The recently published statistics of the United Kingdom contain many facts which throw much light upon the social condition of Devonshire. We find, in the first place, that while the population of South Devon increased 14.3 per cent. in thirty years, that of North Devon decreased 1-2 per cent. during the same period. North Devon is almost entirely agricultural; on the other hand, South Devon contains not only Exeter, the centre of five railways, but the important and populous places of Plymouth, Devonport, and Stonehouse. The Three Towns, as they are called, contain a population of over 150,000, exclusive of the large number of soldiers and sailors in the garrison and the ships of war. The public works in these towns, the two great dockyards, the victualling yard, and the fortifications, have attracted a large number of the inhabitants from the surrounding districts. Unfortunately this desirable immigration has been accompanied by one which is quite the reverse. The number of fallen women in these towns is fearfully large. It has been stated that one woman in every twenty therein is a prostitute, and the estimate, incredible as it appears, is we believe not far, if at all, above the truth. Their numbers are equalled by their effrontery. There is, perhaps, no other place in England where these women ply their avocation so openly and shamelessly, and where modest women find it so impossible to venture alone into the streets after sunset. Great exertions have been made to check this monstrous evil. A recent Act, the Contagious Diseases Prevention Act, has given power to the police to apprehend women whom they suppose to be infected, and to send them to the hospital, where they may be detained in a species of imprisonment until recovery. The authorities declare that this Act has met with signal success; but they have never published any statistics to prove their assertion. Philanthropists have not left the evil for legislators to cure. There is, we believe, no part of England where the Homes and Refuges for Fallen Women are so numerous as in South Devonshire. One of them is affiliated to the famous House of Mercy at Clewer; another is carried on by the devoted Anglican Sisterhood, of which Miss Sellon is the Superior. All are in urgent need of funds, and through lack of them their hands are often stayed from doing all the good that they might do. We need scarcely say that this excess of prostitution above the average is accompanied by an excess of drunkenness and pauperism. The number of drinkshops in the Three Towns is appallingly large, the poor rates are oppressively heavy. So notorious is the intemperance of the place, that there is no town in the kingdom which has declared itself so strongly in favour of the

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Permissive Bill as Plymouth has done. Plymouthians have suffered too much to shrink from the most searching remedy. There is one vice, not, indeed, peculiar to Devonshire, but especially prevalent there, and which has caused some notoriety of late-electoral corruption. This has attained its climax in the borough of Totnes, where £100,000 have been spent in 28 years upon a constituency of under 400 persons. Totnes is not the only offender. There are other Devonshire boroughs as bad probably, though their iniquities have not been so clearly brought to light. Ashburton, Dartmouth, Barnstaple, have all in turn been subjected to the ordeal of a Parliamentary inquiry. In Honiton the price of a vote is a settled thing, and therefore we hear of none of such negotiations as take place at Totnes. Devonport has lately lost its two members for paying ten shillings a piece to the dockyard-men. Tavistock is comparatively pure, for its representation is in the hands of the Dukes of Bedford, and as they have proved liberal landlords, and have made their borough the model of a country town, there is little disposition to question their political supremacy.

Turning from these dark subjects we find a welcome relief. In the first place Devonshire is a remarkably healthy county. The Newton Abbot district, which includes the wateringplaces of Torquay and Teignmouth, has the lowest mortality in the kingdom, despite the considerable number of deaths of consumptive patients which take place at Torquay. In Devonshire the last returns gave 24 deaths at and above 95 years of age, and of these, three were above 100. The marriages in Devonshire during 1864 were 4,765, and of the 9,530 persons included in this figure, 951 men and 1,145 women signed the marriage register with marks. 360 of the men and 1,075 of the women married were under age. The births were 18,778, and the deaths 12,612, the excess of births above deaths being 6,166. The illegitimate births were below the average number by 0.5, the average being 6-4; while Cumberland, in this respect the most immoral county in England, the number is no less than 11-8, or exactly double that of Devonshire. Crimes of violence are comparatively few. This will be seen from the following figures:

Thus, while the crimes of violence in Lancashire, Middlesex, Staffordshire, and Yorkshire are respectively one to 3,062, 2,817, 3,735, and 4,892 of the population, in Devonshire the proportion is only one in 11,332. To this it may be added, that during the last two years, that is since the date to which these returns refer, there has been a remarkable decrease in the number of crimes, so much so, as to have elicited congratulations from the judges, and to have excited the liveliest apprehensions among the members of the bar. This comparative immunity from crime is, no doubt, due to the prevalence of education. In this respect Devonshire occupies a high position. Taking the number of persons who signed their names in the marriage register as the test of education, we find that whereas the average for England is 72 per cent., in Devonshire the number is 78 per cent.

With education comes thriftiness, and the number of savings bank depositors is unusually large in Devonshire. At the same time savings banks are not the only tests of providence, and there are other and better forms of investment, especially co-operative societies, as to which Devonshire is far behind the northern counties. Co-operation unfortunately has been checked by the failure of a store at Exeter, through mismanagement.

