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SOME REFLECTIONS ON PENOLOGICAL LAW REFORMS. By Percy Edwards. WHAT an unconservative people we are becoming! Is this really the pro gression of civilization towards a more per fect condition of society, or is it, perhaps, a retrogression of civilization towards a chaotic state of society? Liberality and reform in everything. Theology, politics, law, and medicine, — all are undergoing changes commensurate with the most liberal ideas of the times. The penological element of theology has been reformed in a direction very acceptable to the legal fraternity particularly, it is said. Relieved of the fateful necessity of facing an eternally long sentence to a habitation not along " Life's Plutonian shore," but right in the "swim" of old Pluto's domain, there should not be lacking a grateful feeling on the part of the legal fraternity for such re forms, although we grumble at and criticise other reforms. Reform in politics is a misnomer. Many changes there are, assuredly. The only subject of dispute here would be as to the direc tion of these changes, or reforms, if we will have it so. Tammany is doing much to re form politics and political parties, accord ing as its ideas of reform affect its politi cal existence; so it is with other political associations. The strong aid of the law is seen here and there in this political reform giving a drastic effect to an otherwise congested condition. One instance will serve the purpose here. The local Legislature of Michigan of the session 189 1, dubbed by the newspapers of the State " Squawbuck Legislature," passed an act making it obligatory for all candi dates for offices at a general election, within so many days after election, to file a state ment under oath, showing what each had spent for corruption purposes, when by the same act all expenditures for the sake of

influencing voters are prohibited, except ex penses of getting infirm and sick voters to the polls, and the distribution of campaign literature.1 Along the lines of medical science there have been also long strides in a reforming direction. And now doctors of the different schools have agreed that the best reason for their ever having been licensed to experi ment with the human anatomy and life, is to save life, and not to quibble over who is going according to Hoyle, while the patient's spirit leaves in disgust. While no one has been successful in an attack upon the great foundation principles of the law which were forged and tempered in the furnace of public sentiment in an age of antiquity, and have come down to us prac tically unchanged, still the law as a science has undergone many changes and reforms in this country, and especially so in the present century Perhaps there is no reform in the law of this age that has attracted more attention, generally, than reform attempted in peno logical law. Charitably disposed people are always in terested in penological reforms. This may arise from morbidity of temperament, which is the breeder of weak sentiment, or from some Quixotic notion of raising the standard of humanity. Be that as it may, the subject of penolog ical reform has been forced upon our atten tion by a mighty wave of sentiment, much as the other great social reform problem now knocking at the doors of society for recogni tion as a political and social factor in our country. When "Little Dorrit " found her way into the homes of England, a period was fixed for the existence of the stupid "Debtors' Act." Dickens, with his good 1 Sec. 44, Election Law, 1891.