The Sun.
London, England, 1853-07-12 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TATESDAY EVENING, JULY 12, 1853.

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

of our numerous colonies, which realised much more
truly than before the observation that we were at the
head of an empire on which the sun never sat. The
question was, whether for our own social advantage, we
were to persevere in getting rid of the criminal popula-
tion of the United Kingdom at the expense of those co-
lonies where we had been hitherto in the habit of sending

Leasing
Compans.

Closing Prices
Yest3rday.

Business
this day.

HOUSE OF LORDS—(YESTERDAY.)
The LORD CHANCELLOR took hie seat on the woolsack

London &
N. West.,

at 5 o'clock.

Lord CAMPBELL presented a petition from the car-
penters, =niers, and ironworkers of Manchester, Hal-
ford, and other places, in favour of the Combination of
Workmen Bill.

Gt.Westn,
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them. The opinion of those colonies having been in an
unmistakable manner manifested against receiving any
more convicts, we must, sooner or later, discontinue send-
ing them there. At present the colony which had been our
grand depot for convicts, Van Diemen's Land, had signi-
fied great reluctance to receive anymore ; and the Govern-
ment, for the reasons statedin the late debate, had acceded
to their request. The question arose, what number could
be sent to the only colony, Western Australia, which was
still willing to receive them. That point ascertained,
their only course was to determine which of those
offenders whom they had been in the habit of tran-
sporting should continue to be sent out. Treating tran-

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L.kN.W
Caledon

The Earl of EGLINTON presented a similar petition
rom the working men of Manchester.
The Earl of EGLINTON presented a petition from
the Synod of Glasgow in favour of the Public Houses
150 1 I (Scotland) Bill.

106 - 166
54 - 56

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& Berw.
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150 - 152
33 -34

AUSTRIA AND TURKEY.
The Earl of MALMESBURY asked the noble earl at

she head of the Government Vadher he had received

112 - 114
56 - 57
271 - 284
14i - 141
26 - 27

any information respecting the advance of the Austrian
army into Bosnia, and on what pba.
The Earl of ABERDEEN said the Government had
received no official information on the subject.
The Earl of DERBY asked the noble earl whether

sportatron as the next to capital punishment, all the
could do was to take off from the bottom, as it were,

S. Eastern
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of the criminal class as large a number as the colony was
willing or able to receive. It was impossible to ascer-

!Norfolk..

