The Sun.
London, England, 1855-03-24 00:00:00

ready tool of the COBURG; and well we know
what they want. Lord JOHN wants the grand
essential of the hour—greatness of mind. NICHO-
LAS far surpassed him in conceptions worthy of a
statesman. Lord JOHN is so habituated to the
life-long compromise of a Whig senator that he
cannot easily rise above political bargaining. His
not wishing to diminish the territories of Russia
is as fatal to his reputation as a foreign statesman
as his finality folly to his character as a liberal
politician. We have no doubt whatever that
were Lord JOHN RUSSELL known to be a hopeless
subject for the manipulations of Russian cunning,
were it known that his terms were, the coasts of
the Black Sea as well as Sebastopol dismantled ;
and if that be not conceded, Poland to be re-
stored—that Russia would grasp at the alterna-
tive which she now professes to reject as an in-
lignity. We fear Lord JOHN'S character and
views are just what will embolden Russia to ask
what she would have known to be hopeless from
L PITT or a CANNING.

We do not wonder that our aristocracy feel
ashamed of what they have now to do. They
have smiled on or tolerated the villanies of Russia
so long—they have so helped to nurse the -vanity
aid ambition of the late CzAn through all his
atrocities and treacheries, that they must feel
rather awkwardly in having to curtail Russian
power and influence. It must, however, be done,
at a reasonable cost now, or at a tremendous one
ere many years are past. Consideration for Rus-
sia has been the bane of this whole struggle. She
is a purely barbarian power, with no claim to
influence or respect but that of vast size and brute
force, and she cannot appreciate consideration.
She repaid permission to pass the Pruth by into-
lerable barbarities in the provinces ; and the
sparing of Odessa by firing on the stranded Tiger.
In like manner she would repay the toleration of
I battery at Sebastopol by increasing it again gra-
dually and insidiously to its present strength, and
the sparing of the dockyards of Nicolaieff by build-
ing fresh ninety-gun ships for another Sinope.
Let our Cabinet take care how they consent to
Coburg and Austrian terms of peace on behalf of
the English people.

The ulterior consequence, we all know, of the
celebrated Act 16 and 17 VICT., c. 99, has been
the virtual abolition of the punishment of trans-
portation. Its immediate result has been the
detention amongst us of an increasing multitude
of criminals, who would otherwise have been con-
veyed away in ship-loads to Van Diemen's Land
and Western Australia. We have, therefore, by
relieving our colonies from a very undeserved in-
fliction, multiplied rather considerably our own
difficulties, anxieties, and responsibilities. All
this has been simultaneously a national= act of
ustice, and a national act of magnanimity. It
will, we doubt not for a single instant, be regarded
by the future annalist of Great Britain as an
event demanding the most earnest, if not the
most eulogistic, celebration. Whatever evils may
devolve upon ourselves from the remarkable
change upon which we have thus daringly, and
even let us say generously, adventured, must be
aceopted in expiation of the wrong hitherto in-
dicted by us, during an interval of years so pro-
traoted and deplorable, upon our remote and un-
Afending possessions. Conspicuous among the
inflictions requiring in this manner to be endured
for a while as courageously and uncomplainingly
as may be well practicable under existing circum-
stances, is the exceedingly apparent one already
adverted to, namely, the enormous increase in
the number of felons in the United Kingdom
faunally undergoing the penalties of incarceration.
It is so far satisfactory, at any rate, to know that
I she energy of our authorities steadily continues to
keep pace with the numerical enhancement of
their responsibilLies. Under their vigorous and
intiring management of the principal Convict
Prisons, and of the subordinate penal establish-
nents throughout the country, no difficulty has
yet been experienced in the way of providing for
)ur prisoners, male and female, adult and juve-

❑ile, an adequate amount of accommodation. Pro
vision has in this respect been carefully secured
beforehand, insomuch that every exigency has
been hitherto effectually anticipated. In testi-
mony of this—take the most recent and sufficient
illustration.

During the year 1853 the total number of
convicts having to bo provided for, somehow or
other, within the twelvemonths, amounted to
9,227 altogether. While accommodation for
9,408 prisoners must be recognised as having
been forthwith placed betimes at the disposal. of
Government by the provident and energetic Board
of Directors over whom Colonel Jess has so long
and successfully presided in his twofold capacity
as Chairman, and Surveyor-General of the Prisons
of England. How it was that this terrible multi-
tude of criminals (9,227) became distributed—in
what proportions and for what reasons they were
distributed--whither and under what circum-
stances they were distributed—we have recently
taken occasion to explain in these columns with
some degree of particularity. A gigantic change
has since then taken place by reason of a compre-
hensive modification of our entire system of cri-
minal jurisprudence. It has been decided by the
Legislature that recourse must no longer be had
to the old, worn-out, exploded, obsolete plan of
wholesale transportation. Exactly 700 out of the
9,227 before mentioned were shipped from these
islands to our distant colonies during the year
1853: 100 by the Sibella to Gibraltar ; 600—.
namely, 296 by the Pyrenees, and 304 by the
Sea Park—to Western Australia. This convenient,
but at the same time unjust and blundering sys-
tem, we repeat, has since then been abolished ;
the notable enactment, 16 and 17 VICT., c. 99,
having virtually done away with punishment by
transportation. The convict population of the
United Kingdom must henceforth be provided for
within the limits of the United Kingdom. Accotn-
modation consequently must be found, not as in
1853, for 7,760 prisoners out of the aggregate,
for the year of 9,227, but for 9,227 as a mini-
MUM, ! Whether it has been so arranged we have
shown by the simple but adequate statement--
that already by the 31st of Maroh, 1854, previ-
sion for no less than 9,408 criminals had been
placed by the Board of Directors at the disposal
of her MAJESTY'S Government. The accomnioda- I

tion so secured was, as a matter of course, of
various descriptions. It included provisions in
this way for 620 juveniles, at Parkhurst ; for 700
females at Brixton ; for 1,048 in the invalid
depots ; for 2,950 in separate cells, whether in
(rented) county or borough cells, as at Bath
and Wakefield, or in the noble Government
establishments at Millbank and Pontonville ;
and, beyond all this, for as many as 4,090 in
the prisons and hulks for 1
450 on boar public works—viz., d the Warrior, 528 on board the
D3fouce, 572 (for the able-bodied) at Dartmoor,
1,020 at Portsmouth in connection with the
dockyard, and 1,520 at Portland in connection
with the Ordnance and the Breakwater. It must
be manifest from these brief and comprehensible

statistics—statistics carrying us no further that;
up to the 31st of March, 1854, that is to gay,
nearly a year from the present period—that the
utmost desirable energy and activity, judgment,