The Express.
London, England, 1857-01-09 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, JANUARY 9.

Hrweterry will not kill him, false kindness will
not cure him, and the world will not receive him ;
and yet he is a man and meat De somewhere. It is
bed legislation that has made criminals what they
are. Under its influence they have graduated ham
trifling amens to the greatest mimes, and sash will
aver be the ease unless you provide industrial prisons
in which they may be inured to labour, and never
discharged till they have acquired Bud habits of in-
entry, paving that they can and will maintain
themselves." Bach are the =premises repeated to
have fallen the other day, at the Malaita-haws Polka-
wart, from Mr. Ca.szcze Plassos, the City Solicitor.
•It would be difficult to eondense into fewer words a
greater quantity of vabsable truth. These few
sentences carry with them the complete condemna-
tion of that scandalous system of repeated short
frapricaments for trifling offenders, and the pre-
mature discharge of those galley of graver aims,
which now constitutes the intolerable reproach et
oar penal administration. The public are already in
pammeion of oar own views on this matter. The

;yobs we advocate is one of lengthened terms of
imprisoment for definitely fixed periods, with gradu-
ated stages of penal treatment, and distinct clamed-
astioa of prisoners according to the nature of their
satecedeets, the quality of their offences, and the
degrees of their corrigibility. Far the proved in-
corrigible, we would award perpetual seclu-
sion, on the same principle which *tills
me in shutting ap kw lib the hopeless lunatic.
Per those who by a long continuance in hard
idiom and good undue had shown that their
rebnaation was not hopelem—we would, after a
protracted minimum of pnishassitorkich should on
no
plea whatever be abridged, provide, out of the
results of their own extra esredage, the sum of
either emigrating to a distant had, or securing em-
ployment in this country. With a view to rendering
this latter object possible, we would estahliek, as a
pert of the puddle system of penal orinsisimatkes,
them adadrable institution which, under the name
of Fahmage r Prilloolll2l' Aid Societies, have been
lamed on the Costinent to work so moose ally as an
hitennedisto stage between the prima sad the eater
world. After a strictly bleed and very hagthausd
the
of the seams* originally ponsuasel by
the judge had bass passed in donna
though in milder or erarrer moths of durum, word-
bag to the siesssts of the «evict himself—aim but
amt till than, we would try the experiment of pro-
bative/try freedom confiding to the Elosative the
must onmemoy power, of rimcsamittiag to bondage
as satisfactory evidence that liberty was being
aband. The labours on whisk we would employ
this essayist population—whose, be it ressembmod,
we should have to keep at the snot .f the State
whoever they might be seat, and at a higher met
abroad then here—would be of muck a kind as to be
at owe advissable to the somenadty,and sot comps-
tithe with the honest labourer. There are many mob
mobs of Them are amens to to she,
bogs to be drained, marshes to be radoirsed, wastes
to he endured produedra, harbours of redeye to be
construoted on our taspeetmeept roasts. As
hug es there are works of this kind to
be cemented—works masesus, aremanerative,
bat secemary or bessided—worin which it is
for the interest of the eammanity to have tarried
oat, which so private espitalist amid afford to under-
take, and which Govennosat could only be justified
in undertaking by the het of having an army of
penal orb to maintain at my rate, and by the expo-
sliemy of getting oat of then as math brad Lbw
as possible in return for their breed napped—as
long as them thinp are so, we mead fir the lives
of m am any groat ter moan ant our esoviets
to a penal settlement abroad, where It is pored that:
they most cost ue mare than they do at hems, and
when the taxpayers of this eouatry can get Si retail
in the results of their Idiom her the cost of their
keep.

It is not indeed unreasonable that the miserable
perigees we hare of late had al the laxity of
the Home-odiee should create an appmhemien
that the system we hare sketched eat would met be
worked matistaetorily in this emustry. There are
many Lamm to be given to We. In the that plan
the Aot af 15.3 must be altered; and in the next
minion of Parlisawat there is little deabt that, in

accordance with the

of the COM-

moos Committee, it will be altered—by substituting
very lengthened terms of fired imprisonment, for
shorter terms subject to conditional discharge. LB
the next place, it is quite clear that the present exo
cit. of the prerogative of merey by the Honsocillee
cannot be suffered to proceed uncontrolled. The
respite of CLUILSTINA Maths mid the tam. of
Geotioz Houses have settled that questiOn in
the minds of all thinking men. If on no other
mend than this, it is abundantly manifest
that the appointment of a Department of Public
Justice can no longer be delayed. 01100110114 it is quite
a mistake to Nippon that the weaklier of hasty
pardon and improvident discharge is confined to the
authorities at home. Such pardon sad suit dis-
charge. were common enough in Australia. The
transported convict, besides, leaves his friends
behind him here, and the presente exerted to free a
man ban a publiomorke prison at home might be
exerted just as efficiently to procure his discharge
from a public-werks prison abroad. We may be told
that under the old system comparatively few con-
victs were returned on oar hands ; but the reason of
that is as plain se the son at noonday. There was
a market for their labour and a field for their enter-
prise where they were. But that would not be the
ease in the purely penal establishments which it
is now proposed to food beyond the sees.
What discharged convict would remain in a

strictly penal eettlement—eneh a settlement as our
contemporary the 21ines now advocates—a settle-
ment kept entirely free ham all admixture of the
colonial element—who would ►bide in such a place
- . . . .

u this a moment after ho had aeqsZed the possi-
bility of escaping from it?

When we regard the great power of oar contem-
porary for good or fee evil, it is a matter of congratu-
lation to ns, who are really in earnest about this; mat-
ter, to perceive that the Times is gradually abating
much of the intemperance of its first opposition to
the views we regard as sound. The oscillations of
the pendulum, indeed, have been, as usual, some-
what violent ; it has swung now on this side and
now on that, with a vehemence scarcely surprising,
when we consider the weight of the thunderbolts
with which it is loaded. But it is now
hovering towards the line of sound judgment. In
its columns of Tuesday last the public were allowed
to antemplate the alternative of substituting penal
labour here for penal labour abroad. The sole ob-
jection urged against the proposition was one which,
on consideration, could have bad no real weight with
a clear judgment, or a masculine intellect. The
objection to which we allude is the immorality
alleged to be inseparable from the employment of
convicts in labour gangs in the publio works. The
answer to this is short and decisive. Whatever
diMeulty of the kind may exist here, would exist to
• tenfold extent in a penal settlement abroad. All
the evidence on this point is ono way. We are hero
no longer in the regions of speculation, but of fact-
The human imagination, in the deepest hell of its
miscreative ingenuity, hoe never found a parallel
for the atrocious realities of the strictly penal
settlement of Norfolk Island. We would not repro-
duce these horrors. We shrink, as Mr. ELLIOT!, an
experienced witness, told the Commons Committee he
shrank, from the thought of planting in Carpentaria,
or anywhere else on the face of GOD'S earth, a penal
settlement of some fifteen Glenwood males, with no
other population than the ofileids who are to super-
intend and the soldiers who are to guard them—
with no press, no public opinion, no watchful
Government supervision. It is partly on this
account, and partly also because wo desire some
beneficial return in labour for their necessary east in
keep, the. we infinitely prefer the cheaper, the more
humane, and, under proper regulations, the equally
safe alternative of keeping our convicts at home, to
seeding them to a penal settlement abroad.