At present every man who steals a sheep has to pay a different penalty. This man is sentenced to six months, that other to twelve months, and then another to fifteen years of penal servitude, according to the discretion of the judge; and instead of being made to pay the price of the sheep and the costs of his prosecution, he becomes a grievous burden to the honest tax-payer, who has to supply him with chaplains, schoolmasters, surgeons, cooks, bakers, tailors, and a whole host of servants in livery to minister to his wants, and so unfit him for the practice of economy, frugality, and other kindred virtues when his fetters are cut. Under a law based on the principle of restitution, the man of good character and industrious habits might be able to find sureties to enable him to discharge his debt to the State under the surveillance of the authorities, without being surrounded by prison walls. The man of middling character might only have a limited amount of liberty, such as the responsible authorities might grant him. Whilst the man of bad character would have to discharge his debt inside prison walls, where he might still continue a villain in habits and heart, and increase his debt by fresh acts of dishonesty; but this would be his own fault, and the safety-valve of the machinery. But to return to the Act 1864. If the labour performed under the "mark" system was either remunerative, or such as a convict might obtain an honest living at when liberated, the system could not be condemned as utterly bad. But if we except the tailoring and the shoemaking done for the use of the establishment, there are really no other employments suitable for the general class of men who find their way into prison. The professional thief--and I am now speaking of the _reformation_ as well as the punishment of criminals--requires to be taught some trade for which he has a natural aptitude before it is possible for him to gain a livelihood, and he must be taught it well, for unless he is a skilled workman he would not be worth the wages necessary to keep him out of temptation. To go on punishing such men in the hope that we will make them honest, is absurd; and to persevere in "reforming," them without teaching them practically that which is indispensable to their remaining honest, is equally ridiculous. We may train a boy to be a labourer of almost any sort, and can impart moral and religious instruction to an unformed mind with success, but if we attempt to do either of them with a confirmed thief who has not been taught to work, we must be disappointed in the result. The _first_ step to reformation, is to interest him in some employment suitable to his abilities, and any other step taken before this only hinders or prevents the work of reformation. We have never yet taken this first step, consequently we have never yet succeeded in reforming any of them. It is also essential that such work should be also well paid, and that the money made at