The Sun.
London, England, 1855-10-29 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1855.

A rclibisliop WIIATELY may be regarded as the
founder of our system of Criminal Reformation.
Ile it was who first promulgated the benevolent
principle that convicts ought to be kept in dur-
ance until such time as they should have asserted
their right to be again set at large—earning anew
the forfeited title to be free, by continuous good
conduct and sustained industry while undergoing
the penalty of incarceration. It was Captain
MACONOCHIE, however, who acquired for him-
self the glory of having developed this seed-
truth, so to speak, into one of our grand, over-
shadowing institutions. It was under the aus-
pices of 6,ptain MACONOCHIE that the theory of
'the great Christian Philosopher was enabled to
zipen and expand into the scheme of the Practi-
cal Philanthropist. We are now actually gather-
ing the fruits of it in the Ticket-of-Leave System,
about which opinions are just at this period so
-very numerous and contradictory. Are those
fruits good or bad, sweet or bitter, poisonous
or beneficial? This involves one of those great
social problems demanding, if possible, instant
solution. Can the question be answered satisfac-
torily? Our authorities say, Yes. Popular pre-
judice declares to the contrary. Who shall de-
cide ? What can be selected as the ground
upon which to arrive at a deliberate and
dispassionate conclusion upon a matter of
this vital importance to the general com-
munity ? There are the statistics fur-
nished by the Annual Report, made by the
Directors of our Convict Prisons, relating the re-
sults of the last year in regard to prison discipline
and prison management If we are to accept
these statistics as definitive upon the subject under
consideration, we must perforce acknowledge our-
selves convinced of the wonderfully good effects of
the new system, inaugurated by the 16 and 17
VICT, ay. 99. However, on the other hand,
there are very different particulars requiring to
be borne in mind no less sedulously, particulars
forcibly thrusting themselves upon the notice of
the population from day to day, almost, it might
be said, at times, from hour to hour—through
the records of our courts of law, from the highes t
to the lowest, from the " flimsy" of the penny-a-
ners in our police-courts to the notes of the
ort-hand writers reporting either succinctly or

elaborate paraphrase through the columns of a
daily newspaper. Judging from these unsystem-
atis ed facts, statistics untabulated, and even, be
t said, as yet unaccureulated into one impressive
aggregate—we should, be compelled to question
the accuracy of the estimate formed by the
organisers (and therefore, of course, the apologists)
of the new system ; in other words, the already-
mentioned Directors of our great Con vict
stablishments. According to the latter it would
appear that little more than one per cent,
of the
convicts discharged conditionally upon the Ticket-
of-Leave System, disappoint the hopes cherished
by the more sanguine of their " guides, philoso-
phers, and friends," the gaol chaplains, at the
period of emancipation. According to the un-
believing " profane," the mere spectators of all
that has been going on of late, not merely within
the precincts of Dartmoor, Brixton, the Hulks,
k, Portsuiouth, Portland, Parkhurst, and
Peutou.v ille, but in the back slums of our great
cities, in the rookeries of our -metropolis, in
ThieveS'-lane Ana Gn •
i-alley, in the Tona-all-Alones
of London and Nyestminster, in the foulest dens,
the moral Sinks and ewers- of the capital and the
provinces—according to the judgment of Journal-
ists, and the readers of journalists, the new scheme
sit (in foot for the reclamation of our convict mul-
titude, has not, :y.,/ f_irty means proved thus signally

triumphant. The impression abroad for some
time past undoubtedly is, that the Ticket-of-Leave
System—noble and admirable beyond all doubt

as a theory—aa a practice is little better than a
very frightful 'experiment. That is the popular

belief, or, call it if you like, prejudice. Is
it a reasonable conclusion, viewing the

matter at once by the light of the annual
Report of the Directors of our Convict Prisons,

and by that furnished to the public at large by the

Fourth Estate, of which we ourselves are among

the diurnal representatives. Colonel JEBB, speak-
ing for the Directors over whom he has long pre-
sided with such consummate ability as permanent
Chairman, has recently supplemented to the last
of his blue books, that for " 1854," being a sub-
stantial volume of some 400 pages octavo, an ex-
planation as to the working of the Ticket-of-Leave
System, presenting his matured estimate to his
fellow-countrymen through the medium of an ex

tended communication addressed to the most emi-
nent of our contemporaries. Opposed to the un-
deniable statements put forth thus authoritatively
by Colonel JEII/3, and to the force of which we
bow with all respectful submission, with all that
r unstinted credulity and implicit reliance which
are the due of a public servant as distinguished
as tho Chairman of the Board of Directors of our
Convict Establishments—there still remain the
no less undeniable " facts" of crimes again and
again perpetrated by Ticket-of-Leave ruffians
let loose upon society cut-throats and
cut-purses, burglars and footpads scoun-
drels doubly-dyed with the guilt of hypo-
crisy and dissimulation, and who have only
assumed the mask of religion for a while in order,
that they might again be at freedom to outrage
the laws of GOD and Man indiscriminately.

