all prisoners, at their entrance into an institution, for a certain time, during which the prison directors, the clergymen and physician should visit them, obtain a proper influence over them, and at the same time impart necessary instruction. (2.) This time must be longer with relapsed prisoners. (3.) Solitary confinement should be used as a disciplinary means. (4.) It may be inflicted even for a longer period upon obstinate convicts, who cannot be subdued by other treatment, as well as upon those who appear to be particularly dangerous in the way of corrupting other prisoners. The prison committee should decide upon the application and duration of this confinement. (5.) It is further desirable that courts should have the power, as is now the case in England, to order in their sentences, that persons shall suffer solitary confinement for a certain time, for example, three or four months, a year. The prison committee are then to determine how this sentence shall be most appropriately executed. (6.) Absolute isolation should be applied to all who are condemned for a short time, for example, for a year or less. Just these persons require a punishment of the most intense effect. If the legislator must decide upon the introduction of one or the other penitentiary system, there are, at all events, certain arrangements necessary, as conditions, to the efficacy of either system. Among these we reckon: I. The establishment of a central board which shall regulate and superintend the prison system, which may be done by charging one member of the ministry of justice exclusively with the direction of prisons. II. The whole penal system must be brought into harmony with the penitentiary, namely, (a) by a reduction of the time of punishment, which was suitable in former times when the prisoners worked together in common and had communication with each other, but which would be unjust with the present increased severity of imprisonment; (b) by changing the system of infamising pun ishments, as the degradation of the convict, attending this system, is incompatible with the spirit of the system of reformation; (c) by an improved legislation on restoration of rights (rehabilitation,) since the liberated prisoner must, at all events, have the prospect of regaining, through good behavior, the enjoyment of all civil and political rights. III. A chief endeavor must be to obtain, in the fourth place, for the penitentiaries, distinguished clergymen, who shall also be placed in good outward circumstances, so that this position may hold out inducements to men of talents to devote themselves to this severe vocation, and in the second place, (a thing easily practicable in catholic countries,) to leave, as much as possible, the immediate superintendence of the prisoners to religious societies, as has already been done with success in Namur, in Belgium, (see above,) in Lyons, and in other cities in France, and, as we have above shown, has received the approbation of the French government. IV. There are required special houses of reformation for juvenile offenders, of whose importance and proper effect in several countries we have already spoken in another article. V. Finally, it is indispensable to obtain the energetic and intelligent coöperation of societies of benevolent persons, who shall make it their object to take care of liberated criminals, and endeavor to procure for them work and opportunity for an honest living, to support the necessitous and to keep a strict watch on the behavior of those who return into the bosom of civil society. Only when these requisitions are complied with, we may speak of improvement in the prison system, and calculate upon a better reform of penal legislation, which, without the support of a wisely organized prison system, cannot hope for any efficiency. B. R. ART. V.-ON THE NATURE OF THAT INTEREST WHICH RE- WHETHER any estate remained in the grantor after the conveyance of a conditional fee, and whether after the conveyance of a particular estate, with a remainder which was incapable of vesting, the fee was in abeyance, or dwelt in the party making the conveyance, have been questions discussed with all the subtlety of scholastic logic. But the questions, though subtle, are not unimportant, and though the controversy is in a great measure founded upon distinctions which are merely verbal, the conclusions drawn from positions, which differ only in the terms of discussion, are widely variant and tend to results affecting important principles. It has been urged that when a fee is conveyed, the whole estate of the grantor passes, and that it is inconsistent with the nature of the grant itself, that another fee should remain in the party making the conveyance. On the other side, it has been argued, that as the whole estate reverts to the grantor when incapable of farther effect according to the terms of the limitation, there must have before existed in him an estate subject only to partial limitations. If the grantor had an actual reversion and not a mere possibility of reversion, it has been supposed that he might have limited a remainder which would have been effectual. Whether such a limitation could have been made, seems to depend upon the powers of the tenant of the conditional fee. There is no doubt that the tenant of a conditional fee exercised the power of conveying a fee which was divested of the condition an estate which in the feoffee became an absolute estate in fee simple. If this power was rightfully exercised, it is evident that the grantor had no actual interest remaining in him. But there is reason to suppose that his conveyance was effectual only as the feoffment of tenant for life would be-tortiously. In the case of William v. Berkley, (Plowd. Comm 247,) Brown J. says, that "when a conditional fee is given, the alienation of the donee after issue had, before the statute de donis, was a great wrong, although the common law permitted it to be done. Dyer Ch. J. said, "It is to be presumed that he who would not have the donee to do any act that tenant in fee simple might do, did not choose that he should have a fee simple estate." But whether his conveyance was tortious or not, there is no doubt it was entirely effectual. There is a great degree of doubt in regard to the precise operation of consequences of the estate both before and after the condition. The power of alienation was allowed on the ground of policy. The intention of the grantor was to retain something more than a mere possibility, and lord Coke says, that limitations of remainders after conditional fees were frequent in old conveyances. The policy, which sustained alienation, was inconsistent with giving effect to these limitations, and when the interest came to be regarded as one which was capable of being destroyed by the tenant of the conditional estate, the policy of the law also rendered all limitations by deed of a mere contingency ineffectual. But as the alienation of the estate was effected by conveyances which were merely tortious, the donor had an actual estate or interest which it was only necessary to protect against tortious alienations, to render indefensible. This was effectually done by the statute de donis, and when the power of the donee was restrained, the interest of the donor became strictly a reversion, and the estate of the donee a particular estate upon which remainders might be limited. This was also effected by the means of uses and wills. It is only in relation to limitations by conveyances of the latter kind, that the question is now of practical importance. It is admitted by writers on this subject, who deny that any estate continues in the donor, that when, in England, the conditional gift is made by the king, he may also grant the reversionary interest, and that this interest is incapable of being defeated by the tenant of the conditional fee, although the estate of the latter is created by grant. This proves that whenever such a fee is created by any species of conveyance, an interest remains in the donor, his heirs or devisees, which, but for the power of alienation, which for reasons of policy was yielded to the tenant of a conditional fee, would have all the incidents of an estate in reversion. It would seem, that, but for the sanction given by the courts to the tortious conveyance of tenants of a conditional fee, an estate in remainder might have been limited by the donor, and if no such limitation was made, that an interest. would have remained in him which must have taken effect in him or his heirs when the fee determined. As no such conveyances are allowed to defeat the limitations made in devises, it follows that limitations after a determinable fee may be made by will; that after such a fee there may be a reversionary estate in the heir; and that a residuary devise will also pass that reversionary interest. By executory devises, estates in fee are made determinable, not by the non-performance of a condition, merely on the failure of issue of a certain line, but by absolute limitation, or by substitution. If limitations analogous to executory devises had been |