The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-12 00:00:00

the political and social chaos around him. The
Peace Convention ms y as well try its experiment
as not. He will probably think it only oae harm.
less confusion the more. But the issue really is
between expediency and fanaticism, and the ques-
tion the next few weeks will decide is whether cal-
culation will be strong enough to resit the passions
that are driving all the interests of the nation to
ruin.

HERALD.—We need scarcely say that our counsel
has been to treat the convict, no matter what his
offence, still considerately, but to punish him in
reality and truth where punishment by his sentence
is due, and to make this sentence to prove exactly
throughout what it says. Let hard labour be hard
labour indeed. Let penal servitude mean coercive
slavery for a declared term. Let men dread crime
because they dread punishment. Reformation is
quite a secondary question. It need never be feared
that the active and benevolent minds of England
will omit any exertion or suggestion which might
lead to this good end. If the public now demands
true chastisement it is not to spare the rod and spoil
the criminal. While they
claim protection for them-
selves they see that the best course to reformation in
kindoffenders is wholesome
Thpeuynoiushgmhtennto.t
toShaanmswseor with
faintyh
rogues. never
Our prison discipline has heretofore been
answer.
one vast sham—a fraud and deception on society.
It may be fairly concluded from what we have all
learnt of prison discipline that these gaols do not
wholly meet our requirements against crime. Some-
thing more is wanted. The ticket of leave is a mis-
take. But the ticket of leave is unavoidable. Our
prisons would be overcrowded without an occa-
sional clearance. We must then look around us for
some practicable remedy. Is transportation, the na-
tural cure presented, the old cure, the one pursued
by us so long, all at once become so used up and
obsolete that England with all her colonies and her
sparse population abroad cannot practise it now ?
We think not. Mr. Adderley and other worthy
men with him think that channel for our criminals
is dried up. It is too expensive for us, and too dis-
tasteful to the inhabitants. This we must all ad-
mit holds good for certain of our settlements. They
have had enough of convict life. They have grown
dissatisfied and grumbled. They would even have
manifested a more formidable resentment if the
mother-country persevered in palming upon them
her surplus evil population. Then the cost weighed
heavily on the exchequer at home. This can be said,
and has been said, with much good sense, against
transportation. But the argument has its excep-
tion. Our empire is immense. There are numbers
of places suitable every way as convict settlements.
The first outlay is not the worst. Let us only
think what our ticket-of-leave men and repeating
criminals cost us now in the year. Any system
of transportation, even to the distant Falkland
Islands, would be a less burden, to say nothing of
the increased safety to life, limb, and property, than
the indulgent methods we are now almost com-
pelled to pursue to preserve our prisons from over-
crowding. Here is the real gist of the matter.
No walls will hold our criminals. We must let
them loose. The plain question Shall we con-
tinue to do this by the subterfuge of tickets of leave,
or send them abroad at once, where the chances are
very many they will never more return amongst us ?
If we can do the work of deportation without in-
jury to our colonies, nay, even with benefit to the
settlers, we consider the difficult problem solved.
The expense, though heavy, will not count when
weighed with the vast ccst inflicted now on society
by the recurrence of offences in the person of the
same criminal. The leading principle in all this
investigation is the security and protection of
society. This must overrule everything. The re-
formation of the criminal will properly follow next
in a Christian country. Expenditure, too, is a
serious item for consideration. The well-being and
the desires of our dependencies and colonies must
not be neglected. But amidst all these there is no
necessary contradiction, They may be harmonised.
The problem may be somewhat involved, but there
is either a direct or an indirect solution lifting it '
out of the reductio ad absurdum in which it is now
submerged and complicated.
POST.—When nations take arms against each
other they reconcile themselves to the miseries
which are inseparable from warfare. Any army
defeated in the field may bear a grudge against the
victors ; but however intense may be the misery
occasioned to the relatives of the fallen, it is seldom
that a sentiment of hatred to the slayers finds a
place in their thoughts. No single man has possi-
bly occasioned greater carnage in the Northern
ranks than General Stonewall Jackson ; yet the
paramount feeling he has excited amongst his op-
ponents is that of admiration. Nor is it difficult to
discover the reason. Jackson is not only a soldier
—he is a Christian and a gentleman. On the field
of battle he directs his artillery where it proves
most effective; but, when the hour of carnage has
passed by, he (as at Fredericksburg) forbears to
recommence firing until the sick and wounded of
his adversaries have been removed; and when
thousands have surrendered (as at Harper's Ferry),
he permits them to depart uninjured on the faith of
a promise not again to bear arms against the
Southern Confederacy. The admiration for Gen.
Jackson expressed by the citizens of New York in
some degree atones for their acquiescence in the
barbarities of Butler, inasmuch as it shows they
have not altogether lost the sense of appreciation
of the real attributes of a Christian soldier. The
long-kept secret of the ultimate destination of Gen.
Banks' expedition is at length known. The expe-
dition has entered the delta of the Mississippi, and
the general in command has superseded Butler in
the government of New Orleans. Already the new
commandant has shown that he intends pursuing
a policy different from that of his predecessor. The
sales of the private property of the citizens of New
Orleans on account of the Federal Government,
which had been ordered by Butler, have been sus-
pended. In the annals of rapine and injustice no
act so utterly indefensible can be found as the con-
fiscation of the property of the inhabitants of New
Orleans. That it was a direct breach of the condi-
tions on the faith of which the city was surrendered
is, perhaps, its least disgraceful feature. Had Gen.
Butler razed the city to the ground it would have
been a great crime, but it would have been less
heinous than those which, under the pretext of ad-
ministering justice, he has daily committed since he
assumed its government. Many have been more
bloody than he ; but for cunning in devising expe-
dients for tormenting the weak and helpless, he
stands alone. Surrounded by his soldiers he knew
he was supreme, and lost no opportunity of making
his power felt. The men he robbed—the women he
attempted, but in vain, to dishonour. On the free
he imposed the most galling servitude; and to those
who, by the laws of the State, were slaves, he gave
freedom, in the hopes that it might degenerate into
unbridled license. He paralysed trade by ignoring
all title to property in those who constituted the
bulk of the population, and attempted to re-
lieve the misery which in consequence arose
among the working classes, by sequestrating the
property of the rich. Blind to every sentiment of
honour and justice, ignorant of every principle of
government, versed only in the dirtiest tricks of the
aimed at no
lowest paths of his profession, the Yankee attorney
success-
ful chicane. Nor P
has he altogether Jai •
led By pro-
mising Protection h
higher ends than the results of
Orleans into makinghe tricked the
declaration of their property,
and then he
confiscated
endeavoured, though ve'l
foulest device
inhabitants of New
that was ever
without success, to coerce
ladies of that city mind he
by the human
the
showing respect for their
oppressors, although subsequently,
equally disreputable trick,
of them widows by an almost
declare in public their he compelled them to
attachment to
meat which had made many
thema childless,
m aand w
hwhichwho
ainet.od it.By
the
a hadgovern-
meat
loaded thorn, with the Y
grossest3aviledr
Safety at the
supported in authority
insults. The Committee of Public
time of ibe first French Revolution contented them-
selves with depriving their victims of life, but they
left them free to entertain and to express in their
dying moments the sentiments for which they
perished. Bertrand Barer° even in his fiercest de•
nunciations of " the Austrian woman" never sug-
gested that by threatened indignities she might be
compelled to extol the mercy and the justice of the
tribunal which sent her husband to the scaffold and