he was resolved that the discipline of Indian jails should be a really punitive discipline. On the other hand, he wrote, 'You have no right to inflict a punishment of death upon a prisoner who has only been sentenced for a term of years or for life,' by keeping him in a disease-stricken jail. Among the most distressing and clamant cases which came before him was the great Convict Settlement in the Andaman Islands, in which the mortality amounted in 1867 to over 101 per thousand. The measures taken by Lord Lawrence and Lord Mayo, had by 1870 brought down the death-rate to 10 per thousand. But the inquiries made by Lord Mayo disclosed a laxity of discipline productive of scandalous results. In 1871 a cruel and mysterious murder committed in the Penal Settlement, and which had been somewhat slightly reported on by the responsible officers, forced on Lord Mayo's mind the necessity of a complete change in the system pursued.
He found that a few English officials with a handful of soldiers were holding down, in an isolated island group, 600 miles across the sea from Bengal, the 8000 worst criminals of Northern India. Many of them came from the fierce frontier races; most of them were life prisoners, reckless, with no future on this earth. The security of such a settlement depends on clear regulations, exact subordination among the officials, and strict discipline among the convicts. The inquiries conducted under Lord Mayo's orders in 1871, disclosed the absence of every one of these
