aid from the State, but there is a sum conditionally appropriated.

The Washington Home is an institution for the reformation of inebriates. It would seem that this institution has proved itself very useful.

The report takes up the question of pardons, and complains of the looseness of "recommendations." It is probable that when a pardon is improperly granted the applicants are more to blame than the pardoning power. For drunkards, prostitutes and vagrants a longer period of confinement is recommended. Certainly there must be a new definition of vagrancy before longer imprisonment can be required.

We regret that we have not space to enter more fully into this report; it is able, and shows by its advancement that very much yet remains to be done. The report advances, and justly, the opinion that the great work of reformation must be done with the young.

RESULTS OF OBSERVATION.

For some time past, but more especially at, and a few years after, the close of the late civil war, the Eastern Penitentiary was so crowded that it was necessary to place more than one prisoner in a large number of cells, and this apparently contrary to the law of the State, and the sentence of the Court. The law allows only one prisoner for a cell in the Penitentiary, and the Court awards that number, and the authorities of the Prison

seem to have no alternative, they must take the convict that the Court in any county of the Eastern District of the State sentences for the discipline of that Penitentiary, and they do take him and do the best they can by him.

Now a law of Scotland prescribes the accommodation for a convict in the General Prison, or Penitentiary, at Perth. The rooms, the cells, the culinary arrangements, and the personnel of the administration, are all for a given number of prisoners, and when the court of any county or district sentences a prisoner for a term that renders him liable to the discipline of the Perth prison, the authorities of that penitentiary look at the number of cells which they have, and if there is in each a prisoner, the new applicant is dismissed to his county jail, to await an empty cell. The result has been that all have to wait so long, that few with a sentence not exceeding a year ever reach the Perth Penitentiary, but work out their sentence in the prison of the county in which they are tried.

While almost all the reports from abroad are lauding what is denominated the Irish system, as something which has not yet been fairly tried out of Ireland, all show, without direct assertion, that hopes of reforming prisoners must be founded on separate confinement.

We think highly of a part of the Irish system, especially the first part, which rests altogether on the total separation of the convicts. And while we do not approve of all the other parts of the system, we are constrained to admit that it works well in Ireland, and may work as well in England and Scotland.

Why then, we are asked, should we not approve of the whole Irish system, since where it is well established it works well?

The answer is simple.

That part of the Irish system which is Irish-which is not Pennsylvanian-is the two closing stages, viz. : the "ticket-of-leave" system, by which the convict is enabled to earn as much money, under surveillance of the prison authorities, or the police, as will take him out of the country, that is, take him to the United States. The behavior of convicts who have arrived at this stage of the system is usually excellent, and they are not long in earning the price of a ticket of passage to the United States, provided they can show their "ticket of-leave." It is said that these men never honestly earned so fast as they acquire the price of that passage ticket. All seem more anxious to contribute means to get a convicted felon out of the country, than to get an honest man steady labor.

So that the success of the Irish system, so far as it goes beyond the Pennsylvania system, depends upon the deportation of the pardoned or "ticket-of-leave" felon. And as there appears to be no country to which those reformed "ticket-of-leave men and women" will go, excepting the United States, so it seems that a foreign country is necessary to the completion of the Irish system of prison discipline-and just in proportion as the Irish system is successful abroad, is our country the "refugium peccatorium," the Canaan of European culprits. And when the inspectors and governors of the Irish prisons laud their system as freeing their jails

from convicts, we confirm their boasts, by counting men and women who have been transferred from European prisons to our cells, by the talismanic charms of a "ticket-of-leave," and we supplement the account by some rough estimate of those who undetected yet, are desolating our cities with unheard-of robberies; who, having left their own country for their country's good, have arrived and organized themselves among us, for their own special good.

When some other nation arises with the claims to the attention of felons which ours has, then we may profit, if we could commit such an international wrong, by the circumstances, and, with a "ticket-of-leave," commission our repentant felons to depredate on the newly-discovered quarry.

While on the subject of discipline, we may as well translate a few remarks from reports received from the Continent of Europe. The following is from a report on the prisons of the South of Germany:

"Would you know the relative merits of a prison? "Ascertain the character of him who directs it. No"where is the influence of a man greater. It is in the "director' that lies the moral life of the establishment; "in him is centered the discipline. One may say there "can be no bad prison with a good director."

That last idea is about what we have so often urged upon our readers, viz., that it is the "administration," not the system, which gives character and usefulness to a prison. Of course the good system well administered is far superior to the poor system well administered

but the poor system well administered is better than the good system badly administered.

We can well understand how a prison may be well and beneficially conducted by a principal who does not trouble himself much with the improvement of his prisoners, provided there are supplied by any means special persons to look to the moral uses of imprisonment, and to apply measures in general accordance with the plans of the general director. But no moral efforts will amount to much, will be permanently useful, unless they are persistent and consistent. The general views of the administrator of the prison must be in accordance with the moral director, and their plans must not clash. Both should understand prison discipline, and both should desire moral improvement, but each should confine himself to his specialty, and each should be careful not to underrate the services or position of the other in the hearing of the prisoners.

CARRYING SECRET DANGEROUS WEAPONS.

One of the worst of crimes, because the parent of so many other crimes in this country, is that of habitually carrying concealed on some part of the person an instantly available deadly weapon. It is often charged upon Italy that it is a land of assassination, but it is probable that there are more crimes of that kind committed in New York City alone, in one month than in all Italy in a year. Yet we notice that a bill has been before the Italian Parliament prescribing the punishment for carrying concealed deadly weapons, designating the kind and number and grading the punishment.