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consist, first, of a period of separate confinement of from twelve to eighteen months' duration, with a view to break up the previous habits of the convict and bring him into contact with advice and instruction; secondly, of a term of compulsory labour in or near Great Britain; and, thirdly, of deportation to a distant colony where he was to be allowed to work for his own living in his own way, subject only to some partial restraints and surveillance. With this arrangement, provided it be practicable, we have no desire to find fault. Whatever may be the final settlement of this matter, separate imprisonment must be an ingredient of the plan. It differs from the solitary system, which has been extensively tried in the United States, in supplying the prisoner with wholesome food, instead of confining him to bread and water; in alleviating his discomfort by giving him employment, and by the visits of the officers of the prison and the chaplain, instead of consigning him to idleness and unmitigated solitude; in separating him from none of the inmates of the prison except his fellow-prisoners; and in allowing him the privilege of attending the chapel and school (securing, on these occasions, his separation from the sight and hearing of his fellows), instead of excluding him from both. In a word, it allows communication for good purposes, but cuts off the contact with evil. We approve also of the second period of forced labour. But, for the reasons already assigned, we doubt the future practicability of transportation; and, however inconvenient it may be, we fear the question will soon be forced upon us, how to dispose of our convicts without it.

Space forbids us at present to deal with this difficult question. If transportation is replaced by home-discipline, it is possible that we may gain by the exchange. It is certain that commitments and re-commitments have increased in the face of transportation. It may be that the remoteness of that punishment has caused its exemplary influence to fail. It may be that the proximity of home-punishments, in the shape of imprisonment and forced labour, would deter the vicious more effectually. At all events we think it would be wise, in cases where transportation would have been ordered, to attempt to reclaim the criminal by a period of separate confinement, and to compel him to perform such labour on public works as shall be useful to the country or the State. We further suggest that, during this period of hard labour, some intervals should be reserved besides Sundays for reviving and applying the instructions received during the period of confinement. Lastly, we think that

subsidiary establishments should be set on foot for the reception of prisoners, under a modified kind of imprisonment, after the period of forced labour has expired. Voluntary emigration, assisted by the State, might be connected with those institutions. And from those who preferred to remain in this country security for good behaviour might be taken where the circumstances admitted of its being given; and, failing such security, the prisoner may be finally released subject to a period of surveillance by the police.

It only remains to suggest some other measures which, in our judgment, might operate as preventives. First, crime should be attacked in its nursery. Juvenile pilferers grow up into bold robbers, and we are convinced that it would be far cheaper to the State to take possession of and endeavour to reform such children than to punish them momentarily and let them go. The fault is often more the parent's than the child's. To meet cases where this can be proved, let the parents be taught that they shall not nurse their children in crime with impunity, by being muleted in some portion of the expenses of the penal school. After being subjected to a reformatory discipline, of which the prison of Parkhurst is an experiment, situations of different kinds might be found for such youths, reserving for a certain period the power of re-apprehending them without trial on proof of renewed illbehaviour.

In the next place, vagrancy should be more strictly watched and severely repressed. It is known by the police to be the source of much crime, and the lodging-houses of the professed trampers need a more careful supervision of the authorities. Indeed, the low lodging-houses of every description are too often the very hot-beds of wickedness. But an Act of Parliament passed in the last session will make the keepers of such houses more circumspect, and compel them, when properly watched, to make some sacrifice to decency.

Lastly, in the vice of drunkenness and the vast multiplication of public-houses, lies one of the most unfailing springs of crime. As the establishment of inns is one of the surest signs of improvement, so the increase of low drinkinghouses is both the cause and effect of depravity. It is better to prevent offences than to punish them; and the magistrates fail in their duty if they grant licenses to more beer-houses than are necessary. If they exert themselves and prevent drunkenness and disturbance, out of which great crimes are daily arising, they will at least have the women on their

side; for none but the wives of our labourers can truly tell what the beer-houses have done for their families.

We have now described the state and increase of crime, and indicated some of the causes of it and their remedies. As ignorance of duty, impunity from detection, uncertainty of conviction, and inadequacy of punishment, were the principal feeders of crime; so the extension of education, a more instructed police, and a better system of penal discipline, were shown to be the remedies for those defects. But the masterremedy is education. If alone it will not do everything, it is the base on which everything must rest. There can be no permanent peace unless it is founded upon religion, virtue, and industry; and these will no more grow without the application of patient labour than the inert ores of Australia will yield their golden treasures to the heedless passer-by. Our generation has not done its duty. Children may be yet counted by hundreds of thousands whose immortal souls and plastic minds are being trained up in wickedness and misery. These might be moulded into virtuous and useful citizens, as running waters may be turned into new channels. "Of all the men we meet with (says Locke), nine parts out of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education. 'Tis that which makes the great difference in mankind." And one greater than Locke has left this memorable rule in the imperishable records of Revelation-" Train up a child in the way that he shall go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.

ART. IV.-1. The Half Century: its History, Political and Social. By WASHINGTON WILKS. London: Gilpin.

