reclaim them and we succeed in many instances. There are many hundreds who have passed through the Central Prison who never return to crime. I know large numbers in the city to-day, who are now holding responsible positions who have served their term in the Central Prison." Asked if there were not, even when the prison system was worst, many who, having undergone punishment, did not return to their criminal way of life, he said, "there were some certainly, but not nearly the number there are now."

In the houses of correction or workhouses of the United States, no attempt has yet been made, as far as we could learn, to introduce the indeterminate sentence, the parole system, or any system of reduction of the term of imprisonment, as an incentive to and reward for good conduct. In the English local prisons, as we learn from Dr. Wines, "A really great and long-needed reform has been introduced into the local prisons with the new system-the progressive classification of prisoners. Beginning with rigidly penal conditions of food, bed, labour and general treatment, the prisoner has to work himself up gradually by good behaviour and industry into higher stages, in which he is subjected to a less irksome regime, and meets with various welcome ameliorations of his condition. A powerful stimulus is thus afforded to good conduct and diligence. . . There are four stages. The prisoner's merits are attested by marks. Eight marks is the maximum number that can be earned in a day. The prisoner remains in the first stage until he has earned two hundred and twenty-four marks, which he may do in twenty-eight days, and then he passes into the second stage. By earning the same number of additional marks, he passes into the third, and in like manner into the fourth; so that every prisoner having a sentence of more than four months. may reach the highest stage where he will remain during the remainder of his term, unless degraded for misconduct, or by way of punishment. No gratuity can be earned in the first stage; a shilling may be earned in the second, one and sixpence in the third, and two shillings in the fourth for every 224 marks. Divers other advantages are obtained at each advance which are highly valued." The money rewards are very small in amount, and this has led to many protests on the part of the friends of discharged prisoners and of aid societies.

Mr. Tallack, in his work on "Penological and Preventive Principles," published in 1889, says: "In the local (cellular) gaols of Great Britain, four stages may be passed through in succession by the longer sentenced prisoners, and a maximum of eight good marks per day may be earned. In the first stage the prisoner earns no money, has the hardest labour and the lowest dietary, and sleeps at night on a plank bed without a mattress (but not without blankets). When he has obtained 224 good marks he may pass into the second grade, where he may have a mattress five nights of the week, with school instruction and books. He may earn one shilling during the whole stay, and may have special exercises on Sundays.

"In the third stage (reached after earning 224 marks in the previous one) the plank bed is only enforced one night a week; one shilling and six pence may be earned, and certain minor privileges. Another 224 marks will bring the prisoner to the highest or fourth stage, where the plank bed disappears, and two shillings may be earned; but in certain cases of special good conduct a maximum of two pounds may be reached. Increased privileges as to correspondence, reading, etc., are also now permitted. The local gaols of Great Britain receive prisoners for periods ranging from one day to two years the maximum."

The treatment of prisoners undergoing sentence is much more severe in many respects in Great Britain than in the United States or in Canada. The desire to

obtain the rewards described by Mr. Tallack, trifling though they seem, does more to maintain discipline than any system of punishments. It probably does much also to induce habits of industry, and to create a spirit of self-reliance.

It seems a matter of regret that no attempt has yet been made to introduce a system of rewards as well as of punishment in the Central Prison. Punishment alone has never been found sufficient for the suppression of crime, or the reformation of criminals. "Hope," says an eminent penologist, "is the master spring of human action. Without it even the good can scarcely retain their goodness: without it the bad cannot possibly regain their virtue. It must be implanted in the breast of the prisoner the first hour of his incarceration and kept there as an ever present and living force. Hope is the great inspiration to exertion in free life. Why should it not be made to fulfil the same benign office in prison life? Can anything else supply its place? Hope is just as truly, just as vitally, just as essentially the root of all right prison discipline as it is of all vigorous and successful effort in free life."

It has been alleged that the introduction of the indeterminate sentence and the parole system in the Central Prison would be impossible, because the number of long term prisoners is so small. This may be matter of controversy, although there is nothing but the will of the Dominion Parliament to prevent the adoption of a perfectly workable system of that kind if it were thought desirable; but this objection cannot be maintained against a system modelled on the English. The average population of the Central Prison is larger than that of any one of fortyfive of the English local prisons-much larger in many cases, and the number imprisoned for six months and upwards in those prisons is less than a third of the whole. Mr. Massie in his evidence said: "We don't keep a record of every prisoner's conduct. We keep a record of misconduct so far as those who violate the prison rules are concerned, but not of those who are well behaved. You will understand this that although under the prison rules there is no record kept there are certain marks against them and the evidence of bad conduct in the works." In reply to varions questions he stated that there is no system in operation in the prison by which the sentence of a prisoner may be shortened as a reward for good conduct, but that it could be introduced with advantage for the long term prisoners, of whom there are not many. The system of indeterminate sentence he thought could not be applied to the short time prisoners, and would not work in the prison as the law stands now. He would approve of a system under which some one would have a right to reward by remission of part of his sentence a prisoner who behaved entirely to the satisfaction of the Warden. "Quite a few," he said, “have been pardoned and allowed to go out through my recommendation to the Minister of Justice through the Attorney-General, where the persons have been held under a sentence very severe for the offence for which they were committed." Asked if he believed in punishment as regards those who fail to perform a fair amount of work, Mr. Massie replied: "I am a Presbyterian and strong believer in the Paulist doctrine that if any would not work neither should he eat."

