satisfactory pledges of repentance and reformation, should be able to depend on assistance and protection in working out his return to the paths of virtue and honesty. This can be secured only by the diffusion of Prisoners' Aid Societies, to assist in procuring employment for the discharged convicts, and watch over their future conduct.

The intermediate stage of imprisonment, combined as it is with due police supervision, has had such signal success in the sister island that it is difficult to conceive why it has not been adopted in England, where the former does not exist at all, and the latter is absolutely nominal; for while the police are directed by the Public-house Act, which makes it penal to harbour known thieves, to point out such when they fall in their way, they are strictly forbidden to interfere with the ticket-of-leave men when they find them, even in houses haunted by known offenders, and even in their company. This has the natural effect of affording them opportunities of committing crimes, and, indeed, almost offers them an incentive for so doing.

The practice of making the pay of the warders in the public work prisons at Dartmoor, Portsmouth, and Chatham, depend in a considerable degree on gratuities, the amount of which is regulated by their own statements as to the efficiency of the convicts' labour, is likewise liable to serious abuse.* Is it not evident that it exposes them to the greatest temptation to conceal the delinquencies and idleness of those under their charge, lest the revelations should diminish the amount of their own salaries ? The mark system, as adopted in Ireland, would at once put a stop to these abuses. The dietary of English prisons

*Within the last year this abuse has been remedied. (See Appendix.)

likewise imperatively demands reduction. It is on an absurdly high scale. To give the offender against his country's laws, who has cost that country already immense sums by his depredations while at liberty, and is putting it to a great expense by the necessity of supporting him in prison, an amount of comfort and well-being not only denied, and rightly denied, to the inmate of the union, but which the honest, hard-working labourer cannot possibly obtain, and which even the thriving artisan, if he has a wife and children, can rarely command, is a direct encouragement to crime, and tends to confuse every notion of right and wrong. No punishment is dreaded by the regular thief where the diet is good, the clothing warm, and the labour light; and such, as we have seen, is the case in convict prisons of England. Besides, as matters are at present arranged, prisoners sentenced for a short term of confinement have a much smaller allowance of food than those condemned to penal servitude, though the offence of the latter is of far deeper die. It is argued that a more nutritious and ample scale of diet is required to counteract the depressing effects of long confinement, and to support health. Even supposing the truth of such an assertion, there is no reason why the convict should begin with a larger and more substantial allowance of food than his less guilty fellow-prisoner. It might be increased, as in the Irish prisons, after the first nine months of separate confinement. But this argument is refuted, by the fact that such diet is adopted without any detrimental results, not only at Mountjoy, but in the prisons of Scotland, although the Scotch prisoners rise earlier and do more work than the English. Mr. Frederick Hill, for so many years Inspector of Prisons in that country, informs us that in 1849 the average cost of the food of each prisoner per day was 34d. in Scotland, and

41d. in England.* In this, as in every other benevolent and philanthropic scheme, there are limits not to be overstepped without creating a degree of mischief, almost counterbalancing any amount of good which may be effected by the most valuable reforms.

I have thus endeavoured to draw attention in France to the efforts of a great nation strenuously seeking to combat or vanquish the crime and depravity of the perishing and dangerous classes by charitable institutions and penal establishments. We live in an age when man has learnt to command the elements, and bow them to his will. May we not hope that he will likewise acquire a power still more precious-that of subjugating the passions of his criminal fellow-creatures, and recalling them to the paths of virtue and peace? Time alone can decide, but the results I have already indicated lead to the warmest hopes of success; and even if these hopes are destined never to be completely realised, the men who are carrying out this great experiment with such untiring zeal and energy deserve all the more encouragement from the friends of progress, because the obstacles they have to contend with are so difficult to vanquish or surmount.

*Hill on "Crime."

APPENDIX.

MAY, 1866.

SINCE the publication of the preceding article, considerable and most important modifications have taken place in the laws regarding convicts and prison discipline in England. A statement of these will not be uninteresting to our readers, as serving to complete, though very inadequately, the history of penal reform in Great Britain and Ireland.

From 1859 to 1861 the criminal code and the management of Government prisons in the two countries underwent little, if any, alteration. But while, in the latter, the system continued to produce the most satisfactory results, in the reformation of the convicts and the diminution of crime, even after the retirement of Sir Walter Crofton-thus affording convincing proof that its success depended not on one presiding spirit, but on the soundness of the principles themselves-the other remained a complete and signal failure. The reason of this will be obvious to all who have carefully perused the preceding pages. In Ireland the convicts are dealt with individually, the directors making themselves acquainted with the workings of each mind, and striving to arouse the better feelings of the prisoner. During the first four months of his incarceration, the diet, as we have seen, is low-the work of the most monotonous and distasteful description. There is no communication, except with the governor, chaplain, and schoolmaster; so that ample opportunity is afforded for meditation and repentance;

while, at the same time, every effort is made to impress him with the conviction that the period of separate confinement may be shortened by good conduct, and will infallibly be lengthened by bad; and that his future condition depends, in a considerable degree, upon himself. When, after nine months thus spent in his prison cell, he is passed on to the next stage, to labour, under strict supervision, with his fellow-convicts, the same stimulus of hope and fear is still presented to him. His cooperation is thus enlisted in his own reformation. The sphere of self-action, at first so limited, is gradually enlarged, in proportion to the improvement manifested by the prisoner, in habit, feeling, and conduct. So he advances from class to class—the amount of work gauged by that mark system which admits of no deception; his conduct daily registered with unerring fidelity; gradually acquiring fresh powers of self-control; pampered by no weak indulgence, but stimulated to exertion by the consciousness that every hour of willing labour and good behaviour hastens the period of liberation-till he is considered fit for the intermediate stage-that important and, perhaps, only real test of reformation. And when, after passing in a satisfactory manner through this period of probation, he obtains his ticket of leave, he is not left to sink or swim as best he may-to relapse unheeded into his old courses, and thus, ere long, to become once more the inmate of the prison walls: he is still under the eye of friendly authority, watched over, and controlled-yet in such a manner as neither to annoy or injure him; encouraged, on the one hand, to remain in the good path, by every incentive that can be rightly offered; warned, on the other, against returning to crime, by the certainty of discovery, re-commitment, and increased punishment.