Lord Derby has been making a speech in support of
the Prisoners' Aid Society of Manchester, which in three years has aided 320 persons, of whom 205 are doing well, 30 have turned out badly, and 85 have either emigrated or cannot be traced. Lord Derby desired to see such an institution attached to every gaol in the country, believing that it would considerably diminish the amount of vice. He did not take a rose-coloured view of the future. What with persons who loathe work, and persons whose mental capacity hardly tells them the distinction between right and wrong, and persons who turn to theft when vagrancy and begging fail, he could hardly forsee a day when the magistrate would lack work. But he therefore felt it all the more expedient to give every man who wished to leave off crime a chance of reformation, and the best way was through these societies, which ought, he hinted, to be more liberally supported by the magistrates.
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