The Press.
London, England, 1855-10-13 00:00:00

Cart an lastin.

The Court still remains at Balmoral. Her Majesty
and the Royal Family have enjoyed their usual daily
drives or rides in the neighbourhood, and Prince
Albert has on several occasions enjoyed the sport of
deer-stalking.
The retain of the Court is fixed for Tuesday next,
the 16th. Her Majesty will sleep at Holyrood for
the night, and the next day continue ber route to
Osborne.
The Duchess of Kent left Balmoral on Friday.
Prince Albert has promised to lay the first stone of
the buildings of the Birmingham and Midland In-
stitute at Birmingham on the 22nd of November.
The Earl of Aberdeen and Sir Edwin Landseer
have been on a visit to Balmoral.
The Duchess of Gloucester continues to occupy a
suite of apartments at the Bedford-hotel, Brighton.
Her Royal Highness is in excellent health, and she
purposes remaining in Brighton.
His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge has
been staying at Knowsley during the week. His
Royal Highness is expected to leave this day. On
Tuesday and Wednesday the Duke visited Liverpool.
Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge
arrived at Rowton Castle on Thursday evening, on a
visit to Mr. and Lady Charlotte Lyster. The Princess
Mary, Baron Knesebeck, and Miss Montague accom.
panied the Duchess. Among the distinguished
visitors invited to meet her Royal Highness at Row-
ton, aro the Earl of Powis, Viscount and Viscountess
Newport, Colonel the Right. Hon. G. C. W. Forester,
M.P., and Colonel Frederick Hill. On friday her
Royal Highness and party paid a visit to the Earl
of Powis at Powis Castle, near Welshpool. After
partaking of luncheon and visiting the tastefully laid
out grounds, the Duchess and the other distin-
guished visitors returned to Rowton Castle.'
Lord and Lady John Russell have returned to
Pembroke Lodge, Richmond-park, from visiting the
Duke and Duchess of Bedford at Woburn Abbey.

The Marquis and Marchionoss of Westminster
and family have arrived at Buitton4where they pur-
pose making a brief sojourn.
The Earl of Lonsdale has left town for tho Con-
tinent.

The Earl of Derby was presented with the freedom
of the burgh of Irvine while at Eglinton Castle
last week. _ _ _

Major-General Hugh Rose, C. 8., her Majesty's
principal Commissioner at the head-quarters of the
French army, is awarded the rank of Knight Com-
mander of the Bath, and the Companionship of the
Bath has been conferred on Lieut.-Colonel the Hon.
St. George Foley, Second Commissioner at the head-
quarters of the French army, and Lieut.-Colonel
Claremont, Military Commissioner at Paris, both of
whom have served with the French army throughout
the greater portion of the Crimean campaign.
Her Majesty has con erred the Order of Knight
Grand Cross of the Bath on Marshal Valliant, the
head of the Frenth army, who, as Minister of War,
has had so great a share in the organisation of the
allied expedition to the East.
The Hon. G. Denman, of the Home Circuit, son of
the late and brother of the present Lord Denman, is
one of the candidates for the office of Common Ser-
geant of the city of London about to become vacant
by the retirement of Mr. Bullock. Mr. Russell
Gurney, Q.C., the present Commissioner and Judge
of the Sheriff's Court, is considered likely to receive
the appointment.
Sir Thomas Trowbridge is about to lead to the
altar Miss Louisa Gurney, daughter of Daniel
Gurney, Esq., of Norwich, and sister of the late Hon.
Mns. W. Cowper.

THE EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH, it 1S announced in
the Moniteur of Thursday, " has just entered the
fifth month of her pregnancy." The health of the
Empress was excellent.
POERIO, the late Neapolitan Minister, and his
friends are treated with less severity at present. A
letter from Naples states that they are now allowed
to walk out every day in the inclosure, and to write
twice a week under surveillance to their friends.
THE CEREMONY OF TAKING THE VEIL took place at
a convent in Glasgow on Thursday last. The nun
professed was Miss Cecilia Black (Sister Mary of the
Cross), and the novice received was Miss Millar, of
Edinburgh. The congregation was large, consisting
of several of the clergy and of the nuns of the
convent, and of a vast number of ladies—the mothers
of the children who are being educated at the con-
vent school. The solemn high mass was celebrated
by his lordship Bishop Murdoch'

II

OCTOBER 13, 1855.

THE CHARGE OF MR. RECORDER HILL.

