This thesis embraces a very wide range of action. It means the systematic rational treatment of evil-doers, from the refractory infant and juvenile pickpocket to the burglar, the fraudulent bankrupt, the felon, the traitor, the murderer, and if any exist, the born criminal. It signifies, in short, a complete science complementary to that of true education. For whereas the latter comprises all manner of attractive stimuli to noble living, this is the science of necessary social restraints to be applied in nursery, school and prison with the universal gentleness which springs from universal love. The purpose to be aimed at is, first, improving character by restraining obnoxious tendencies; second, reforming character already become anti-social; third, protecting society from all corrupt infusion that might proceed from morally diseased character. A leading principle of the criminal law of Great Britain is that punishment be adjusted in proportion to the supposed magnitude of each individual offence. If we study this principle, we must perceive the truth of Judge Fitz-Stephen’s allegation, for what connexion has it with the reformation of the criminal? A judge or a jury makes no attempt to compute the amount of prison restraint and discipline necessary to reformation, nor are they possessed of facts for forming a judgment. Their whole attention has been focussed on the crime, not on the character of the criminal, or the antecedent and future conditions affecting the character. Neither does the judicial sentence connect itself proportionately with the mischief done to society. A fraudulent banker or commercial speculator, whose downfall involves the ruin of thousands, is not dealt with, as compared with a petty thief, on a scale of severity expressive of the magnitude of suffering entailed. And the petty thief, who steals the rich man’s goods, as compared with the criminal who beats and abuses his wife, is adjudged a severer penalty—a measure of punishment indicating the superior value of goods over wives, which is a sentiment appropriate only to barbarous times. These anomalies, however, are explainable. Our laws have descended to us from a barbarous age, when might was right, irrespective of justice; and from a race whose punishments sprang from revenge, and were roughly proportioned to the feeling of revenge. They are little else than reactionary forces, of which some are always present in an inchoate society. Their inapplicability to the task of reforming criminals is easily proved.