massacre of the innocents," and passed. Our thanks for its safe delivery are mainly due, I believe, to the Great Cham of prison discipline, Sir Walter Crofton. The importance of the new Act lies in what it permits rather in what it compels our prison authorities to do. Not but what there is some wholesome compulsion in it, too, concerning certain items, as to which all controversy is now at an end. Parsimonious justices, for instance, must now find separate cells, and indulgent justices hard labour, for all their prisoners; and the Home Secretary is armed with power to enforce obedience on these and other points. But as regards the introduction of new principles in gaol management, the Act is not imperative. The prevalent type of prison discipline at present is the separate system. The prisoner spends his whole term in a separate cell; except in chapel, at school, and at exercise, he is alone: from first to last the uniform monotony of the discipline remains unchanged; labour is an alleviation of, rather than ingredient in the punishment, and in many prisons it is very light. The reformatory qualities of this system are chiefly negative; it prevents contamination, it promotes reflection, (though the reflections are as likely to be pernicious as salutary,) and the solitude by its effects on the brain and nerves renders the prisoners highly impressible. The merit of the system lies in the opportunity which it gives to the chaplain, and where the chaplain has been the right man for the work the happiest results have followed. Still this method is too artificial, not to say too morbid. I have been with earnest chaplains on their prison rounds, and, as I marked the effects of their ministrations on the faces and demeanour of their patients, I felt as if I were in a spiritual hothouse. The new Act does not compel any great amendment of this system, for the only provision directly bearing on the matter is this, that for the first three months, at least, the prisoner shall be kept to hard labour, the severity of which may afterwards be, in some measure, mitigated at the discretion of the justices. It is obvious that this rule may be literally obeyed, and the discipline in consequence rather worsened than bettered. But the gist of the Act, it is well known, lies in the opportunity it presents to all prison authorities to adopt the Winchester system, which Sir W. Crofton described to the section last year-that is to say, a modification of the mark system, under which the prisoner, by his own strenuous exertions, may raise himself from a bitterly penal condition, to a state of comparative

ease.

The new Gaol Act then, permissive and not compulsory, is plainly not final. It would have been premature to impose the Winchester system, until it had been tested by further experience. But a few years hence, when its value has been more fully demonstrated, we may look for a bolder measure; and when that measure comes, let us hope that it will give the gaol-bird what the convict already has, the right of redeeming some portion of his forfeited liberty by the sweat of his brow. Without that right-for the hope of earlier freedom is an inducement beside which all others are insignificant

the mark system is crippled. The Winchester discipline is very admirable, but why should it be worked by horse-power when we might have steam-power?

There is one clause, the 33rd, in the new Act, which contains an important suggestion. "Where two or more prisons are within the jurisdiction of the same prison authority, that authority may carry into effect the requisitions of this Act with [respect to the separation of prisoners, or the enforcement of hard labour, by appropriating particular prisons to particular classes of prisoners." In the next Gaol Act I hope to see this somewhat faint suggestion developed into a code of definite instructions. To extract the maximum of penal and reformatory power from our gaols they must be modelled on the same plan as the convict prisons. We can never fully develope our plans within the walls and narrow confines of a common gaol. For prisoners under long sentences, we want, during the later portions of their imprisonment, establishments which shall serve the same purpose for them as Chatham and Broadmoor do for English, Spike Island and Lusk for Irish convicts. Mr. Baker is about to lay before you a scheme for such supplementary institutions. Whether we shall agree in all his details remains to be seen, but I think his main principles are incontestible.

I must beg you to notice that all recent reforms and proposed amendments in gaol discipline tend to assimilate that discipline more and more to what has hitherto been called the Irish, but I hope is soon to be called the British Convict System. And this is what we require one uniform penal system for all sorts and conditions of habitual offenders.

But when we have got this system we shall still have the farther problem to solve, how to sweep to the utmost certainty within its grasp the criminal classes. Allow me to state very briefly, in conclusion, what seem to me the chief desiderata towards the solution.