98 - 100

her Majesty's Government had received any communica-
tion either now or any other tine from the Austrian
Minister, with respect to the pcssib:hty or probability
of the Austrian Government occupying Bosnia.
The Earl of ABERDEEN said he had received no
intimation of such intention on the part of the Austrian
Government.
NAVAL PROMOTION AND RETIREMENT.
The Earl of HARDWICKE rose to call attention to
the order in Council of the 25th of June, 1851, bearing
upon the promotion and retirement of officers in the
navy. Re did not wish to make any attack upon the
present government, because they had nothing to do
with the order in Council in question. When it was
issued he stated his objections to it, and he now ventured
again to trouble their lordships on the subject. He
wished to induce the government to look into the matter
with the view either of revising, rescinding, or amend-
ing the order in Council, in order that justice might be
done to the officers of her Majesty's navy. It did not
seem right, while the late government held office, until
the opinion of the country was taken upon an important
question of public policy to alter the order in Council.
But if the late government had continued in office, he
should have done in the Cabinet what he now proposed
to do in their lordships' house—namely, to represent the
injustice and inefficacy of the order in Council, first, in
regard to the instruction of midshipmen ; secondly, as
to lieutenants and commanders : and thirdly, as to
post-captains. The regulations regarding the half-pay
of officers also required revision. A post-captain, in
order to receive the rank of admiral on the active list,
must serve for six years in peace, four years in warror
five years in war and peace in a rated ship. That was
the sole and entire test of the ability of an officer. The
object was to endeavour to place upon the list of admi-
rals for active service young, active, and intelligent men
practised in their profession. If the order in Council
produced that effect, he should have no objection
to it ; but it was unjust as well as ineffica-
cious. The injustice was, that however desirous and
able an officer might be to serve in a rated ship, the
Admiralty did not provide a rated ship for him. An
officer might expend the best part of his life in the ser-
vice, and might serve an apprenticeship under the best
officers, but, having attained a certain rank, he might
not succeed in getting a ship for six years, and when he
arrived at the top of the list the door was shut in his
face, and he was liable to be dismissed from active ser-
vice. On the other hand, another officer, through the
accident of getting a rated ship, arrived at the rank of
admiral on active service. Then, a rated ship was a
term that implied a wide margin, from the smallest fri-
gate to the highest line-of-battle ship. If an officer had
never commanded a line-of-battle ship, and had had no
experience in the evolutions of a squadron, he might
still, if he had served in a frigate, become an admiral.
But another officer, who might have served three years
in a frigate, And only two years or one year in a line-of-
battle ship, where he might become conversant with the
practice of evolutions of a squadron or fleet was removed
to the reserved list. There was also another point to
which he wished to call attention, and which bore upon
the civil portion of the service. By these orders in
Council any officer having been in command of a dock-
yard, victualling-yard, or in any civil service under the
Crown relating to the navy, was entitled to take his
place on the active list, and was competent to command
a fleet. The order enacted that the time passed in ser-
vice might be reckoned as so much sea time passed
afloat. He believed, however, that this order in Coun-
cil, which applied immediately to the dockyards and to
the victualling-yards, did not apply to hospitals, and
yet, notwithstanding this, three distinguished naval
officers, who had served their time as superintend-
ents of hospitals, were made exceptions to the rule.
That apppeared a flagrant act of injustice, because,
as he had said before, although there was some doubt
on the subject, he did not believe it was intended
that the officers at the head of medical establish-
ments should be allowed to reckon their time, yet the
officers to whom he alluded had been so treated, and
were continued on the active list. What had been the

thin that number with absolute accuracy, but it might
be assumed at from 800 to 1,000 annually. Then came
the question—from which set of convicts the punish-
ment of transportation should be removed ? Undoubt-
edly from those who were in the eye of the law the
least culpable. The returns for 1851 showed that there
were sentenced to transportation in England and Wales
2,892 convicts, including 56 who were capitally con-
victed, but whose punishment was commuted to tran-
sportation. Of these 1,562 were sentenced to seven
years only, leaving 1,330 sentenced for longer terms,
practically for ten years and upwards. Scotland and
Ireland produced nearly, but not quite, the same num-
ber—in all, about 2,400 or 2,500. Not above one-third
of those could be received in Western Australia; and
it would be a very unwholesome state of the criminal
law, if; of the large number sentenced to transportation,
everybody should know that there were two chances
out of three that the sentence would not be carried into

L.&N.W.I
& Mid
Stektou &
Darlingt.
Midland..