A number of prison reformers maintain that prisoners should neither be punished nor rewarded. All punishment they speak of as revenge. The State they say has a right to imprison criminals for the protection of society and to keep them in prison until they have given satisfactory evidence of such a reformation as will make it safe to give them their liberty. Whatever means seems best calculated to produce their reformation the State should, for society's sake, employ; but rewards of any kind they disapprove of. An Act passed by the New York Legislature in 1889, known as the Fasset Act, provides that meritorious

prisoners may receive compensation in money to an amount not exceeding ten per cent. of the earnings of the prison. Mr. Eugene Smith, secretary of the Prison Association of New York, commenting on this in a pamphlet recently published, says: "The allowance made to the prisoner is called compensation, but compensation for what? Apparently compensation for good conduct. Where is the free community in which money is earned as a compensation for mere good conduct? And the question may fairly be asked whether it is not a false and hurtful idea to inculcate in the convict that he ought to be paid money for simply conducting himself well?" There are some prisons in which credit is given to the convicts at certain fixed rates for all the work they do and they are charged fair prices for the food, clothing and other necessaries they receive, and for the cost of lodging and guarding them. The balance they may authorise their families to draw, or it is invested for them until their term has expired. This Mr. Smith regards as the ideal system. The prisoner, like others, needs food, clothing and bed. "The State is under no obligation to furnish him with any of these things," argues Mr. Smith. "The public owes no man a living, least of all does the convicted criminal, who has defied the laws, have any claim on the charities of the State." One thing only the State ought to do, and it arises out of the necessities of the situation. "The convict being deprived of his liberty cannot get work to do for himself; the State ought, therefore, to provide him with work and pay him proper wages for his labour. The State having done that has in this regard discharged its full duty. And then, the condition of the prisoner becomes that of any free labourer-he will have to work for his support; he will have to pay out of his wages for whatever he consumes and for the general expenses of his living; and if, by dint of economy and hard work, he is able to earn more than he spends, grant him the privilege, within proper limits, to accumulate his savings until his discharge. Such a fund will then serve a most useful purpose in tiding him over the first trying period when he is adjusting himself to the changed condition of freedom. Or, if he has a family, give him the liberty to apply any possible savings to their support. If he is sick or disabled the State will provide for him on the humane principle on which it maintains hospitals and asylums. But to the sturdy convict the relation of the State should be that of employer to employé.

"Now mark the natural effects of such a system upon the character of the convict who was at first an idle vagabond, living on what he could get by depredations There is necessarily developed in him in the first place the habit of industry and the habit of self-support by his own labour. He gets used to earning money and to saving money and to doing both by work. He acquires an experimental knowledge of the value of money and of the value of labour. He becomes accustomed to the idea that labour is the only legitimate means of supplying his wants and of making material progress in life. And when he leaves the prison he comes out a competent and industrious workman, inured to self-support under circumstances so like those in which he now enters as not to suffer any radical shock from altered conditions."

The system thus strongly advocated has not been adopted to any great extent anywhere. The system of allowing the prisoners a small portion of their earnings, presumably the difference between the cost of maintaining and guarding them and the value of their work has found more favour. In some of the Western States a small sum is allowed daily to strong and feeble, sick and well, skilled and unskilled alike. The amount is in most cases too small to be of much use to the prisoner's family, and the two objects to be aimed at in making such allowance, unless Mr. Smith's principle be fully adopted, are the acquisition of habits of steady industry and the strengthening of the family ties which so often exercise

so powerful an influence for good even on the most depraved and most hardened. Another system is that of setting the prisoners a task or stint and placing to their credit for the use of their families or of themselves when they have regained their liberty a reasonable price for all the over work they do. This system Mr. Massie has adopted in the Central Prison. He said: "I can say that we have introduced the system of giving men task work. After a man has finished his task we pay him for whatever other work he does. I find that this is a great incentive to men to do good work in the prison."

The principle on which payments for extra labour are made, Mr. Massie explained. Men employed in any occupation outside do more work in a day than is done by prisoners. This is partly because several of the prisoners have not received a sufficient training. The "stint" is not regulated by what a good workman does outside but by what is considered a fair average day's work for a prisoner. The men working in the brickyard where twelve work on a machine get a stint of nine thousand and the men are paid for whatever they do over at the rate of 25 cents a thousand to some and down to 64 cents. Some of these men make as much as $60 from May to October. A stint is fixed in the broom shop which a prisoner when he has learned his work thoroughly can get through nicely in seven hours. A stint is fixed as far as possible in regard to blankets and tweeds. Where it is difficult to keep an account of the over work from 20 to 40 or 50 cents a day is allowed. In the tailor's shop the men are paid ten per cent. of the value of their work. Asked how the man who is not a mechanic is paid, Mr. Massie said, "We regulate it by paying so much to the average man and as much to the expert, taking as a basis what the average man can do. We make no distinction as to rates."

