Review of Periodicals irregular unions. The Archbishop of Canter bury, Lord Halifax, and Lord Halsbury, who represent the Church view, were strongly against the proposed change. They would prefer to do away with divorce altogether rather than give increased facilities for it. They are not moved by the argument that quite poor people are now in the same case as ordinary middle-class people were in before the Divorce Act, when divorce by Act of Parliament was the only method." Penology. In general, it may be said that to the modern civilized world punishment has come to signify, except where capital sentence is imposed, simply the detention of the criminal in an institution where he will be deprived of all save the bare necessities of life and of the society of his fellow men. Modern morality does not approve of physical cruelty to the prisoner, nor of injury to his health by placing him in unsanitary surroundings or by exacting from him injurious labor, but is satisfied with the penalty of social opprobrium added to that of confinement in a place ren dered by no means inviting. Punishment has come to be, therefore, practically deten tion. The sane and the insane criminal, con sequently, are dealt with in the same general way. The essential difference is only that the latter needs sometimes to receive medical attention in a special institution, and may sometimes be justly allowed a fuller share of the luxuries that may enliven the monotony of prison existence. No doubt there is a tendency to treat prisoners too well, but such a condition of affairs as that disclosed by the following writer is not typical—if it were the need of an antiWilberforce to unreform our prisons would be imperative :— "The Pampering of Prisoners." By One of the Pampered. National Review, v. 53, p. 962 (Aug.). An Oxford graduate, brought up in com fort, if not in luxury, who was a prisoner for a month in a West Country prison in England, has written a study of the situation as he found it. The man has proved himself an optimist of the most pronounced type by naming his article "The Pampering of Pris oners.' The title is not, as might appear at the first glance, bestowed in irony, but the ex-prisoner is honestly fearful lest, the beggar discovering the comfort that awaits him in jail, "each starving wretch will tear himself from his groove of misery and rush panting to the cool, secluded cells, and the careless, happy, prison life, where there is no worry, no dirt, no drunkenness; where the food is regular and nourishing; where there is peace and security, and no anxious brooding over the morrow." The worst deprivation, according to him, connected with prison fare, was the necessity for drinking, if water was to be had at all, the water in which he had washed his break fast utensils. Of this, even, he writes: "Water with a sediment of stale gruel is not a liquid of crystalline clearness, but it is both
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healthier and more palatable than much foreign beer to be met with in our restaurants." He says in conclusion :— "The ideal to which all movement ought to tend is admittedly the lenient prison. But the ideal can only be attained at the coming of that happy era when only the lenient prison is required. At present a much harder and more dour treatment of prisoners is needed, for this is the danger-time when society is being gradually and practically evolutionized. At such a stage of human progress humanitarianism is found to bless only those that give, not those that receive, for there is a ruffianly minority in every state of society, composed of men who do not appreciate kindness at its true value. Against these society is in duty bound to protect itself. No practical system of social reform can be safely attempted if prison is not meanwhile exercising that wholesome restraint over the millions which is the primary object of its existence." This ideal of the "lenient prison," as this writer says, is wrong; we need to make prison punishment fearful enough to check the evil impulses of criminals. We should not go to the opposite extreme of an ignoble brutality, as may be the case even now in some places where remnants of a barbarous rigime possibly still survive:— "Beating Men to Make Them Good." By Charles Edward Russell. Hampton's, v. 23, p. 312 (Sept.). "The Ohio State Penitentiary, here used as an illustration of the old methods of prison management, has long had the reputation of one of the worst penal institutions in the country. The state legislature at its last session undertook some marvelously belated improvements, appropriating $150,000 for new buildings, to be erected on modern and sanitary principles. It prevented the renewal of the existing contracts, but it did not, however, abolish the beatings nor the water cure nor the bull rings nor the spoils system nor the idea of terrifying men into orderly behavior." It is not only possible, it is obligatory, for the state to avoid the extremes of leniency and brutality alike. Positive morality defines in unmistakable terms what should be the attitude of the state towards the responsible criminal. His punishment unquestionably de pends on the seriousness of his harmful act, and the penalty may be anything from a merely nominal one to capital punishment, according to the nature of the act. But in imposing sentence there may be mitigating circumstances to be taken into account, such as (1) the degree of his partial irresponsibility, if responsibility has not been complete, or (2) the chance of his reformation. Such con siderations may properly operate to lessen the punishment otherwise imposed. In the case of the irresponsible criminal, the period for which he should be detained