I. The first necessity is a classification of offences; a classification of the simplest kind, for it will consist merely in placing them all under one or other of the two heads-casual crime and habitual crime. Suppose, for the sake of convenience, we use the old words "misdemeanour" for the former, and "felony " for the latter. In the annual criminal statistics all offences committed within the year are arranged under certain titles about 90 in number. Glancing down the catalogue, the merest tyro can distinguish between misdemeanours and felonies. Speaking roughly, offences against the person and malicious offences against property are misdemeanours, and all other offences against property felonies. The judicial officers should be allowed the fullest discretion as to the length of the sentences passed on misdemeanants and incipient felons; but for second and subsequent felonies the law, and not the judge, should prescribe the sentence; and prescribe it on the simple principle that every fresh sentence for felony shall be longer than the last by a certain fixed amount at least. The judge should have power to increase, but not to lessen this minimum.

II.-I am one of a small body of enthusiasts who believe that with a scale of "cumulative" sentences for felonies rigidly enforced, backed by a sound penal system, professional crime might be extirpated within this century. There have been so many changes of late in our penal laws, and these changes produce such a pernicious uncertainty and confusion, that I am loath to plead for another. Still some change is requisite, for at present there is a most awkward gap in our scale of secondary punishment. The highest legal term of imprisonment is two years, the lowest of penal servitude, five. By the last Penal Servitude Act sentences for three and four years were abolished, partly because the judges in their tenderness dealt far too freely in these light sentences, and partly because under the old régime three or four years penal servitude was not a harder punishment than 18 months' or two years' imprisonment. A scale of "cumulative" sentences would do away with the first objection, while the increased stringency of the convict system has already done away with the second. I may mention, by the way, that judicial tenderness, refusing to be baulked by a ruthless Parliament, finds a vent now in sentencing to short terms of imprisonment many of the poor felons who, before the change in the law, would have incurred penal servitude.

There is only one obstacle to the adoption of the innovations I advocate, namely, the difficulty of ascertaining what, if any, was the last sentence for felony incurred by the re-convicted offender whose fresh sentence is under consideration. But with a police force yearly increasing in efficiency, with criminal registers properly kept, and with appliances such as photography at our command, this difficulty should soon be overcome. Meanwhile, I see no hardship in calling upon every convicted felon, whose antecedents cannot be ascertained, to prove that he has hitherto been free from felonious taint. If he cannot or will not, give society the benefit of the doubt, and sentence him as an old offender.

Does the present Administration of the Poor Law create any obstacles to the Reform of Criminals and the Repression of Crime? And if so, how could such obstacles be removed? By FREDERICK HILL.

AT

T the threshold of the inquiry which we are called upon this morning to make-namely, whether the present administration of the poor law creates any obstacles to the reform of criminals and the repression of crime; and, if so, how can such obstacles be removed?-is the question, which among the chief causes of crime are affected by the working of the poor law? Directly or indirectly, I should hold that all the main causes of crime are more or less

so affected; but I think it will be generally admitted that, as regards two potent causes, the administration of this law has a marked and undoubted operation. I allude to those great parents of crime-bad training and severe want. In illustration of the former, it seems sufficient to refer to the well-known facts-facts of which experience in my former office of an inspector of prisons gave me daily abundant proof-that the criminal class, as a body, have been greatly neglected in youth; that comparatively few have had their minds and hearts at all cultivated; have been brought up in habits of industry, or been taught the means of earning an honest livelihood—a state of things the less to be wondered at, when it is borne in mind how many of them, at an early period of life, had lost one or other of their parents, and how many are illegitimate, or are the children of confirmed paupers, drunkards, or criminals. And how very much the after career of the children of such as become inmates of a workhouse depends on their wise, thoughtful, and kind treatment there, or their neglect and bad usage, is shown by the striking contrast in the result of the two courses an honest and respectable life being the general issue in one instance, and, in the other, an addiction to crime or pauperism.

