Prisoners have put on a kind of veneer, for both youthful offenders and offenders of older growth are better dressed. They are cleaner, too, in person, for which I suppose one ought to be thankful--even though, to a large extent, rags and tatters were picturesque compared with the styles of dress now too often seen. Loss of the picturesque has, I am afraid, been accompanied by loss of individuality, and the processions that pass through London police-courts now are not so striking as formerly. They are devoid of strong personality, and the mass of people in many respects resembles a flock of sheep. They have no desire to do wrong, but they constantly go wrong; they have no particular wish to do evil, but they have little inclination for good. In a word, weakness, not wickedness, is their great characteristic. But weakness is often more mischievous and disastrous in its consequences than wickedness. In the young offenders this lack of grit is combined with an absence of moral principles, and though the majority of them appear to know right from wrong, they certainly act as if they possess little moral consciousness. Again I content myself with merely stating a fact, for I must not be led into philosophic inquiry or speculation as to the causes of this loss of grit, though I hope to say something upon the subject later on. Crime, too, has changed in some respects. There are fewer crimes of violence; there is less brutality, less debauchery, less drinking; but--and I would like to write it very large--there is more dishonesty, which is a more insidious evil. Here again I am tempted to philosophic inquiry, or to engage in some attempt to answer the question--Are we as a nation becoming more dishonest? I answer at once, We are. For twenty-five years I have watched the trend of crime, for the past ten years I have closely studied our criminal statistics, and I can say that personal experience and a close study of our annual criminal statistics confirm me in this matter. Some explanation of the growth of dishonesty may be found in the social changes that have been going on. As education advanced the number of men and women employed as clerks, salesmen, and business assistants multiplied, and it follows that the temptations to, and opportunities for, dishonesty multiplied also. For years a large transference of boys and young men from the labouring and artisan life to the clerk's desk or to the shop-counter has been going on. The growth in the number of persons employed as distributors of the necessaries of life, who day after day receive, on behalf of their employers, payments for bread, milk, meat, coal, etc., multiplies enormously the facilities for dishonest actions.