In the later management of this jail, to all fresh arrivals for life there was a period of probation of three years, during which time they were fettered and worked in gangs upon the public roads. This was thoroughly punitive, and with no liberty whatever. They were, in point of fact, full of fears and practically without hope. After a time, they began to find that the only chance of any amelioration from this hard labour was by a course of good conduct; and they saw before them their own countrymen, who had once been similarly circumstanced, occupying better positions and employed on less distasteful work. They also heard from their fellows that several had attained to a ticket of leave, and were earning for themselves an honest livelihood in the place of their banishment. This, then, was their encouragement; but not a few at first, however, though carefully treated in hospital, died from "nostalgia," or "love of country," before they could complete their term of probation. The late General, then Captain Man, who, as we have already said, did a great deal in the consolidation of the convict system of Singapore, went from the Straits Settlements to the Andamans, and inaugurated there the same system; but we learn that since his time convicts upon first arrival from India are placed for a certain period in separate cells, and no doubt the authorities had good and weighty reasons for the change. We have no report as to the advantage or otherwise of this probationary alteration, but from what we have said, it will be seen that we incline to the belief that for this class of native convicts work in irons upon the public roads is a better "first trial" than to place them under what is known to us as the "cellular system." For local prisoners, who after their sentences have expired are returned to the town, we do advocate the "cellular system," and have ourselves designed and built for term convicts several wards upon this system. The advantage gained is complete isolation from one another for a fixed period, and the indiscriminate admixture of classes thus avoided, and so possibly by this means a recrudescence of crime in the place prevented; but with convicts under banishment, and mostly for a life term, we think the conditions are very different, and we prefer the plan adopted in the old Singapore convict jail. The punishments in force by our laws are of course designed to deal out retributive justice to the prisoner for his offence against society, and so to prevent, if possible, a repetition of the offence by others, and by this means to protect society against evil-doers. There is no wish to punish with any vindictive feeling, but rather, if it can be done, to bring about the reform of the prisoner, and to take away from him the desire to offend again; and as "Beccaria," the Italian philanthropist, well said, "those penalties are least likely to be productive of good effect which are more severe than is necessary to deter others."