CO885(1-2) — Page 669

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

C.O.

Reference :-

885

2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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Transportation is certainly a great convenience to the State by which it is employed. England has in this respect been the envy of other countries. The French Government is at this moment en- gaged in arranging the substitution of transport- ation for long periods of imprisonment in France, having convinced itself by the researches of official inquirers, that it will derive great benefit from the change. The writer of the present paper has had an opportunity of reading the reports of different Commissioners who were employed by the French Government some years ago to visit the prisons of Belgium and of all the principal States of Germany and Italy. In all of them he found the same complaints of the difficulty of disposing of offenders after their sentences were expired. In Austria the Government attempted to cut the knot by providing that no convict should be set at large until he could prove that he had the means of earn- ing an honest livelihood; a rule which, if really enforced, would in most old countries amount to a sentence of imprisoment for life. All the reports were full of statements about récidives, relapses, a term unknown in English in discussing matters of this kind; about récidivistes, a term unknown in French itself, except in the works of official writers who have been driven to the use of it by the constant recurrence of the class of men whom it describes; about Sociétés de Patronage, private bene- volent associations for endeavouring to promote the restoration in society of liberated offenders. Nothing can more strongly illustrate the exemption we have enjoyed in England from one main difficulty of secondary punishment, than the fact that in our country, so full of benevolent institutions, this par- ticular class of charitable societies (with the excep- tion perhaps of one for the reformation of juvenile offenders) has hitherto been unknown. In Prussia, as the writer has understood, it is the practice of the police to require that persons who have committed their offences in one portion of the Prussian Domi- nions should, after liberation, establish their domi- cile in an entirely distinct and remote portion. This affords a striking example of the manner in which similar difficulties lead to the attempt of similar remedies. Prussia has no colonies, and yet

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by the rule just mentioned, she makes the nearest approach which is possible for a continental State to transportation.

Without dwelling further on the reflections sug- gested by the experience of other countries, the general arguments in favour of transportation are sufficiently obvious. By removal from his old haunts and associates, and also from a country where the supply of labour is in excess of the demand, and every candidate for employment is therefore almost fastidiously scrutinized, the crimi

ual himself has a far better chance of reform in the colonies; for the very same reasons the mother- country profits his transportation; and the colonies gain the benefit of his services in a state of society where manual labour is greatly wanted, whilst if he undergo a proper course of preliminary discipline, and if the whole number sent be in only modérate proportion to the free population, the moral tone of the convict is far more likely to be raised than that of the community to be lowered. The convict, it should always be remembered, must be somewhere. If the general balance of good and evil be looked to,

it is almost beyoud dispute that his presence in a well-situated colouy does less harm and more good than it would do anywhere else. And if the inte- rests concerned be taken separately, it must still be admitted that the two first parties to the transaction, viz., the State and the criminal, make a large and undeniable gain, whilst the colony, if it suffers some moral evil, suffers infinitely less than any old and over-crowded society, in which the convict should be turned loose with far greater inducements to commit fresh crime.

Such are some of the prominent and most obvious arguments on one side of the question. On the other side it is objected that the colonists are treated unjustly by continuing to introduce convicts among them; and also that it is impolitic and even wicked to plant in favoured regions of the globe whole communities of bad men. The force of the first objection is much weakened by reflecting on the history of both New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. They were founded at a great cost by this country, purely as penal colonies. The first settlers were attracted to them partly by the fineness of the climate and other good qualities of the country,