The Press.
London, England, 1857-05-16 00:00:00

SAVINGS lIANK.

The house having resolved itself into a committee
on savings banks,

The CHANCELLOR of the ExcHEQuEli, in moving a
esolution, " that it is expedient to amend the laws
relating to savings-banks, and to provide for the

THE PRESS.

establishment of savings-banks with the security of
the Government," stated the principal points of dif-
ference between the bill which he meant to found
upon the resolution and the bill of last session. He
proposed, lie said, by the present bill that the Go-
vernment should assume the entire responsibility for
the moneys of the depositors in the banks, and this
obligation rendered it necessary that ample securities
should be taken against fraud, such as giving power
to the commissioners to make general regulations
with respect to the duties of and the amount of se•
curity to be required from, as well as power of dis-
missal of, the officers. He was ready to remove any
unnecessary restrictions, but he trusted that the
house would support him in guarding the public
interests. If the local authorities, the trustees and
managers of savings-banks, opposed these necessary
securities, there would be only one course, namely,
to abandon the bill, and to leave the system as it
was. He intended likewise to introduce a clause
into the bill prohibiting any private individual or
cumpany from establishing a bank under the title of
a "savings-bank."
Sir H. WILLOUGHBY complained that the Govern-
ment did not undertake to consolidate as well as
amend the law of savings-banks. He objected
strongly to the iilegal use of savings-banks' stock for
financial operations by the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer, while at present a deficiency of five millions
and a quarter bad been created. He maintained
that the law gave the Chancellor of the Exchequer
no right to touch one farthing of this money.
Finally, he thought the whole question should be
referred to a select committee.
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER observed
that the only condition which the Government
would insist upon was to be satisfied of the
solvency of the banks, and he would put the
terms in as distinct a form as he could in the bill.
To refer the bill to a select committee, he said, would
be to shelve it for the session. The objection urged
by Sir H. Willoughby to the power exercised by
the Government of converting the stock of savings-
banks was not a valid one :

Exchequer Bills (said the right lion. baronet) are just
as much Government debt as the Three per Cent. Consols.
They have become part of the permanent debt of the
country ; and, as far as I can see, no valid objection can
be raised to the conversion of that portion of the unfunded
debt in the bands of the Savings-banks Commissioners in
the form of Exchequer Bills iato Three per Cent Consols.
If the house think tit to impose any restrictions which do
not now exist, they must remember that they will deprive
the executive Government of the power of sustaining on
certain occasions the value of the Government securities
and of preventing depressions injurious to the public.
The resolution was then agreed to.

TRANSPORTATION BILL.

Sir G. GREY, in moving the second reading of the
Transportation and Penal Servitude Bill, explained
its main provisions. It proposed, he said, to abolish
the sentence of transportation, and to substitute that
of penal servitude for a more extended period, so
that convicts might be sent to any colony willing to
receive and which possessed means of employing
them. He anticipated the objection that it some
convicts sentenced to penal servitude were selected
to be sent abroad while others were retained at home,
it would produce uncertainty in the nature of the
punishment, observing that uncertainty had entered
quite as much into the former system of transporta-
tion. The hill would not alter the power of granting
tickets of leave, as a general rule.
Mr. BENTINCK believed that convict labour, which
was now wasted, might, by means of penal settle-
ments near home, be so applied as to pay the ex-
penses of the convicts, with great advantage to them
as well as to the country, by their employment upon
harbours of refuge and other public works. He
moved that the bill be read a second time that day
six months.

This amendment was left unseconded, when
Mr. ROEBUCK remarked that the great cause of
crime in this country was the difficulty of finding
employment, which tainted labour could never find,
so that when a man ceased to be a convict he was
driven back to crime. There was, in his opinion,
but one remedy,—that of transporting all who were
sentenced to transportation for life to some now un-
inhabited spot, after qualifying the convict by pre-
vious probaticn to become a colonist.
Sir. J. PAKINOTON observed that the subject was
full of difficulties, but the measure of the Govern.
ment, which, as far as possible, met conflicting
views, had his approbation ; his only objection to it
was the element of uncertainty it imported into the
sentences, so that the public would not know what
the sentence passed really meant. The Govern-
ment, he added, should address itself to an anxious
consideration of the question what was to be done
with the convicts when released, in order that the
change might be as innocuous as possible, and he
thought the check of a well-regulated ticket-of-leave
system would in this view be beneficial, by keep.
ing alive the element of hope.
Mr. DRUJIMOND, Mr. J. H. PHILLIPS, and Mr. BYNG
spoke in favour of restoring transportation.