3 - 31

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105 - 100

execution. (Hear.) To avoid this, they must go a step
further, and remove transportation from a still larger
number. There were none for periods between 10 and
14 years ; he only remembered one case of a man sen-
tenced for twelve years, and there were probably not
half-a-dozen such cases in a year. Nearly all above ten
were sentenced to fourteen years or upwards. Deduct.
ing from 1,330 the number sentenced for ten years only,
there remained 435 sentenced for fourteen years and
upwards in England and Wales. Taking the same
proportion for Ireland and Scotland, the total was
about 800. This left a little margin within the number
the colony would be able to receive ; but as, hitherto,
the discretion of the judges had led many who were
liable to 14 years or longer being only sentenced to 10,
and as this would not be the case under the altered state
of the law, the number sentenced for the. longtr period
would probably be rather increased. He therefore
thought that they should only leave as subjects for
transportation, those who were now liable for 14 years
and upwards, including cases of receiving stolen goods,
outrages, assaults on the person, attempts to do grievous
bodily harm, house breaking, burglary, cattle stealing,
and matters of that sort. The only remaining question
was, what should be substituted as a punishment for the
remainder. It had been the practice for some time, for
a great number of those sentenced to transportation, not
to be transported. Instead of this they were imprisoned
for a certain time on the separate system, were then em-
ployed on public works, and then, after a certain time,
were either transported or not. At present, a prisoner
sentenced to 15 years' transportation might be employed
all that time on the public works ; but in point of prac-
tice it had never been done. The only effectual course
would be to pass upon those who would otherwise have
been transported, a sentence as little varied as possible
from that which had been usual. The course had been
always this : where a party was sentenced seven years,
ordinarily speaking, he was imprisoned for a year ; then
he was sent to the public works for one or two years,
either to the hulks, Dartmoor, Portland Island, Pem-
broke, or other places ; and then he was sent abroad
with a ticket. of leave. This, unfortunately, could be
done no longer. He had endeavoured to come as near
as possible to it. Those who would have been trans-
ported for seven years, were now to be kept in penal
servitude for a term of four years; those transported
for 10 years would undergo a penal servitude of six
years ; those for 15, one of eight ; and those above 15,
one of 10 years. The bill then went on to explain that
the persons so sentenced would be liable to be dealt
with—after their service on the public works they were
to be sent to any place either in or out of the kingdom,
including Bermuda, Malta, or Gibraltar. The question
lay in a very narrow compass. Two propositions were
to be established—what number of convicts they could
continue to send to the colonies, and how they could
best deal with those who were not so sent. He had
had one or two communications urging him to do no-
thing in this matter, on the ground that there were
.statutes in existence enabling the Crown not to trans-
port those who had been sentenced to transportation.
This would certainly enable the Crown to make a selec-
tion of those to be sent to the colonies ; but weighing
the advantages and the disadvantages together, it
seemed to him a very scandalous thing that sentence of
transportation should be passed upon 5,000 people at
the various sessions and assizes, when it was well known

:lGtWestn

MINES.

result of the practice followed since 1851 ? Had the
present system, as was intended, produced upon the ac-
tive list a body of young and active officers who might
be supposed, from their youth, to be more energetic and
able to command our fleets, and had the result been
that on the retired list the names of old officers were
found whose years justified and rendered necessary their
retirement ? Quite the reverse. The ages of 16 officers
on each side produced—on the reserved list 1,027 years,
and upon the active list 1,038 years, so that there was
' a small balance against the activity of the active list (a
laugh), and it followed that there had been placed upon
the active list a larger number of aged officers than upon
the retired list. The service of six years in a rated ship
could not be any sufficient test of the abilityof an officer,
because officers might have served within a week or
month of that time ; while, on the other hand, you
might have an officer pushed on in the service by inte-
rest, who might have served the required period afloat,
and still might not be so efficient a man as the other,
who had not served quite so long a period. If their
lordships took into consideration the mode in which the
navy was governed, it was the very last profession in this
country which ought to be regulated by orders in Coun-
cil of this description. The whole mode of p'romotions and
appointments was objectionable at present, because those
promotions and appointments were not made by the
board as a board, but were exercised by one individual,
the First Lord. By orders in Council of this description
you placed the First Lord in the very difficult and painful
position, because although, doubtless, as an English gen-
tleman he wished to do justice to every one, great sus-
picion was thrown upon him, let him do whatever he
might and be as just as he could. In the army no such
system existed, and if there was retirement it was retire-
ment by selection of the Crown, and upon intelligible
grounds. The recent order in ouncil was only a repe-
tition of the order passed iu 1827, which, far from being
considered just by the service or by the governing power
of the day, was thought so unjust to the service that it
was repealed, and another substituted in its place.
What he would ask the Government to do was, to exa-
mine the bearings of that order in Council, and to re-
store to the service the arrangements then effected in-
stead of those existing at present, which produced no
financial advantage to the nation. The order substituted
for that of 1827 would effectually meet the case
which he had described, and would prevent any govern-
ing power being placed under circumstances of great
difficulty, and from from havinc, its motives repre-
sented in a spirit totally foreign to its feelings and in-
tentions.

