the use of sewers for the Mother Country. We
could no longer "flush" off our criminals in
that direction. The caldron of corruption,
now filling more rapidly than ever, must be
emptied, not, as before, over wild regions where
handwork, and the necessity of earning subsistence,
would neutralise all thoughts of guilt,
but over our own land. Must be: for the humanity
of a more enlightened time had introduced
shorter and more suitable sentences of seven
and fourteen years. When it is mentioned that
in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, the
number of offenders proceeded against in England
and Wales alone, reached the sum of nearly
half a million, and the fact became apparent
that we were to receive back a good portion of
this scum, it may be well conceived what surprise
and alarm filled men's minds. The mere
presence and inconvenience of such fellow-citizens
was the least portion of the evil: for an efficient
police and the vigour of the law might reasonably
be assumed to be some protection. But
the real danger arose from the presence of this
venom which was to be absorbed into the healthy
veins of the country, spreading corruption in
a fearfully increasing ratio.

The empire was aghast; but still it was no
more than a nine days' wonder of nine days'
panic; and it was believed the thing would come
right. In the mean time (in 1853) the new system
began, and a discharge of some two thousand
convicts annually began to set in silently.

The working of this ticket-of-leave system in
practice is tolerably well known, and regarded
with uncomfortable feelings by the public. In
theory, however, it supposed the repentant
convict behaving with a beautiful regularity within
his prison, seeking the chaplain's society, and thus
qualifying himself for an early release. On being
restored to freedom, the theory again was that
the converted convict moved and had his being
and performed what lawful duties he could find
under a sort of legal espionage, giving a species
of bail for his good conduct in the shape of a
fresh re-commitment to prison should he
transgress. But practically the effect of this
wholesome regulation was, that the community
became filled with hordes of ruffians at large,
bolder and more dangerous, through past
impunity and remission of punishment, free men
who should be in jail; unwatched, too, for the
police of the country considered such tremendous
duties as forming no part of their functions.

We were then gradually helped to the frightful
discovery that no fewer than twenty-two
thousand known thieves were proceeded against;
and that as surely as we set a convict at liberty,
so surely were we sending out licensed desperadoes
to work mischief to persons and properties.

It was plain that something must be done,
and that speedily. It was altogether too quixotic
to expect that a State should supply
instruments for its own destruction. It was
clear the only safety was in a recurrence to
the old principle, subject to an important
modification. Formerly we got rid both of criminal
and man together; both were expelled from the
system by deportation. Now, since we must
keep the man, could it not be possible to get
rid of the criminal alone? If he must be
turned loose among honest and civilised men,
could it not be after some process of purification,
and some rite by which the old demon of
criminality shall be exorcised?

And this is the basis of the new system of
criminal treatment which has spread into every
country whose civilisation is at all advanced.

All are agreed that the mere infliction of pain
upon the evil-doer, by way of retaliation for
pain that he inflicted, is a very minor matter
in a great scheme for suppression of crime.
Jails, too, are now universally reformed—
classification has been introduced, so that the whole
mass shall not ferment, and all particles become
equally leavened with the one corrupt principle.
In short, prisoners now are punished, and
reformed—re-formed in its strictest sense—made
into new men. The prison was not to be
merely a place of pain, but a crucible in which
criminal dross could be skimmed away, and an
innocent precipitate left to be sent forth at the
proper time.

There was a sound principle recommending
itself by reason and common sense—by economy
both of time, and money, and morals—and by a
hundred other advantages so obvious that it is
marvellous how it escaped notice centuries
back. Rather it did not so much escape
notice; it suggested itself to the thoughtful
and the good over and over again. But there
existed then, as there exists now, that disinclination
in the administration of the country, to
be moved by the advice of those in the crowd,
and who are unaccredited by office. And those
to whom the memory of one Oliver Goldsmith
is dear, and to whom the story of his Vicar is
the sweetest reading for simplicity, pathos,
quaintness, poetry, and humour, will not be
surprised to find that the wise and humane notions
of our day in reference to prisons are distinctly
set forth in this precious little romance. A
century ago, all but three years, when in
England prisons were no more than vile Alsatias
and noisome cellars of reeking crime; and in
Ireland, dens of which we may find a perfect
picture in the Dublin Black Dog, described
graphically in Mr. Gilbert's excellent history;—
at this degraded era Oliver Goldsmith, whose
serious speeches were a source of infinite amusement
to his facetious friends, wrote the famous
prison scene in the Vicar, wherein is set out
what should be the principle for dealing with
crime.

The true principle being at last recognised,
some progress was made. But in England we
were not yet even at the beginning. The best
intentions will not alone ensure success. It
was indeed decreed that criminals should be
reformed; but the procedure for that purpose
was a great science, in which it was fancied
that we were skilled, but of which we did not
know even the rudiments. The utopian idea
of reformation began and ended with a perfect
jail. The old cesspools were scavengered out