The Penal Servitude Commission has reported (except on the subject
of transportation) arguments and conclusions very similar to those reported by the Social Science Association some months since, and the report will give a great impulse to the Irish system. But on transportation, we regret to say, the Commissioners cling to the old views, and urge the en- largement and freer use of the penal colony in Western Australia. Captain Torrens alluded with justifiable bitterness to this recommendation in an able speech delivered last Saturday at the annual dinner of the Law Amendment Society. Captain Torrens is one of the most distinguished of the law reformers in Southern Australia, and he objects, he says, to the resumption and enlargement of this bad system in a neighbouring colony, exactly on the principle on which an Englishman would object, were a neighbour to post a notice on the land adjoining his dwelling, "Filth and sewage to be shot here." In South Australia, he says, an Act had been passed making it penal for the captain of a ship to land in the colony any conditionally-pardoned cri- minal, in short, any ticket- of leate man. The Act, he admits, is probably repugnant to British law, since any British subject permitted to be at large here may go to any other part of Her Majesty's dominions, but "the colonists are determined to uphold it."
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