A common method of punishing offenders is to impose fines upon them, so that if a man has money he may commit any of a large number of offences without any risk of imprisonment. It may even be profitable for him to do so, for the fines for doing some illegal acts by which money can be made are in some cases less than the profits to be made by transgressing the law. It is a queer condition of affairs. The principle of restitution is one that can be readily understood and approved, but fines are not an attempt to apply such a principle. They go, not to any person who may have been injured, but to the local exchequer for the most part. This is a vicious arrangement, for it is an incitement to the local authorities to make as much as they can off the offenders in their district; and whether they are ever moved by it or not, it is not proper that they should have any interest in filling their coffers by such means. Fines fall very unequally as a burden on those subjected to them. The amount inflicted, though small, may be out of all proportion to the offender's means; half-a-crown is not much, but it is a great deal to the man who has not got it. Before the same court you may have two men charged with similar offences. One is a motorist who has exceeded the speed limit; the other is a driver of a light van who in trying to catch a train has been reckless in his driving. The motorist may be fined in five times the amount inflicted on the vanman, but to the one the sum only represents a small inroad on his means, while to the other it represents something like a week's wages. There is not one law for the rich and another for the poor; if there were they might not be so unequally treated. There is the same law for both; but in its effect it favours the rich at the expense of the poor, and that is not to the ultimate advantage of the community.