"The opportunities may exist, but the practice is one of the rarest crimes known in the calendar. The punishment for conviction of bribery of, or corruption in, a judge, is life imprisonment in the government prisons; and to the person accomplishing it, a similar sentence; while to attempt it is a twenty years' offense." "Severe punishments, compared with those of former times," was Cobb's remark. "Yes, very severe. But a good government needs and demands a good and true corps of judges to settle, justly, the individual disputes of its people, and to protect them in their lives, liberty and property." "I should imagine that the system is very expensive--the salary of so many judges?" "Not nearly as expensive as the summoning of jurors, their per diem pay, the delays in justice, and the many incidentals of cost in trials in former years. One Dom and one Gledom Cöda serves for 15,000 people. The salary lists are $12,000 and $25,000, respectively; or three dollars per capita to insure justice. The judges serve until seventy years of age, unless removed for incapacity or for commission of crime. The lease of office is thus, practically, for life, the salary high, the honor great, and self-interest makes the man honest." "I think it a good innovation," exclaimed Cobb. "No doubt you would like to hear of the prison system as it exists to-day; for it is directly connected, of course, with the law?" "Certainly. I have wondered if there was any change." "Each State has its own prison, wherein are incarcerated all convicts whose sentence is less than five years. All others are sent to the government prisons. Of these latter prisons, there are ten, situated in various parts of the country, but all on islands and isolated from communication with the world except by government vessels. The island of Anticosti, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, is the main Eastern prison; then, there are those of Tiburon, in the Gulf of California; Great Abicos, among the Bahamas; Charlotte's Island, in the Pacific Ocean, and others. These are prisons belonging to the government, and no convicts are sent to them whose sentence is less than five years. Here are manufactured every conceivable thing needed by the government, and for which it would have to pay cash, did it not make it itself. Great ship-yards, from which are turned out magnificent vessels of war; foundries, in which immense and powerful guns are fabricated; looms and workshops for the clothing of the army and navy; factories for boots, shoes, furniture, ironware, and thousands of other articles that the various departments of the government require. In fact, the manufactured articles are few that the government has to buy by contract. The raw material, however, is purchased and sent to the prisons, and there fabricated into the articles needed. As no convict comes with less sentence than five years, ample time is available in which to teach him such a trade as will give to the government the