that not 1,000 would be transported. (Hear.) That
was an inconvenience which outweighed almost every
other that could be suggested.
Earl GREY did not intend to oppose the second read-
ing, for, although he concurred in thinking that trans-
portation was the most useful secondary punishment
they possessed, he was bound to admit it had already
been decided that its use, at least to a great extent,
should be discontinued. He agreed that they ought to
bring the practice as nearly as possible to the rigid en-
forcement of the sentences actually passed ; and there-
fore something of the kind proposed by his noble and
learned friend must be adopted, because there was nothing
else that they could adopt except what was called
in the bill " penal servitude." At the same time,
he had been greatly disappointed that the noble and
learned lord had not given a fuller explanation of the
manner in which her Majesty's Government intended
to deal with this most difficult of difficult subjects • and
he felt, moreover, that some of the provisions of the bill
were open to objection. He should have liked, in the
first place, to have been told what was the course that
the Government intended to adopt with respect to ex-
tending the existing prisons at Portland and Dartmoor,
or what new prisons were intended to be formed. He
should have liked to have had some calculation given
the house of the expense to be incurred, and also to have
been informed whether the Government had already
begun to take the necessary measures to provide for the
disposal of the convicts who were no longer to be trans-
ported. Above all, he had anticipated that the noble
and learned lord would have satisfied the house upon a
point upon which many questions had been asked by
himself (Earl Grey) and other noble lords, when the sub-
ject was last before them, namely, what was to be done
with the convicts who, under the existing law and prac-
tice, had been taught to expect, that, at a given period,
they would be released from the severities of Dartmoor
and Bermuda ? In the course of one of the first conver-
sations which had taken place upon the subject this ses-
sion, he (Earl Grey) had stated his opinion that there
would be between 3,000 and 4,000 of such persons to be
disposed of during the present year. The noble duke

(the Duke of Newcastle) contradicted him on that occa
sion, and said that the real number would not be much
more than half that. Of course he (Earl Grey) bowed to
the noble duke's superior information • but he had after-
wards moved for returns upon the subject; and really,
with those returns in his hand, he could not now see how
his calculation could have been wrong. The total number
of convicts removed to the Australian colonies with tickets
of leave last year had been 3,735, and the year before
3,182 ; and he was aware of no cause in operation to
reduce that number. On the contrary, the natural pre-
sumption was that it had not yet reached the maximum,
and there had in fact been a progressive increase during
the previous years. (Hear, hear.) There were, even
at the date of the returns, at Portland, Bermuda, and
the naval arsenals, no fewer than 1,234 persons who
were entitled by the regulations then in force to expect
to be released from the extreme severity to which they
were subjected. Those who knew how severe was the
penal discipline in use, how continuous the labour, how
monotonous and tedious the life they led, would not be
surprised to hear that the convicts should look forward
to the period of their release with extreme anxiety, or
that the stimulus to good conduct which that anticipa-
tion of release supplied, was the main source of all the
improvements which had been brought about in our
prison discipline. On a question of so much importance
then, he trusted that some information would be given
before the close of the present debate. (Hear, hear.)
He would now proceed to make a few remarks upon the
bill itself. Under the present law a convict under sen-
tence of transportation might be kept in prison at the
pleasure of the Crown during the whole time of his sen-
tence ; but in practice that had never been done. It had
always been the practice that the convicts should be
released at a much earlier period. Thus persons sen-
tenced to seven years' transportation were discharged
at the end of four years if they behaved well. Now, it
was of great importance that the Crown should possess
this power, because the whole of the improvement
which had taken place had arisen from the plan of thus
making the duration of the punishment depend upon the
good behaviour of the culprit. If, therefore, they short-
ened the time of imprisonment they would greatly
bili a man,dimi-
nish
the efficiency of this motive. Under
however idle and disorderly he might be, so long as
he kept clear of a second conviction in a court of justice
he would be discharged as a matter of course ; whereas
now he knew that if he were guilty of misconduct he
might be kept for the whole period at Portsmouth and
Dartmoor. Besides the more natural course would be
to increase the severity of the imprisonment if they re-
mitted the banishment. Such, however, had not been
the case except in one remarkable instance, namely.
where a person had been sentenced to penal servitude
for life. He (Lord Grey) had great doubts whether they
could ever carry out such a sentence as that. Trans-
portation for life was a very different matter, because in
and
et
banishment.sen ene c
that case the party, if he behaved well, would, after a
time, receive a ticket of leave,then a his
would become merely ono of perpetual
But it was very doubtful whether the people of this
country would ever be willing to see men condemned to
a servitude that should last for life unchecred by the
hope of ultimate release. (Hear, hear.) There was also
a great deficiency in the bill. At present it was not
the practice to permit convicts to pass at once from a
state of strict discipline to one of unrestricted liberty.
The holders of tickets of leave were compelled to reside
in the particular part of the oolonyallotted to them, and
they could be remanded into custody if they were guilty
of breaking the condition upon which the tickets had
been granted. Experience showed that that was a plan
which had led to very good results, and that the holders
of tickets of leave were much less liable to relapse than

