A short historical retrospect will show that it is only in comparatively modern times that '_Imprisonment_' became the recognized method for the punishment of crime, and that prison reform, in the sense of _moral_ improvement by imprisonment was formulated as a political duty, and became an earnest pre-occupation of statesmen and philosophers. Prisons, as places of punishment, were unknown to ancient Roman law. The '_carcer_' was known only as a place for 'holding' prisoners, not for 'punishing' (_ad continendos, non ad puniendos homines_), and the object of punishment was frankly held by Roman legists to be only that of deterrence by fear. The '_carcer_' is not mentioned in the list of Roman penalties: death by hanging, by being hurled from the Tarpeian rock, drowning in a sack; with exile, beating with rods, &c., were the methods with which as schoolboys we were familiar. In that dark period of penal law, based, as it was, on the ideas of vengeance and intimidation alone, which lasted down to the French Revolution, we find little, or no, reference to Imprisonment as the punishment for crime. In the long list of punishments under the old French Code we find '_réclusion perpetuelle_' as a punishment for women and a substitute for the galleys and banishment. There is too '_la prison perpetuelle_,' but this was not an organized system, but really a euphemism for that mysterious disappearance of persons obnoxious to the Crown or the State by '_lettres de cachet_,' or otherwise. The Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 marks the beginning of the reaction against these ideas, and the substitution of an orderly and methodical system of punishment. We find 'Imprisonment' formally installed for the execution of offences against the law in the French Code of 1791. At this time Mirabeau is said to have anticipated modern penitentiary science by publishing a remarkable report, declaring Prisons to be '_maisons d'amélioration_,' founded on the principle of labour, separation, rewards under a 'mark' system, conditional licence, and aid-on-discharge. We seem to be reading a modern treatise on Prisons--a sudden gleam of light, bursting on an age darkened by the shadow of much unutterable cruelty in the punishment of crime.