The Farm accounts have been but roughly kept, as I could never see any certain way of arriving with accuracy at the cost of cabbages, potatoes, &c. consumed in the house. We merely, therefore, give an account of that portion of the produce which is actually sold.

The past year has from many causes been one of unusual expense. The price of Provisions may be reckoned, at least, at one half more than the average previous years.

The large number of Schools arising in all parts of England has caused a great demand for Schoolmasters and Bailiffs. This I have been anxious to supply as far as I could, and have had a considerable number of men training in the School to act as Masters or Bailiffs elsewhere, amounting to an average of three extra masters throughout the year. I am happy to add that, besides many masters of other Schools who have spent from a few days to a fortnight here, and many who have come for a short time and given it up, six men trained here have gone to other Schools, five of whom have hitherto given satisfaction. The cost, however, of the (average) three masters' board can hardly be estimated at less than, say £20. each.

There have also been an average of about five boys unpaid for by Government, having been received unconvicted before the allowance for convicted boys was granted. These may be roughly estimated to have caused a deficit of £65.

The increase also of the value of Stock on the Farm (consequent on the increase of the number of boys and acres) from £298. 8s. 3. to £476. 10s. accounts for £178., making altogether £443. more than might be expected in ordinary years, which renders the less hopeless our deficiency of this year of £283.

We must, however, acknowledge the receipt of some extraordinary donations, but for which the deficit would have been far greater. The money value of these has been considerable, the testimony they give of the opinions of the donors has been far more. particularly to £50. from Charles Bathurst, Esq., and £25. from R. S. Holford, Esq.

I allude

When, however, we consider that in nearly every County in England £700. or £800. has been raised for this purpose at the very outset, (in many far more), while in this county the subscriptions (exclusive of the Managers) amounted to somewhat under £260. in the first three years, and 163. 14s. in the present year-I cannot but hope that now that the system has ceased to be considered as a wild experiment, and has been proved, by God's help, to have hitherto succeeded and borne good fruit, the whole deficit of this year may not be left to be made up by

Your obedient Servant,

T. B. LI. BAKER.

At the Birmingham April Sessions the Recorder delivered the following Charge, which is just now most important, when most ill-advised and ignorant would-be legislators are endeavouring to subvert the Ticket-of-Leave System, because it has been carried out with a haste and an ignorance little inferior to that which they, themselves, display in opposing it.

For the report of the Charge, and of the presentment of the Grand Jury, we are indebted to Aris's Birmingham Gazette, of April 21st, and to The Midland Counties' Herald, of April 24th:

The proclamation against Vice and Immorality having been read, the learned Recorder addressed the Grand Jury as follows:Gentlemen, I am sorry to have to inform you that your duties will be very heavy on the present occasion. The calendar, which is not quite made up yet, consists of 136 prisoners; probably the number brought before you will not be much less than 150. The interval between the Sessions has been considerable, no doubt, but in the Parliamentary Session before the last an Act passed which it was expected would have the effect of lessening considerably the number of prisoners committed for trial at Assizes and Sessions. I refer to the Act extending the power of summarily convicting for felony, which had up to that time been limited to young persons, extending it under certain circumstances, which I must not stop to enumerate. And true it is that there have been many such convictions in this, as in other towns; but whether the effect will be permanently good, or is at this present moment such as to diminish materially the number of persons committed to Assizes and to Sessions, may well be doubted, because it has been found by experience that whatever gives facility to the prosecution of offenders multiplies the number brought before tribunals, whether summary tribunals or juries, to have their cases considered. It is quite a distinct question, and one I do not now enter upon, whether the number of offences is increased or decreased; but certainly the number of offenders brought into Court, as is proved by experience, is augmented. It is increased for this reason, that forty or fifty years ago any person who proseeuted a criminal did it at his own expense. I well remember when a boy a friend of my father's being robbed on the highway near to this town, and being shot at; his life was thereby put in danger and his property taken from him. He prosecuted the robbers as soon as they were apprehended; but he had to pay the costs of their apprehension, and the costs of their prosecution, and his bill amounted to 90%. It cost him, therefore, 901. to be robbed and to be shot at; and the result was, that the offenders, being young, were treated mercifully, and in the course of eighteen months were again in the town of Birmingham, passing him in the street, entertaining, it is to be supposed, no feelings towards him which it would be very comfortable for him to contemplate. It is not much to be wondered at that, when the tax of prosecution was so enormous, prosecutions were comparatively rare, and persons have from this hastily concluded that as the prosecution was rare, crime was rare; but to gentlemen of your sagacity it will appear at a glance that the one fact does not by any means necessarily follow the other. The Legislature found it necessary to give facilities for prosecution (and the main facility was to pay the costs of the prosecutions from some public fund), considering it highly unjust that when the community had not been sufficiently strong, or sufficiently vigilant, to guard one

