The reason advanced for the amendment of the law was that the number of wife deserters had for a long time been on the increase, and that existing measures had proved ineffectual. There has been a good deal of controversy upon the question whether the enactment of forced labour for Poor Law defaulters conflicts with Section 361, paras. 5, 7, and 10, and Section 362 of the Imperial Penal Code, but the judgment of the Imperial Department of Justice is in the negative, provided that such labour be required by way of restitution of relief afforded, and not as a punishment for misdemeanour, and that no definite term of detention be imposed. Institutions established for the reception of such persons, therefore, must be regarded as reformative in character, and not in any formal sense as penal. It is unlikely that a British Legislature would be willing to depute to Poor Law Authorities, even of the reformed type proposed by the Poor Law Commission, power to put to forced labour defaulters of the kind referred to. Nor does it accord with our national ideas of justice that the same authority--in this case a civil body--should be able to act simultaneously as plaintiff and judge. The Legislature of the State of Hamburg entertained scruples upon both these points, and for that reason, besides allowing an offender to answer a proposal of committal, both in person and by legal adviser, it devised a double form of appeal. In this country the only practicable form of procedure would be by magisterial order, as at present, except that defaulters would, on conviction, be committed to a Labour House for disciplinary treatment, instead of as now to prison. Among the German towns in which Poor Law Authorities possess and enforce the powers here referred to, are the four Saxon towns of Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz, and Plauen, also Stuttgart, Hamburg, Oldenburg, Ulm, Heilbronn, Ludwigsburg, Rostock, Schwerin, and Dessau. I have described the Dresden Labour House in another place,[66] and it will be sufficient for present purposes to summarise the principal characteristics of the Leipzig institution. [Footnote 66: "The German Workman: a Study in National Efficiency," pp, 293-301 (London: P. S. King & Son, 1906).] MUNICIPAL LABOUR HOUSE AT LEIPZIG. This municipal Labour House is one of the oldest institutions of the town, for the building was anciently a monastic hospital; later it served for the reception of orphans, deserted and neglected children, imbeciles, etc., and it has been applied to its present purpose for some seventeen years. The Labour House is officially described as serving for "the detention, suitable employment, and moral improvement" of the following classes of people:-- (_a_) Work-shy, intemperate and dissolute persons who, owing to their mode of life, become chargeable, or cause others for whose maintenance they are responsible to become chargeable, to the Poor Law.