The Express.
London, England, 1851-01-30 00:00:00

relinquishment of convict transportation will involve
an entire revolution in our penal code and pragite,
toe which neither our social circumstances, nor Ow

progress of distinct practical views of penal law, had
prepared as. have„fer a long time gone got kt•,
manisintour criminal sale, that ilgsgtalliatically, but'
by obliterating now .one and theti Waller of its
,hagsher features, until transportation, real or nomi-
ngl, has beams *most the only punishment
-fee graverieliaqiiencieh it contains. The sentence of
, death is now rare prosouncedoind more rarely car-
ried into execution. The pillory, public flagellation,
and similar secondary punishments, have been aban-
doned; whipping in any shape is almost exclusively
reserved for juvenile offenders ; fines and imprison-
ment, with or without hard labour, are restricted to a
limited class of offences. Transportation for longer
or shorter periods is the monotonous doom in the
immense majority of cases. It may mean a num-
ber of years spent in the hulks, or • number of
years spent in Van Diemen's Land, bat transportation
is the legal phrase in which the sentences of nine-
tenths of our criminals is expressed. Our law re-
formers have given up almost all the rest of our old
punishments, and they have not had ingenuity to in-
vent new ones. By abolishing transportation, we
woald apparently leave ourselves without aty penal-
ty to inflict. Penal establishments at home
are associated with prospective inconveniences, from
which the imagination recoils. The horrible degra-
dation which human nature has experienced in the
bagnes, and the prospect of a numerous horde of
forcats mingling in the crowds which choke the
thoroughfares of our large and populous streets, with
necessarily extended powers of inquisition,
11-
lance, and control to the police, are contingencies
to which it is impossible to look forward with egos-

nimity.
What is to be done ? Are we to revert to obsolete
corporeal punishments ? '1 here can be no doubt that
these have in many instances been abolished less out
of judicious sympathy for offenders than in order to
spare the morbidly excitable nerves of beholders.
But, on the other hand, there can be no doubt that cor-
poral punishment has a tendency to embrute the suf-
ferers, and render the general public coarse and cruel.
Again, are we to found new settlements in remote
regions to receive our more dangerous offenders P
Unluckily, it is obvious that the great defect of the
Australian system of transportation originated in the
excess of the convict as compared with the honest
population. The penal settlements became crowded
with a felon population, in which crime ceased to be
disreputable, and a mutual instruction in ecoundrelism
was carried on by accomplished professors. The evil
was cot confined to any locality. Every island almost
in the Pacific has its escaped convict or convicts
teaching the Aborigines the vices instead of the vir-
toes of more advansed society. This was dangerous
when that lonely ocean was visited only by a few
straggling merchantmen or whalers; it is intolerable
now that commerce and settlement are making such
rapid strides there. Yet again, shall we deport
our convicts to our tropical settlements ? Hu-
manity recoils from the suggestion : this would be
a re-extension of death punishment, of the in-
fliction of death by a slow and torturing process.
Beside' all our tropical settlements have in or around
them numerous uncivilised populations, sure to be
rendered dangerous by an intercourse with the con-
victs, which it would be found impossible to prevent.
In reference to this important question government
and the legislature are placed in the awkward pre-
dicament of men who will be compelled to act, w ith-
out baying time allowed them by inquiry and deli-
beration to mature a safe and satisfactory plan of
action. For this they, in a great measure, have
themselves to thank. The feeling against convict
immigratios, in the colonies which have had no practi-
cal experience of a coavict population, if not originally
caused has been confirmed by the facts sad
opinions put in circulation by the transportation cosi-
mittees of the House ot Commons. Lord JOHN RessaLL,
as has already been observed, by his denunciations et
transportation taught the people of Van Diemen's
Land the arguments, the very words, with which they
now wail him. Earl GREY was until lately fore-
most among the assailants of the system. For fif-
teen long years our leading statesmen have been
doing their utmost to cast discredit on the penalty of
transportation by exposing its evils and abuses ; but
during the whole of this time they have shrunk from
the labour of devi►ing an ads qua's substitute ; and
the consequence is that now, woen the time for action
has arrived, they present the melancholy spectacle of
men who not only recoil from carrying their own
principles into effect, but who seek to palliate their
inaction by affecting distrust in them.