Thus the highest success, regarded by Mr. Hoskins as {178} “really a miracle,” is achieved by a system most nearly conforming to those dictates of absolute morality on which we have insisted. The convicts are almost, if not quite, self-supporting. They are subject neither to gratuitous penalties nor unnecessary restrictions. While made to earn their living, they are allowed to purchase such enjoyments as consist with their confinement: the avowed principle being, in the words of Colonel Montesinos, to “give as much latitude to their free agency as can be made conformable to discipline at all.” Thus they are (as we found that equity required they should be) allowed to live as satisfactorily as they can, under such restraints only as are needful for the safety of their fellow-citizens. To us it appears extremely significant that there should be so close a correspondence between _a priori_ conclusions, and the results of experiments tried without reference to such conclusions. On the one hand, neither in the doctrines of pure equity with which we set out, nor in the corollaries drawn from them, is there any mention of criminal-reformation: our concern has been solely with the rights of citizens and convicts in their mutual relations. On the other hand, those who have carried out the improved penal systems above described, have had almost solely in view the improvement of the offender: the just claims of society, and of those who sin against it, having been left out of the question. Yet the methods which have succeeded so marvellously in decreasing criminality, are the methods which most nearly fulfil the requirements of abstract justice.