t any sort, and can impart moral and religious
instruction to an unformed mind with success, but if we attempt to do
either of them with a confirmed thief who has not been taught to work,
we must be disappointed in the result. The _first_ step to reformation,
is to interest him in some employment suitable to his abilities, and
any other step taken before this only hinders or prevents the work of
reformation. We have never yet taken this first step, consequently we
have never yet succeeded in reforming any of them. It is also essential
that such work should be also well paid, and that the money made at
such employment should be his passport to liberty. Under the present
system we only make him kill time at labour which disgusts him with all
kinds of regular industry. The county prison sentences are, moreover,
too short to enable the thief to earn such a passport to freedom, but
they are of just the requisite length and fitness for turning the
casual into the confirmed criminal. In fact, _time_ sentences are
not suitable for confirmed thieves. Their sentences ought to be so much
money to be earned in a penal workshop, where honesty and economy could
be practised as well as industry. There are two grave objections urged
against teaching thieves lucrative trades. Firstly,--it would tempt
others to commit crime; and secondly, it would interfere with free
labour. With regard to the first objection, I admit there would be some
force in it if the sentences were such as they are now, because time
runs on, whether the prisoner is industrious or not. But if the
sentence imposed a fine in addition to all the expenses incurred by the
prisoner during his incarceration, there would then be no inducement to
the commission of crime. With reference to the second objection, I
would merely state that all labour done in prison of a useful character
interferes with free labour to some extent, but I contend that if each
prisoner was employed at that kind of work for which he is best
qualified, it would interfere less with the proper and necessary
division of free labour than the present plan of keeping a large number
of men employed at work for which they have no special aptitude.

The error we have made in employing prisoners hitherto is not merely
that we have employed them at trades or other employments not suitable
to their natural abilities, but that we have entered into competition
with those trades where too much competition already exi