The last year of my imprisonment was marked by the arrival of a number of Fenians, and the departure for freedom of one or two of the very few prisoners whose society had been a pleasure to me. One of these had been the editor and proprietor of an influential country newspaper, and his crime was very similar to my own. He was a man of deep thought, and far, very far, from being a criminal at heart. He was the best educated man I met with in prison, and eminently qualified for writing a treatise on the prevention of crime. The other had been in business in London, and had brought up a large and respectable family. Having been accustomed to mix in the society of some of the most eminent of the city merchants and bankers, his company in such a place as a prison was a great acquisition. After the departure of these two prisoners I had only one intimate and intelligent companion left. His case excited my sympathy, inasmuch as he was a very humble and penitent man, with a sentence of penal servitude for life. A sentence, I believe, inflicted not so much for the crime, but on account of the position the prisoner formerly occupied in society, and "as a warning to others." This is a formula which, in many cases, is made to sanction monstrous injustice, and in all cases, I may say, is practically inoperative. The only parties warned by the fall and punishment of such an one as the prisoner I here refer to, are those in the same respectable position in life, because they are the only parties who have it in their power to commit the same crime. The punishment cannot warn those who are not in and cannot attain to the position which makes the crime possible, and who could not find the opportunity to commit it, even if they were paid to seek it; then why punish such men as this prisoner the more severely, because he was in that position?