The city bred thief class are far from being dunces or "flats," and it is not possible to make them common labourers. Many of them may very fitly be compared to the idle and dissipated "swells" of the middle and higher classes. If we took a "fast" young nobleman, for instance, and put him to some office agreeable to himself, so that he conceived a decided liking to harness, it would do him a deal more good in the way of reforming him than a course of lectures on the seventh commandment! And assuming that by so doing he enticed other "swells" to buckle on official armour, it might interfere with the prospects of some who had never been "fast," but on the whole, society would benefit by the change. I maintain that that would be the correct method to adopt with some of those thieves who are totally irreclaimable by our present system of prison discipline. With regard to the casual and petty thieves, their case is somewhat different. Many of them could not be raised above the lowest class of common labourers, but by adopting a system of individualization, that is studying each man's natural abilities, we could always arrive at the best results. It might be advanced as a third objection, that it would be impossible to make thieves pay their expenses in prison, and a fine in addition. Under our present system I admit it would be very difficult, but in the penal workshops, into which I would turn all our prisoners, this objection would not hold good. The prisoner would then be stimulated to labour at paying work agreeable to his tastes and suitable to his abilities, and the cost of his maintenance would be less than it is at present. Those who really could not earn a living in the penal workhouses, and those who would not earn their living, I would transfer to the prison for criminal incurables. I would not have any first offenders against property in prison, I would punish them as ticket-of-leave men. In the penal workshops I would only have persistent thieves. In the convict prisons only great offenders against the person and traitors. All the persistent criminals of the petty class, I would consign to the workhouses; but the character of our workhouses would require to be altered. There are three distinct classes of paupers. (1) Those who have become paupers through no fault of their own. (2) Those who have become paupers through vice; and (3) The vagrant class. I would refuse admission to the workhouse to the first class, just as I would refuse admission to the prison in the penal workshops to first offenders against property. I would treat them, on the family system of out-of-door relief, as the deserving poor. The second class I would admit into the workhouse, and the vagrant class as well, but on the understanding that they did not get out again till they had paid their bill. In short we ought to make our prisons and our workhouses paying concerns, and with the former there need be no difficulty whatever;