The Sun.
London, England, 1855-10-10 00:00:00

tion more specifically to the ticket-of-leave,. men. By a
statute passed in the year 1853; a new penalty was. created
under the name of "penal servitude." This perialtf only
differs from that of imprisonment With hard labour•by the
provision for restoring, the prisoner to liberty without
waiting for ther.expiration of his sentence--namely, by
license from the Secretary of State, certifying that such
indulgence has ben granted, being called a ticket-of.leave,
Until, howevor,.the expiration of the term of penal servi-
tude to which the convict has been adjudged by the sen-
tence of the Court, the licenCe is liable to be revoked at
the discretion of the Minister, and, wherrso revoked, the
prisoner is recommitted in executien.of his original sen-
tence. This new penalty must now be substituted by the
courts in all cases formerly punished by,tratisportation,
except where his offence renders the convict liable to trans-
portatiou for a period not less than I t years, while it may
be substituted even for the longest terms. It was also pro-
vided that convicts under sentence of transportation at the
passing of the act, or subsequently sentenced to that
punishmentohould be made capable of benefiting by the
license of the Seeretary of State on the saiiietonAtions as
to revocation with those sentenced 'to penal servitude.
Ceeetieraen, it is the provision for a conditional discharge
from prison which has attracted public attention and has
given to the system its name. That both provisions are
founded on sound principles is my firm belief, as I have
already stated. .It is obvious, however, that it is. the first
upon which the. greatest stress ought to be laid, for this
plain reason, that, in proportion as the means of reforma-
tion are furnished to the prisoner slid the tests of reforma-
tion are well chosen and faithfully applied, in exactly that
same proportion will the necessity for the second provision
—viz.,' the power of recallihg the ticket of leave—be dimi-
nished ; so that.if we could insure perfect tests and a per-
fect application of them, the enlargement of the prisoner
might be made absolute in the first instance, while, on the.
other hand, a convict invert ectly reformed' will scarcely-.4s
deterred, by-re:mon of tbs-power of rosioeation beingrbung
over him, from yielding eventually to the temptations to
which when at liberty he is certain to be exposed.. As a
protection to society, it is also, as it now stands; imperfect
in this further particular, that the power of revocation ter-
minates with the period fixed by the original sentence,
which at.the time the license is granted may henearly ex-
pired. This defect, however; might readily be amended.
The power 'of recall might remain in force until a certain
fixed period after liberation, to be further extended if durit.g
that same period the recall should be made. And this
brings me to what I consider the most serious defeat in the
statute. The condition which is set forth on the ticket of
leave is as follows :

" The power of revoking or altering the license of a con-
vict will most certainly be exercised in case of his mii=con-
duct. If, therefore, he wishes to retain the privilege which
by his good behaviour under penal discipline he has ob-
tained, he must prove by his subsequent conduct that he
is really worthy of her Majesty's clemency. •To produce a
forfeiture of the license it is by no means necessary that
the holier should be convicted of any new offence. If he
associates with notoriously bad characters, leads an idle
and dissolute life, or has no visible means of obtaining an
honest. livelihood, &c., it will be assumed that he is about
to relapse into crime, and he will be at one apprehended
and recommitted to prison under his original sentence."
It is not, gentlemen, that I disapprove putting these men
again under restraint without evidence of their having
committed a new crime. I must have greatly changed my
opinions before I could raise any objection of that kind.
Possibly it may be recollected by some of those whom I
have now the honour to address that, in the year 1850, and
again in the year 1851, I ventured to advise that all persons
who had been convicted of acts of dishonesty should be
liable, when, id the belief of competent witnesses, they
were leading a life of crime, to be called on for proof that
they were in the enjoyment of the means of subsistence,
drawn from lawful soarces ; that, in default of such proof,
they should be held to bail for a limited period, and, in
default of payment, should be committed to prison. The
principle on which my proposed measure was founded has
now been adopted by the Legislature, but with the safe-
guard of a trial. According to the net, the prisoner is
deprived of his liberty by the mere stroke of the Minister is
peu. The Legislature probably proceeded upon the
ground that, as it is the confidence placed in his
reformation wnich gains him his liberty, so if that
confidence be lost his privilege ought to be withdrawn.
Nor am I, for one, much afraid that a power of
this kind, however arbitrary, will be often abused. On
the contrary, I believe the danger lies on the other side. It
is so repugnant to the other side—it is so repugnant to the
spirit of our laws to condemn without a trial—that an
English Minister is under a much stronger temptation to
withhold the exercise of such a power in cases where it is
justly demanded than to use it oppressively ; and, accord-
ingly, symptoms of such forbearance are not wanting. Mr.
