.

Now, my friends and fellow countrymen, the writing the history of my own
life, during my confinement in a prison, will not, I trust, be considered