Mr. Adderley criticized the measure sharply from his own favourite
point of view—that of shorter, sharper, purely deterrent sentences, with no remissions or reformatory machinery of any kind. We are not prepared to abandon the hope that this measure may be made the means for introducing the Irish system into our English prisons, or we should almost agree with Mr. Adderley rather than with the present half-and-half policy of Sir George Grey. Mr. Adderley undiluted is better than Sir Walter Crofton and water ; and the Home Secretary's present views are a faint and fluctuating compromise between the two. He holds out no hope of the intermediate prisons, the only good preparation for tickets of leave ; we cannot see that he even intends to make the licence a privilege earned by special industry, but only, as before, the mere result of respectable conduct and the average tale of work ; and, worst of all, he declines to take any steps for a secure registration and supervision of the ticket-of-leave men after their discharge. Without these three great conditions of success, the reformatory element in the discipline must be insignificant, and it would be better to go in for the Chief Justice's and Mr Adderley's deterrent system pure and simple.
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