According to the intention of its authors, adequate police supervision over those who had been conditionally liberated on license was an essential feature of the Ticket-of leave system, but this was not the interpretation adopted by the Home Office, for on behalf of that Department, evidence was given before the Select Committee of 1856 to the effect that "it was thought far better to give no directions whatever to the police on the subject, but to leave them (_i.e._ the license-holders) precisely in the situation of men who had served out the whole period of their sentence." On every ticket-of-leave issued, the following conditions were endorsed:--"Notice--(1)--The power of revoking or altering the license of a convict will most certainly be exercised in case of his misconduct. (2)--If, therefore, he wishes to retain the privilege, which by his good behaviour under penal discipline he has obtained, he must prove by his subsequent conduct that he is really worthy of Her Majesty's clemency. (3)--To produce a forfeiture of the license, it is by no means necessary that the holder should be convicted of any new offence. If he associates with notoriously bad characters, leads an idle or dissolute life, or has no visible means of obtaining an honest livelihood, &c.--it will be assumed that he is about to relapse into crime, and he will be at once apprehended, and recommitted to prison under his original sentence." These conditions, admirable in themselves, were not enforced and so were practically useless. Ticket-of-leave men almost invariably destroyed their licenses (which they were not compelled to keep), and if apprehended for a fresh offence, or on suspicion, stoutly denied that they had previously been convicted; nor was it easy for the authorities to prove the contrary in the absence of any proper system for the registration of convicts. The helplessness of the police in the matter may be measured by the fact that constables were instructed on no account to interfere with ticket-of-leave men, "nor when seen in public houses are they to be pointed out to the landlord, and required to leave, as in other cases of convicted thieves and suspected characters." It was of course only just that convicts released on license should not have their comings and goings continually dogged by constables; but to elevate them into a privileged class, and to place them on a higher plane than "suspected characters" who had never been convicted, was, in the words of Sir Richard Mayne, "to give them opportunities to commit crime which they might not otherwise have." The police were not to blame for this state of things, for they only carried out the instructions of the Home Office, which, again, did not feel justified in interfering with liberated convicts unless authorized to do so by Act of Parliament. To shew how entirely the police authorities dissociated themselves from any responsibility for