The Earl of ABERDEEN said, the noble earl had
rightly stated that her Majesty's present Government
had not originated the order in Council to which he had
alluded, and had also given a reason for not bringing
the subject under the attention of the Government of
which he himself was a member. He thought he recol-
lected that at the time this order in Council was issued

the noble earl, with some of his friends, had made some
observations on the subject. He believed the matter
had been considered by the Government at the time,
and had also been fully considered by Parliament. Now,
he (the Earl of Aberdeen) knew the subject was one
upon which much difference of opinion prevailed in the
naval profession, and he confessed that he himself was
not very competent to offer an opinion upon any practical
view which the noble earl had taken upon the working of
the order in Council. As, therefore, the noble earl had

done nothing more than call the attention of her Ma-
jesty's Government to the subject, he would, without
offering any opinion or coming to any conclusion himself,
simply engage that his right hon. friend at the head of
the Admiralty should give the subject his full conside-
ration, and he had no doubt that ultimately a decision
would be arrived at which would give some satisfaction
to the noble earl.

The Earl of HADDINGTON had long been of opi-
nion that the matter was one which needed consideration,
but it was a subject of very considerable difficulty in-
deed, and it was more easy to point out defects in the
existing system than to devise a remedy for those defects.
He doubted whether under any general orders or regu-
lations whatever, cases of hardship might not occur.H
knew an instance in which an officer who had served
five years and a certain number of months in a rated
ship was then put upon the retired list. He had pre-
viously at the desire of the Government of the day, con-
tinued for a considerable time to serve in a sloop, and,
if he had been allowed to count that service in the sloop,
he would not have been put upon the retired list. That
he thought was a case of great hardship. (Hear.)
Lord COLCHESTER hoped the whole subject would
receive the careful consideration of the right hon. baro-
net at the head of the Admiralty.
Earl TALBOT was very glad the subject was about
to receive the attention of the Government. It was a
very important question, deeply affecting the efficiency
of the navy, and he believed the order in Council alluded
to had given rise to great dissatisfaction in the service
generally.
The subject then dropped.
TRANSPORTATION OF OFFENDERS BILL.
The LORD CHANCELLOR, in moving the second
reading of this bill, regretted that there was a necessity,
at the present day, to introduce a bill of that description.
He did not treat lightly the advantage of transportation
as a secondary punishment. His experience in criminal
courts had convinced him that transportation answered
the end of punishment better than anything elso that
could have been devised. (Sear, hear.) It had all the
main ingredients of secondary punishments ; it had a
maximum in apprehension and a minimum in endur-
ance ; it excited great terror, without, perhaps, eventu-
ally inflicting great pain, and he knew not what they
could look to better. If the United Kingdom alone
were concerned, he should have deprecated the removal
of transportation from the statute-book, to any great
degree, as a punishment for crime. Its terrors operated
to prevent the commission of crime, and those who had
committed it were afforded the best chances of reforma-
tion. But we were bound also to consider the interests