We are aware that in some countries, in framing their penal laws and discipline, the only object appears to be to prevent the continued perpetration of offences by the imprisonment of those convicted as offenders, and by the severity of their punishment to deter them from a repetition of their crimes after their discharge; the example of which punishment, it is desired, shall also operate to restrain others from entering upon and pursuing an equally criminal course. This object is effected, at the smallest possible cost to the community, by constructing their prison buildings, almost exclusively, with reference to the safe-keeping of the prisoners, making no arrangements for their separation, but congregating them together in large masses, with very little, if any, regard to difference in age or degrees of criminality. The consequence is, that instead of the prisoners being reformed or made better, by the discipline to which they are subjected, they are almost inevitably made worse; and many times, those who were committed on a charge of pocket-picking or some other minor offence, are fitted for burglars or the commission of the highest class of crimes on their discharge. A valuable member of our Prison Society who has recently spent several years abroad, during which time he became very familiar with the penal system and the arrangement and manner of conducting the prisons of one of the countries of Continental Europe, having frequently visited and personally inspected the prisons, speaks of it as being generally admitted amongst the people there, that reformation was no part of their plan, and was never expected to result from the imprisonment of criminals. We are happy, however, in the belief, that this system is now viewed by nearly all countries as being a relic of the barbarism of the dark ages, which, besides partaking of the character of cruelty, evidences great short-sightedness and want of wisdom, if we consider how its results affect the best interests of the community. Instead of being a school of reform, through whose influence the number of those from whom outrages might be apprehended would be lessened, if it does not actually increase them, it at least makes life-long criminals of the most hardened character, of a large proportion of those subjected to its discipline, who, at the time of their first commitment, were by no means steeped in wickedness; many of them when quite young, having, in an unguarded moment, yielded to strong temptation to commit some minor offence, of which having been convicted, they have been thrust amongst the most abandoned outcasts of society, and soon lost to all hope of restoration, when by a really humane and Christian course of treatment they might have been led back from the by-paths into which they had, without due consideration, stepped, and have been brought to experience the happiness of a virtuous life, and to be a blessing instead of a curse to society.