of its members from robbery, but that in consequence of their inability to guard him he had become a private sufferer, it was very wrong to increase that suffering by making him pay a large amount to protect that public which had not protected him. Nothing could be more fair than such reasoning; but in the very difficult subject of criminal jurisprudence it is scarcely possible to take a step, however right the direction may appear, which does not draw after it consequences quite unexpected, and very little to be desired. Certainly the consequence of the payment of the expenses of prosecutions is to bring cases into this Court which a wise and humane discretion would overlook, and give the offender another chance. The severity of punishments has to some extent that effect. Humane persons (and humanity I am glad is spreading amongst us) shrink from exposing a delinquent, for an offence which they consider slight, or caused by some overwhelming temptation, or committed by a young person without experience, to a severe penalty; thus the very severity of the punishment often acts as a protection against those who are guilty of crime. But the course of legislation has been now for many years gradually to lighten punishment; and the course of the public mind has been even more rapid than the Legislature, so that punishments as they stand on the law books cannot be inflicted in this Court. For instance, I cannot usefully, and even there may be doubt if I can justly, inflict punishments which are heavier than those that would be inflicted on the same individual by the discretion of Judges or other Recorders in other places. Of course any great inequality of that kind makes it a matter of accident, not of guilt, how much a man is punished; as it would follow that a man would be punished severely, not because his offence is great, but because it is committed in a certain jurisdiction; and punished lightly, not because his offence is trivial, but because his crime occurred in a district where a lenient scale of punishments obtain. Punishments which might appear to this Court expedient, if they go beyond that scale will, of course, be mitigated by the authorities at the Home Office, to whom her Majesty the Queen entrusts that part of her prerogative which enables her to pardon or mitigate the sentences of prisoners. Thus, there are two currents in motion, operating continually to lessen punishment; and the Legislature now and then steps in and makes a very great change, of the character to which I have referred, in the extension of the SummaryJurisdiction Act, because there is a limit to the punishment which Magistrates can infiîct, much below the limit applying to Assizes and Sessions, and the consequence is that many prisoners are brought here who would not have been brought. The prosecutor says to himself, "If this person were to be punished by transportation or very long imprisonment, or taken before a large public body and exposed to shame, I should shrink from bringing him before the Court, or from having him apprehended; but he will be placed before Magistrates, will be at once subjected to punishment, without waiting for trial, and his punishment must be a light one, because Magistrates have not the power, if they have the disposition, to make the punishment heavy. I think, therefore, it would be better for all that he should

be sent to prison." But what is the result? He is subjected to a slight punishment; he is not in custody long enough for any system of reformation, however well devised, to produce any impression upon him; he has no motive for attempting self-reformation with a view to shorten his imprisonment, for it is already so short that it cannot be lessened by any such process. Meanwhile he has lost his position in society. He was one of the honest and respectable portion of the community; he has passed the Rubicon; he has entered into the criminal class. He had a horror of a gaol; he has entered the gacl; he finds it not so dreadful a place as his imagination pictured it. The shame of having been in gaol he cannot shake off. What is his position on his discharge? He was not able to resist temptation when it was comparatively easy to resist it; he now finds himself outlawed, and repelled by society; that position which he was not able to maintain while it was easily maintainable, he has now to recover in the midst of all difficulties. This is his prospect on the one hand. On the other hand he has formed connections-he has learnt that there are means of maintenance which will preserve him from the necessity of excessive toil; which, if they are pretty sure to bring upon him great evils, those evils are in the future and prospective, while his wants and desires press upon him on the instant, and with tyrannical power. What wonder, then, if he soon falls? What wonder if he quickly finds himself again engaged in acts of dishonesty, and if he is by and by brought before us again? I am not entering into any speculation, or indulging in any effort of the imagination, in saying this. What I have told you is, every word of it, the fruit of a bitter experience, gathered in Criminal Courts, during a period of nearly forty years.

