27 DECEMBER 1851, Page 12

NEW NORFOLK ISLANDS IN THE PACIFIC.

A REPORT has been put in circulation, through a provincial jour- nal, that new penal colonies are to be formed in the far South., It is possible that the Liverpool Albion may have been misinformed, but it is also possible that the statement may be quite true, and it is at least specific. The statement is, that "the Lords of the Ad- miralty have given directions for the immediate equipment of two vessels to proceed upon an exploratory expedition to the South Sea Islands, including New Caledonia and the Fejees, with a view to ascertain the capabilities they respectively present for the pur- poses in question "—penal settlements, and coaling stations for steamers. " We also learn that her Majesty's ships Herald and Arrow are destined for this service " ; Captain Mangles Denham to have the command. Such is the story ; and there is in it an air of probability.

We know how puzzled her Majesty's Ministers have been to hit upon some mode for disposing of convicts : we know that the Aus- tralian Anti-Convict League increases in numbers and influence ; that the Australias generally are angered at the idea of receiving more convicts ; that the discovery of the gold-beds in Australia must make the custody of convicts all but impossible anywhere within the shores of that compact continent ; that convicts have been sent begging for reception from colony to colony, and wel- veined only in the unimportant colony of Western Australia, re- pulsed with rebellion from the Cape of Good Hope ; we know that the newfangled canto of half-measures or less than half-measures, the " probationary " plan, has disappointed expectation ; and we know that, in default of better correctional discipline, of better morals in the country, of better arrangements to prevent the fac- titious multiplication of criminals, the number of convicts is in- creasing on the hands of her Majesty's Ministers. They are in as great a puzzle as an eminent manufacturing chemist whom we once saw brought to his wits'-end in facing the question where to cast the dry rubbish of his vast factory. Ministers indeed have had advice upon the subject. They have been most perseveringly and ably advised by Captain Maconochie, how to adopt a principle of correctional industry, which would render the convict a comparatively harmless and tractable animal ; but the plan is too simple for official ideas in these super-philoso- phic days. Ministers have preferred a plan of " model prison," where the prisoner was to be veiled lest 'his blushes be seen, fed into a moral state of his physiology, lectured and preached into a beatific condition, and then given forth to the world as a blessing. Some prisoners have gone crazy under the process of correctional coddling ; stronger minds have preserved their tone—unaltered ; and the " model prison" is now one of those pretty state toys which the authors don't very well know how to get rid of quietly, without notice or ridicule. If a little local earthquake could swallow it up, "unbeknown," during a French revolution or any other vast diver- sion, how glad didactic officials would feel!

On the other hand, the Ministers of the country have been ad- vised, with much simple painstaking and clear intelligence, by Mr. Adderley, the Member for North Staffordshire, how they might diminish the number of convicts, by revisit]g those laws and regu- lations which contribute to multiply criminals,—especially bad prison-regulations, the substitution of coarse prison training for proper tuition of the vagabond young, and ineffective laws for the relief of the poor under real hunger and want of work. But Mi- nisters are too busy with important affairs of state to look after the material welfare of the country so carefully as the advice implies. Intrigues to get into office, or to keep in it—devices to get up sham reform movements, which will return " political capital "- contrivances to make the calamities of foreign nations fall in with the nice little Downing Street arrangements for patching up un- toward " Ministerial crises "—with all these important affairs of state, how can Ministers attend to prisons and paupers ? Do pri- soners and paupers deserve such special attention ? Besides, Sir George Grey and Lord Grey have their own fancies and hobbies ; and what is the use of being in office if a man is not to do what he likes with his own ?

Moreover, they have " tried " everything. They have tried abolishing transportation, under the dictation of Sir William Molesworth's Committee ; they have tried model-prisoning ; they have tried the " distribution " system ; they have tried Cap- tain Maeonochie at Norfolk Island—where he succeeded as far as they let him and as long as he stopped ; they have tried the ticket-of-leave plan; they have tried the probation plan ; and now why should they not fall back on new penal settlements ? It is true that amended ways have been " tried " only in a superficial, slighting mode, or mixed up with incompatible plans, merely for the credit of saying that such or such a plan was to be " tried " ; but still the official conscience holds itself quit. If you warn them that they will make another Norfolk Island Grooat Island in the Pacific, they may reply—" Well, we cannot help it : human nature is human nature, aboriginally black and bad and inclining to the Norfolk Island type ; if you. doubt, you. are a shocking sceptical philosopher; and convict nature being naturally hideous, convict keepers must not• be nice." If it is necessary, however, to establish convict depots, why send them to the Antipodes, instead, of keep- ing them at home, where they could be much more efficiently guarded ? To this question the standing reply is to point to the agues in France. But the exa,mple of another country, noted for the tld,keeping of her convict force, is no answer to the demand for a proper system of keeping. The only sound and- sensible

evidently is, to do all thatispossible in the way of dimini

the number of convicts accruing ; and then to bestonr the rest so as to be effectively guarded, and placed under a system of correc- tional discipline, as much as possible simple, efficient, and self- supporting. If convicts can be properly kept, they can be properly kept at home. Meanwhile, however, by permiesion of the general apathy and disgust at interference in public affairs, Ministers are likely enough to indulge the official propensity to found new states like Norfolk Island.