is these who give the deepest shade to the calendar of crime, and work incalculable mischief both in and out of prison, by instructing the tyros in all the most subtle varieties of villany. To reform such men may seem an arduous, perhaps an impossible task; but it is far less arduous, and certainly not impossible, to prevent their becoming the hardened ruffians which we have, without exaggeration, described them. The truth must be told. The system of secondary punishments (as they are called, though why we know not) is radically wrong. There is something radically wrong in the discipline and regulations of our jails. The details of imprisonment are faulty and imperfect. Surely this is proved, when it is shown that men are invariably rendered worse, instead of better, by confinement in a jail. Even though it be admitted, for the sake of argument, that the state lies under no obligation to attempt the reformation of its criminals, the admission serves no whit to support a system under which criminals are confirmed and hardened in their vicious courses. The state may refuse to succour, but it has no right to injure. This, as it seems to us, is the strong point against our present system. It does not so much punish the body as injure the mind of the criminal; and, in so doing, it eventually endangers rather than secures the peace of society. Many remedies have been proposed, but all, with an exception that will presently be mentioned, are rather palliative than corrective. Solitary confinement, for instance, is an undoubted cure for the diseases engendered by bad example and evil communications; but it breeds a host of other diseases, peculiar to itself, and in many cases worse than those it cures. Not to speak of the indulgence which so much idleness allows for vicious thoughts and recollections, the chief objection to solitary confinement is, that, if continued for any length of time, it unfits a man wholly for subsequent intercourse with the world. He leaves his prison with a mind prostrated to imbecility, and a body reduced to utter helplessness; yet he retains, perhaps, the cunning of the idiot, and just sufficient use of his limbs to serve him for a bad purpose. On these painful considerations, however, it is unnecessary to dwell at length. Solitary confinement, without occupation and without intervals of society, was an experiment upon the human animal. It has been tried in this country and elsewhere, and has signally failed. At this moment, we believe, it has few or no supporters.