At present, the lengths of penal sentences are fixed in a manner that is wholly empirical. For offences defined in certain technical ways, Acts of Parliament assign transportations and imprisonments, having durations not greater than so much nor less than so much: these partially-determined periods being arbitrarily fixed by legislators, under the promptings of moral feeling. Within the assigned limits the judge exercises his discretion; and in deciding on the time over which the restraint shall extend, he is swayed, partly by the special quality of the offence, partly by the circumstances under which it was committed, partly by the prisoner’s appearance and behaviour, partly by the character given to him. And the conclusion he arrives at after consideration of these data, depends very much on his individual nature—his moral bias and his theories of human conduct. Thus the mode of fixing the lengths of penal restraints, is from beginning to end, little else than guessing. How ill this system of guessing works, we have abundant proofs. “Justices’ justice,” which illustrates it in its simplest form, has become a bye-word; and the decisions of higher criminal court frequently err in the directions of both undue severity and undue lenity. Daily there occur cases of extremely-trifling transgressions visited with imprisonments of considerable lengths; and daily there occur cases in which the punishments are so inadequate, that the offenders time after time commit new crimes, when time after time discharged from custody. Now the question is whether, in place of this purely empirical method which answers so ill, equity can guide us to a method which shall more correctly adjust the period of restraint to the requirement. We believe it can. We believe that by following out its dictates, we shall arrive {182} at a method that is in great measure self-acting; and therefore less liable to be vitiated by errors of individual judgment or feeling.