The Sun.
London, England, 1847-03-08 00:00:00

Miontiat 2int

LONDON, MONDAY, MARCH 8, 1847.

Legislation, from being the most complicated of
sciences, admits of perpetual improvement, and re-
quires an almost endless modification. So compre-
hensive is this principle in government, that the
whole business of the Legislature may be said to be
comprised in the labour of reconstructing, and re-
adapting, and reforming, and re-organising the Code
of laws by which the body politic is bound together,
and from the peculiar colouring of which the Con-
stitution derives its character and its individuality.
Notwithstanding the genius which has been lavished
upon the science cf good government from the re-
motest periods of antiquity, that science is every day
proved yet more plainly to be in its very embryo and
its adolescence. The philosophy of the heathen sages,
the wisdom of LYCURGUS, the fabulous sagacity of
rommaus, the intelligence of JUSTINIAN, the
assiduity of CONSTANTINE, the industry of
ALFRED, and the generous and masculine
powers of CH ARLEM AG E have been in-
effectual in sweeping away the vaster abuses
of the social condition. After ages of experience and
generations of experiment, the commonest evils still
continue to flourish, the moral maladies consequent
upon the congregation of men together in states and
cities still remain unchecked, and, what is more
disastrous and appalling than all these considerations,
is, that crime seems to propagate itself with re-
doubled energy :under the very punishments
which have been contrived for its correction and
eradication. In lieu of a diminution of depravity in
consequence of the greater extension of civilisation, the
licentiousness of the more abandoned classes of the
community appears to thrive and deepen upon a ratio
nearly equivalent to the advarcement and elevation
of their more prosperous and more fortunate neigh-
bours. We become satisfied with the alterations made
upon the statute-book, we relap.T into the lethargy of
confidence; but the evils we conceived to have been
either vanquished or provided against, accumulate in
number and extend in enormity, until we are re-
awakened to a knowledge of their existence by a
sense of danger and a consciousness that some more
effectual measures of prevention and expiation must
be administered. Just now we are precisely in that
position. The deplorable inefficiency of cur criminal
regulations has loomed upon us in spectacles so rife
with atrocity, that we are compelled, from sheer
horror, to pause and scrutinise its details. From
that scrutiny we have been latterly deriving a dread-
ful but salutary lesson in legislation. We have
looked into the abysses of sin which have yawned
before us in our penal settlements, and from the
dismal disclosures of those abysses we have derived
the experience of many centuries.
The pernicious effects resulting from indiscrimi-
nate transportation have, however, been long since
recognised. Even before the abolition of the assign-
ment system—a system that actually held out
temptations to the destitute to become com-
paratively affluent by becoming felons, or, in yet
plainer words, to become the favourite objects of the
solicitude of the law, by becoming the flagrant de-
riders and infringers of the law—even before that
wanton system of leniency had been thoroughly ex-
ploded, cries of indignation were raised against
the broad principle of transportation as in-
efficient in preventing the commission of crime,
and as inapplicable to all species of offences against
the State. Now, however, that clamour for the re-
vision of our criminal code in reference to theinflic-
tion of secondary punishments has penetrated the
region, and, what is more, has reached the ears,
and, what is more, has satisfied the judg-
ments, of our deputed legislators. Last evening
the Earl GREY pronounced the doom of the obnoxi-
ous system of indiscriminate transportation. The
complete re-organisation of the law in this particular,
is, therefore, we take it, inevitable. The days of the

old blundering system are numbered. Our annual
number of convicts will not henceforth be
shipped off in cargoes to the penal colonies to
be pampered into irreclaimable ruffians by being
surrounded by unusual luxuries, or to be goaded into
the commission of those heinous and almost incon-
ceivable crimes that might well "fleck the skies with
blood," and " turn the sunshine black."
That transportation has always been a most un-
equal punishment is universally acknowledged.
Both before and after the abolition of the assignment
system it has been unequal. To the outcast of the
workhouses and rookeries the salubrity and purity of
a tropical climate are immeasurably more than com-
pensation for the supervision of an inspector, the
compulsory labour of so many hours each
day, and the banishment from a country in
which his very existence is a misery
and a degradation. On the other hand, transportation
is a monstrously disproportioned punishment, to the
less'criminal and the more affluent members of the
population.
Satisfied as we are with the scheme proposed by
Earl GREY in reference to the treatment of felons, re-
joiced as we are at the abandonment of a plan by which
humanity is violated, and Norfolk Island transformed
from an earthly paradise into a habitation of beings
very little removed from demons, we are, neverthe-
less, persuaded, that there is much reason in the re-
mark uttered by Lord BROUGHAM, that the total
abolition of the system of transportation is undesirable,
seeing that it is to many criminals the most awful
of all the visitations of authority. According to the
scheme traced out by Lord GREY, the present system
of transportation is to be wholly and " totally abo-
lished." Felons, instead of being dispatched forthwith
to the penal settlements, are to be retained at home for
a limited period. During the prior portion of
that period they are to be subjected to a rigid con-
finement at Parkhurst, at Millbank, at Pentonville,
or elsewhere ; and in the subsequent portion of that
period they are to be employed upon the public
works. It is in the arrangements connected with
this industrial employment of convicts on public
works that the principal merit of the Noble Earl's
proposition consists. Here the most profligate and
hardened will have a final :opporttinity of working
out their social and physical redemption. By honesty,
assiduity, and sobriety they may in this
stage of the expiation of their offences
obtain the remission of further punishment
on the solitary condition of their instant emigration.
Meanwhile, in these instances, the wages of their
labour on the public works will have been accumu-
lating until the time has arrived for their conditional
discharge. In all these provisions we recognise
only the combination of rigid justice and a
noble clemency. The only point, in the proposition
laid
before Parliament by the Noble Earl, her
Majesty's Secretary for the Colonies, which to our
thinking admits of emendation, is the one wherein is
intimated the " total" abolition of the present system
of transportation. Otherwise the scheme of secondary
punishments undertaken by the Government is as
sagacious as it is benevolent.

We, on Saturday, inserted an article from a corre.
spondent on the deeply interesting subject of the
liability of provisional committeemen. In fact, it is
hardly possible to estimate too highly the great public