Some years ago, I had an opportunity of making full and minute inquiries into the after-life of the children brought up in the large workhouse of Birmingham-or rather in a separate school, or asylum, as it was then, and is probably still called, in connection with the workhouse; and the examination showed an almost marvellous result, from the good and judicious treatment which the children received, and from the habits of industry in which they were trained.

At that time the Asylum usually contained about 300 children; and, although some cases probably occurred of which there was no information, not a single instance was known of a child brought up there becoming afterwards a pauper.

I must remark, however, that an admirable arrangement existed, and I trust continues, with respect to the children of the Birmingham Asylum, which, so far as I am aware, is not to be found elsewhere, but to which no inconsiderable part of the foregoing most gratifying result is probably attributable. I allude to a regulation, under which every child, during the whole time of its apprenticeship after leaving the asylum, was visited once a year by an officer of the workhouse, who inquired on the spot into the child's conduct, and, when neces sary, into the conduct also of the person to whom he had been bound apprentice; and who took, forthwith, any measure which the case might require.

Highly satisfactory results, though I do not know whether they equalled those I have mentioned, followed the excellent training in the pauper school, so long conducted by that able and benevolent man, the late Mr. Aubin, formerly at Norwood, and afterwards at Hanwell; and I have no doubt there are many other instances of which I have no specific knowledge.

If such results as these be compared with the subsequent history of

children brought up in a bad and ill-organised workhouse, on leaving which they are hawked about with as much difficulty in putting into circulation, almost, as if they were so many bad coins, the contrast is most striking, and shows in a strong light how much not only the recipients of the good education are indebted to the real "guardians," under whom they have been placed, but how much the district, as indeed the whole country, owes them; and on the other hand, how great the injury done by the unfaithful stewards who neglect and mismanage the trust of the poor children, with which they, in turn, are charged.

That severe want is a powerful incentive to crime, few will probably be prepared to deny; but any who have doubts on the subject may be reminded of the frequent bread-riots which used to break out; of rick-burnings; of the sudden and lamentable increase of female prostitution after one of the strikes at Preston; of the murder of the Rev. Mr. Hollest by a man who, from the press of applicants, had been refused admission to the refuge at Westminster; of the terrible case, in the records of capital punishment, of Mary Jones, who, to procure food for her children, when her husband had been seized by a press-gang, committed a small theft for which she was afterwards banged; and of the well-known fact that robberies are most frequent in that part of the year when work is most difficult to procure-the winter. Reference also may be made to the saying of the first Napoleon, a saying indicative of his keen observation, that there was no insurrection which did not originate in the belly.

Relief in all the cases described, our poor law, if properly administered, would afford; though I need scarcely add that in yielding that relief, the responsibility of living parents, in the instance of the young, should always be maintained, and, when necessary, enforced by fine and imprisonment.

The English poor law, the noble Statute of Elizabeth, the Magna Charta of the indigent, and yet so planned, by the sagacity of its framers, as to be truly beneficial to the country at large, that Act which for nearly three centuries has formed one of the brightest pages in a code of which, till of late years, at least, contained much that was dark and repulsive, lays down the principle, that with a due exaction of work, every person in the country, man, woman, and child, who is in want, shall be supplied with food and shelter. But is any one bold enough to declare that this admirable law is rightfully administered; so administered as fairly and honestly to attain its end? Can any one, when asked for alms to buy food, or for a pittance wherewith to obtain a night's lodging, or for work by a liberated prisoner, or other fellow-being out of employment, on the plea that the applicant is unable to obtain either food, shelter, or labour, truthfully reply, "You must needs be an impostor, for you know right well that you have only to knock at the door of the workhouse, and what you want you will get!"

I venture to assert that the experience of every one present will compel him to reply in the negative, and will recall to his mind in