The present state of New Caledonia affords abundant proof of the truth of this position. It will doubtless never advance to the rank of a first-class colony. It is still and must always be a prison house beyond sea peopled mainly by convicts past or present, by those in various stages of ameliorating change, but who cannot shake off the original taint, and the general low level is maintained by constant reinforcement of those who have it full upon them. To-day the larger part of the population of the colony is based upon the criminal element, which is divided into three principal classes: First, the _forçats_, or convicted prisoners still in a state of servitude; second, the _libérés_ or emancipists in semi-freedom, who emerge in due course from the first class, and, third, the _relégues_ or those sent from France to serve a sentence of perpetual exile. There is hope in the future for the first, partially attained freedom and approaching comfortable assurance for the second, but for the last named there is nothing but black despair. Life alone remains theirs, but with not the faintest prospect of remission or release. It is obvious that under such conditions healthy colonisation is about as impossible as healthy physical being in a colony of lepers. Free emigrants may declare it their intention, but they will not persevere in the attempt to build up new homes under such false conditions; they will not leave the mother country, or if they do, will take the earliest opportunity to return to the hard, clean, industrious life of agricultural France. We have seen that, with the larger influx of the vigorous Anglo-Saxon, the same difficulties were faced and overcome; but at what risks, what degradation and how great a waste of men and means! New Caledonia is nevertheless an interesting study, and its present condition an object lesson in penal legislation. It is a prison planted in the tropics, to a large extent worked and governed on the same lines as the prisons in the heart of a mother country. Wrong-doers are transported to the other end of the globe to endure a penalty that might be better inflicted, more cheaply and under better supervision and control, by the strong arm of an omnipresent public opinion at home. Some remote advantages are no doubt obtained in the later stages of the terms of imprisonment, and at least society is rinsed effectively of its lees and leavings.