I by no means admit the two principal objections of MM. Kirchenheim and Wach, that the conditional sentence is repugnant to the principle of absolute justice, according to which every offence should be visited by a corresponding punishment, and that short terms of imprisonment, if they have not always produced a good result, ought not to be abolished, but only applied in a more suitable and efficacious manner. The first objection will not weigh much with those who are guided by the principles and method of the positive school. As M. Gautier says, it is absolutely <p 277>useless to dispute about consequences when we start from premisses so opposed to each other as retributive justice, according to which every fault demands a proportional punishment--``fiat justitia pereat mundus''--and social defence, according to which a justice without social advantage is an unjust justice, afflicted with metaphysical degeneracy. The second objection appears to me to have no better foundation, for the disadvantages of punishments by short terms of imprisonment are organic and inevitable defects. There is no chance of their practical amelioration, for they have all been tried, from the system of association to that of absolute isolation, from the most inflexible vigour to the mildest treatment. Amelioration of short-term punishments can only have an indirect influence by way of palliation; but it is the actual imprisonment for a short term which is trifling and unavailing. At the same time, and not to mention other objections on points of detail, specially applicable to the form given to conditional sentences on the continent of Europe, as compared with the American system, (which is certainly better, since it does not leave the offender to himself, and is not restricted to the simple legal relapse), I am not enthusiastically in favour of the conditional sentence. And my lack of enthusiasm, in spite of the first impression, which was decidedly favourable, is based on different grounds from those hitherto stated by the opponents of this reform. In the earliest edition of this work I maintained that repression ought to be mild in form for occa<p 278>sional criminals, and progressively severe for recidivists and habitual evildoers, until it reached perpetual segregation. The Italian proverb, that ``the first fault is pardoned and the second whipped,'' is an unconscious confirmation of the popular opinion. And from this point of view the conditional sentence, if combined as in the French law with progressive severity of repression for recidivists, is sufficiently attractive in the first instance. But the conditional sentence, to consider it for a moment as it has hitherto been propounded and carried out, has two characteristic defects, in common with the actual penal system, of which its advocates, for the most part balancing between the classical and positive school, cannot get rid.