suffice to
say that in the field of controversy the contest between the opposing
parties is a fairly even one. In fact, looking at the matter from a
purely polemical point of view, the advocates of the death penalty
have probably the best of it. It has, however, to be remembered that
such questions are not solved by battalions of abstract arguments, but
by the slow, silent, invisible action of public sentiment. The way in
which this impalpable sentiment is moving on the question of the death
penalty may be seen, first, in the manner in which crime after crime
during the present century has been excluded from the supreme sentence
of the law, and secondly, in the steady diminution of capital
executions throughout the civilised world. If the present drift of
feeling continues for another generation or two it is not at all
improbable, in spite of temporary reactions here and there, that the
question of capital punishment will have solved itself.

Another form of punishment is transportation. As far as Great Britain
is concerned, transportation possesses only a historic interest. No
one is now sent out of the country for offences against the law.
Experience showed that penal colonies were a failure, and that the
truly criminal could be more effectively dealt with at home. Within
recent years the French have resorted to the system of transportation;
but, according to several eminent French authorities, the penal
settlement in New Caledonia is hardly justifying the anticipations of
its founders.

Penal servitude has taken the place of transportation in Great
Britain. Every person sentenced to a term of five years and over
undergoes what is called penal servitude. The sentence is divided into
three stages. In the first stage the offender passes nine months of
his sentence in one of the local prisons in solitary confinement. In
the next stage he is allowed to work in association with other
prisoners; and in the last stage he is conditionally released before
his sentence has actually expired. If a prisoner conducts himself
well, if he shows that he is industrious, he will be released at the
expiration of about three fourths of his sentence. If, on the other
hand, he is idle and ill-conducted, he will have to serve the full
term.

During the first nine months of his confinement the convict sentenced
to penal servitude is treated in exactly the same way as a person
sentenced to a month's imprisonment; the only difference being