2. Great Exhibition: Catalogues and Juries' Awards. London: Clowes and Co.

3. Novelties, Inventions, and Curiosities, in Arts and Manufactures. London: Knight.

THE last half century stands by itself in proud and significant isolation as having been completed with so many gratifying results. It has no parallel in the vast circle of its achievements in any other age or country. No chronicles of advancement-no catalogue of inventions-no vast successes over the obstacles cast by time and circumstances in the way,

can for a single moment be placed in comparison with the brilliant consummations that have surrounded us and our efforts in such prodigious and prodigal variety. We may assert, without fear of contradiction, that never before in any period of the world has there been witnessed and testified to, by the universal earth, a tableau, a detail, an illustration of progress, so decisive and so emphasized by its own fruition and harvest as this. The most costly and stupendous wars have been succeeded almost immediately with us and with our neighbours by years of peace, during which the arts of civilized life have developed themselves in an incredible degree; and the reaction has been full and complete in its providential and benevolent compensation for the many and grievous evils that have gone by. The country had become under the pressure of these wars almost bankrupt, and the national debt increased to an enormous degree. Burthen after burthen was laid upon its shoulders, and men began to think it could endure no more. Repeatedly the last straw was supposed to have been put upon this patient "camel's back,” and still it bore with comparative cheerfulness the heavy load, and by its elasticity exhibited the boundless extent of our re sources. The devotion of patriotism, often of a noisy and unrefined kind, was placed beyond the reach of suspicion by the readiness with which the people submitted to the ceaseless calls made upon them. Bribery, corruption, and intimidation, characterized and varied the brutal features of the electioneering periods. Public offices were scandalously trafficked in, in every way, and there existed a corruption which rivalled that of the period of the Second Charles. Drunkenness, with its correlative vices, prevailed to a frightful extent; and was only equalled by the almost universal ignorance that reigned on all sides.

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If the demands of the insatiate wars showed our exhaustless powers of reproduction, the same wars, for causes we cannot here enter into, eliminated at the time but little of national genius, save in the camp and the senate, which cannot be taken either as a rule or an exception, since educated men can speak in a more or less degree to the purpose, while war is always an active college for the education of the soldier. Our condition at the beginning, and even to the middle, of the half century, was in some things as bad as it could be desired even by our most inveterate enemies.

That the statistics of crime were on the increase, the following extract from the first book on our list will pretty convincingly show:

"The number of offenders committed for trial is declared to have risen nearly four thousand in one year, and to have doubled within fifteen years-a rate of increase quadruple that of the population. Of the number committed for trial, about two-thirds were convicted. A considerable portion of these offences were against the person; and, towards the end of the period, there were many of a novel and revolting character. 6 Body-snatching,' and its more frightful sequence, Burking,' were the worst of these. For some years the graveyards for miles around the metropolis, and wherever there were surgical schools, were infested nightly with the ghouls of civilization-ruffians who tore the newly-buried from their graves for the sake of what the body would fetch at the dissecting-rooms-as much as ten, twelve, or even twenty guineas-while others laid fictitious claim to the corpses of persons who had died in the workhouse or by the wayside. But, towards the end of 1828, an accidental discovery horrified the profession and appalled the public-namely, that systematic murder had been going on in London and Edinburgh for the supply of the doctors. The detected accomplices, Burke and Hare, confessed to the death of fifteen victims, whom they had enticed home and stifled by a plaster or wet cloth. Uncertainty to what extent assassination had thus been practised produced a general consternation; and all who are old enough remember that for a year or two after the wretch who gave a name to the method he used had been executed, amidst unparalleled expressions of execration, the timid avoided fields and byeways after dusk, lest they should be waylaid and Burked.' Another species of crime originated about the same time; and, unhappily, survives to this day to an alarming extent. At the Lancaster assizes in 1828, Jane Scott was convicted of having poisoned her mother; and, before her execution, she confessed to having murdered in the same way her father and two children. As if the notoriety given to a new form of crime by its punishment stimulated to its repetition, poisoning has been ever since one of the commonest and most destructive of crimes, especially in the rural and more destitute districts. The name of Esther Hibner is also met with in the record of these years as the type of another class of newlydiscovered crimes-that of cruelty to female servants. This woman had been in the habit of taking parish apprentices, and of treating them with the most wanton barbarity, till one died under her hands, which procured the release of the remainder, and the death of their tormentor. Again was morbid imitativeness excited; or, perhaps, it was only that people's attention was excited-anyhow, a number of such cases we:e brought to light. War upon machinery by the operatives it had unfortunately displaced was no new thing; but in 1829 it took the new and desperate form of burning cotton-mills, and blowing up with gunpowder the houses of the employers. A still wilder madness, that had first shown itself in France, was about to break forth in England--that of rick-burning, of which many were incredulous till it glared upon their own sight. In these scattered facts we find symptoms of the condition to which society had wrought itself, and proof that poisonous elements were running side by side with the quickened streams of healthful life."

The gulf between the great and the low-the rich and the