people love their surroundings; they have no desire to change; a
life of squalor among squalid companions is not distasteful to them;
on the contrary, they will refuse to leave old haunts no matter what
inducements are offered them elsewhere. It is hardly possible to do
anything with these offenders, and they unfortunately constitute at
least one fourth of the criminal population. Such persons return again
and again to prisons; and the manager of an important Prisoners' Aid
Society in a great northern city, says, that to aid them "is a mere
waste of money, if not an encouragement to vice."[48] How to deal with
persons of this description is a most tantalising problem. More
vigorous methods of punishment are sometimes advocated as the proper
manner of deterring these habitual and incorrigible offenders, but if
we consider the constitution and antecedents of most of them, it
becomes perfectly certain that such means will not effect the end in
view. As a matter of fact, most of them are not adapted to the
conditions of existence which prevail in a free society. Some of them
might have passed through life fairly well in a more primitive stage
of social development, as, for example, in the days of slavery or
serfdom, but they are manifestly out of place in an age of
unrestricted freedom, when a man may work or remain idle just as he
chooses. A society based upon the principle of individual liberty is a
society of which the members are supposed to be gifted with the
virtues of prudence, industry, and self-control; virtues of this
nature are indeed essential to the existence of such a form of
society. Unfortunately, a certain portion of its members do not
possess them even in an elementary degree, and no amount of seclusion
in prison will ever confer these qualities upon them. Imprisonment, to
be followed by liberty, however rigorous it is made, is accordingly no
solution of the difficulty; the only effective way of dealing with the
incorrigible vagrant, drunkard, and thief, is by some system of
permanent seclusion in a penal colony. All men are not fitted for
freedom, and so long as society acts on the supposition that they are,
it will never get rid of the incorrigible criminal.

[48] At a recent meeting of the Statistical Society, Mr. Murray
Browne gave some interesting information respecting the work of
Prisoners' Aid Societies among habitual offenders. "A question,"
he said, "had been addressed to all Disc