We have left ourselves small space to speak of the many great public works in Devonshire, of the Devonport and Keyham Dockyards, with their magnificent arrangements, of the Royal William Victualling Yard, which cost £1,500,000, of the Plymouth Breakwater, which was thirty-two years in building, of the famous 'leat,' by which Sir Francis Drake brought the water of Dartmoor into the town of Plymouth, for a distance of nearly twenty miles, of the Dartmoor Railway and Granite works, of the Leemoor China Clay Works, and of the South Devon Railway, which, after having for twenty years struggled against the overwhelming loss incurred by Brunel's costly mistake of the atmospheric experiment, is now at last becoming a fairly profitable undertaking. We have not sought to render this article an abbreviated tourist's guide or a substitute for Murray.' We have endeavoured only to set forth some of the social and physical characteristics of a county whose beauty of scenery and mildness of climate fairly entitle it to the name of the Italy of England.'

THE REFORMATORY EFFECT OF REMUNERATIVE PRISON LABOUR.

THE HE reformation of criminals is by no means generally a hopeless task, nor is the effort to accomplish it likely to be productive merely of unimportant benefits. It is not an improbable supposition that a considerable proportion continue in their vicious courses on account of untoward circumstances rather than from inclination. The loss of character, deficient instruction in any honest calling, or the inveteracy of habit, may seem to impede the adoption of any well-regulated method of living, or the introduction to any honest occupation. These difficulties of their situation frequently entitle them to be viewed as objects of pity, rather than of unmitigated condemnation. And, in any case, the arrangements for the management of persons under sentence for offences against the laws of their country, should be such as would give them a chance, on being liberated, of pursuing some creditable occupation.

Thieves and vagrants, it is generally believed, follow their disreputable manner of living from a loose, idle disposition; but if the privations of their existence, and the difficulties they encounter in procuring a subsistence be taken into consideration, it will be obvious that, of all classes, they suffer the worst hardships, and undergo an extreme degree of labour for inadequate results, in addition to the frequent depression of spirits they must endure from the irregularity and uncertainty of their operations. The poor beggar may sometimes meet with extra benevolences, but usually he has many weary miles to traverse for a mere trifle, and, if he had the option, might earn more at any honest calling. The occupation of a thief is one continual course of peril; he has to sustain a very great amount of labour and watchfulness to possess himself of other people's property, and when he has obtained it, only by selling much below its value can he turn it to account. Undoubtedly, if a man can obtain a livelihood by any honest calling, he must be a thorough fool to encounter the danger, risk, and fatigue of pilfering and robbery. We have no desire to extenuate the guilt of the criminal; all we insist on is, that his life must be fraught with such repulsive circumstances, as to render it certain that were a chance of improvement offered, the criminal would, in many instances, become reformed into a useful member of society.

According to the system pursued in the greater part of our gaols, of occupying prisoners in useless or unproductive labour, they obtain no serviceable skill or knowledge; and on

being discharged they go forth into the world with scarcely a chance to preserve them from their former vicious practices. When a man who has been in gaol returns to his own neighbourhood, his evil reputation shuts him out from ordinary labour, and unless he be a skilled workman, without a character he would hardly obtain employment among strangers. Our Christian doctrine teaches us to promote repentance and amendment of life; but the mere precept must be altogether without result, unless accompanied with such instruction and favourable circumstances as may enable the offender to bring well-formed intentions into action. He may be told that in this country, if he have neither character nor skill to procure him employment, he has the workhouse as a place of refuge, whither it would be far better for him to repair than renew his career of criminality. This resource, however, to an able-bodied man, is nothing better than a continuation of imprisonment; and, as a place of confinement, the unionhouse is held in equal abhorrence with the common prison.

Punishment should always be inflicted with a view to reformation, otherwise it partakes of the character of vindictiveness. Habits of industry tend to promote moral improvement much more than exhortations, however earnest. In those, therefore, who have hitherto led idle, dissolute, and dishonest lives, we should endeavour to promote industry. Our gaols, as great reformatories, should become schools of industry, where persons, especially those who are imprisoned for long periods, should be employed productively, not only so as to defray a portion of the cost of their maintenance, and thereby become less burdensome to the community, but also in order that they may acquire industrious habits, and such skill in some handicraft as may enable them, after their sentences shall have been completed, to procure useful employment.

A system of industry has been conducted in the Bedford Prison for some years past, with such favourable results as have not been exceeded, if equalled, in any other gaol in England, and this has been accomplished without any aid from the county rates. Previously to the appointment of the present Governor (Mr. Roberts), fourteen years ago, the labour performed in the prison was utterly unremunerative; but under his management the discipline and productive occupation of the prisoners have continued regularly to improve. Prisoners in the county of Bedford, on their entrance into gaol possess little or no knowledge as artisans, and have to be taught separately in their cells their various kinds of labour. The good effect of the present system may be inferred from the diminution of the number of committals, and particularly of