‘Howard abated the jail-fever; but it seems to me he has been the innocent cause of a far more distressing fever which rages high just now: what we may call the benevolent-platform fever. Howard is to be regarded as the unlucky fountain of that tumultuous frothy ocean-tide of benevolent sentimentality, abolition of punishment, 'all-absorbing prison discipline', and general morbid sympathy, instead of hearty hatred, for scoundrels ...'

Thomas Carlyle Latter Day Pamphlets, no.2 1850