Our Criminal Classes. 13 
culty and to look to him in after life for help and 
encouragement. I am sure the present excellent Super- 
intendent of the Onderneeming School would be only 
too glad to do what he could to assist his boys to gain 
an honest livelihood and a respectable name. 
The Girls' Reformatory which it is proposed to 
establish, offers still greater difficulties than the other. 
Amongst the abandoned young women who would form 
its inmates it would seem impossible to hope that any 
blossom of purity or industry could survive. At the 
most we may hope that the Matron may be able in 
time to inculcate some degree of self control ; to make 
the girls more outwardly decent in word and gesture, lo 
train them to habits of industry and cleanliness, and 
teach them to sew and wash, so that when they are 
discharged they will be able to gain an honest livelihood 
without sinking back into the infamy from which they 
were rescued. If some kind middle-aged ladies would 
take some of the better behaved girls into their service, 
they might preserve them from evil companions and help 
them to obtain a respectable position amongst their 
fellows. 
Prevention is better than cure, but as there always will 
be criminals amongst us there must be some means of 
punishing them and preventing them from becoming a 
nuisance to their respectable fellow citizens. Punishment 
is an evil which we make an offender suffer as an example 
and a warning to others : criminal proceedings are to 
prevent future injuries. There are many people in 
England who are strongly opposed to the infliction of 
the death penalty for wilful murder, and these numbers 
are yearly increasing. But I am sure it would be a great 
