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cess individual cases, must depend on our exact acquaintance with the 

 real nature and origin of the disease, and with all the influences from 

 without and from within which promote or may be used to restrain it. 

 Whilst terror was regarded as the only efficient preventive of crime, 

 and to maintain it in the public mind, whilst getting rid of dangerous 

 characters, torture and death were freely employed, the management 

 of our criminal population was simple and intelligible, but most re- 

 volting to humanity. These times have passed away, and if it cannot 

 be said that better means have yet been brought into action for check- 

 ing crime, at least an end has been put to wholesale slaughter and dis- 

 gusting cruelty perpetrated under the sanction of law. It our pris- 

 ons are far from yet being, what they ought to be, schools for refor- 

 mation, they are at least no longer the foul sinks of filth, disease and 

 misery which once they were. We might be tempted to congratulate 

 ourselves on this degree of progress if we could be sure that we are 

 still advancing in the right direction, but the whole subject seems to 

 be attended with such difficulties, the confusion in the popular mind 

 so great, and the evils resulting from a total failure thus far in the 

 attempt, on a large scale, to repress crime, and the degree in which 

 it is even multiplied by the methods employed against it, are so alarm- 

 ing, that instead of finding any cause for satisfaction in our actual 

 condition, it ought to be to us a source of constant anxiety, and a de- 

 mand for perpetual efforts for the attainment of a better system. It 

 cannot be but that a better system is possible. The simple fact is, 

 that at present, imprisonment only fosters criminal dispositions and 

 returns men on society more determined and better prepared to prey 

 upon it ; transportation is prohibited by the impossibility of finding 

 a suitable field for it, as well as on account of other grave objections 

 in respect to its expense and its deficiency in most of the qualities of 

 a useful punishment, and branding, public flogging and other attempts . 

 to affix permanent disgrace to criminality, are known only to create a 

 desperate class, and are utterly opposed to the humane feelings of the 

 age in which we live. What then is to be done that crime may not 

 eat into the very vitals of Society, and ere long utterly destroy our 

 boasted civilisation? What most readily occurs to most people is 

 that we should increase the severity of our punishments in order to 

 make them more effectual in the way of warning. This implies that 

 men can be terrified from the commission of crime, and that terror 

 is the most certain mode of influencing them in our power. We hold, 



