the merchant and the artisan experiences a temporary suspension.

Considerable additions have been made to the roll of members; this is gratifying as showing an extended and extending interest in the subject of prison administration, but the addition to the annual dues is not to be overlooked. It is desirable that persons who think well of our Society should by membership aid in increasing its usefulness. Society membership does not call for any expenditure of time, and two dollars a year is the only "due," and those dues may be liquidated by the payment at once of twenty dollars for life. membership.

It is the membership of the Acting Committee that calls for labor in the prisons, and that membership alone gives to our associates the right to enter the cells. The number of the Acting Committee is nearly filled up. Some corrections of that list may be made to give it greater efficacy. The monthly returns from each of the Branch Committees-that for the Penitentiary and that for the County Prison-exhibit much devotion to the cause by members. But an investigation of the cells shows that the inmates might profit by additional visitations.

The thanks of the Society are certainly due to those members who have so fully represented the grand idea of our Society, by frequent and regular visits-and much of the success that has rewarded those labours is due more to the regularity of the visits than to their length. The prisoner who takes any interest in the presence and instruction of the visitor, becomes attached

to the particular one, and finds himself annoyed by the interruption of out of the way visits, and by any interruption of the regular coming of his particular counsellor. The weariness of the cell is terrible to the prisoner, and he looks for the hour when the figure of his friend shall darken the door of his cell, "as a servant earnestly desireth the shadow." Very often has the visitor requested his client to proceed with his mealwhen the call was at the "feeding hour," and received for answer, "Let it be, sir, it comes three times a day, but you come only once a week.”

The work of visiting prisoners for their moral good is one requiring peculiar adaptation of mind and inclination, and the uses of those qualities are improved by practice. Many persons anxious to do good and communicate, have found, or perhaps have been kindly told, that their capabilities consisted in power to do good in another direction, and they have withdrawn to works in which they could be more useful, or left in disgust to withhold from employment faculties that were more highly appreciated by themselves than valued by others.

Some persons have joined the Society, and become members of the Acting Committee, feeling little more than curiosity as regards the character, condition and plans of prisoners; many of these, after visiting the cells, have found a work which seemed to be of the highest importance-and, what was most strange to them, they found themselves almost irresistibly drawn to that work, with inclination to pursue it steadily, and stranger still, they found in themselves-powers,

faculties and inclination that ensured usefulness, while they prevented all weariness. The devotion of time to the benefit of prisoners, and what may be regarded by some as the irksomeness of talking to one individual in his solitude-lose their unpleasantness where there is a respect for the cause and a living interest in the object.

"The labor we delight in physics pain."

And when the convict by degrees learns to distinguish between shame for imprisonment and shame for crime; when he learns to found his resolution of amendment on hatred of vice, rather than dislike of its consequences, the devoted visitor finds a relief from anxiety—and a reward for perseverance. There is a ground for belief that what he has done is to make the prisoner better;

"And labor shall refresh itself with hope."

The Acting Committee are able, with gratitude to God, to state to the Society that the good work assigned to the different branches has been industriously and profitably pursued, and the cause of humanity has been illustrated by the persistent labors of those to whom we have entrusted the work. The situation of some of the members of the Committee is such that with less sacrifice than others would be compelled to make, they have regularly and persistently visited the prisoner and carried on their work. Others with no less zeal have been compelled by other relations to lessen the number of their visits. While some have

been placed upon the Acting Committee less from an idea that they could fully discharge the office of visitors, than from the knowledge that their name and their service in other directions would be of great advantage to the Society, and increase its abilities to do good-by creating sympathy and augmenting the contributions to the fund upon which so much of the permanent usefulness of the Society depends. And, let it be added, that the value of their services is increased by the credit which their character and public services shed upon the Society.

In other portions of this number of the Journal will be found references to the progress of feeling in other parts of the world, relative to prison discipline, results of those efforts put forth in London by the Congress of 1872. In the meetings of that Congress one bench was specially noticeable, for the constant appearance there of two or three men and one woman, whose countenances and features denoted them to be of another race than the Caucasian; their eyes and minds were open to all that was presented, and they listened attentively and most discriminatingly to all that was said upon the subject of penitentiaries and reformatories. These were natives of Japan, sent to England to be instructed in the knowledge which the rulers of that Eastern Empire had seen to be so useful to their western friends, and which they were willing to secure for themselves.

The papers now inform us that the Government of Japan is alive to the great subject of penology, and that, while considerable improvements have been made in

the administration of the affairs of some of the prisons, arrangements are being made to establish a general system of prison rule-which shall lead to the adoption of a plan of prison discipline that will render necessary a change in regard to construction, so that the means of carrying out the system will not be lessened by the nonconformity of the plan of the prison with the system of administration.

It is gratifying to find it thus with a people whom most of their Western contemporaries have set down as backward in civilization, and unalterably fixed in a system that was almost systemless.

It is said that the eastern part of China has had its attention drawn to the deficiency of its prisons, and the cruelty which may be, and, it is said, is now practised upon the convicts. China is rather slow in making improvements in any of her social, political, or domestic habits, but she moves certainly and directly when she learns that she is losing by her neglect, and she is noted for close imitation.

It is a sad thing when nations make the punishment of crime the only great object of penal laws, and by neglecting the idea of improvement create a class of criminals whose sense of degradation is awakened only by detection. It is not alone in the East that pariahs are found. They must exist in all societies where conviction is made to exclude the benefit and therefore the hope of amendment.

We record perhaps fewer changes in prison system. and prison discipline in different parts of the world than we could desire-but while a large class of per