In France, as in all countries, there are criminals of many kinds and ranks, and of these the French _relégués_ are the lowest and meanest. I have said before that in the criminal society of New Caledonia the assassins, forgers, embezzlers, and what we should call swell-mobsmen form the aristocracy. The _relégués_ are the lowest class. They are the gutter-snipes of crime; the hard cases; the human refuse beyond all hope of social salvation; mental and moral derelicts, of no use to themselves or anybody else. We have thousands of them in this country, but we don’t deal as wisely or as humanely with them as the French do. Our judges and magistrates send them to prison again and again, well knowing that they will only come out to commit more crimes and be sent again to prison, becoming in the intervals of liberty the wives and husbands and parents of other criminals. This is one of the social problems which they deal with better in France. There is no nonsense there about a criminal “having paid his debt to society” when he has served his sentence, and being, therefore, free to go and commit more crimes. When a man or woman has committed a certain number of crimes of the minor sort, or has been convicted of hopeless immorality or alcoholism—in other words, when there is reason to believe that he or she is absolutely unfit to possess the rights of citizenship—such person may be, in the last resort, sentenced as in England, say, to twelve or eighteen months’ hard labour as punishment for that particular crime. Now in an English police-court the habitual criminal might possibly thank the magistrate and go away to “do it on his head,” but in France he may hear the fatal words: “At the expiration of your sentence you will be placed in _relégation_.” [Illustration: The “Market” in the Convent, Isle of Pines. The Female _Réliqués_ are drawn up before one of the Prison Buildings. In the foreground are the Kanakas waiting to sell their fruit and vegetables. _Drawn by Harold Piffard from a photograph._] Of this the meaning is: “You have proved yourself unfit to live in the society of your fellow-citizens. Punishment is no warning to you. You will neither reform yourself nor be reformed; therefore Society has done with you: you are banished! You will be fed and clothed and attended when you are sick. You will have work found for you, and you will be paid for it. But if you won’t work there will be the prison and the cell for you. Now go, and make the best of it.” The banishment is practically for life. There are circumstances under which a _relégué_ can win his release, but there are two things that he can never do: he can never gain a concession and marry and settle down on his own property; and he can never gain restoration of the full rights of citizenship—both of which, as I have shown, the _forçat_ can do.