The corrupting effect of the intermixture of released criminals with the populace here seems forgotten. It is very much greater than in France. There, it seems, only 7,000 or 8,000 convicts are annually let loose in a population of 35,000,000, whilst with us at least double that number of convicts, together with a host of lesser criminals summarily convicted, are let loose in England and Wales upon a population of only 16,000,000. So that we are at least five times worse off than France, numerically, in this respect; and if extent of criminal depravation is taken into account, probably tenfold worse off.

Some writers (one especially in the "Edinburgh Review" of last July) have unadvisedly represented the principles of reformation and prevention as antagonist; they are not so: no one wishes the reformatory to supersede the correctional discipline; but surely they may be combined, the latter lessened as the former proves fruitful of amendment. We have reason to believe that this subject will be treated at large in a forthcoming work, and shall refrain from doing more than merely pointing out the obvious mischief and mistake of representing two essential elements of efficient punishment as in opposition, or in possible competition to each other.

Correction is needed to secure an awe of the effects of crime, and to minimise the temptation to commit it. Reformation is needed, not only for the sake of the patient, but to prevent him from afterwards contaminating others, and spreading the influences of crime,-a very important consideration for a government professing to watch over the welfare of its people. It is a most important thing that the Committee should so thoroughly appreciate the necessity of reformatory imprisonment as a prelude to transportation as well as a necessary concomitant of any punishment. The Committee say

"Without raising any speculative question upon the right to punish those whom the state has left in ignorance, it may safely be affirmed that the duty of all rulers is both to prevent, as far as may be possible, the necessity of punishing, and when they do inflict punishment to attempt reformation. The Committee, therefore, strongly recommend the adoption of effectual measures for diffusing generally, and by permanent provisions, the inestimable benefits of good training and of sound moral and religious instruction; while they also urge the duty of improving extensively the discipline of the gaols and other places of confinement."

The writer in the "Edinburgh Review" seems to think the reformation of criminals a sort of amiable hallucination, and talks of the difficulty of changing the skin of the Ethiopian and the spots of the leopard. This is written not only in bad

taste, but utter ignorance of the results of experience. The most hardened criminals have been frequently softened and reformed by the mighty economy of kindness and sympathy, one of which the power is but faintly shadowed in the few and feeble efforts yet made to give it success. We wish to see this introduced into all our prisons; at the same time we are no advocates for undue lenience. Reformation and correction must go hand in hand. Captain Maconochie's experiments have, we believe, erred on the side of lenience, or rather in a toleration of conduct which, so far from being the fruit of reformation, were the fruit of non-reformation, to which indulgence was encouragement, and encouragement the direct reverse of the principle he sought to establish.

The maladministration of the penal discipline of the colonies there, is a sufficient reason for carrying on the work at home, where efficiency may be secured and abuses corrected. The system of imprisonment here might be made to fit the convict for immediate assignment when he arrived at his destination. The less intercourse with other criminals the better. The evils of assignment have chiefly arisen from the unreformed state of the convicts. They were sent out reeking with all their criminality full upon them, materially increased by the contamination of their associates on board ship.

The plan of sending out convicts after a brief term of perfectly abortive attempts to reform them, without any sufficient means to effect real improvement, and to send them as exiles and not as convicts, has been very properly condemned at home by Lord Brougham, and resisted in the colony. Nothing can be more unjust to the prisoner or to the colonists. It gives no sufficient chance of reformation to the former or of security to the latter. If there is no power to withhold his freedom from the convict when in the colony, there is no check upon him as regards fear, and there has been no means taken to supply its place by moral discipline.

II. With regard to the reformation of JUVENILE Offenders the Report says:

"The evidence throws some light upon the treatment of young offenders. That the contamination of a gaol, as gaols are usually managed, may often prove fatal, and must always be hurtful to boys committed for a first offence, and that thus for a very trifling act they may become trained to the worst of crimes, is clear enough. But the evidence gives a frightful picture of the effects which are thus produced. In Liverpool, of fourteen cases selected at random by the magistrates, there were several of the boys under twelve who, in the space of three or four years, had been above fifteen times com

mitted, and the average of the whole fourteen was no less than nine times. The opinions of competent judges, especially on the bench, vary as to the expediency of giving to magistrates a power of summary conviction in such cases; but the inclination of opinion is in favour of confining this to professional persons exercising judicial or police functions; or if two ordinary justices should be intrusted with it, to interposing the check of a jury, composed, however, not of twelve, but of three or four persons. It is also the very general opinion that magistrates may safely and advantageously be armed with a power of discharging for slight offences, upon taking the recognisances of parents or masters for the good behaviour of the party. Important evidence will be found in the Appendix, especially from Birmingham and Manchester, in favour of a judiciously exercised discretion in discharging boys, especially when apprehended for the first time. The principal difficulty of giving a summary jurisdiction arises from the difficulty of fixing a limit in point of age, and of ascertaining in each case that the party comes within the line. But the committee are strongly inclined to think that much of this might be got over, even without appointing special justices, by enabling magistrates in petty sessions to exercise the summary power, with the previous consent of the parties themselves to submit to such tribunal, confining the jurisdiction to certain offences, and the punishment to six months' imprisonment, with or without labour, or to the infliction of whipping in the presence of certain appointed officers, with or without such imprisonment."

