+------+------------+-------------+------+------------+-------------+ | Year | Committals | Convictions | Year | Committals | Convictions | +------+------------+-------------+------+------------+-------------+ | 1869 | 248 | 185 | 1874 | 258 | 167 | | 1870 | 249 | 154 | 1875 | 236 | 169 | | 1871 | 267 | 140 | 1876 | 386 | 250 | | 1872 | 327 | 204 | 1877 | 307 | 187 | | 1873 | 455 | 258 | | | | +------+------------+-------------+------+------------+-------------+ The punishment for murder with malice aforethought is now penal servitude for life, other phases of homicide five to twenty years, in both cases mine labour. In cases of infanticide, if the offspring is illegitimate it ranks as manslaughter. The following is a condensed summary, with brief comments of our own in parenthesis, of a report on the prison system which was kindly furnished to us by the Roumanian Inspector of Prisons, a zealous, well-meaning, and most courteous official, as are all Roumanian officials. [Footnote 71: Reports on Laws of Foreign Countries, presented to the House of Commons, 1881.] II. The penitentiaries are divided into two classes, 'preventive' and 'central.' In the central prisons three kinds of punishment exist, forced labour, confinement called 'reclusion,' and correction. The men condemned to forced labour work in the mines (in what manner we shall see presently) during the daytime, and at night they sleep above ground in the prison. On Sundays and fête-days they do no work. The product of the labour of the convicts belongs of right to the State, but in order to encourage the prisoners three-tenths is given to them. (We may at once say that this is not faithfully carried into practice, as we know from personal enquiry that many of them are compelled to expend their earning to secure the common necessaries of life.) Aged and feeble persons are transferred to the prison of Cozia, where they weave, &c. The prisoners condemned to 'reclusion' work in tanneries and ropewalks, as for example in the prison of Margineni, and they are entitled to four-tenths of the products of their labour. In the correctional prisons the convicts cultivate the soil, make bricks, &c., and are entitled to half their wages. In all the prisons the convicts are permitted to employ their leisure time in making articles of use or ornament from materials furnished to them by the authorities, which are sold to visitors, and the State gives them a proportion of the fruits of their industry. (These articles we found to be beautifully made. They consist of egg-cups, paper-knives, forks, spoons, &c., carved in wood and resembling similar objects made in Switzerland and the Black Forest. One prisoner had made a tobacco-box of dough, painted and decorated it with artificial flowers of the same material, so that it was not