not, however, adopted in England, as the Government naturally shrank from the great and novel responsibility of finding employment in England for discharged convicts. Ireland, however, with its rural and scattered population, its demand for labour, and its centralized police, afforded facilities both for securing employment, and, with it, police supervision, which should not be hostile, as a system of _espionage_, but friendly in its character, and from knowledge of local circumstances, calculated to promote the welfare of the convict. The relatively small number of convicts in Ireland rendered easy the introduction of the so-called Intermediate System, which was simply the collection of the better-disposed convicts previous to their discharge in centres under easy discipline, with a view to disposal under favourable conditions. The strong belief which existed at the time that the so-called Irish System was producing results which were unprecedented was due to the economic history of the country. During the years when the system was introduced, it happened that Ireland was passing through a crisis without parallel in the history of Europe. The crisis included a famine, a pestilence, an exodus, a transfer of large areas of land to a new proprietary, and the introduction of a new Poor Law. The population was decimated three times between 1845 and 1861. Towards the end of this period, work became plentiful, and wages rose as much as one hundred per cent. At the same time, in England the population was increasing, work was difficult to find, there was no centralized police as in Ireland, and any comparison between the results of the two Progressive Systems would have been valueless, the conditions being so entirely different.