observations of those who make such subjects their
especial study are of infinite value.

The chaplain of the Warwickshire county jail
states that the year 1857 has been the only year
since the prison at Birmingham was opened in
which the rate of the commitments to the
population has been greater in Birmingham than the
average rate throughout England and Wales. The
cause of the exceptional increase of crime in this
borough during that year can only be traced by
the chaplain to the return to it in the same year
of an exceptionally large number of convicts
returned from penal servitude before the expiration
of their sentences." The Recorder, taking
this as his text, goes on to say: "I have
learnt from your chief superintendent of police
that the return to Birmingham of one discharged
convict possessing ability and influence has very
materially increased the number of commitments
in a particular year."

How should the case be otherwise? No
one can doubt the great influence of example
and companionship upon all classes of society;
while, on the lower grade and on the young, it is
most powerful of all. Who shall measure the
evil brought into a school or university by one
black sheep. The contamination is gradual but
certain, and many characters of the weaker sort
will, by bad association, receive that bias
towards evil which was all that was necessary
for their ruin. It is so, as we all have
opportunities of seeing, among domestic servants.
Their power of injuring each other is immense.
Take the case of a small establishment, consisting,
we will say, of a couple of servant-maids,
who have been brought up from the country.
They are uninitiated in the slang of the London
members of their tribe, and are contented and
happy. They can exist without followers. They
can do all the work of the house with ease and
cheerfulness. They will take what it may be
convenient to give them for dinner and supper,
rather astonished, in fact, at fare so much
superior to what they have been accustomed to
in their own poverty-stricken homes. In short,
they are good and contented servants, and their
mistress congratulates herself with reason, when
she hears her friends complaining of domestic
troubles.

But how long does this last? On some special
occasion of a grand cleaning, or some equally
miserable disturbance, "help" is sent for, and
the char-woman of discord is flung into this
happy family. This worthy lady is kind enough
to enlighten the two injured innocents to whose
rescue she has come, as to their "rights." For
these she exhorts them to stand up, as other
servants do. What! will they "put up" with
cold meat? are they satisfied to be deprived
of the visit of their male relatives and other
friends "from the country," whom they might
regale so pleasantly and cheaply with their
patron's food? Well, they are poor-spirited
things if they allow themselves to be put upon
like that!

If the char-woman does not step in, the
tempter will come in another form. One of
your provincial maidens is obliged to leave you
for some reason or other, and her place is
supplied by a metropolitan substitute. How soon
is a change observable in the establishment!
The new servant has made the other
discontented. She objects to do things which she
now considers "out of her place." She is
perpetually a martyr, is injured, lazy, and at last
utterly saucy and insubordinate.

Does not all this go to prove the great
influence of the lower classes on each other?
Unhappily, the worst among them are
ordinarily the strongest—strongest in will, in
character, in mind. Their companions are afraid
of their sullenness, and afraid of their
overbearing natures, while at the same time they
admire their daring, and in many cases regard
with a kind of interest akin to hero-worship the
notoriety which a well-known malefactor obtains
as a public character. Surely it is a mistake to
send one of these incorrigible rogues back to the
society from which he has been temporarily
removed. An incorrigible boy is expelled from
school lest he should do harm there, and an
incorrigible man should be expelled from society
for the same reason.

To return once more to the charge of the
Recorder at Birmingham. His opinion as to
the working of the present ticket-of-leave system
is, as one might expect, very discouraging. "It
is," says the Recorder, "of much less
importance than could be wished, whether the convict
be discharged because he has completed his
sentence, or upon ticket-of-leave before such
completion; because, as we have been repeatedly
informed in the speeches of Sir George Grey,
the grant of a ticket-of-leave by no means
implies reformation in the recipient. And so long
as, in addition to this defect in our practice, the
executive government in England shall take no
steps to enforce the good conduct of the
ticket-of-leave man by the revocation of his license
until he is convicted of a new offence, but, on
the contrary, whatever may be the profligacy of
his life, and the notoriety of his want of any
visible means of subsistence, shall still leave him
at large to follow his evil course; so long will
the presence of discharged convicts in any town
be a severe calamity to its inhabitants, stimulating
veteran criminals to pernicious activity, and
augmenting their forces by the addition of many
a recruit."

It seems that in Ireland a much stricter
supervision is exercised over liberated convicts than
with us, and of the result of this surveillance
the Recorder speaks in terms of eulogy. "I
cannot," he says, " express to you the
mortification I endure when I compare the state of
things in England with that in Ireland. I have
made two visits, at the distance of four years, to
that island, for the purpose of scrutinising with
care and diligence the working of the Irish
convict system under the superintendence of
Captain Croft on and his meritorious colleagues.
There you will find that the grant of a ticket-of-leave
is never made except on strong proofs of
reformation; but as the strongest proofs may