That diminution of crime, depends _not_ on deterrent punishment, but on wide and impalpable influences—growth of social feeling, spread of education, betterment of manners, decrease of intemperance, improvement in housing, a hundred other causes—is plain from the official statement lately issued. “The members of the predatory classes are appreciably fewer than in 1857, in spite of the fact that in the interim population has almost doubled.” _And this in the face of admittedly milder penal measures!_ For further evidence that mere severity of treatment does not deter we need only look at the comparative success of the Elmira Reformatory in the United States, and the Borstal institutions here. Under these systems, which allow the offender some kind of natural life, the percentage of those who return to crime is most notably smaller. Crime is disease—if not in the medical, in the moral sense of the word. It is either the disease of weakness, or of unbalanced self-will, or the disease of inherited taint. We have fought against this conclusion because we still harbour the spirit of revenge; but as knowledge advances we shall, we must, accept it. And the sooner we do accept it the less money we shall waste, the less harmful and unnecessary suffering shall we inflict. The difficulties of judicial and prison administration are enormous, the force of prejudice encountered by reforming administrators terrific—all the more terrific because these prejudices, in the main conscientious, are wholly reinforced by the fact that change means trouble and expense, by fears of making things worse, by all the accumulated momentum of “things as they are.” For a man with any understanding in his composition it is impossible not to sympathize with those who, administering justice, earnestly desire to do their best, and are often, one is sure, sick at heart from the feeling that what they are doing is _not_ the best.