The Press.
London, England, 1856-12-20 00:00:00

pore! classes, and others, to whose circum-
stances a payment in cash is more suitable
than a payment by cheque on the Bank of
England.
We have now laid before our readers as con-
cisely as possible, and necessarily in an im-
perfect form, a general outline of the actual
information which is derivable from the
inquiry of last session. As we observed at the
commencement, throughout the whole of the
examination the antagonism between two
important public departments is painfully
perceptible; and the altercations which in
some instances took place, together with the
spirit of attack and defence upon which it has
been our duty to animadvert, have rendered
the evidence less clear and instructive and
useful than under other circumstances we
should have found it, coming from persons of
the high position and great experience of
all the witnesses. It remains for us to com-
ment upon the inferences which the public
will draw from the inquiry, upon the defects
in the present administration of the public
monies, and upon the plans which have been
proposed for remedying those defects.

TICKETS OF LEAVE AND TRANS-
PORTATION.

SeFFICIENT evidence is, in our opinion, already
in existence to enable us to place the discus-
sion of this question upon a tolerably broad
basis. The increase in crimes of violence has
been concurrent with the retention of our cri-
minals at home; and the number of cases in
which such crimes have been brought home
to released convicts is quite sufficient to dispel
any notion that it is merely an unaccountable
coincidence. The scientific gentleman in
" Pickwick," who was made a member of various
learned societies on account of the highly eru-
dite manner in which he explained the result
of an electric shock on his own person, which
was, in fact, nothing but an ordinary black•eye
inflicted by the human fist, was hardly more
sapient than those wiseacres who deny that
the murders and robberies with which the
past twelvemonth has been rife have anything
to do with the bludgeon and centre-bit of the
" ticket-of-leave."

Assuming this connection, then, it seems to
us that the question for discussion is not whe-
ther we have rightly carried out the proposed
substitute for transportation, but whether that
substitute was not in itself a blunder. No way
of working it could do away with the broad
fact that it keeps the disease amongst us,
which transportation effectually removes. The
ill blood still remains in the system, and cir-
culates through the veins of society. The
point of this argument can neither be turned
aside nor evaded. There is the nuisance
before our very eyes, under our very nose, or
whatever other popular hyperbole may best
express close and undeniable proximity. And
all which the advocates of the system can do
is to admit that, though it may be worse for
the honest population of this country, it is
better both for the criminal himself and also
for our own colonies. That is to say, that
there is two to one in its favour. The first of
these positions admits, we think, of easy dis-
proof; and the second of such modifications
as will leave it very little weight in the discus-
sion. We arc almost tired of repeating, that
the further you remove the criminal from his
old associates, the better chance he has Of
reformation—that the wilder and freer is the
country to which he is removed, the better
chance he has of procuring an honest liveli-
hood ; and that there is a class of criminals,
of whom Marley was probably one, whom
active rural employment is nearly certain to
reform, and whom the life of cities is almost
equally certain to make worse ; that at home,
on the other hand, nobody will employ a jail-
bird while honest labour can be had, and that
thus old temptations and new wants unite to
lead him back into crime.
In regard to the colonies themselves, we
have never affected to say that we should
force our convicts upon such settlements as
Sidney and Melbourne now are. The question
18, are we not justified in founding other

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