This document is, as I have said, the statement of Sir Joshua Jebb, very slightly curtailed to bring it within your space. I have abridged a small portion of the retrospect at the commencement, and have shortened the transitions here and there; and that is all the change. The writer has not allowed himself to take the broadest view of the subject; which we shall not quite understand, unless we glance at the chronic controversy between the two systems of England and Ireland. In 1857, Sir Joshua Jebb made a report professing to describe the Irish system, and stating his own opinion upon it. I certainly could not adopt Sir Joshua Jebb’s description of the arrangements in Ireland; nor can I entirely agree with what he supposes to be the object of inquiry: namely, to ascertain whether the probationary prisoners should be withdrawn from the higher stages on public works, and congregated in the huts of the intermediate stage; whether discharged prisoners could not be placed under the supervision of the police, and whether employment could not be found for prisoners released on licence as in Ireland. Sir Joshua meets these questions in the negative, and I believe I am correct in stating his conclusions thus:— “Firstly. The character of the convicts in this country, and the circumstances, differ so much from those of Ireland, that any plan for congregating them together under less control than is at present exercised, would not be calculated to render them more fit for discharge, or give the officers to whose care they might be consigned better, or even the same, opportunities of judging their character as those which exist at present. “Secondly. That even if such objects could be promoted by removing selected convicts into separate, small, intermediate establishments, with diminished control and more voluntary action, the exhibition of convict discipline in such a form would impair the exemplary character and deterrent effects of a sentence of penal servitude, which, on all accounts, it is most essential to preserve as the most formidable of our secondary punishments. “Thirdly. That any general superintendence of the police would be impossible in England, without obstructing the employment of the men. “Fourthly. That if such measures could be systematically organized, it would be very desirable to afford convicts some special information or instruction in connection with their future prospects during the last few months of their confinement—not in separate, intermediate establishments disconnected from the prisons, but in the stage of discipline which precedes discharge.”