The Sun.
London, England, 1855-12-08 00:00:00

TICKETS OF LEAVE.

The following letter has been addressed to the editor
of the Times :
Sir,—l shall be glad if you can afford space in your
columns for a few observations upon the probable future
working of the ticket-of-leave system, or, I should rather
say, of the system of secondary punishment substituted
for transportation.
In order, however, to make the subject intelligible, it

is necessary to disabuse the public mind, and also a con.
siderable portion of the press, both as to the causes
which led to the grants of these tickets, and the inten-
tion of the grants themselves ; and, to do so, I must
shortly revert to our colonial policy with respect to con-
victs.

It was formerly the practice to distribute the con-
victs in different colonies, and assign them by tickets of
leave, after a term of probation, to respectable colonists,
to whom they became domestic or farm servants, shep-
herds, and the like; but they continued subject to the
colonial authority, and liable to have their tickets re-
called, and be remitted to incarceration upon complaint
of misconduct. They were also, under special cir-
eamstances —as extraordinary good conduct, or in
political cases—allowed to become settlers under a
ticket of leave—a system not ill adapted to the wants of
a growing colony, but, I believe, wholly inapplicable to
the mother country. It is manifest that regulations
which may be advantageous in a thinly-peopled country,
where labour is scarce and temptations not abundant,
may be most mischievous in a country where the
labour-market is overstocked and the temptations to
crime are enormous.
Some years ago it was deemed expedient—whether
rightly or not I hays no means of judging—that the as-
signment system should be abandoned ; and the natural
result was that the colonists, losing the personal advan-
tage they had previously enjoyed from unpaid labour,
saw only the evils which the convict population brought
upon them, and became averse from its continuance ;
and shortly afterwards it became the practice for the Co-
lonial-office to transport all the convicts to Hobart Town.
The consequence was that the colony was soon over-
stocked with a convict population, which became so dis-
proportionate to the respectable settlers, and had such a
fearful ratio of males beyond females, that thegravestdis-
orders ensued, and I am not overstating the ease when I
say that the reports to the Colonial-office on this subject
were unfit for the public eye.
The next step of necessity was the suspension of all
further deportation to Hobart Town ; and then it was
that the post rash experiment ever ventured upon was
male, and a whole shipload of convicts was consigned
to one of our most flourishing colonies—namely, the Cape
of Good Hope—without first ascertaining the feeling of
tho colony, or, as it would seem, without even giving
notice of the shipment. The result of that disastrous ex-
periment is too well known to need comment here ; but
the consequence was to place the Government in a se-
rious dilemma. The assignment system having, as I have
already observed been abolished, the colonists had no
counterbalancing interest to reconcile them to the im-
portation of convicts. They all took the alarm, and the
outcry against transportation became universal. Tne
impetus which would be given to crime by its
abolition—for it is well known that it was a punishment
much dreaded by thieves—was not thought of ; the
moral and social evils of the constant accumulation of
confirmed criminals in our densely crowded districts
were overlooked. The Government yielded, and, after
two years' deliberation, the present system of penal ser-
vitude was devised, by which, in effect, save in some
rare and exceptional cases, transportation is abolished.
In the meanwhile upwards of 6,000 convicts, who
during these years had been sentenced to different
periods of transportation, had been detained in our Eng-
lish prisons. It would have been manifestly unjust to
keep these persons in a state of penal servitude during
the whole period of their sentence, because, without
going into minute detail, by the enactments of the
statute the sentences of penal servitude did nut
exceed in length above one-half of the corre-
sponding sentence of transportati )n. Acting on this
principle, the convicts have, generally speaking, been
I discharged (irrespectively of their antecedent character:),
at the expiration of one-half of the term of their sen- '
tences, although occasionally detained an additional six
months in case of misbehaviour in prison. The discharge,
however, has been conditional only—that ie to say, the
parties have had tickets of leave to remain at large during
good behaviour, subject to revocation in case of their
misconduct ; and they have also, with few exceptions,
received gratuities on quitting the prison. About 2,000
convicts still remain to be so discharged, and then the
grants of tickets of leave will cease, for it is not the pre-
sent intention of the Government to extend them to
cases of penal servitude. It would therefore, be a waste
of time to make any co mments upon the pracitical con-
sequences of these tick ets, which are evidently only
of a temporary character, if the evil was not more
deeply seated. But the vitality of the new system of
secondary punishment in not dependent on these tickets.
It will continue after their cessation, and with either
aggravated or diminished evils as the grant of a ticket of
leave, which sounds well: in theory, shall have practically
operated as an assistant to the reformation of the grantee
or an additional incubus on his honest endeavours.
I do not think the public are sufficiently aware of
the actuai state of crime in our metropolitan and other
densely-populated districts, nor aro they sufficiently
impressed with the fact that the criminal population
form a distinct class of regurlary educated persons, fol-
lowing distinct branches of their trade. L-t us take
the subjects of these tickets-of-leave as a test. Up-
wards of one-sixth of the whole number of convicts
who, as appears by the Government returns, have
been discharged upon tlisese tickets, received their sen-
tences of transportatioia either at the Central Criminal
Court or the Middlesex Sessions. I have not the means
of ascertaining the antecedents of the prisoners so sen-
tenced at the Central Orieninal Court, but I cannot be
wrong in assuming that the Judges of the Central Crimi-
nal Court are at least as careful in awarding such sen-
tences as the judges of the Sessions, and that, as the
heavier classes of offences alone are reserved to he tried
there, the offenders are not less familiar with crime
than those who are tried. at the session. But it is in my
power, from the documents we possess, the registers we
preserve, and the inquiries we direct before transporta-
tion is awarded, to give a history of every prisoner
transpoited by our Court. I have directed the Govern-
ment returns to he carefully compared with our docu-
ments, and the result of the comparison is, that every
convict who has been discharged on a ticket of leave
was, at the time of his conviction, a professional thief.
They may be thus divided :—One-tenth children, who,
when convicted, ranged between the ages of 11 and 14,
novices in crime, having; only undergone the preliminary
discipline of short imprisonments and whippings under
Sir John Pakington'e act, and been sentenced to trans-
portation in the full expectation of admission into the
Reformatory at Parkhurst. Five-tenths—that is to say,
one-half—youths between 14 and 20, who, having passed
the initiatory stage and become regular thieves, had
been already previously convicted of felony, or suffered
under numerous summary convictions. Three-tenths
young men between the ages of 20 and 30, who had
been thieves from their youth up ; and the remain-
ing tenth men more advanced in life, but all, with one
exceptien, under the age of 40. Now, I would ask,
if the wildest dreamer of dreams ever bit upon such a
system cif reform—young men in the prime and vigour of
manhood, youths at the most dangerous period of their
lives, and even children—homeless, bouseless children—
sent indiscriminately to their old haunts and associates
iu the worst parts of the metropolis, with, on the ave-
rage, 51. in their pockets to celebrate their return, but
with no provision for their future employment or
well.doing,, and no certificate of character but a ticket of
leave ?

