for spending the money in his pocket as fast as possible, and perhaps for discounting the great expectations of the next few months. It was a knowledge of these facts which, in 1857, induced Mr. Whitbread, the Member for Bedford, at present one of the Lords of the Admiralty, to suggest the establishment of an Association for the express purpose of holding out a helping hand to the discharged prisoner. He invited Mr. William Bayne Rankin and other friends to assist him. Some lent him their names, which were in themselves of great value; others gave him their money, and some few rendered active co-operation. Mr. Rankin became the honorary secretary of the Association, and Mr. F. Partridge its secretary. By degrees the “Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society,” which is still an independent charitable body, has become a sort of volunteer auxiliary to the Convict Department. The Association prepared forms, which were sent to every convict prison in England; the nature of the society is explained to each prisoner before his discharge; and he accepts the help or not entirely according to his own free choice. In early days, many prisoners hesitated to comply with the first peremptory condition imposed by the society—that the whole of the gratuity should be placed in its hands. Judged by graduates in a school not calculated to afford the happiest study of human motives, the charitable gentlemen in Westminster were regarded as a great joint-stock crimping establishment; and the newly released suspected that they were to be as much victimized as the German “redemptioners” were in America. By degrees, however, this suspicion wore off; a knowledge of the manner in which the society worked spread amongst the class on whose behalf it acted, and the business of the corporation has expanded accordingly. At first, there would be two or three cases a week; there are now three or four a day. At first, there was scarcely work enough for one secretary; now the society employs a secretary, two clerks, and one or two agents, and finds the machinery altogether insufficient for its exigencies. During the last year, the moneys passing through the hands of the society have amounted to an aggregate between 10,000_l._ and 12,000_l._, composed principally of the prisoners’ own money; for it must be confessed that no society has ever done so much with such a narrow modicum of means. The list of actual subscribers is slender, and we observed that the heaviest share of the burden falls upon a very few in that short list. At the same time, gentlemen at a distance do not scruple to claim the co-operation of the society in helping forward individuals who may have excited a local or individual interest.