* In consequence of these representations some medical gentlemen of the city were brought in to examine me, who pronounced my life to be in no danger, and therefore (so it seemed) my health was not regarded as worth improving by better food. Provided I did not make a case fer the House of Commons, that was enough. They appeared to consider themselves as bound to keep me alive and no more.
'Akin to the want of better food, was the want of exercise, and no want of damp. The yard in which I walked was so small, that I always became giddy, through the frequent turnings, before I became refreshed. The governor sometimes permitted the "Fines-Class" in which I was, to walk in his garden; but the occasions came seldom and lasted not long--and I was previously so enervated by confinement, that the unusual exercise thus taken, threw me into a slight fever. Generally speaking, the place in which I was confined was miserably humid, and, although I took perpetual care, I had almost a perpetual cold.
'An application for a trivial favour often brought down upon me ruthless treatment. The visiting magistrates would come, and before the other prisoners denounce me as the "worst felon in the gaol, and the most atrocious of criminals." I was directed to ascribe this to the petulance of age and the rancour of orthodoxy; but I thought it proceeded from bad taste and worse feeling.
'From first to last, every newspaper sent me was detained; every letter from me was perused, and every one to me was broken open and read--and the very seals, if they happened to be heterodox, were interdicted. Thus the privacy of affection and friendship were violated, and mind as well as body laid under one restraint.
'When I saw friends it was but for a few minutes, and then through the bars of a gate; to shake hands was a privilege, and to converse unheard, impossible. To me it was a momentary satisfaction made an enduring mortification. To the public it may seem a light matter that nothing can be spoken to a visitor unheard by officers, but it is no light matter to a prisoner. The commissioners inquired--"Can you make no communication to your friends without its passing under the eyes of the governor, or through the ears of the turnkey?" I answered--"None; and that it was not prudent for a prisoner to mention openly what affected persons in whose power he was put--that no prisoner must calculate on gaolers being generous, for they owned few virtues not written in their rules." I spoke from experience, and gave them cases in point.
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