"It certainly seems justifiable to infer from these figures that our penal reformatory system has been made effective," says Du Cane, in his "Punishment and Prevention of Crime;" "and the remarkably steady and sustained decrease ... must be considered to show that recent legislation, with which it so remarkably coincides in point of time, has in principle and execution not only completely succeeded in promoting uniformity, economy, and improved administration, but also in that which is the main purpose of all--the repression of crime." The decrease is even more remarkable in the convict prisons, those which receive the more serious offenders, sentenced to penal servitude. The convict population of Great Britain is now just about half what it was some five and twenty years ago. Going back to 1828, when the population of the country was barely fifteen millions, there were in all,--in the penal colonies at the Antipodes, at Gibraltar and Bermuda, the Hulks at home and the Millbank Penitentiary, just fifty thousand convicts, or ten times what the total is to-day with a population of nearly thirty millions. Carrying the comparison a little further, there were 3,611 sentenced to transportation in 1836; in 1846, 3,157; in 1856, 2,715; in 1866, 2,016 (combined with penal servitude); in 1876, 1,753 to penal servitude alone; in 1886, 910. In 1891 only 751 imprisonments are recorded. This progressive decrease is doubtless largely due to the growth of that more humane spirit which has in recent years mitigated the severity of punishment, and which prompts the judges to avoid the heavier penalties, as is shown, for instance, by the fact that in 1836 there were 740 life sentences, while in 1891 there were only four. It may be attributed also to the admitted punitive efficacy of penal servitude. That it is sufficient to visit even serious offences with shorter terms, a practice much facilitated by the recent reduction of the minimum period from five to three years, is amply shown by the record.