satisfying themselves as to the antecedents of the convict,” they were already familiar with his antecedents. Finally, let us not overlook the fact, that this course is the only one which, while duly consulting social safety, is also entirely just to the prisoner. As we have shown, the restraints imposed on a criminal are warranted by absolute equity, only to the extent needful to prevent further aggressions on his fellow-men; and when his fellow-men impose greater restraints than these, they trespass against him. Hence, when a prisoner has worked out his task of making restitution, and, so far as is possible, undone the wrong he had done, society is, in strict justice, bound to accept any arrangement which adequately protects its members against further injury. And if, moved by the expectation of profit, or other motive, any citizen sufficiently substantial and trustworthy, will take on himself to hold society harmless, society must agree to his proposal. All it can rightly require is, that the guarantee against contingent injury _shall_ be adequate; which, of course, it never can be where the contingent injury is of the gravest kind. No bail could compensate for murder; and therefore against this, and other extreme crimes, society would rightly refuse any such guarantee, even if offered, which it would be very unlikely to be. * * * * * Such, then, is our code of prison-ethics. Such is the ideal which we ought to keep ever in view when modifying our penal system. Again we say, as we said at the outset, that the realization of such an ideal wholly depends on the advance of civilization. Let no one carry away the impression that we regard all these purely equitable regulations as immediately practicable. Though they may be partially carried out, we think it highly improbable that they could at present be carried out in full. The number of offenders, the low average of enlightenment, the ill-working of {188} administrative machinery, and above all, the difficulty of obtaining officials of adequate intelligence, good feeling, and self-control, are obstacles which must long stand in the way of a system so complex as that which morality dictates. And we here assert, as emphatically as before, that the harshest penal system is ethically justified if it is as good as the circumstances of the time permit. However great the cruelties it inflicts, yet if a system theoretically more equitable would not be a sufficient terror to evil-doers, or could not be worked, from lack of officers sufficiently judicious, honest, and humane—if less rigorous methods would entail a diminution of social security; then the methods in use are extrinsically good though intrinsically bad. They are, as before said, the least wrong, and therefore relatively right.