The Press.
London, England, 1856-11-29 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

f)r. adventurous spirits, and so many chances of
reformation. That our criminals cannot be borne in
Sydney and Melbourne is to our mind the
best nrgnment that they cannot be borne in
London; and is so far from showing that trans-
portation must be abolished, that it furnishes incon-
testable reasons why it should be revived and
extended.
The ticket•of•leave system, however well intended,
is a failure for two reasons. First, because it
retains experienced offenders in the country ; and,
secondly, because the terrors of conviction are
thereby very much diminished in the eyes of those
who have not yet violated the law. The consequence
is, a rapid improvement in the art of evading
detection, and a corresponding increase in the
encouragement to crime. Thus offences multiply at
a sort of compound interest, the result of which in a
few years it is perfectly shocking to contemplate.
Some new localities must be found for penal
settlements, and that speedily, if we would not have
the population of this country rise, as that of Cali-
fornia has done, and establish a Vigilance Committee.
Without exaggeration, we believe they will soon take
the law into their own hands in some fashion or
another, if they are not relieved from the apprehen-
sion of being throttled, stabbed, beaten, robbed,
jumped upon, and murdered, as soon as it grows dusk
and the policeman is well out of hearing. The fact
is, it is idle any longer to say we cannot transport
our convicts. We must transport them, or else
transport ourselves, for the country is too narrow to
hold both.

We dissent from those persons who seem to
imagine that every new foreign settlement is, de jure,
entitled to dictate terms to the mother country. No
definite rule can be laid down. It would he in the
highest degree unjust and unwise to force our con-
victs on communities like Sydney and Tasmania.
But that Sydney and Tasmania are too flou
rishing to be penal settlements now, is, in great
measure, due to the fact that they were penal
settlements once. The predecessors of the race, who
talk so loudly of contamina don, were illud quod
dicere nolo. They did most of the rough work
which the infancy of a colony requires, and if a new
settlement is founded the same process might be
observed. As for the alleged taint in the blood, it
is an argument which we suppose the Australians
would be as unwilling to bring forward as we should.
If, in fine, prosperous and orderly communities
have arisen out of penal establishments in one
quarter of the globe, why should they not do so in
another?

In forming new penal settlements, two things
seem to be required. First, that they should be
sufficiently remote from civilised society; secondly,
that the country shou'd be large enough to afford
scope for industrial labour. But there really does
not seem to be any great want of such localities if we
would only take the trouble to look for them. There
is the greater part of the north coast of Australia;
there is the east coast of Africa; there are the
Falkland Islands ; there is Borneo, inhaoited only by
savages ; and, lastly, there is our own Island of
Ceylon. There may, of course, be objections, of
which we know nothing, to many of these places ; but
some one of them would, probably, turn out to be
available, or, even it not, there are surely other
tracts of country on the world's surface which we
could employ in the manner proposed.

Corrtspontatt.
ELECTORAL INEQUALITIES.
Letter V.
TO THE EDTIOR OF "THE. PRESS."

Sir,—The decay of Parliamentary efficiency,
which is now conceded as a fact, is legitimately
traceable to that vicious constitution of our
electoral system which I have attempted to
expose.
I must be pardoned for repeating so often
that the Whig or town constituencies return
twice as many members in proportion to their
numbers as the county or Conservative con-
stituencies. The injustice is glaring, and
ought to be exposed till it is remedied. I re-
state it at present, however, in order to trace
its results.

It is plain that the Whig party, having a
fixed mechanical 'preponderance to fall back
upon, can afford to rest its tenure of power on
the vulgar and well-understood interests of
their supporters. Their leaders are under no
necessity of appealing to higher motives, for
they do not require to enlist the passions of
men on their side. Hence in a party so con-
stituted all we can expect as a general rule is,
political apathy, an avoidance of originating
measures, which, by agitating public opinion,
and evoking a contest of interests, may result

SATURDAY,

own interests, and to coincide in opinion with
' the dispensers of patronage, so long as the
injustice they do to other people is not forced
on their attention. Hence the " safe role "
has been the general tenor of Whig polies►
since the preponderance in the electoral body
secured by the Reform Bill has come clearly
into view. They throw out a tub now and
then to amuse the public ; but the moment
the great whale shows any excitement, the tub
is quietly withdrawn, and the political waters
subside into their usual torpidity. Hence the
new Reform Bills of Lord John Russell, and
the measures of administrative and legal
reform which are brought forward in the
beginning of every session to be burked at its
close ; and hence also the more dangerous
manoeuvres on foreign policy of Lord Pal-
merston—fussy tactics, which, like a man on a
hobby-horse, combine apparent motion with
entire absence of progress.
Such is the effect on the Whig party, the
natural and logical consequence of the exist-
ing state of things acting on human nature.
Let us now inquire into the effect of the system
on the Conservative party.
The Conservatives being in a minority in
the electoral body when things are in their
ordinary course, cannot expect to float their
measures merely by an appeal to the common
vulgar interests of their electoral supporters.
To carry their measures they must gain con-
verts from the habitual adherents of the other
party. Now, if the preponderance was not
overwhelming this would be no great griev-
ance. for an appeal to higher principles—to
patriotism, to philanthropy—might in each
case be sufficient, and the only mischief would
be that the Conservative party would he less
frequently in power than their numbers entitle
them to be ; but owing to the preponderance
being in the ratio of two to one, the Conser-
vatives, if they are to be an efficient political
party at all, are thrown, as the very condition
of their existence, into a normal state of agita-
tion. They must create a political capital out
of political excitement, or they must assist
quietly and decently at their own political
obsequies. Strange necessity this for the
Conservative party, constitutionally adverse
to excitement and agitation ! but, nevertheless,
the logical result of the position in which they
have been placed by the Reform Bill.
Is it to their honour or is it not that they
have shrunk from this political exigency?
That is a question very open to discussion ;
but the fact is undeniable, they have abstained
from employing the sole means within their
power capable of securing their due place as
a party. They have not appealed to the pas-
sions of the country, and the consequence is
they have only their own political supporters
to rely on. Hence the normal minority in
which the Reform Bill has placed them with
the constituencies has been perpetuated in
the Commons. They have been obliged to
confine themselves to a critical and negative
course of political action of great disservice
to their party prestige and of little use to the
country.

Sum-ming up, then, the practical action of
the two parties—the apathy of the Whig party
arising from their security, and the apathy of
the Tory party arising from their hopeless-
ness of success—the result is Parliamentary
inefficiency.
If, on the other hand, the interests of all
parties in the nation were justly represented
in the House of Commons, there would be a
due oscillation and a healthy vigour in party
conflicts. The Whig party would not then re-
strict themselves to the " safe role," just
because they would not be safe, but would
require to appeal to patriotism, to principle, to
passion, to secure their possession of power.
Nor would the Conservatives be compelled to
adopt political agitation as the only means of
attaining power ; for their regular supporters
in the electoral body would be sufficiently
numerous to allow of them governing on Con-
servative principles.
My letter has been already too long. I have
yet to point out the effect of Whig prepon-
derance as engendering la se literacy, which,
indeed, is the ultimate result. of Parliamentary
inefficiency, and as corrupting the press, the
last resort of ititutional vitali .1 du;