ingenious among them who regret the abolition of imprisonment for debt may revive it in effect by selling groceries and clothes on a hire-purchase contract. The routine treatment to which the convict is subjected is much more severe than that which is applied to the ordinary prisoner, and it does as little good.[3] It is a system of repression mainly; a sitting on the safety-valve that is apt to provoke outbursts of temper and violence resulting in assault. These may be punished with the lash. A power which is not possessed by the Judges of the High Court is granted to the Prison Commissioners. It is considered necessary in order to maintain the system, but as no one claims that the system is in any degree reformatory, it becomes a question whether it is worth maintaining. [3] The diet for convicts is more generous than that for ordinary prisoners, however. Male convicts whose conduct and industry have been satisfactory may be liberated on license when three-fourths of their sentence has been served. Female convicts in like circumstances may be liberated on license after serving two-thirds of their sentence. The same man who is at one time a convicted prisoner in an ordinary prison may at another time be undergoing penal servitude. While he is in an ordinary prison there is neither power nor occasion to order him the severe punishments which may be inflicted on convicts. If he need the lash when he is sent to penal servitude, there is at least the presumption that the cause lies as much in the character of the life he is compelled to lead as in the character of the man. The more punishment inflicted on prisoners in a prison the stronger the probability is that the place is badly managed. Repression is necessary, no doubt, but repressive powers should only co-exist with power to reward. Even a donkey will go further after a carrot than when driven by a stick. It never does any good to a man to treat him as a machine, and the tendency to do so under the name of discipline is a root vice of the system. In the convict prison, as in the ordinary prison, during the last few years the grinding mechanical routine has been relaxed, and the amazing discovery has been made that it is easier and better to manage men if you recognise that they are men than to regard them as mere numbers. There has even been talk of reformation resulting from the changes that have taken place, and to judge by some magazine and newspaper articles from the pens of enthusiastic and ignorant visitors, one would think the prison had become a kind of paradise.