There is another side to the picture. It is sometimes the case that a man who is put to death is innocent of the crime for which he is charged. Whether innocent or guilty, a great number of those thus punished pass into eternity unsaved. With many of them it has been an act performed on the impulse of the moment. Their former lives, perhaps, have been upright, viewing them from a standpoint of morality. Again, it is often the case that a family is left in a critical condition to battle for life with this cold world. A delicate wife with helpless children must thus be weighed down in sorrow and bereavement, poverty staring them in the face, crushed with shame and disgrace, with no one to provide for them and no help nor special protection from the state whose laws have forever removed the one to whom they looked for maintenance and protection. LIFE IMPRISONMENT. Life imprisonment is an unjust sentence. Life prisoners are those who have received their sentence for murdering a fellow being. In many cases, however, they can not really be classed as criminals. They are victims of circumstances. The deed was not premeditated but was brought about on the impulse of the moment. The sentence of a lifelong imprisonment forever deprives of the liberties of freedom and the association of friends and relatives, and the only hope of freedom is an escape, then to remain a fugitive from justice. Mr. Meade in his report suggests that the life prisoner should be allowed the same privilege of commutation or short time as is given other prisoners, and in this give him a hope of release. There are tables which insurance companies use (and they are supported by the courts) which fix an average limit of years of the existence of a man, computing from the first year; the interval beyond the present age naturally decreasing as old age approaches. He says: “It would seem that these tables furnish a foundation on which a system for life prisoners should be based. For instance, a man twenty years of age is convicted of murder and sentenced to prison for life. Our tables show that the average number of years for a man of that age still to live is approximately thirty-four. Figuring the legal commutation on this term of thirty-four years, we find the prisoner would be compelled to serve about twenty-three years of solid time. A man thirty years old would on the same basis, having about thirty years to live, serve eighteen years; a man forty years old, having about twenty-five years to live, would serve sixteen years in prison. Thus we might continue our observations indefinitely.”