This appears to have formed the basis of the Juvenile Offenders Act (which will be found after the Digest). A very injudicious modification, however, has been made in the term of the imprisonment, three months having been substituted in the act instead of six. Now if anything is to be done in the way of reformation, it is preposterous to suppose that it can be effectually administered in three months. The Committee state that,

"Seventhly, there is almost entire unanimity of opinion against imprisonment for short terms. There is no prospect of the reformation of any class by such punishments, while their tendency is certain to accustom young offenders to the infliction and thereby to lessen its deterring effects. If, however, it is found in the administration of the criminal law that short imprisonments must still be inflicted, the Committee see no reason why solitary confinement should not form part of such sentences, subject to the formerly stated limitation in respect of time."

Concurrently with this view we have great pleasure in stating that the Committee also find

"That those who have actual intercourse with convicts are they who feel the least sanguine as to this deterring or exemplary effect of penal infliction, and who lean the most to make trial of punishment as affording the means of reformation. The experiment that has

been tried at Stretton-on-Dunsmore, in Warwickshire, for above twenty-eight years, and similar experiments at Horn, near Hamburgh, and at Mettray, in France, and eleven other establishments in imitation, during the last eight years, afford a highly gratifying view of the efficacy of reformatory discipline, especially upon young offenders. "Lastly. Upon one subject the whole of the evidence and all the opinions are quite unanimous-the good that may be hoped from education, meaning thereby a sound and religious training, commencing in infant schools, and followed up in schools for older pupils; to these, where it is practicable, industrial training should be added. There seems in the general opinion to be no other means that afford even a chance of lessening the number of offenders, and diminishing the atrocity of their crimes."

If the government after this neglect to put in force a comprehensive system of penal reformation, they will entail upon themselves a degree of responsibility and condemnation which we apprehend they will be loath to incur.

As respects the mode and system of juvenile reformation the Committee seem more disposed to the plan of industrial training adopted at Parkhurst than to the penal schools shadowed forth in the Minutes of the Privy Council. The Committee of the Lords in their Report say that

"Very important evidence has been given in favour of dealing with such offenders, at least on first convictions, by means of reformatory asylums on the principle of Parkhurst Prison, rather than by ordinary imprisonment; the punishment in such asylums being hardly more than what is implied in confinement and restraint, and reformation and industrial training being the main features of the process. Without going beyond the principle which should be followed on this question, the committee are disposed to recommend the adoption, by way of trial, of the reformatory asylums as above described, combined with a moderate use of corporal punishment. The committee also recommend the trial of a suggestion made by witnesses who have given much attention to this subject, that, wherever it is possible, part of the cost attending the conviction and punishment of juvenile offenders shall be legally chargeable upon their parents."

We have now given a concise, but, we believe, nevertheless a comprehensive view of this extremely important and interesting Report, and we believe that no subject connected with jurisprudence more vitally concerns the protection of property or the moral progress of the people. A society might be very advantageously formed for the purpose of promoting this great reform and stimulating the government in the performance of its manifest and imperative duty.

We rejoice to find that a member of our own profession, eminent no less for intelligence than assiduity, Mr. Charles Pearson, M.P., has taken the subject up, and will, no doubt, follow it out in all its ramifications.

III. THE PENAL CONGRESS AT BRUSSELS has held several sittings lately, but it scarcely appears to us that very much. light has been thrown on the subject. It is far too much the result of these theoretical debates to uphold or denounce set systems without inquiring into the best modes of adopting parts of them in practice, so as to meet the various requirements of the case; for instance, we find the "cellular system" treated as though it consisted necessarily of solitary confinement. It clearly does not: and we have ourselves seen a very excellent modification of it in England, which does not appear to have attracted the notice of the congregated savans of Brussels. Solitary confinement by itself is a far too severe punishment. It does not tend to reformation. On the other hand, any communication with other prisoners corrupts but is there no alternative but perfect solitude? Certainly there is. Counsel and persuasion should be actively plied, whilst counteracting companionship should be sedulously debarred.

M. Suringar (of Amsterdam) gave a sketch at the Congress of that perverted esprit de corps which exists among criminals of all ages, by which they take rank in each other's estimation according to the number and enormity of their crimes, and the skill and daring with which they have been committed. It prevailed equally among younger criminals, and he gave instances in which the emulation to surpass their fellows in wickedness had led to the perpetration of the most enormous crimes. While thrown together they stifled in each other all impulses to good, even if they existed. In one case a young thief told him he could not do any thing towards a change for the better without the consent of his comrades. From these circumstances the speaker argued in favour of a separation from their evil companions, and giving them a pursuit and employment, two conditions afforded by the establishments, called agricultural colonies, to receive them after they had undergone a certain term of imprisonment. He hoped the Congress would not be allowed to separate without doing something to produce a practical result-without establishing something like the colony at Mettray. We hope so too; but we confess that we wish some more practical insight into the requirements of the case which had enlightened the Congress. By far the most instructive fact of the proceedings seems to have consisted in the following visit to and description of the prison of Vilvorde:

"It is calculated to contain 800 inmates, and at the present time is tenanted by 750. The discipline enforced is that of the prison of Auburn; that is to say, the inmates work together at different trades during the day, but in profound silence and without communication