No great and costly prisons would be needed. Simple and inexpensive cottages, each with its separate plot of ground, with furniture and housekeeping arrangements on the most frugal scale, with absolute necessaries in food and clothing, at least for a time, would be required. The greatest possible liberty should be given to each individual convict. The industrious should be assured of the full benefit of their toil. Those who would not work, should find here the same penalties for idleness as obtain in the world they had left. Here might be gathered the whole round of industry--artisans, shops, manufacturers of all kinds, aided by every appliance of modern machinery. Schools, libraries, and even churches would by no means be excluded from this life-convict home. There is no reason why such a community of criminals might not ultimately become largely self-supporting and self-governing. They could have their own courts, their own lawyers, their own judges, their own system of penal law, and their own machinery for its enforcement. To each small company of men there should be allotted a cottage, which they could call their own. As far as possible these men should be left to themselves. The outworking of social and economic laws under such conditions might sometimes be summary and savage, but it would ultimately be salutary. Though for a while, save as it was held back by the mailed hand of military power, crime might run riot, the instinct of self-preservation would at last assert itself. The murderer does not like to be murdered; the highway robber does not like to be robbed; all classes of criminals object to taking their own medicine; and so it would come about that, even out of elements the most incongruous and unpromising, some form of social order would finally be evolved. It is needless to say that the sexes should occupy separate villages. This in itself would cut off one very formidable source of new recruits for the army of crime. Indeed, it is hardly too much to predict that, if this plan of permanent segregation and isolation were carried out for even a single generation, crime would sensibly diminish, our overcrowded courts would be relieved, taxation be lessened, and the staggering shoulders of modern civilization be to some extent unburdened from one of the heaviest loads they are now condemned to bear. It may seem an ungenerous thing to say, but it is to be feared that the opposition to any such plans would be likely to come from those whose familiarity with the vices of the present system should best fit them to labor for and most earnestly to desire its improvement. Enlightened physicians gladly join in any scheme which promises to prevent or lessen disease, in spite of the fact that their living depends upon its prevalence. So, enlightened judges, lawyers, and court officers might be expected cordially to approve of any system of moral hygiene which gave promise of efficiency as a prophylactic against crime.