Lord Carnarvon made a good speech in the House of
Lords on Tuesday night, on the foolish omission of the principle of super- vision of ticket-of-leave men from the Habitual Criminals Act of 1869. In point of fact, what now happens is, that convicts who have suffered part of their sentence, and are dismissed with a licence, are either immediately lost sight of by the police, or are kept in sight only by a system of espionage which has, as Lord Carnarvon said, far worse results than the old regulation requiring them to report themselves every month to the police, any breach of which led to the revocation of the licence. The licence system is only of any service if it be so worked as to be at once a con- siderable protection to society against the licence-holder, till the expiration of the licence, and also a -protection to the convict himself against the temptation to fall back into his former habits. It is neither, unless the convict really lives for a time on his good behaviour, under an immediate fear of the re- vocation of his licence, and at present this is not so. 'We are sorry to say Lord Morley did not seem to hold out much hope that the Government would return to the system as originally devised and worked by Sir Walter Crofton.
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