on the ground that to abolish the terror of imprisonment from the youthful mind would embolden the juvenile inclined to crime and lead him more readily to commit it.  Others object on the ground that it is only right the child should be punished for his offence.  In answer to the last objection, it may pertinently be said that a sentence of three or four years to a Reformatory is surely sufficient punishment for offences usually committed by small boys.  With regard to the first objection, our own experience is that the ordinary juvenile is much more afraid of the policeman than of the prison, and that the fear of being caught would operate just as strongly upon him if he were sent straight to the Reformatory as it does now.  The evils connected with the present system of sending children destined for Reformatories to prison are of two kinds.  At the present time many magistrates will not send children to Reformatories who sorely need the restraints of such an institution, because they know it involves a period of preliminary imprisonment before they can get there.  Secondly, it enables a lad to know what the inside of a prison really is.  On these two points let me quote the words of an experienced magistrate.  “I have many times,” said Mr. Whitwell, at the fourth Reformatory Conference, “when having to deal with young people, felt it very desirable to send them to a Reformatory, but have shrunk from it because we are obliged to send them to prison first.  I think it should be left to the discretion of the magistrates and not made compulsory.  I feel very strongly indeed that it is most desirable to keep the child from knowing what the inside of a prison is.  Let them think it something awful to look forward to. When they have been in the prison they are of opinion that it is not such a very bad place after all, and they are not afraid of going there again; but if they are sent to a Reformatory and told that they will be sent to a prison if they do not reform, they will think it an awful place.”  These are wise words.  It is impossible to make imprisonment such a severe discipline for children as it is for grown-up men and women, and as it is not so severe, children leave our gaols with a false impression on their minds.  The terror of being imprisoned has, to a large extent, departed; they think they know the worst and cease to be much afraid of what the law can do.  Hence the fact that society has less chance of reclaiming a child who has been imprisoned than it has of reclaiming one who has not undergone that form of punishment although he has committed precisely the same offence.  In England, many authorities on Reformatory Schools are strongly in favour of retaining preliminary imprisonment for Reformatory children; in Scotland, experienced opinion is decisively on the other side.  On this point, the Scotch are undoubtedly in the right.  The working of prison systems, whether at home or abroad, teaches us that any person, be he child or