First Offences.
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majority, and their views of things do not Scotland; but the injury done by the other change much, for all the blizzards of evening evil, the habitual dissipation of the mind, papers which occasionally disturb the surface must be more lasting. The public is per of the world. Still there are two evil con- i petually swallowing mental absinthe till it sequences about this appetite for sensational loses all relish for healthy diet. It will scarce trials about which there can be no dispute, ly read anything so dry as political thinking, although one of the two may prove to be only and for independent reflection it leaves itself temporary. They increase the cleavages of no time. Already it demands that its mental bread shall be cut into minute squares, so society. Owing mainly to our system of re porting, which is healthily reticent whenever that it may be swallowed as pills are, without poor men are exclusively concerned — the mastication or effort; and presently it will very worst English trial of our time never refuse bread altogether, as young men and obtained one line in a London paper — the women do who have indulged for years in a course of exciting novelettes. That is an trials which are fully detailed are nearly al ways those of the cultivated, to the increase immense evil, threatening the whole progress of the entirely unfounded theory that the of the new generation;• and we confess we see cultivated are exceptionally corrupt, and to no remedy for it, any more than we do for the the creation of a most regrettable impediment sale of shilling shockers and penny dreadfuls. in the way of their moral leadership. The It is a mischief of the times, produced by uncultured lose reverence for the cultured, the rushing advance in the means of dis and with it half the advantage they might seminating knowledge of which some of derive from their existence. This phase of us are so proud; but though at present feeling will probably pass with the spread of incurable, the mischief may at least be knowledge, as it has passed in Germany and acknowledged. — Spectator.
FIRST OFFENCES. THE "London Times" thus comments a twofold punishment for his old and for his on an important change just intro new offence. Good results are expected to duced into the French Criminal Adminis follow from the change, and it may be hoped tration : " By a law promulgated on March with reason that they will follow. The dis 27th, a great distinction is to be made between tinction in treatment is based upon a distinc first and subsequent offences. The man tion which exists in fact. A first offence does who is brought up for the first time and not necessarily prove that the offender be found guilty will be sentenced to fine or longs to what is known as the criminal class. imprisonment as the nature of his offence I He may have been betrayed into crime under demands, but the sentence will not neces the pressure of special circumstances, or may sarily take effect. The execution of it may have given way to sudden temptation by no be postponed, if the court so determines; deliberate choice of his own. To send such and if the offender keeps a clear record for a man to jail may have just the effect which the next five years he will be suffered to es a wise legislature would be most careful to cape unpunished. But if during his period guard against. It may introduce him to a of probation he falls again into crime life of crime by the stigma which it puts upon and comes again before the court, his old him as a jail-bird, and by thus making it sentence will be revived, and he will undergo very difficult for him to earn an honest liveli
