We now arrive at a new stage in the history of penal legislation. The time had come when transportation was to be distinctly discountenanced and its approaching abolition openly discussed. Many concurrent causes contributed to this. Sir William Molesworth's committee, in 1837, had spoken against transportation in the plainest terms. It was condemned because it was unequal yet without terrors to offenders. It was extravagantly expensive, and most corrupting to convict, colonist, and all concerned. Last, but not least, the protest of the colonists themselves, now for the first time formulated and put forward with all the insistance that accompanies the display of a virtuous determination, could not be entirely ignored. Important changes therefore were inevitable, nor could they be much longer delayed. In point of fact, in the matter of secondary punishments it was a return to the position of fifty years before. At one and the same moment the three latest devised outlets through which the graver criminals had been disposed of were practically closed: the antipodes, by agitation and the strident voice of public opinion; the hulks, by the faultiness of their internal management; and the great reforming penitentiary, by the absolute barrenness of results. If deportation beyond the seas were to come to an end, then the convicts must remain in the mother country. But where? Not in the hulks; that was out of the question. Sir William Molesworth had recommended more penitentiaries, as the Nabob ordered more curricles. But the country grudged another half million: there had been little or no return for that spent years before on Millbank. Then it was suggested that large prisons should be constructed on the principle of Pentonville, for ordinary offenders, while the more desperate characters were to be drafted to Lundy Island and other rocks that might hold them. A third scheme was to construct convict barracks in the neighbourhood of the dockyards, to replace the hulks; but this, which contained in itself the germ of the present British prison system, was far too radical a change to be tolerated at that time or for many years to come. All action being thus impeded and beset with difficulty, the British Government steered a middle course. It was thought that by grafting certain important so-called improvements upon the old system it might be retained. Doubtless, judged by later experience, the plan appears shifty and incomplete; but in theory and as seen at the time it was excellent. It was deduced by sound logical arguments from given premises, and had those premises remained unchanged the system might perhaps have existed longer without collapse. But reasoning on paper is not the same as in real life: one small accident will upset the profoundest calculations. The plan of "probation" which I am about to describe was admirably devised; but it failed because the conditions of the colonies varied, and because small obstacles, that were at the time