In Turkey where prisons exist in every city and town of a certain extent, and where little attention has hitherto been paid to the science of constructing and administering them, there is ample room for improvement without any considerable out lay. Much unnecessary bodily suffering, much of the evil resulting from moral contagion and from a corrupt and cruel exercise of authority not contemplated by the law, may be removed at once by a few judicious regulations and corresponding arrangements. Even the adoption of these indispensable preliminaries to a more complete system of improvement could hardly be effected without some additional expense. But in the present advanced state of human knowledge and public opinion no government which respects itself and claims a position among civilised communities can shut its eyes to the abuses which prevail, or to the horrors which past ages may have left in that part of its administration which separate the repression of crime and the personal constraint of the guilty or the accused.