The Sun.
London, England, 1855-03-28 00:00:00

by vexatious procrastination, they might at length
induce them, from sheer weariness, to assent to
injudicious conditions and unreasonable stipula-
tions. That evil has happily been averted, chiefly
because the conduct of Prussia, so graphically
depicted by the Nestor of the British
Senate, was too bad to allow of the concessions
required byFREDERicK WILLIAM and his advisers.
After many fruitless efforts to obtain the co-
operation of Prussia, we tardily shook off the in-
cubus, and placed her in the state of isolation in
which she now remains, and where she must con-
tinue until the adoption of a more generous and
high-minded policy by her Government. We
must act in the same way towards Austria if her
conduct require similar treatment. Had France
and England acted entirely by themselves—had
it not been for the futile attempts to obtain Ger-
man co-operation, the War would either never
have commenced, or would have long since been
brought to a satisfactory termination. As it is,
we must make the best of a bad bargain ; but our
representatives must be imbecile indeed if they
suffer themselves to be deceived, not merely for
the second, but the twenty-second time. The
first NAPOLEON had a summary mode of convincing
German diplomatists and inducing then to make
up their minds as to the course to be adopted.
We trust that his worthy successor will be equally
decided in his proceedings, and that the represen-
tatives of England are too well aware of the value
of the French alliance to endanger it by any
further attempt to conciliate those who are not
accessible to any but decided arguments.

It would be altogether erroneous to imagine
that the recent extraordinary changes effected in
the Criminal Code by means of the Act 16 and .17
Vscr., c. 99, have necessarily conduced to any
comprehensive or fundamental modifications in
our system of Convict Discipline—either in regard
to the principles of general management, or in
reference to the details of home administration.
It is not so. The matter deserves to be under-
stood by the multitude at large; and, to be so
understood, it requires, perhaps, some few words
1)y way of familiar explanation.

According to the letter and spirit of the new
enactment, all that has been thereby effected by the
Imperial Legislature, has been (immediately) the
virtual, and (ultimately) the total and permanent,
abolition of the secondary punishment of transpor-
tation. Correctly spaking, the 16th and 17th
c. 99, has already put an end to the ex-
ii;tence of penal settlements in our colonial pos-
sessions. Botany Bay has long keen nothing
more than a horrid memory of the past. Norfolk
Island is henceforth to be, in its old capacity, as
much a terra incognita to our judicial authori-
ties as even Cipango was to the medieval naviga-
tors, or the renowned Ultima, Tliule to the
geopraphers of antiquity. The annual crop of
felony reaped down in these islands by the two-
edged sword of justice is no longer to be con-
veyed away in ship loads to our antipodes, to be
there threshed and winnowed under an elaborate
system of penal discipline, and afterwards sown
broad-east by tickets of leave far and wide over
Van Diemen's Laud, or throughout the length and
breadth of Western Australia. Instead of shoot-
ing rubbish after this horrible and wholesale
fashion upon the shores of our distant colonies,
we are from this time forth to gather it up care-
fully into certain spots selected for that purpose
within the limits of the United Kingdom, there
to discover what possible good can be brought
about in its regard by a series of processes equiva-
lent to those of careful sifting and exquisitely-
cautious disinfection. Otherwise, let us say, we
I have at length resolutely determined, as we ought
long ago, in mere justice and humanity to have
determined—not, as heretofore, to relieve our-
selves of a hideous burden and an almost over-
whelming responsibility by shifting it from our
own shoulders to those of our unfortunate colonial
populations. We have resolved in lieu of this,
and, as it were, in expiation for our past miscon•
duct towards our remote fellow-countrymen, to
make the best of it ourselves—ourselves to sustain
the weight of theburden, and to support, if possible,
the consequent and. more cumbrous sense of the
responsibility. As we have intimated, the CROWN,
the Lords, and the Commons of England have
done all this by the transformation of a Bill into
an Enactment. That Enactment has already, we
have observed, abolished the whole scheme of our
penal settlements ; it has abrogated the entire of
one branch in our groat system of secondary
punishments ; it has totally done away, that is to
say, with the secondary punishment of Transpor-
tation.

But—while this recent act of legislation has
done all this, it has by no means necessitated, as
a further result of the change in the law, any
radical or even superficial alteration either in the
principle of convict management, or in tho de-
tails of home a,clininistra`ion. The principle of
management Is now, in 1355, to all intents and
purposes, identical with that defined thirteen
years since, namely, in. 1842, by the Earl of DERRY,
then Lord STANLEY, in his capacity as Colonial
Secretary. The details of administration are at
this moment precisely similar to those arranged
five years afterwards, and consequently eight
years from the present time, that is in 1847, by
Sir GEORGE GREY, then, as now, the Minister pre-
siding over the affairs of the Home Depart-
ment. Wherefore it becomes manifest that
all that has been effected by this notable
Act 16 and 17 VICT., C. 99, is, as we have already
intimated, the putting an end to the system of
convict removal from this country to Van Die-
men's Land and Western Australia—and the
substitution of release by " order of licence" at
home for the plan of release with a " ticket of
leave" in our remote penal settlements. That is
all—voila tout ! The result is simple and easily
expressed. But if it is so, it is at the same time
most momentous. It involves, of course, an ex-
traordinary increase of responsibility upon those
hitherto and still entrusted with the guardianship
of our criminal population. It requires on their
part a corresponding increase of vigilance, saga-
city, pr•ruptitude, precision, and determination.
It taxes all their energies, in short, to the very
uttermost. It calls largely, and, moreover, sud-
denly, upon all their abilities, upon all the re-
sources of their invention, upon all the stores of
their cautious and protracted experience. It is
gratifying
to know that, up to the present junc-
ture at least, there has been no perceivable defi-
ciency in any ono of these particulars among the
corps of officials directing the movements of the
complicated machinery of our Penal Administra-
tion. Under the adroit
guidance and vigilant
st
theea
dwhole
an department
o appears to have worked as
supervision of the Surveyor-Geueral of Prisons,
efficiently as ever—and. this, be it
may please to call it, under
that of an astonishing
under the sharpest teat, trial, or-
pressure of unexpected
(rice:ind:inorbe:ehda,tever y
tances.
The fact is pecu-
liarly honourable and fortuitous circums
entire Depart_to the
went ; it is ll especia 3 honourabla
the Dap y
r y
tenant nel
--
ER JE as the Chief of
other
• t Colo
now more particularly when so 1113"
branches of the public service have utterly broken