Moreover, the cellular system is unequal in its application, for difference of race has much to say to it, and in fact it is a clumsy machinery of the northern races, repugnant to those of the south, more dependent on the open air and light. Apart from that, isolation has very different effects amongst people of the same nation, according to the different vocations <p 263>of the prisoners, especially of occasional offenders. In this connection the testimony of Faucher, Ferrus, and Tarde is thoroughly just, that in prison administration we ought to observe a distinction between dwellers in town and country.[23] [23] Yet the question whether the cellular system should be modified in accordance with the nationality, social condition, and sex of criminals, which has not been brought forward since the Prison Congress at Stockholm, was there decided by the following resolution:--``The cellular system, where it is in operation, may be applied without distinction of race, social condition (as regards townsmen or rural population), or sex, provided that the authorities have regard to these special conditions _in matters of detail_. Exception may be made in respect of the young, and if cellular discipline is applied to them also, it should be in such a way as not to prejudice their physical and moral development.'' (``Proceedings,'' 1878, pp. 303, 617.) Again, the cellular system is too costly to be adopted as the only form of imprisonment--which, however, is enacted in the Italian penal code, the French law of 1875, and elsewhere. And it is just by reason of the enormous expenditure on vast prisons that the grievous and mischievous contrast arises between the comforts provided for murderers and men guilty of arson in their cells and the privations to which the honest poor are exposed in hospitals, poorhouses, town garrets, country hovels, and barracks. One of the most significant results which I noticed at the exhibition of various plans of cells in connection with the Prison Congress at Rome in 1885 was that it demonstrated to the general public how the cellular system treats prisoners (whether before trial or after sentence) better than the poor, who continue to be honest in spite of their wretchedness.[23] [23] Even prison experts have been concerned by the vast expense of the cellular system, and the following question was brought forward at the <p 264>Congress at Rome:--``What modifications would be possible, in accordance with recent experience, in the construction of cellular prisons so as to render it more simple and less costly, without detriment to the necessary conditions of a sound and intelligent application of the system?'' Detailed recommendations were agreed to on the motion of M. Herbette; but the system is unchanged, with requirements which can be only very slightly reduced. <p 264>