me time by tact and kindliness to
diffuse a moralising atmosphere around him. Some men can do this by
instinct, but the majority require to be taught; it is therefore most
essential that every person entrusted with the control of prisoners
should have some previous theoretical instruction in his duties. After
all, those who can do most real good to prisoners are the warders
immediately in charge of them. Visits from persons outside who take an
interest in the outcast and fallen, are, according to French
experience, comparatively worthless.[47] These visits are well meant,
but they are not paid by the class of people to which the prisoner as
a rule belongs; the gulf between the visitor and the visited is too
great for the establishment of that inner sympathy on which the
permanent success of moralising efforts so greatly depends, and it is
easy for such a visitor to do more harm than good. On the other hand,
if you have a competent and well-instructed class of warders, if you
have these men trained to regard their duties from an elevated point
of view, you possess in them a body of men who are not separated from
prisoners by impassable barriers; you have comparatively little in the
way of social antecedents to estrange the prisoner from the person in
charge of him: such being the case it is easy for the two men to
understand each other, and is, therefore a relatively simple matter
for the one to influence the other for good.

[47] _Revue des Deux-Mondes, Avril_, 15, 1887.

What is to be done with offenders when their term of punishment has
expired? This is a question which modern society finds it exceedingly
difficult to solve. What is the use of punishing a delinquent for
offences against the law if, the moment his sentence is completed, he
is sent back again into the surroundings which led to his fall. So
long as his surroundings are the same, his acts will be the same,
unless his mind has passed through a revolution during detention in
gaol. The latter event, it must be admitted, sometimes does happen,
although it is not easy in these days to get the world to believe it.
And when it does happen it is marvellous to see how men, through their
own unaided efforts, will redeem their character and wipe out the blot
upon their life. But many offenders pass through little or no change
of mind, and unless delivered from their surroundings they will
continue to fall. Here, however, comes in the difficulty. Many of
these