is time convicts upon first
arrival from India are placed for a certain period in separate cells,
and no doubt the authorities had good and weighty reasons for the
change. We have no report as to the advantage or otherwise of this
probationary alteration, but from what we have said, it will be seen
that we incline to the belief that for this class of native convicts
work in irons upon the public roads is a better "first trial" than to
place them under what is known to us as the "cellular system."

For local prisoners, who after their sentences have expired are returned
to the town, we do advocate the "cellular system," and have ourselves
designed and built for term convicts several wards upon this system. The
advantage gained is complete isolation from one another for a fixed
period, and the indiscriminate admixture of classes thus avoided, and so
possibly by this means a recrudescence of crime in the place prevented;
but with convicts under banishment, and mostly for a life term, we think
the conditions are very different, and we prefer the plan adopted in the
old Singapore convict jail.

The punishments in force by our laws are of course designed to deal out
retributive justice to the prisoner for his offence against society, and
so to prevent, if possible, a repetition of the offence by others, and
by this means to protect society against evil-doers. There is no wish to
punish with any vindictive feeling, but rather, if it can be done, to
bring about the reform of the prisoner, and to take away from him the
desire to offend again; and as "Beccaria," the Italian philanthropist,
well said, "those penalties are least likely to be productive of good
effect which are more severe than is necessary to deter others."

In the later days of our Singapore convict jail, of which time only are
we in a position to express an opinion, the treatment of the convicts
was one of discipline from beginning to end. There was first the
probationary period under fetters, in gangs upon the public roads, or
upon the severest hard labour; next the period of freedom from this
restraint and a time of test, and if they stood this test well, then
advancement to a position of trust, either on the lower rung of the
prison warder-staff, with a belt of authority across the shoulder, or,
if an aptitude for any trade was evinced, to the position of a novice in
the workyard, at whatever branch of industry the convict was thought to
be best suited. Ther