The "mark" system admits of great cruelty being practised, but on the whole, as it is carried out, it is a more innocent piece of deception than the classification. At the public works, however, there is much injustice done by it, no allowance being made for a sick man, unless he has met with some accident. If the "marks" were money, _bona fide_ sovereigns, and if the prisoner were permitted to exercise the abilities God has given him in order to earn that money, there might be some sense and justice discernable in the system. As it is there is neither. I may here venture to say that we might materially diminish crime and expense connected with the prosecution and punishment of criminals by doing away with our convict establishments altogether, except for the confinement of political prisoners, and those having sentences for life. In lieu of these I would suggest the introduction of the system of remissions into our county jails, granting first offenders a liberal, and third and fourth, an extremely small allowance. Teaching the prisoners such trades as they are fitted for, qualifying them for colonists, and selecting the most suitable for emigration. I would also place the jails and workhouses under one management. Commissioners for the prevention of crime and pauperism in each county, and subject them to a rigid government inspection by a board responsible to Parliament and the nation. But even this would only be a partial reform. I would have our criminal laws based upon the old Mosaic principle of "enforced restitution," and carried out on the Christian principle of making the offender "pay the uttermost farthing." Then we could fairly and justly retain the idle and the useless in the net of justice, and allow the willing and industrious to achieve their own freedom by satisfying the claims of the law. Now, when time has been strangled, and virtue repressed, we allow the worst villains to escape, and all that has been required of them in prison was civility to officers, obedience to a stupid discipline, and a few years' work which neither enables them to support an honest livelihood outside the prison, or contributes in any appreciable degree to their maintenance inside. Under the system I propose, every man who stole a sheep would have to pay the same penalty before he could exercise the rights of citizenship--no matter whether his character was good, bad, or indifferent; no matter whether he was rich or poor, a peer or a peasant, the voice of impartial justice would say, "You have incurred the same debt to the State, and the same penalty must be paid."