THE " ticket-of-leave " system, which has attracted

so much attention lately in all parts of the country,

by the depredations of many " ticket-of-leave " men,
was chosen on Monday last as the subject of his
charge to the Grand Jury by Mr. Recorder Hill.
The learned recorder commenced his charge by
stating that he considered the system to have been
much overrated both for good and evil, and that he
should regret to see the system condemned, because,
in his opinion, it embodied two leading principles to
be considered in the treatment of criminals—viz.,
that the criminal should have the opportunity of
working his way out of gaol, as well as that he
should be liable to be deprived of that liberty, if ever
in after-life he relapsed into criminal habits :
Time was (remarked Mr. Hill), and the era is not so
long past, when our penal code was the most sanguinary
of the civilised world. The list of offences punishable
with death presented a fearful catalogue, descending from
wilful murder down to privately stealing in a shop to the
amount of be. Nor were the terrors of the law permitted
to sleep ; so that when the feelings of the people at last
awoke to the cruelty of these inflictions they were out-
raged at every turn with appalling scenes of legal ven-
geance During the period
while so many offences were punished with death, the
commutation of the capital sentence to one of transpor-
tation being an act of mercy, the minor, though still
heavy penalty, was not regarded as severe; but when
capital punishment became applicable only to a small
class of crimes, transportation began to be looked upon in
a different light. And now that, by the refusal of all our
colonies except one to admit convicts among them, trans-
portation has been in great part abolished, a similar feeling
begins to prevail against long terms of imprisonment,
which makes way all the more quickly because long impri-
sonments, not being imposed by sentence during the period
that capital punishment and transportation were freely re-
sorted to, present a deceptive aspect of novelty, since a
large proportion of convicts sentenced to transportation
were at all times left in the hulks to be punished by im-
prisonment, which might extend through the whole period
for which they were adjudged to be sent abroad, although
it was, and is, usual to discharge them after a detention of
much inferior length. How far this disposition gradually
to lessen the amount of punishment will be carried it is
impossible to predict. All I can say is, that its progress
is very rapid, and that it shows no signs of having
approached its termination.
After referring to the difficulties and perplexities of
the Government in providing for the surpins numbers
of prisoners thrown upon their hands by the stoppage
of transportation, and of the great question of the
day of making the " duration of imprisonment depen-
dent on the conduct of the prisoner," the learned
recorder observed :

But if you desire, as I most earnestly do, to see this
principle universally adopted, you must be prepared to
strengthen the hands of Government by advocating such a
change in the law as will enable those who administer the
criminal justice of the country to retain in custody all such
as are convicted of crime until they have by sure and un•
equivocal tests demonstrated that they have the will and
the power to gain an honest livelihood when at large. You
must be content that they shall be retained until habits of
industry are formed, until moderate skill in some useful
occupation is acquired, until the hard lesson of self-control
is mastered—in short, until the convict ceases to be a cri-
minal, resolves to fulfil his duties both to God and to man,
and has surmounted all obstacles against carrying such re-
solutions into successful action.

But Mr. Hill is by no means inclined to shirk the
question of the hitherto unreformable criminals, and
suggests a remedy worthy of attention :
But as no training, however enlightened and vigilant,
will produce its intended effects on every individual sub-
jected to its discipline, what are we to do with the incu-
rable? We must face this question. We must not flinch
from answering that we propose to keep them in prison
until they are released by death. You keep the maniac in
a prison, which you call an asylum, under similar condi-
tions. You guard against his escape until he is taken
from you, either because he is restored to sanity, or has
departed to another world. If innocent misfortune may
and must be so treated, why not thus deal with irreclaim-
able depravity? This is a question which I have asked
times out of number without ever being so fortunate as to
extract a reply. It is always tacitly assumed that impri-
sonment must not be perpetual. But whether that assump-
tion is founded on any reason supposed to arise out of the
nature of things, or whether it only rests on the present
state of public feeling, I know not. If the former ground
is taken, I would give much to learn what the argument
is. When disclosed, I must either answer it or yield to it.
But while I am kept in the dark, each alternative is shut
against me. If, however, this assumed inadmissibility of
perpetual imprisonment is rested on the present state of
public sentiment, I have seen too often the change from
wrong to right in that great power to despair of it becom-
ing an ally instead of an opponent. It is my belief that
if long terms of imprisonment, even to perpetuity, were
placed before the public mind as indissolubly connected
with the privilege to the convict of working out his own
redemption from thraldom, by proving himself fit for
liberty, it would require no great lapse of time to produce
the change in opinion which I contemplate.
Upon the more immediate question of tickets of leave,
in a further portion of his charge he reiterated the
necessity of giving absolute powers to the magistracy
to recal the tickets of offenders