I know how strongly the current of public opinion
has for some time set in against the deportation of cri-
minals, and the odium I have personally incurred by my
obstinate disbelief in the beneficial effects of this new
system of secondary punishment. The working of the
system has net tended to diminish my preconceived opi-
nions, and I still think that if the abovernentioned victims
of our wretched system of criminal jurisprudence, as re-
gards juvenile offenders, had been, either before or after
their respective imprisonments—and I care little which
—been dispersed in different settlements where popula-
tion is scanty and labour scarce, not as convicts, but
under proper guardianship and superintendence, the
State would have been better and more cheaply served,
and the offenders have enjoyed a far more rational
chance of becoming honest members of society than will
ever be attained by their retention in the mother coun-
try, either with or without the aids of gratuities and
tickets of leave.
I hope it will not be supposed I mean to assume that
no ticket•of-leave man has amended his ways. I know
the contrary to be the fact ; and I believe in rural dis-
tricts it will be found that many idle, dissolute castaways,
who have been transported at a quarter session for a
series of petty thefts, such as stealing a pork pie, or a
dead rabbit, or a tame fowl, Ice., (see the Government
returns), have come back to their respective villages
more cautious in their conduct, and perhaps more regu-
lar in their habits ; but, as regards the real criminal
population, the experiment has been a complete failure.
And this brings me to the marrow of my letter. We
must not rashly impute blame to the projectors of the
scheme. It was an attempt, forced upon them by cir•
cumstances, to mitigate the social disorders which
must of necessity flow from a retention in the mother
country of all our confirmed and accomplished
criminals. It has failed, and if those criminals 'are
still to be retained among us we must abide by the conse-
quences. The subject is too vast to be here discussed,
and I, therefore, conclude my letter with a quotation
from the leading article in the Times of November 21,
which expresses those consequences in more forcible
language than I could myself hope to furnish, and may
lead the public mind to a right contemplation of this
most important subject.
"Every criminal whom we send back to the streets
unreclaiwed goes back not merely a social nuisance, but
also a political firebrand. We have hitherto got rid of
our worst offenders by transportation ; they now go. to
establish among us that dangerous class' whose exist-
ence so many foreign states have had to lament."-1 am,
Sir, yours obediently,
December 1. JOHN ADAMS.

The Melton season has begun ; the Earl and Countess
of Wilton have arrived there. Lord Canterbury and
Lord Gardner have been there some days, and the Hon.
Colonel Forester is expected ; also Lord and Lady New-
port, and the usual frequenters of this fashionable resort.
The Brazilian mail, telegraphed yesterday afternoon,
has arrived earlier than on any former occasion, and just
in time for her letters to be answered by the outgoing
steamer of the 9th.
The North Cork Militia arrived at Liverpool yester-
day, in the steam-ship Niagara, and proceeded to Al-
dershott. In the afternoon the West Bent Militia em-
barked on board the Niagara for Dublin,