would say, "You have incurred
the same debt to the State, and the same penalty must be paid."

At present every man who steals a sheep has to pay a different penalty.
This man is sentenced to six months, that other to twelve months, and
then another to fifteen years of penal servitude, according to the
discretion of the judge; and instead of being made to pay the price of
the sheep and the costs of his prosecution, he becomes a grievous
burden to the honest tax-payer, who has to supply him with chaplains,
schoolmasters, surgeons, cooks, bakers, tailors, and a whole host of
servants in livery to minister to his wants, and so unfit him for the
practice of economy, frugality, and other kindred virtues when his
fetters are cut. Under a law based on the principle of restitution, the
man of good character and industrious habits might be able to find
sureties to enable him to discharge his debt to the State under the
surveillance of the authorities, without being surrounded by prison
walls. The man of middling character might only have a limited amount
of liberty, such as the responsible authorities might grant him. Whilst
the man of bad character would have to discharge his debt inside prison
walls, where he might still continue a villain in habits and heart, and
increase his debt by fresh acts of dishonesty; but this would be his
own fault, and the safety-valve of the machinery.

But to return to the Act 1864. If the labour performed under the "mark"
system was either remunerative, or such as a convict might obtain an
honest living at when liberated, the system could not be condemned as
utterly bad. But if we except the tailoring and the shoemaking done for
the use of the establishment, there are really no other employments
suitable for the general class of men who find their way into prison.
The professional thief--and I am now speaking of the _reformation_
as well as the punishment of criminals--requires to be taught some
trade for which he has a natural aptitude before it is possible for him
to gain a livelihood, and he must be taught it well, for unless he is a
skilled workman he would not be worth the wages necessary to keep him
out of temptation. To go on punishing such men in the hope that we will
make them honest, is absurd; and to persevere in "reforming," them
without teaching them practically that which is indispensable to their
remaining honest, is equally ridiculous. We may train a boy to be a
labourer of almos