It was the immortal Howard who first stirred public opinion in England to consider the question of prison reform. As Burke finely said of him "He surveyed all Europe, not to view the sumptuousness of palaces, but to survey the mansions of sorrow and of pain: to collect the distresses of men in all countries. The plan was original, and full of genius as of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery." The names of Howard and Bentham will always stand in the forefront of those who in those dark days tried to enlist public sympathy for the prisoner and captive,--the former by his keen humanity, protesting against the abuses and barbarisms which he found to exist at home and abroad: the latter, as utilitarian and economist, devising a new system to secure, firstly, a rational system of legal punishment for the offence committed, and, secondly, a rational system of treatment while in prison after commitment. To the casual student of English Prison history, Bentham is known chiefly as the author of the somewhat whimsical scheme known as the 'Panopticon'--a structural device for securing, in the first place, the safe custody of prisoners and economy of administration. Because he said boldly that he rejected sentiment in his construction of a Prison System, his influence has been sometimes regarded as hostile to the reformatory idea which was beginning to gain ground in Europe; but in rejecting sentiment, he, at the same time, admitted that, controlled by reason, it was a useful monitor, and, indeed, it is the great merit of Bentham that, in an age when there was grave need of adjustment of the essential factors of punishment, he worked for a compromise between a too great pre-occupation with its moral purpose, and a too severe insistence on its penal and terrifying effect. Though in vigorous language he preached the gospel of 'grinding rogues honest,' it was part of his plan to educate, to classify, to make methodical provision for discharge, and, lastly, he may be said to be the founder of the modern school of criminology in laying stress on the absolute necessity of preventing crime by discovering and combating its causes.