"This will never do,"—as all readers of Lord Aberdeen's address
to the Social Science Congress must feel. The public have endured a good deal at the hands of Presidents of that useful body ; and with a painful recollection of some addresses by Lord Hampton and others, we thought that the force of dullness could no further go. But Lord Aberdeen shows that Social Science can be made far worse than it has looked. He talked—in accordance with the custom which compels every President to deliver a mis- cellaneous harangue—about prison labour, imprisonment for debt, workmen's dwellings, and temperance. The ulta-podrida talk was not always accurate. Thus he laid down principles as to prison employment which, as Colonel du Cane could have told him, have been more or less carried out in every convict prison. He argued against a supposed law as to imprisonment for debt will& has long ceased to exist, and he discussed the subject of the treatment of habitual offenders as if no Habitual Criminals Act had been passed. " This," we repeat, "will never do ;" and Lord Aberdeen may unwittingly. render good service by persuading the Committee of this, and by putting an end to Presidential displays. We are sorry to see that a sensible Judge such as Lord Gifford is, thought fit to deliver to the rites dures of Aberdeen a flighty address, swimming in poetical quotations, on jurisprudence. The Congress must really make amends by quiet work in the Sections.
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