The “mark system” of Captain Maconochie, is one which more fully carries out the principle of self-maintenance, under restraints no greater than are needful for safety. The plan is to join with time-sentences certain labour-sentences—specific tasks to be worked out by the convicts. “No rations, or other supplies of any kind, whether of food, bedding, clothing, or even education or indulgences, to be given _gratuitously_, but all to be made exchangeable, at fixed rates, at the prisoners’ own option, for marks previously earned; it being understood, at the same time, that only those shall count towards liberation which remain over and above all so exchanged; the prisoners being thus caused to depend for every necessary on their own good conduct; and their prison-offences to be in like manner restrained by corresponding fines imposed according to the measures of each.” The use of marks, which thus play the part of money, was first introduced by Captain Maconochie in Norfolk Island. Describing the working of his method, he says― “First, it gave me wages and then fines. One gave me willing and progressively-skilled labourers, and the other saved me from the necessity of imposing brutal and demoralizing punishments. . . . . My form of money next gave me school fees. I was most anxious to encourage education among my men, but as I refused them rations gratuitously, so I would not give them schooling either, but compelled them to yield marks to acquire it. . . . . I never saw adult schools make such rapid progress. . . . . My form of money next gave me bailbonds in cases of minor or even great offences; a period of close imprisonment being wholly or in part remitted in consideration of a sufficient number of other prisoners of good character becoming bound, under a penalty, for the improved conduct of the culprit.”