The judicious management of the criminal classes is a question which has long occupied the serious consideration of legislators and social reformers throughout the civilized world; and though much of what has been said and written on the matter is visionary and based on imperfect data, the agitation of the question cannot but be productive of advantageous results. In pagan times penal laws were enacted chiefly with a view to the punishment of crime, and but little account was taken of the criminal. The Julian law and the Justinian Code and Pandects inherited this cruel and unchristian character, which attached itself to them for centuries even after the birth of our Saviour. The influence of Christianity was long powerless to mitigate the horrors of barbarous legislation. In vain did the bishops of the church protest against the atrocities which were everywhere practised on prisoners. So far from listening to these humane appeals, hard-hearted rulers exhausted their ingenuity in devising new modes of penal torture, while for the wretched culprit not a pitiful word went forth from royal or baronial legislative halls. Among the Romans treason was punished by crucifixion, the most cruel of deaths. The parricide was cast into the sea enclosed in a sack, with a cock, a viper, a dog, and a monkey as companions. The incendiary, by a sort of poetic retribution, was cast into the flames, while the perjurer was flung from the heights of Tarpeia’s rock. But the treatment of prisoners for debt was still more barbarous and quite out of proportion to the magnitude of the offence. The unfortunate being who could not meet the demands of his creditors was compelled to languish in a filthy dungeon for sixty days, during which time he was fed upon twelve ounces of rice daily and had to drag a fifteen-pound chain at every step. If, at the expiration of that time, the claim against him was still unsatisfied, he was delivered over to his obstinate and unrelenting creditors to be torn limb from limb as a symbol of the partition of his goods. The severity of these provisions was somewhat softened in later times, but throughout the middle ages, and, indeed, down to the latter half of the eighteenth century, the same fierce and Draconian spirit pervaded all laws having reference to the punishment of crime. Vast numbers of prisoners, without distinction of age, sex, rank, or character of crime, used to be huddled together in wretched pens, where they rotted to death amid blasphemous and despairing shrieks. Spiritual comfort and advice were withheld from them; for it was a feature of these miserable laws to pursue their victims beyond the grave by a clause which stipulated that they should die “without benefit of clergy.”