The Sun.
London, England, 1849-03-28 00:00:00

nience in which the country was placed in respect°
teansportation. without reaching the main point which
was raised by this motion. He said that they ought not
to put the system of transportation in the way that less
complained of; and that, therefore, the House should
affirm the resolution. The debate of that evening would
point out, he thought, the necessity of improving the
education and general social condition of those classes of
the people which furnished the majority of these con'
vict:. He hoped he should have the assurance of the
Government that this system of transportation should
not be tweed. But in this country there was no
public minister whose duty it was to investigate and
provide for these social exigencies. What leers
they coming to ? With their gaols everywhere over-
flowing, their colonies unwilling to receive wore con'
victs, and 7,000,000/. or 8,000,0001. annually spent in in-
struction—religious instruction, too—which ought t°
have prevented the occasion which gave rise to so large
an amount of transportation, what was to be done? /16
recommended the House to affirm the resolution nth'
routed by the Hon. Member, ia the full belief that it
would tend to accomplish some of the improvements to
which he had adverted.—(Hear, hear.)
Major BLACKALL recommended a system of con'
vict labour to be maintained, strictly under military
discipline. If that were established, he believed that
instead of being productive of mischief in the colony
of the Cape, it would prove a very great benefit to its
population.
Mr. AGLIONEY said, that in his opinion the Right
Hon. Baronet, the Home Secretary, had proved too
much; and as yet it was difficult to say whether his
proofs and admissions should be taken as binding,
either against the Government or the House. The pe'
tition of the colonists appeared to him a very proper
one, and he could scarcely believe that a respectable
body of colonists could express a wish to have eon'
vials sent out to them.—(Hear, hear.) Some of them,
indeed, bent upon the accumulation of money, might
perhaps do so, but the general case was extremely inv.
probable; and if the Right Honourable Baronet were
of that opinion, it was a virtual abandonment of the
system of transportation. Ile firmly believed that it was
far better to tutu the convicts loose in society in this
country rather than . in the colonies, because here theyhad a complete organization of the law and police, which
the colonies were comparatively destitu'e of A more
dangerous system could not be put in practice than that
of allowing convicted felons to go loose in a small com'
municy, on tickets of leave. He might cite, as an
tration of his view of the matter, a dispatch to Lord
Stanley, dated at Auckland, New Zealand, in the year
1843, and signed. by George Clark, as chief protector of
the aborigines, whom he should not on this occasion have
quoted, had he not been confirmed in his statements to it
very great extent.—(Hear, hear.) The dispatch stated
very forcibly the baneful effects of the practice under
which the Parkhurst boys, who came within the scope of
the resolution, had been permitted to reside amongst the
natives. They taught the simple and credulous New
Zealanders, who harboured them and kept them in idle'
ness, to swear in English, and to write all kinds of els-
scene names and phrases on paper, which they sent by
them to market as the price they were to demand for
their commodities. The system was undoubtedly one
calling for serious reform, and he trusted that before
long the reform would take place.
Mr. F. SCOTT wished to ask whether it was right
or fair to force convicts to remain in a colony, against
the will of the colonists, after their time of sentence was
expired ? Is was one thing to send out prisoners as
holders of tickets of leave, and another to employ they°
on public works.. Of the latter the colonists did not com'
plain, but if the convicts were continued in the colony
after the works were completed, and thus allowed to
contaminate the murals of the colonists, that circumstance
formed serious grounds of complaint.—(hear, hear.)
Would it not hereafter be better to consider whether
the:colonists were to be liable to the continuance amongst
them of convicts as settlers, after the expiration 01
their sentenc, s, or whether it would not be fair, alter
those convicts hat: been engaged on the public works'
and had worked out their time of sentence on those
works, to require them to purchase their passage home
—unless in cases where the colonists expressed a desire
to receive them ? In Van Diemen's Land three-fourths
of the adult population were convicts, or persons whose
sentences had expired. lie was of opinion, with every
right-thinking person, that it was not fair in England to
inflict the off-scourings of her own population on the CO'
Lord JOHN RUSSELL did not mean to take any
part in the present debate, were it not that he deemed it
necessary to correct a misapprehension of the Hon.
Gentleman the Member for Cockermouth, in reference to
an observation made by his Right Hon. Friend the Se'
cretary of State for the Home Department. The 1100'
Gentleman seemed to be of opinion that his Right a 00.;
Friend had stated that in cases where colonists objects
'l
to receive convicts, no more were to be sent out to such,
colonies. Now that was not what his Right Hon. Friend
said. What he said was that he objected to giving any
expression to an opinion pledging the Government 10
that course, because he believed if the terms of the mo-
tion before the House were so framed as to include anY
colonies, it might lead to the inference that the systea
of transportation was to be altogether abolished. IP3
Right Honourable Friend objected to any such 1/1;
Terence. But in particular cases, such as the case 0'
the Cape of Good Hope, where there was
remonstrance from the colonists against sending
a large number of convicts to their colonies, 0
would not be right to continua sending them. That was
the opinion of the, Noble Lord at the head of the Colonial
Department, and it was an opinion in which the other
members of the Government participated. He trusted
that the explanation which he had thus deemed it to be
his duty to give would prove satisfactory to Mr. Adder"
ley, whose object was not to place any objectionable de-
claration on the books of the House, but rather to secure
that which was required by the Cape of Good Hope--;
that transportation should not be continued to that
colony, contrary to the wishes and remonstrances of the
colonists. The general opinion was with respect to
persons who committed crime, that it was difficult
for such persons to procure employment on leaving
prison; and it wan, therefore, thought advisable, °II
the expiration of their time, to send them to plol
where there would not be that difficulty. He remembers
a case wherein a man, who had received good and re"
ligious instruction in Pentonville, obtained employment
as a shopman soon after his liberation; but some of Ins
old associates found out his place, and gave information
affecting his former character, and leading to appeehen'
sions respecting his honesty, and the coesequence Wes'
that he was dismissed; and it was to meet such cases
as that that the Government were anxious to make pro"
vision.