they bear, whether they are honest and sober, whether they have ever been in prison, what wages they earn, and whether the child is legitimate or not.  A similar method to the one adopted with Reformatory children ought to be instituted, with suitable modifications, in European prisons and convict establishments.  It is, at the present time, being advocated by almost all the most eminent criminal authorities,[1] and more than one scheme has been drawn up to show the scope of its operation.

    [1] See Appendix I.

In addition to the service which a complete personal and family record of convicted prisoners would render as to the causes of crime, such a record would be of immense advantage to the judges.  At the present time a judge is only made acquainted with the previous convictions of a prisoner; he knows nothing more about him except through the evidence which is sometimes adduced as to character.  An accurate record of the prisoner’s past would enable the judge to see at once with what sort of offender he was dealing, and might, perhaps, help to put a stop to the unequal and capricious sentences which, not infrequently, disgrace the name of justice.[2]

[2] In his interesting work, “Die Beziehungen zwischen Geistesstoerung und Verbrechen,” Dr. Sander shows that out of a hundred insane persons brought up for trial, the judges only discovered the mental state of from twenty-six to twenty-eight per cent. of them.

Passing from this point, we shall now inquire into the possibility of establishing some system of International Statistics, whereby the volume of crime in one country may be compared with the volume of crime in another.  At the present time it is extremely difficult to institute any such comparison, and it is questionable if it can ever be properly done.  In no two countries is the criminal law the same, and an act which is perfectly harmless when committed in one part of Europe, is considered in another as a contravention of the law.  Each country has also a nomenclature of crime and methods of criminal procedure peculiar to itself.  In each country the police are organised on a different principle, and act in the execution of their duty on a different code of rules.  In all cases, for instance, of mendicancy, drunkenness, brawling, and disorder, the initiative rests practically with the police, and it depends almost entirely on the instructions issued to the police whether such offences shall figure largely or not in the statistics of crime.  A proof of this fact may be seen in the Report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, for the year 1888.  In the year 1886, the number of persons convicted in the Metropolis of “Annoying male persons for the purpose of prostitution” was 3,233; in 1888, the number was only 1,475.  This enormous decrease in the course of two years is not due to a diminution of the offence, but to a change in the attitude of the police.  Again, in the year