stable than that which, among the public at large, affirms the total depravity of _some_ men; especially of ex-convicts. Turning to penal colonies, experience is most favorable to the belief that it opens the road to reform. The reports on the British penal colonies are especially cheerful from this point of view. The majority of the criminals sent abroad during three centuries reformed their lives. Australia ought to be the most disorderly country on the globe, if deporting criminals to a colony could produce a bad society. But notwithstanding the fact that England sent a large criminal population to that colony, Australia is one of the most orderly and respectable of the English dependencies. The only possible explanation is that the official reports are true, and that the convicts did actually reform. If Botany Bay did not reform them, the honest opportunities of that vast island did coöperate with their good purpose and promote their reform. England deported criminals from 1597 to 1867—a period of 270 years. During the War of Independence she suspended deportation and enrolled her convicts in the armies sent to subjugate us. In 1838 more than 100,000 criminals had been sent to Australia. An official report sets forth that in 1850 an enumeration of ex-convicts in Australia accounted for 48,600, and that all of them except an insignificant fraction were living honestly. But it will be said that Australia protested against the continuance of the system. This is not the exact fact. In dealing with the question, the English government threw upon the Australians all the expense of the surveillance of the deported criminals. The colonial government demanded, most righteously that England should pay this bill of expense; but rather than pay it the English Parliament chose to abolish the system of deportation. The colonists did make sentimental objections to receiving convicts, but they did so on the ground that the cost of watching the criminals of England was unjustly thrown upon them. A French writer remarks that in this case, as in the quarrel with us, the money question was allowed to prevail over statesmanship. The British ex-convict is worse off than our own because there are fewer opportunities for men under the reproach of prison service.