The Express.
London, England, 1864-02-19 00:00:00

ghe erpreoli.

TO 0011U1SPONDIN75.

divertimento Wended tor ".111—elonre;. Loudon Zombie
, must be at the Mem, 10, Beuvertentreet, by Two
peat
on the day of pahtleatlon.

onVI•MGAtuhN.

THIS WW . SHE STOOPS TO CONTATEEt Mews.
W. H. Weise, H. Core, G. Perren. and W. Harrison Misses L.
?Toe and A. Hiles.—Conductor. 11.. A. Mellon—And the weds!
of BT. GEORGE AND THE DEAGON.—Cournence et?.

If ATI. A RCIT.

Tim ityzwl.6, LITTLE DAISY.—THE RIVALS. Hearn
Buck/tour, Howe, Chippendale, Farrell, Roger, Mart . liresdAmee
Angel, litre-111mm, Snowdon, Lindley.—And LINO ARTHUR.
blz. Compton . Madames L Keeley, Wright. Lindley, Lltomer.

PAINCIBBII.

Tins %rune,. PAITL'i ItiiilltN7 X. Vining. Nelson
Fidler. Forrester:Mellon. leyton.Catheat• . Mesdames Marston,
C. Carson. Powell. and Lie SavUle.--Ilad HARLEQUIN
LITTLE TOY TUCKEIL

LYCZI7fL

THIS ET THR LOST CHILD. Mr. Wlddloomb and
Miss P. Lecleroy.—BßL DE MONIO, a Lora Story. Messrs.
lactate:. Brougham, Rotary, Charles, and Jordan ; Mlassa
Kate Ten,. ravens*, and Itureettly, and Mrs. Las.

REITANNIA..

Tyne Ersnrneo. HIC/611715ICKORy, DOCK. Mrs.
S. lane and ttra-rate PantemJanata—THE GREAT GHOST
EFFECT.—Arthur and Bertrand.—The Fs.ry Fountain... And
MY LORD WELCOME.

111011 WATER AT LONDON BRIDOZ.
Ton DAT Mnrnfolt. Ok. Arimsoas. oh. nai.
T04K6A011.. Mondas, Oh. 51m.....AltAressa. lb. Lim.

LONDON, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19.

SIR GEORGE Gary explained last night the pro-
visions of his new Bill to amend the Acts relating
to Penal Servitude. The measure is a tardy con-
sequence of the panic caused in London two winters
ago by the sudden increase of robberies with vio-
lence. The prevalence of those crimes was held
to show that there was something wrong in our
mode of dealing with convicted criminals, but it
was well that no important change in the law
was attempted under the influence of temporary
excitement. Without any such change to which
the improvement can be traced, the number of rob-
beries with violence in the metropolis, which during
the last three months of 1862 was 58, fell in the last
three months of 1863 to 11. Si• Grown GREY, who
probably relies on the experience of Sir RfCHARD
MAYNE, amounts for this reduction by ascribing
the offences of 1862 to a gang of robbers whose
exploits quickened the vigilance of the po"ce, and
thus led to their capture and the dissolution of
their confederacy. And seeing that statistics show
a considerable and progressive decrease of crime
throughout the United Kingdom during the last
twenty-one years, it seems reasonable to refer the
state of things which marked the close of the year
1862 to exceptional cause.. The alarm caused by
the garotters, however, drew attention to some
weak points in our system of punishment, defects to
which those who interest themselves in the
state of our criminal law had vainly called atten-
tion until it had become dangerous to walk in the
open streets in midday. A general relaxation of
punishment had been gradually and silently taking
place. Convictions had ceased to be feared by the
criminal classes, who, emboldened by comparative
impunity, proceeded to alarming extremes of vin•
lance. Until the appearance of the Report of the
Royal Commissioners on Penal Servitude the con-
tempt of the criminal class for the law was gene-
rally, but, we believe, incorrectly, charged on the
administration of our convict pianos. Some of the
necessary regulations for breaking the terrible
monotony of prison life, and preventing
a sentence of imprisonment from becoming',
practically a sentence to madness or death,
were seized on by popular writers, and at length
it became almost a settled belief that the prisoners
passed their lives in eating, sleeping, and playing.
The Commissioners found on inquiry that the con-
victs were compelled to lead a hard dreary life of
penal labour, altogether unrelieved by those plea-
sures and amusements which had been the theme
of imaginative authors. In the Commissioners'
opinion the fault was not in the nature of the
punishment, but in its duration. The judges had
administered the Act of 1857, enabling them to
pass abort sentences of penal servitude, as if the
Legislature had intended that there should be a
substantial mitigation of the punishment of crime
generally. In another respect the law was ad-
ministered with a feebleness equally dangerous.
Ely means of tickets of leave, granted for no
reason whatever, criminals were restored to their
old haunts sad their old practices with frightful
rapidity. The aim of the Hosts Scent-riser, in
his new Bill, is to place both judicial sentences and
the ticket-of-leave system on a surer footing. Sir
Geoaoz GREY proposes to abolish the short sen-
tences to penal servitude, such as have been
passed since 1857, and to enact that the
minimum term of that punishment shall
be five years. It appears that of the
13,331 sentences to penal servitude passed
from 1857 to 1862, as many as 3,825 were for
three years, and 4,432 for four years. The Com-
missioners had recommended a minimum of seven
years, but Sir GEORGE GREY shrinks from the
obligation of taking charge of so many criminals
for so long a time. With respect to the ticket of
leave it is proposed, among other things, that in
future the fact of conviction for an indictable
offence shall work the revocation of the license,
and that when this has taken place the convict
shall undergo the remaining portion of the punish-
ment for his original offence before he begins to
work out his new sentence. These are material
improvements in the law, and may be expected to
add to the safety of the public, both by making
punishment more deterrent, and by providing a
means of withdrawing inveterate criminals from
society for longer periods.

Sir GEosoi (ares Bill is avowedly an at-
tempt to amend the existing system. He
declines either to recognise any new principles
in the science of criminal jurisprudence, or to re-
turn to those which we have long since discarded
as erroneous. To those who imagine that there is
some unfailing method for rooting crime out of
society which only our weakness and effeminacy
hold us back from adopting, his proposals will
seem but wretched palliatives. Those who have
not unlimited faith in simple unmitigated terrorism,
and who do not think that the community would be
safer if men who had been schooled by it were
returned to society, will take his Bill as a measure
of substantial though moderate reform.
It is with deep regret that we observe the
persistence of the Government in sending convicts