the ordinary penal servitude population, and be substituted for the old ticket-of-leave system, under which remission of sentence can be earned by a more or less mechanical observance of prison rules, on the condition that the unexpired portion of the sentence is passed under Police Supervision. It is possible that comparison of the two systems may engage public attention in the future, when interest in prison reform, obscured and diminished by the greater problems which the war has created, again asserts itself. I have shown in the Chapter on Discharged Prisoners the indispensability of a good system of 'Patronage' or aid-on-discharge. Much has been done in this respect in recent years. The action of the Government in 1911 in recognizing the supreme importance of regulating the discharge of persons from penal servitude by the establishment of a State Association for this purpose, was a great step forward. To the Central Association for the aid of discharged convicts, then created, may be attributed a large and an honourable share in that remarkable decrease of recidivism which prison statistics illustrate, and to which reference is made in my Chapter on "Patronage, or Aid-on-discharge." It is also a remarkable example of the value of a co-operation by which the resources of the State, and the enthusiasm and _freedom of action_ possessed by a voluntary association, can contribute to the diminution of crime. The retrospective study of crime in this country since the London Congress, 1872 (Chapter XVII.), must suggest many reflections, both concerning its treatment in the past, and its prospect for the future. If we eliminate the period of War, 1914-18, the special conditions of which I have already referred to, the broad deduction may be made that so long as the classical conception of punishment remained, i.e., the mechanical application of the letter of the law to an abstract type of offender, no great impression was being made either in the number or character of offences. Statistics varied from year to year under the influence of special circumstances; but the great stage army of offenders in all the categories continued its unbroken array, with a monotonous regularity, and it seemed almost a mockery to talk of social progress, when, in the background was the silent, ceaseless tramp of this multitude of men, women, and children, finding no rest but behind prison walls, and only issuing thence to re-enter again.