SA'/'tfIIDAT,

Mr. W. EWART opposed the founding of a new
penal colony, and thought punishment should take
place in this country, for the purpose of deterring
others.

Mr. HENLEY thought that if a judge sentenced a
man to penal servitude, and then, without reason
assigned, this man was suddenly transported, the
man would feel that this was an aggravation of his
punishment, and that instead of the Crown exer-
cising mercy it was exercising arbitrary power. He
hoped that when they got into committee the right
hon. gentleman would let the word transportation
stand.

Mr. BAINES replied to some observations, and said
that on the part of the present Secretary for the
Colonies there had been no effort spared since the
committee of the House of Lords made their report
to discover a place where the convicts might be sent,
and the result was that it was found to be difficult,
if not impossible, to discover such a place.
Mr. WiirrEsrDE believed that the people of this
country would never be satisfied with a law which
permitted the judge to pronounce one sentence and
the Government to substitute another and a severer
punishment.

Mr. KEA:rrso and Mr. PACE gave a qualified
support to the bill.

Lord STANLEY said the question was not whether
transportation was desirable or not, but whether it
was possible, and his opinion was that any attempt
to found a new penal settlement in any part of the
globe would end in disappointment. If so, we were
thrown upon the only colony that would receive
convicts—namely, Western Australia—and with all
the precautions we could and should take we must
not rely upon the continuance of this resource,
which would afford an outlet for only a limited
number of convicts. With reference to the iucor.
ngible class—

His belief was that after the strictly penal term of im.
prisonment had expired there would always be some
criminals whom it would be impossible to let loose again
upon society, and who must be in some manner detained
and secluded from the rest of the community during the
term of their lives. He did not mean by that to propose
such a punishment as imprisonment for life within the
walls of a gaol. Public feeling would not sanction that ;
but detention was not necessarily imprisonment, and there
were many places in which it might be possible to detain,
to seclude, and to employ, in not unremunerative labour,
criminals who from their habits and the magnitude of
their offences it would not be right to let loose again upon
society.

Then with regard to the corrigible class of criminals,
he thought the ticket-of-leave system had in reality
never had a fair trial ; the theory was one thing, but
the practice had been another. It was a fair ques-
tion, in his opinion, for the Government whether it
was not possible to find employment for such men
upon public works when the term of their imprison-
ment had expired. Then, again, the present ticket-
of•leave system was defective in this—that tickets
were granted almost indiscriminately, the refusal
being the exception, and the granting, after a certain
term of imprisonment, the rule :
He did not think that any ticket of leave ought to be
granted until the prisoner had passed through something
like a probationary stage of employment, such as could be
given and had been given in more than one prison, by
which his continued good conduct, when a certain amount
of freedom was allowed him, might be tested. It was, he
believed, a great mistake to suppose that those prisoners
whose conduct was best in confinement were necessarily
those who would do best on recovering their freedom. The
prisoner who conducted himself best in gaol was generally
speaking the man of the most docile character, who would
be the most amenable to any influence, whether good or
bad, which might be broa;lit to bear upon him, and he
was therefore very often the man who, when the restraints
of pris.mn discipline were removed, and he got among his
old associates again, was the most liable to relapse into
crime.

There was another point also which deserved some
notice in connection with this subject. He believed it was
stated, when this question was last discussed, that, out of
1.140 tickets of leave which had been revoked, all except
41 had been revoked in consequence of reconvictions. Ilut
if they laid down the rule that no ticket of leave should be
revoked except upon a reconviction, and did not adopt the
practice of revoking it upon the inability of the man to
prove that he was earning an honest livelihood, the grant-
ing of a ticket of leave became a merely nominal thing,
and the man might just as well be let loose upon society
without one. The offence which led to his reconviction
would have bratight him to the bar whether he had pos•
sessed a ticket of leave or not, and by rigidly adhering to
the rule in question the utility of the system was destroyed.
These were the three measures to which we must
mainly look for safety in dealing with the criminal
population ; permanent detention of the worst class of
criminals, a probationary stage succeeding the penal period
before tickets of leave should be granted, and a greater
supervision than at present existed in cases where tickets
of leave were granted. If these measures were adopted, he
believed and trusted that they might safely pass through
the difficult period which would follow the total abolition
of transportation ; but, whether they passed through it
safely or not, he was convinced that to return, on any large
scale, to the practice of transportaticn, was, he did not say
inexpedient, but simply and absolutely impossible.

MAY 16, 1857.

