The process is popularly described as giving the offender another chance. It is a loose expression, which may mean anything. It sometimes does mean giving him another chance to offend, and that is all. It is intended to give him another chance to behave; and this assumes that he has already had the chance; an assumption that is not always warranted if the facts were considered. Clearly it is of no advantage to the public that an offender should have a chance of again committing a breach of the law; and if he is to be liberated from custody, it would be a reasonable proceeding to see that he is placed under such conditions as would make it easier for him to obey than to break the law. Putting him on probation ought not to mean returning him to the conditions under which he failed to resist temptation. Rather should it imply placing him under less unfavourable conditions of life. What is actually done amounts to this, that the offender, instead of being sentenced, on conviction, to imprisonment, is ordered to appear in court after so many months, in order that his case may be disposed of; and is allowed to be at liberty provided he consents to live under certain conditions prescribed by the court, his conduct to be reported on by a probation officer, whose duty it is to give him such counsel and aid as is possible without expense to the rates. The probation officer may be a police official; not necessarily a police officer, but under the control of the police. Now if there is one thing that is more clear than another in Glasgow and other urban areas in the West of Scotland, it is that the poorer classes are suspicious of the police and the machinery of the law that masquerades in the name of justice--for it is a burlesque of justice to examine only one side of a case; to decide how far the individual is to blame for offending against the laws of the community, without making any enquiry into the question how far the community is to blame for inducing the offence; and this is felt, if it is not clearly expressed, by all who are liable to transgress. A tacit conspiracy against the officers of the law is not only apparent in the case of the poorer classes, but in the case of all classes, when they are brought into conflict with it. The old Roman father who sacrificed his son to the laws, and whom we were asked to admire for his heroism when we were at school, is not a common phenomenon. He has left few descendants, which is probably a good thing. Now the father strives to shield his son; the sister puts the best face on her brother's conduct; and the neighbours would far rather condone the fault of the culprit than expose his misdeeds. They feel that our methods are wrong whenever they come intimately in contact with them, and they obey their instincts and feelings; that is all. They can see that it is wrong, that it is foolish, to interfere with a man to make him worse, no matter under what pretence,