19 DECEMBER 1846, Page 1

Earl Grey is about to vinaic. ke some of the

expectation formed of him as a Colonial Minister, by reforming the system of con- vict transportation. Transportation to Van Diemen's Land is to be checked ; that of males is to be stopped altogether ; the mi- gration of female convicts will continue for a time, to restore the balance of the sexes, then to cease; the establishment of concen- trated crime at Norfolk Island is to be broken up; the term of convict punishment is to be measured by labour instead of time. The readers of the Spectator know the shocking and long-enduring atrocities which this measure, in the year I846, is to stop. It does honour to the Minister.

But it involves another and larger consideration. What is to be done with the convicts? Our prison system performs for the body corporate the reverse of that which the lungs perform for the human body : the lungs purify and vivify the blood ; the prisons, continually sucking in and giving forth a stream of living crime, vitiate the population and sow the seeds of death. Confessedly, our system makes the criminal worse ; by statistics we know that it keeps up the process which we have described with reaction as regular as that of the pulse. It professes to teach virtue by example, which is indirect, dubious, and general ; it teaches vice by direct initiation. This subject has been oppor- tunely brought before the Law Amendment Society this week, by Mr. M. D. Hill ; who proposes to substitute for penal example and temporary imprisonment, reformation and imprisonment for the whole term required by the reforming process. His arguments, derived from practical experience, will tell with practical people. He contends that the plan he advocates will be more efficacious than that of the vaunted " example " by punishment, which is neither certain nor immediate. It might be added, that pain is not the most effective instrument even as an example. Pain is properly the antagonist only of those feelings which are opposite to pain : those which take a morbid delight in pain—despair, cruelty, revenge, and other tragic passions—may even derive a fascinat- ing intensity from the contemplation of a mortal doom. Moreover, mere transient penalty— to be incurred or evaded at a chance, at the worst to be endured in hardened contumacy—is an example far less cogent than the spectacle of vice seized in its own trap, held while it is vice, and compulsorily transformed. Such an ex- ample wears the aspect of destiny, which cannot be gainsaid. Mr. Hill modestly limits his suggestion, for the present, to the juvenile class of offenders ; but the time is coming for a thorough revision of our penal system.