Mr. HOPE expressed a general approbation of the
hill, which enunciated, be said, one great truth, that
a convicted criminal forfeited his time and his labour
to the country, which might turn it to use either at
home or abroad.
Mr. MARSH—who claimed experience upon this
question from having " just returned from a penal
colony "—suggested that a convict settlement might
be established in the northern part of Australia.
The bill was then read a second time.
INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS BILL.

Mr. ADDEIILEY moved the second reading of this
bill, which he said was verbatim the same as had
been recommitted pro fornul in the last Parliament.
He stated briefly the object of the bill, which was a
supplement or complement to the Reformatory Acts.
He anticipated and replied to an objection that it
was a proselytising measure.
Mr. BowvEn opposed the bill on two grounds—
first, that it introduced principles new to the judi-
cature of the country, anti interfered with the
parental authority of the poor; secondly, that the
effect, though not the intention, of the measure was
to proselytise, since Roman Catholic children would
be sent to Protestant schools.
Lord R. CECIL def..nded the bill.

Mr. Pans, not dissenting from the principle of the
bill, protested against the levying a compulsory rate
upon the agricultural parishes for the purposes of
the bill.

Mr. BARROW opposed the bill, on the ground that
it sanctioned an interference with parental authority
which ought not to be tolerated, and because the
provisions of the bill went beyond the necessity of
the case.

Sir G. GREY said the bill required very careful
consideration in committee, but he hoped there
would be no objection to reading it a second time.
Upon a division the second reading was carried by
177 to 18.

_
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER moved for
the reappointment of the select committee to inquire
into the operation of the Bank Act of 1844 (7th and
Bth Victoria, c. 32), and of the Bank Acts for Ireland
and Scotland of 1845 (Bth and oth Victoria, c. 37,
:)t4).—The motion was agreed to.
Sir G. GREY obtained leave to bring in a bill to
make other provision for the exercise of the powers
of the General Board of Health ; and

Mr. FiTzaEßArai a Bill to Consolidate and Amend
the Acts relating to Bankruptcy and Insolvency in
Ireland.

HOUSE OF LORDS-TUESDAY.
TRE4THENT OF CHINESE PRISONERS.

The Earl of CARNARVON directed attention to the
account given in the China Mail, published at Hong
Kong, of the barbarous treatment of the Chinese
arrested on suspicion after the poisonings. Fifty
prisoners were crammed into a room sixteen feet
long by fifteen feet broad, furnished with a small
aperture fur ventilation, and were kept for twenty
days in this confined space, without beds, and having
to perform in it all the requirements of nature. But
this was not the only case :
In the China Mail of the 12th of February there was
another account of the apprehension a 150 men, all of
whom were liberated after a short time, except half a
dozen, who were left in prison without food fur twenty-
eight hours. Yet he was told that no one was responsible
for this. Surely no one could deny that the responsibility
attached to the authorities in Hong Kong. He could only
say that if this was the spirit in which English justice was
administered abroad, he was not surprised that the Eng-
lish Lame was hated wherever it was known, and that
people rose in insurrection to put an entity) it. He begged
also to move for all the papers relating to the trial of the
baker and others on the charge of poisoning; and in ad-
verting to that subject he felt it his duty to bring under
their lordships' notice the line of conduct which the
Attorney General for the colony took upon that occasion,
and which appeared to him most extraordinary and unpa-
ralleled. On the trial of the men in question the Attorney-
General was reported in the Hong Kong journals to have
said, " If tectnicalities of the British law procured their
release the Chinese authorities would be encouraged to
repeat their diabolical attempt." Again, "In a case of
poisoning the tuercy of the law should be restrained, not
relaxed." In England, on the trial of the most hardened
ruffian, the prisoner was invariably told that he was not
bound to say anything to criminate himself ; but at Hong-
Kong, a British colony, the Attorney-General, on the trial
in question, deported himself in such a manlier that Mr.
Bowra, one of the jurymen, thought it his duty to complain
of the learned gentleman's conduct as being harsh and tin-
Au. towards the prisoners. The Attorney• General ap-
pealed on the occasion, not to the justice of the case, but
to the political contingencies likely to result from the pro-
ceedings. It was, in truth, one of the most monstrous
cases of which he (the Earl of Carnarvon) had ever heard.
He trusted the Government would think it their duty to
produce all the papers bearing on this subject; and if the
statements he had read to the house, so lowering and
debasing as they were to the English name, should be sub-
stantiated by official documents, he hoped the Government
would not shrink from visiting the parties who were to
blame with such an amount of censure as would meet the
justice of the, case.
The Earl of HARROWBY said that Government had
written out for information, and would present any