His edict was followed by special regulations issued for politicals under the Empire, February 9th, 1867, through M. Pietri, Prefect of the Seine. These regulations, illustrative of the care France exercised at an early date over her politicals, defined the housing conditions, diet, intercourse with comrades inside the prison and with family and friends from the outside. Their privacy was carefully guarded. No curious visitor was allowed to see a political unless the latter so desired.

Kropotkin wrote[2] of his incarceration in Clairvaux prison in 1888, to which he and twenty-two others were transferred from Lyons after being prosecuted for belonging to the International Workingmen's Association: "In France, it is generally understood that for political prisoners the loss of liberty and the forced inactivity are in themselves so hard that there is no need to inflict additional hardships."

In Clairvaux he and his comrades were given quarters in spacious rooms, not in cells. Kropotkin and Emile Gautier, the French anarchist, were given a separate room for literary work and the Academy of Sciences offered them the use of its library.

There was no intercourse with common law prisoners. The politicals were allowed to wear their own clothes, to smoke, to buy food and wine from the prison canteen or have it brought

[1]Sigerson, Political prisoners at Home and Abroad, p. 89. [2]Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Kropotkin. in; they were free of compulsory work, but might, if they chose, do light work for which they were paid. Kropotkin mentions the extreme cleanliness of the prison and the "excellent quality" of the prison food.

Their windows looked down upon a little garden and also commanded a beautiful view of the surrounding country. They played nine- pins in the yard and made a vegetable and flower garden on the surface of the building's wall. For other forms of recreation, they were allowed to organize themselves into classes. This particular group received from Kropotkin lessons in cosmography, geometry, physics, languages and bookbinding. Kropotkin's wife was allowed to visit him daily and to walk with him in the prison gardens.

Sebastian Faure, the great French teacher and orator, was sentenced to prison after the anarchist terrorism in 1894 and while there was allowed to write his "La Douleur Universelle"

Paul La Fargue, son-in-law of Karl Marx, wrote his famous "The Right to be Lazy" in Sainte Pelagie prison.

France has continued this policy to date. Jean Grave, once a shoemaker and now a celebrated anarchist, was condemned to six months in La Sante prison for an offensive article in his paper, Les Temps Nouveaux. Such is the liberty allowed a political that while serving this sentence he was given paper and materials with which to write another objectionable article, called "La Societe Mourante et 1'Anarchie," for the publication of which he received another six months.

It is interesting to note the comparatively light sentences political offenders get in France. And then there is an established practice of amnesty. They rarely finish out their terms. Agitation for their release extends from the extreme revolutionary left to the members of the Chamber of Deputies, frequently backed by the liberal press.