Tttlr ADHESION OF THE TIMES.
TILE adhesion of the Wines to the principle which we have just been enforcing is a distinct event in itself. When that powerful organ adopts a principle, we infer that the principle is no longer militant in an order of devoted adherents, but triumphant in popular acceptance. It was a consciousness of the stamp of currency which the Leading Journal can give, that made Sir Robert Peel convey to the office in Printing-house Square the special thanks for support, which Mr. Carlyle first brought before the public in his Memoir of Mr. John Sterling. If the Times, faithful to its own title, strives to reflect the prevailing opinion of the day, it has only the more largely identified itself with such opinion, and acquired a larger power to distinguish opinion as being received. We may sometimes smile at the facility with which our great contem- porary can take up a neglected cause just at the happy moment when the coming success of a principle may assist the success of a journal ; but when it adopts propositions which we have at heart, we all of us congratulate ourselves on the event, and believe that we have success because the Times aids us. For several years, with
little help from contemporary journalism, we had held the faith which we have last been preaching with renewed hope, that no convicted and imprisoned criminal should be restored to liberty until he shall have earned it by labour and conduet the Times now adopts the same creed, and we infer that society at large is on. the point of adopting it.
Somewhat new to the cause, our contemporary, indeed, slightly misconceives the representations of its oldest advocates. For ex- ample, Mr. Hill, defending the principles on which the ticket-of- leave system is based, insists that the principles are sound although they are exposed to serious misconception b y their imperfect ap- plication in the existing system : the Times seems to regard Mr. Rill as being in some way a defender of the system as it is. .Again, Mr. Hill mentions the alleged effect of the ticket.of-leave system upon the adult criminals, as resulting in the reform of 90 per cent,—figures which he mentioned in order to express his strong doubt of their accuracy ; and yet the figures are cited against him as his own. These, however, are minor errors, and since they must get corrected in the progress of discussion now likely to become practical, they will do no serious harm. Certain we are, that Mr. Hill, like. Archbishop Whately, Captain Macono- chic, and the other labourers in the same field, will take little umbrage at small mistakes, while they can congratulate themselves upon so fortunate an adherence as that of the great journal. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Times may do more in a single article than any other or all other educators of opinion in long years of toil. All we ask is, that the Leading Journal, having -reached the top of the hill, will put a" scotcher " behind its wheels, and not run back to the bottom ; a mishap at which it would be easy to scold, but which scolding would not mend.
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