The feudal lords and their henchmen did many things in the good old days in their quarrels with their neighbours which to-day would bring them before the justices. They wounded with intent, they did grievous bodily harm to anyone who annoyed them, and they did as much malicious damage to property as seemed in their own eyes a fair set off for insults had and received. Among a certain small degraded class in our own country these traditional pleasantries of the country-side are not fully recognised to be crimes. There are a set of men among whom it is not "bad form" to commit these acts. This form of atavism requires not only pity but further and better repression at the hands of capable police. As long, therefore, as we have these hereditary tendencies to crimes of violence and selfishness, the police court seems to me to meet a felt want. I can imagine a better world without any police court, just as I can imagine this world with a better police court. But I should like to see imprisonment kept entirely for evil-doers, and that side of the police court work which consists in rate collecting and semi-civil proceedings transferred elsewhere. At present many are sent to gaol in the police court for the crime of poverty. In the cases of non-payment of rates or of orders on parents to pay subscriptions to industrial homes it seems a very bad policy to send a poor man to prison. It takes a man from work, it does not produce money, and it throws a family into the workhouse. In these cases there is no pretence of proving a man's means and sending him to gaol because he can pay and won't. No such evidence is necessary. The man goes to prison because he is poor and has not the money to pay. If the State thinks fit to put a man's child in a reformatory, one would think it might stand the expense of it, without ruining the home by imprisoning the father because he cannot subscribe towards his keep. With regard to orders for maintaining a separated wife, or affiliation orders, everyone would have less sympathy with the man who is sent to prison for not paying these. But if a man has not the money he does not make any in prison, and what these poor women want is regular weekly money. These are special cases in which I think power to attach a man's wages up to a certain percentage would be a just and reasonable proposition. Such a law might be unpopular with mankind, but it seems fair to the women. Whether it would tend to increase or decrease maintenance and bastardy orders I have not the least idea.