Jardine, the London magistrate, lately complained that 40
ticket-of-leave men infested the neighbourhood of Lis
court; meaning, doubtless, to intimate by that statement
that he had in his vicinity 40 of such convicts who had in-
curred the forfeiture of their licences by disappointing the
expectations on which they were granted. If this be so,
it would seem but reasonable that in each of these in
stances the ticket-of-leave should be recalled, unless, in-
deed, the sentences have expired, when it would be incor-
rect to denominate these convicts ticket-of-leave men, since
they stand only in the same position with all other prison.
ers who have received their absolute discharge. But, gem
tlernen, it appears by a return made at the end of March
last that the practice is not to withdraw the licence until
the convict stands charged with a new offence—a deviation
from the terms of the warning written upon the ticket-of-
leave, which I am unable to explain except by the conjec-
ture which I have offered to your notice. Gentlemen, I
have said that the working of the system has been, as I
think, exaggerated both by its opponents and its admirers
for evil and for good. For evil, because I feel certain that
convicts who have now tickets of leave would have been
released unconditionally after a detention not very much
greater than that to which they have been subjected undo.
the new system. And I ground this opinion on three ins-
portant facts-Ist, on the growing impatience of severe
punishments evinced by the public ; 2d, on the usage of
liberating transports not sent abroad long before their terms
of transportation have expired. To these two facts I have
already adverted. The third is that the Legislature, when
it substituted penal servitude for transportation, very
much abridged the duration of the punishment. Gentle-
men, the real evil with which we have to contend stands
thus :—So long as we could impose our criminals on other
communities we did not trouble ourselves to cultivate the
science of reformation, and now that this lazy and selfish
resource has failed us, we, in the stress of our difficulties,
are c )mpelled suddenly to call upon the functionaries of
our gaols to perform a task demanding qualifications with
which, without a long previous training, it is unreasonable
to expect them to be endowed; or in such full measure as
to insure success. Having weighed these circumstances,
you may, perhaps, gentlemen, arrive at the conclusion that
no small portion of the unpopularity which has fallen upon
the uew system is produced by its having come into exist-
ence just at the time when the country was beginning to
suffer from the augmented number of convicts which the
stoppage of transportation had liberated at home, instead
of their being thrown into our colonial population as here-
tofore. The disease, if I may so illustrate my meaning,
results from the obstruction of the accustomed outlet—
namely, transportation; but the remedy—the ticket-of-
leave system—failing to work a perfect cure, has been cen-
sured as if it were the cause of the malady. Gentlemen,
the reason why I think the system has been over-estimated
for good as well as for evil is, because it applies only to a
comparatively small class, and because the evidence of re-
formation remains doubtful, although, I must admit, much
more cogent and applying to a larger proportion of the
licences than I hid expected to find it. And I make this
admission without forgetting that large subtractions may
be required from the estimated results. The estimate is
that from 80 to 90 per cent. of convicts discharged
with
tickets of 'leave are permanently reformed. Gentlemen,
there is, as you well know, an establishment at Mettray,
in in France, for the reformation of juvenile offenders,WMet-
stands at the head of all reformatory
tray enjoys every possible advantage. Its' lo°ui 'n
der and
jiiisartvisit here last
chief director, M. De Metz, who by
week may be personally known to
yelled ability, Icing experience,. 27:17:roxana;ImaaPasingeciroafddlluenavir7i)-
tion to his great enterprise. His
institution
15 years f
he*hdiseeeistyhnosterrlenloa o
aceagnrrleeigaatnet-I
attained its present exalted
im
ened administration, conducted
assiduity ; and yet even 7..
PrePortion of its inniates.tehtotatnrs9o per. cent. Nevertheless
gentlemen, 90 per. cent.
of
my mind a result so wonder-
ful that nothing short of the very searching investigations
which I have bad the opportunity of making could induce
worthy of confidence; and, that being
so,
omaucsctepbee
ipteasrroitted to receive the estimate of reforma-
tions effecter/ among the ticket-of-leave men with sow e
doubt and misgiving, though with implicit reliance on the
sincerity with which it is promulgated. The truth is that
permanent reformation demands years to test its reality,
and the system has not been in operation for a sufficient
length of time to furnish the required proof. The proba-
bilities certainly look the other way. Mettray deals with
young and plastic minds, and bodies. It retains its wards
a long time—often for many years. None of them leave
Mettray until employment is procured for them. Each is
placed under the superintendence of some benevolent per-
son residing in the neighbourhood of his master, who
watches over the youth with the care of a guardian. Met-
tray is looked upon by those who have been its inmates as
a home. It is a high gratification to them to visit their
" colonic," as they are taught to call it. If they have not
failed in their duties they are always kindly welcomed'
and, should they through misfortune be thrown out of work,
they find hospitable reception at Mettray.! Gentlemen, I
shall be most agreeably surprised if experience shall justify
those who superintend our ticket-of-leave system in placing