17 MARCH 1849, Page 12

WHO SHOULD KEEP OUR CONVICTS?

THERE is one question which those who undertake the responsi- bility of renewing convict transportation are bound to answer— By what moral right they inflict on the Colonies a burden which they deem too grievous for the Mother-country ? For the pretext which Lord Grey advances against the Cape of Good Hope, that money has been advanced to the colony, will not bear a second look ; and the shifting counsels which prevail among Mr. Glad- stone, Sir George Grey, and the other leading men of Parlia- ment, show that they are all at sea, without distinct or settled conclusions. They want the will or the capacity to grapple with the question, and in the mean time they are avowedly making tentative "experiments." Be it so : if England cannot produce statesmen who will probe questions that press for settlement until they arrive at fixed principles—if England can for the time pro- duce nothing but empirical experimentalists—on her be the pe- nalty: but by what right do the quasi statesmen, engaged in these experiments without principles, shuffle the gross conse- quences of their trial-schemes upon the Colonies ? Before they inflict any burden so heavy, so noxious, and so degrading, they are bound at least to make out their case for doing so. The proposal is, to land yearly on the shores of the Colonies a certain number of convicted felons, of whom England wishes to get rid. The colonists at large deprecate the invasion: the Cape of Good Hope entreats that it may not be contaminated as Aus- tralia has been ; New South Wales implores that it may be suffered to continue the work, already begun, of freeing itself from past contamination. But whether the colonists urged these most reasonable claims or not, the fact is self-evident, that Eng- land ought not to impose the consequences of her own criminal- producing tendencies upon the Colonies.

Not a pretext advanced for the evasion of responsibility will stand examination. It is said, for instance, that if we retain our convicts at home, we shall create horrible depositories of crime, like the Bagnes at Toulon and Brest: but it is not necessary that we should form our convict establishments on bad models, which ought to be compared only with our gaols before the time of Harvey, or our chain-gangs in the Colonies before they were abolished. It is said that we cannot imprison so many because it would be too expensive : but the well-known case of Glasgow Bridewell shows that prisoners may be detained at a less cost than the newest of Lord Grey's convict systems will entail. It is said that the prisoner's health would suffer from a longer con- finement than twelve or eighteen months: we have seen prisoners in good health who had been in separate confinement for three or four years ; and improvements might be made even on our best prisons. That deterring punishment must be sought before

reformation : but no evidence has been advanced, to show that compulsory reformation is not the most deterring of punishments to the lawless—not the alternative of punishment, but the most effective form of it. That if we do not send the convicts abroad, they will return upon society : but how do we prevent their re- turning upon society by deliberately pouring their bands upon society in the Colonies ? The statesmanship which consents to use that pretext deserves no name but the homely and opprobrious one of "slut's tidiness" —a sham order, made by hiding dirt and rubbish out of sight. It was some such instinct which used to make the Dracos of the good old hanging times bury their criminals as fast as possible. Our " humanity " makes us scruple about killing—our nerves have grown nicer and more effeminate; so we pack over our cri- minals to the Colonies. It is true that such a mode of disposing of them multiplies crime in the Colonies—even murder and life- destroying depravity ; so that for every life saved from the hang- man probably we throw away several lives : but those disagree- able consequences befall abroad ; the criminals do not come back upon "society "—meaning our own society ; and if the horrors are really greater, our own stomachs are saved the sickening. The Colonies are very bad places for bestowing criminals at large on parole or "ticket of leave," because the population being so much smaller the ratio of criminals to the whole is increased in an immense degree, and the character of a thinly-peopled country enfeebles effective superintendence. Oh, but the convicts, you say, are to be reformed. Indeed ! you can reform criminals ? you have at last found out that you can really reform criminals? You have been told so before, and you doubted it. But if you can, why should you not keep them at home? why be so alarmed at the prospect of their "returning back upon society "? Is it lest they should fail to get employment ? are the Colonies so much more charitable, intelligent, and wise, that they will accord employment which the prejudices of the home-keeping folks re- fuse? Ask the South Australians and the Cape colonists, who refuse the boys from Parkhurst, and deprecate Lord Grey's cri- minals though warranted to be regenerate: ask Mr. Mathew Hill and the employers of the youths at Birmingham whom he has rescued at the outset of a career in crime.

The advocates of transportation have not fairly tried any one of their own assertions by experience—not even by the experi- ence which lies ready-made to their hands. They set about the task of administering the criminal law—a work of magnitude which grows as the population grows—without fixed principles or settled plans ; they shift from one difficulty to another, and fall back upon condemned schemes with a periodicity of vacilla- tion. •

One of their expedients is likely to bring an explosion : among the criminals whom they are inflicting on the Cape of Good Hope are some of the Irish rebels—officers for the Caffre armies in the next war—allies for Prsetorius and his Anglo-Dutch brethren. The Imperial Executive is actually sending out the Celt to sympathize with the dark-skinned wild Irish of South Africa, and to set "the green above the red" on the coast of Natal ! Lord Grey and his cousin George claim for England the right to do this because they have advanced the Cape colonists some money this, put down the Caffres. Doubtless, before many years are gone, we shall see that admirable pantomimist Sir Harry Smith sent to beleaguer Smith O'Brien in the house of some Hottentot widow M'Cormack, and then dancing a jig with the vanquished Brien Boroihme, and talking inverted O'Connellisms to a conclave of Molly Maguires, on his own greatness and the beauties of allegiance. Lord Grey says we must enter upon this plan of Hibernicizing the Cape, "because we have a right to do

In great acts, especially those that profess to enforce discipline and guide the morals of the country, it does not become the statesman to proceed on assumptions : yet it is only by gross assumptions that it is now declared expedient to remove our criminals to other communities. Primft facie, that country which produces the criminals is bound to take charge of them herself. It is by some fault of hers that they are produced, and she is responsible. England produces many classes of criminals ; among them, those who inherit the profession of crime and can- not escape from it, those whom ignorance betrays to vice, and those whom necessity renders desperate: she has not absolved herself from complicity in producing those the three great classes of criminals, by enforcing the simple and direct modes of pre- vention. A criminal population having accrued, England by her Government has never tried her best even to palliate the evil : she will not really look into the question, but prefers to dabble on its surface among dogmas and presumptions and empirical ex- periments ; she refuses the most likely experiments, to prefer the least likely ; she leaves the most scientific and active criminal reformers, such as Mr. Mathew Hill and Captain Maconochie, to find patrons in local magistrates ; slawahrinks from the trpuble of real investigation, and likes best those who are 'content to tinker old plans; • and when the embodied result of her negligence pre- sents itself in the horrid shape of a great criminal population, she hurries the felon band out of her own sight, 'among the de- serving colonists who are winning new provinces for her empire, to harass them and deprave their children. England, we say, does this—through the faineants whom she suffers to act on her behalf.