I have told you the calendar consists of 136 prisoners. I have before me what you might well suppose another calendar, and a tolerably large one. It is not so, but is a list of persons who have been convicted, with a short note of each conviction. I find that very nearly sixty of the 136 have been formerly punished, some of them many times. There is a case of an individual (I will not men. tion his name, because I have no desire to prejudice you against him), twenty-three years of age. It is recorded against his name, that on the 27th of October, 1849, he was summarily convicted for refusing to work at the Workhouse, and sentenced to fourteen days' imprisonment; July, 1851, for wilful damage, one month's imprisonment; 1852, for stealing thirteen pounds of lead, twelve months' imprisonment; 1853, misbehaviour in the Workhouse, fourteen days; the same year, for an assault, fourteen days; same year, for running away from the Workhouse with the clothes of that establishment, one month; the same year, for insolence in the Workhouse, twenty-one days-four convictions, therefore, in 1853; at the January Sessions, 1854, he is convicted of uttering two counterfeit half-crowns, and imprisoned two years; on the 24th of July, in the following year, he is sentenced to three months' imprisonment, for assaulting an officer of the Gaol, and now he is here for another offence. That is his history from 1849 to 1856. I shall not detain you any further except to express the conviction of my own mind, which I feel

gaining strength year by year, month by month, day by day, for a very long period, that the only principle of administering punishment which does not involve absurdity when it comes to be carefully investigated, is this: when once a criminal is convicted, keep him until he has given him cogent proof that he is reformed, and if he never give such cogent proof, keep him till the day of his death-let him be released by death alone. All this may sound exceedingly harsh to those who have not been called upon to investigate and study the subject: but I believe it is capable of being proved to be the principle most consistent, not only with the safety of society, but with the good of the individual; because what can be (if we look at it either as members of society or as Christians) a greater misfortune to a man than to be put on a course which leaves him almost by an inevitable necessity to go on offending against the laws of God and man, from year to year, during the term of his life! Do we not do him, as well as society, a benefit by keeping him in custody, and thus prevent him sinning against God and man? I ask your excuse for having troubled you at this length. It was not my intention to have uttered ten words when I began to address you. I have been led on by the great importance of the subject, an importance which, if it even could be exaggerated, is so by the fact that the Legislature is now about to enter on an examination of the great question of punishment. I wish that that examination may be so conducted as to lead to such changes as shall make it less painful than it now is to preside in a Criminal Court; for the feeling uppermost in the mind of every person who, like myself, is called upon to adjudicate in criminal matters, must be that they are engaged in the execution of laws, and in the administration of penalties, which, to speak in the most cautious terms, are far less efficient for all good purposes than anyone could wish to see them who has the welfare of his country at heart.—The Grand Jury then retired.

Appeals. There were various Appeals against the Borough and Parish rates entered for hearing, including many by the London and North-western Railway Company; only one, however, was enter. tained, that of Gillot v. the Guardians and Overseers of Birmingham. -Mr. Field for the appellant. Mr. Spooner and Mr. Wills for the respondents,-It appeared from Mr. Field's statement that the appellant complained of being over assessed for premises in Grahamstreet, and also that it was unequal as compared with other properties in the parish. In reply to a question from Mr. Spooner, Mr. Field stated that he had the notice of appeal, but not the necessary recognizances to prosecute. Upon this admission, Mr. Spooner said they could not proceed, as the local Act clearly required that the recognizances should be entered into. In this opinion the learned Recorder concurred, and ordered the rate to be confirmed. -The other appeals were respited.

The trials of the prisoners were then proceeded with. The following is a summary of the sentences:-Penal servitude: Four to six years, fifteen to four years.-Imprisonment: Four to two years, eight to eighteen months, two to fifteen months, fifteen to twelve months, four to eleven months, one to ten months, four to nine months,