Upwards of three thousand Ticket-of-Leave men
have been already enlarged, it now appears, since
first the scheme of penal servitude was applied to
convicts retained in the United Kingdom. A
little over two thousand others still remain "on
hand" to be dealt with in like manner during the
next year or two, until such time as the original

" stock" shall have been entirely exhausted. A
pleasant prospect enough, it must be allowed, for
those who have already been dismayed by the
manifold offences perpetrated by the amiable pre-
decessors of those two thousand gaol-birds yet to
flutter out again upon the world—their wings a
little clipped, it may be, by the surveillance of
the police, but their talons still capable of almost
any amount of lawless plundering and brutish de-
struction. Unsophisticated specimens of what
may have been meant by Mr. TENNYSON in his
hideous glimpse of—

" Nature, red in tooth and claw with rapine."

It is a grand but terrible experiment, that is
the truth of it, this novel and daring scheme
of reforming criminals by affording them premature
opportunities of returning to their evil ways !
Let us put the matter in a homely fashion to the
apologists of the Ticket-of-Leave System, just as
it appears to ourselves, viewing the whole of that
system dispassionately. Suppose some wonderful
contrivance, some wonder-working piece of mecha-
nism were constructed for the curing of—
" Blindness and lunacy, lameness and leprosy I"
after the fashion of the famous machine repre-
sented by the father of Peter Simple—the ma-
chine for modifying, by pressure upon certain
bumps, the arrangement of any one's phrenologi-
cal development. Suppose this miraculous, me-
chanical, or chemical cure for certain of " the ills
that flesh is heir to" were set in motion in some
great public place of resort—say in Trafalgar-
square. Suppose the blind, and the mad, and the
lame, and the leprous, to the number of three
thousand and odd, were one after another sub-
jected to its mysterious and magibal manipu-
lation. Suppose the cures, the positive cures,
affected were to the number of 80 or 90 per cent.
—the calculation actually put forward by the
apologists of the Ticket-of-Leave System, as to the
average of those permanently reformed under its
operations. Suppose, however, that beyond all
this—while every hundredth unfortunate expe-
rimented upon had his miseries aggravated fright-
fully by the effects of the working of the machine—
suppose we say that in addition to this aggravation
of evil every now and then to individuals brought
under the influence of the Wonder-Worker, it,
the Wonder-Worker, were every now and then to
be liable to terrific explosions. Suppose these ex-
plosions scattered destruction to life, limb, and
property among her MAJESTY'S innocent lieges
going about their ordinary avocations in the neigh-
bourhood—killed a man crossing Parliament-
street, knocked an eye out of the head of another
sauntering along the Strand, set fire to a house in
St,. Martin's-lane, and so on through any number
of sections in the great chapter of accidents.
Suppose all this—and you have supposed what
may seem very extravagant no doubt, but what is
at the same time strictly and literally analogous
to the terrible and extraordinary experiments
now taking place publicly in the very midst
of these • densely-populated islands with a view
to the cure of the intellectually blind and
mad, the morally halt and leprous. Experi-
ments which are proving every day disastrous to
numerous unoffending passers-by in the general
multitude.
The theory of the Ticket-of-Leave System we
regard as eminently entitled to our admiration.
The principle in which it originated we revere as
one exquisitely beautiful in its benevolence. Its
purpose we regard as a purpose of sublime
benignity. The aspiration of which it is expres-
sly,. .7..4,4,401 as we would even cherish those
diviner aspirations born from the COlenini
and beneficence of Christianity. Yet the practical
experience of this system, theoretically so ennoblin
so humanising,
so philanthropical, we are com-
pelled by the sheer force of reason to consider ono
that has prayed, in many respects, most signally
deplorable. Insomuch that we are fain to thank
BEATEN for that announcement made the other
day by Colonel JEBB in his very masterly state-
ment, written almost as much in exculpation as in
P
outon—to
w
exchalkedilati
to nthiits,that an end is already
formidable scheme of un-
but no less un-
doubtedly dangerous
doubtedly generous and humane,
and destructive, experi-
ment.

than one, a most ill-
was, in more ways
The admission of the Austrians into the Prin-
cipalitiesadvised if not a treacherous, step. Mark-lane
feels the effect of it, and our loaf
is probably a
Penny for it. These, or at least half that, dearer
niggOdly bullies, who hardly dared
to come in
sight of the Russians' backs, who merely ventured
to walk in when the latter had walked out, can
yet Unprofitably consume the produce of the
country, paying for it, when they do pay, in
worthless Austrian paper. They lessen thus the
exportable produce of the country, while in a mi-
litary sense they only recompense the Allies with
mischief. The Provinces, notwithstanding the
War, have had, according to the most reliable
accoupts, splendid crops. Part of these is eaten
-
by the Austrian locusts ; but, .worse than that,
part, and the immensely larger-parti is detained
by the position in which Austria places those ter-
ritories. She obtains liberty for a few of her own
vessels to quit the Danube, the vessels or the