How far this may serve as a substitute for the hope of earning a remission of a portion of the convict's sentence it would be difficult to say. The effects of such payment for extra work made on equitable principles must be good. There is no reason why this system of payment for extra work should not be combined with a system under which a remission of part of the sentence or a liberation on parole could be earned by good conduct, attention to work and diligence in such literary studies as may be prescribed. No system of dealing with criminals from which the hope of reward is absolutely excluded can be thoroughly successful.

PENITENTIARIES, STATE PRISONS, CONVICT PRISONS.

The penitentiary, or convict prison, as it now exists, is comparatively modern. When the feudal system disappeared and states became consolidated the erection of large prisons became necessary, although executions continued to be numerous, and barbarous punishments-the cutting off of the right hand or right foot, branding and scourging-were freely used for the prompt repression of misdemeanours which now would scarcely be regarded as serious, and the pillory was in every-day use for the punishment of petty offences. The governments of continental Europe found much difficulty in dealing with criminals whom it was deemed inexpedient either to put to death or to set free. England sought relief from this difficulty by sending a large number of criminals to the West Indian aud North American plantations, where they were disposed of to the planters on terms which made them virtually slaves for the period of their service. Towards the close of the eighteenth century the colonies refused to receive any more of the convicts. and it became necessary to make some provision for their safe-keeping and proper management. The labours of John Howard had begun about that time to produce some effect. He was strongly opposed to the transportation system, but his

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opposition would have proved unavailing if the colonies had not insisted on its discontinuance or the experiment at Sierra Leone had not proved a failure. An Act, 19 George III., c. 74, which, it is said Howard assisted in framing, after stating that "the punishment of felons and other offenders by transportation to His Majesty's colonies and plantations in America was attended with many difficulties," provided for the erection of two plain, strong and substantial edifices or houses, which shall be called the penitentiary houses, for the purpose of employing and confining in hard labour in one of the said houses such male convicts and in the other such female convicts as shall be ordered to imprisonment and hard labour." The especial purpose of the establishment of these penitentiaries is stated in the 5th section, which says that "if many offenders convicted of crime for which transportation hath usually been inflicted were ordered to solitary imprisonment, accompanied by well regulated labour and religious instruction, it might be the means, under Providence, not only of deterring others from the commission of the like crimes, but also of reforming the individuals and inuring them to habits of industry." The idea of providing a cell for each prisoner, which is probably all that was intended by the framers of this Act, was at that time new in England, as was indeed the idea of reforming criminals or suppressing crime by any other than deterrent methods; nor did these ideas obtain to any great extent, in other European countries. The prison of San Michele, at Rome, built in 1703, for Pope Clement XI, was probably the first constructed on that principle. Fontana, the architect of this prison, it is alleged first introduced the wings, radiating from a centre, with tiers of cells fronting on corridors, which many believe to be of American origin. In this prison also, as Mr. Tallack says, the necessity of combining the moral with the deterrent conditions of separation was permanently recorded in the motto conspicuously inscribed over the prison: "Parum est coercere improbos nisi probos efficias disciplina." (It is of little use to restrain the wicked by punishment unless you make them virtuous by discipline). Howard visited this prison and it is said, greatly admired the motto in which his own views were expressed. M. Corbeer, appointed a commissioner by the French government in 1839, to report upon prisons, declares that the correctional system is not American, but has existed from comparatively early times. A prison after the model of St. Michele, was built at Milan, and another long after at Ghent. From these probably Howard adopted the system of prison construction which he recommended to some friends in Gloucestershire where the first prison built on this plan in England was actually erected. When Mr. Fowell Buxton visited the prison at Ghent in 1817 it had probably undergone very little change. He tells us that the prisoners' beds were in small recesses from a gallery opening from the court. Each had a separate cell. The major part of prisoners of the same class worked together in rooms 176 feet long and 26 broad. They wove calico, damask and sacking cloth, and there were shops for carpenters, sawyers, blacksmiths and other mechanics. The manufactory was under a contractor who furnished the prisoners with their food-twenty-six ounces of bread and two quarts of soup daily for each. The utmost care and regularity were preserved, and no prisoner was allowed to speak. The prisoners received the whole amount of their earnings every week and purchased at shops in the gaol what they required. They were cheerful and well behaved. Mr. Buxton did not see a fetter or chain in the whole prison. Corporal punishment, once inflicted, was dispensed with, having been found unnecessary; privation of work it was said was penalty sufficient to keep ninety-nine out of a hundred orderly and attentive to the rules, and if one was occasionally received of an unusually turbulent and ungovernable disposition a week's solitary confinement invariably reduced him to obedience. "There was," says Mr. Buxton, "a degree of cleanliness in their persons and an air of cheerful