The Sun.
London, England, 1857-01-09 00:00:00

TICKET-OF-LEAVE SYSTEM.

Colonel Jebb is a first-rate statist. He has the
right figures, and he reasons admirably upon them.
His letter in our paper of yesterday is a model for
any country the population of which is entirely
under the dominion of reason, the climate of which
secures it from nervous complaints, and where even
the robbers and murderers—if there are any—take
in blue-books, and amuse themselves with decimal
sums is criminal arithmetic. The Colonel, how-
ever, makes soma admissions not at all of a nature
to reassure the old ladies, or even the old gentle-
men, who now lie listening for " noises" till two
o'clock in the morning. His first admission is,
that under the existing acts there can be no pos-
sible alteration of the practice. He leaves us no
loophole. It is all according to law. No doubt,
he intimates, judges and magistrates are very un-
discriminating, and sometimes pass very light sen-
tences on atrocious offenders. The law, however,
cannot undertake the office of the judge. It can
only deal with the sentence • and if the same sen-
tence has been passed on the wretched pilferer of
a few pounds of bacon and the deliberate perpe-
trator of the most horrible outrages, the law, says
Colonel Jebb, interferes at the same period, and
restores them both to society. So far, however,
from the practice being an innovation on the side
of lenity, it is much more severe than the pre-
vious one ; at least, by the testimony of the
criminals themselves, who, the Colonel informs
us, would much rather be sent to Australia
at the end of four years' imprisonment in this
country than set at large in their own dear country
rl after two years and a half. The chaplain, he says,
has nothing to do with it. The only condition re-
quired by the act is a certain amount of good be-
haviour. In the department of criminal science it
appears that the moral scale is graduated with an
accuracy which removes all doubt between the
convict and his keepers. The former sees the scale,
and knows how to act up to its requirements.
The Home-office, the visiting magistrates, and all
the authorities concerned see at once when the
requisite degree of morality has been attained. So,
shutting their eyes to all " antecedents," to the
peculiar circumstances under which their hopeful
protege came under their care, and despising the
vulgar belief that a man who has done certain
things is sure to do them again, they give him his
liberty, leaving society to take care of itself. It's
all quite regular, says the Colonel, and he pro-
nounces it good. So, of course, we are not sur-
prised at the further aggravation of the present
state of things that, in the Colonel's opinion, there I
can be no immediate improvement upon it.
Very well ; as, according to the Colonel, there
is not sufficient discrimination, or rather none at
all, except between what nurserymaids call the
" behaviour" of this convict or that, neither of
them having a very wide scope within the four
walls of a gaol ; as the chaplain has not even the
opportunity of discriminating; as the sentences are
very undiscriminatory; as the Home-office does not
venture to discriminate • and as the system is
simply a machine by which convicts of all sorts and
sizes come in at one end and re-appear at the other
in the uniform shape of ticket-of-leave people, we
cannot be very wide of the mark if we suggest that
iottie further attempt be made towards a -better
discrimination, and consequent clasSification.
we are to deal with? all convicts in the' same way,
then we can understand the present system may
meet a great variety of cases as well as any one
other. With more discrimination, however, we
may attempt different methods of treatment. There
clearly are those of whose reform we may entertain
some reasonable hope, and as clearly there are
others who are either irreclaimable or too dangerous
to be set at large. We don't see why the personal
question—for it is a personal question—may not be
decided while the man is in prison, and upon va-
rious considerations. For example, we must say, in
the present state of society, considering the mutual
confidence in which we all dwell, and the way in
which we leave ourselves at the mercy of violence,
we have a very great reluctance to see men con-
victed of gross personal outrages thrown again on
the public, except after the utmost possible ox deal.
But, assuming certain less desperate or less for-
midable classes, surely we have not yet exhausted
the desert shores, the outlying and inhospitable
regions of the earth, where these men might spend
the rest of their lives in such labours and under
such a system as the site and the community
would allow 'f It need not be a paradise ; as little
need it be a hell ; but to a moderate purgatory we
have no objection. The chief point, of course, would
be that there should be no escape, and an impassa-
ble gulf between it and the more attractive colonies.
Nature itself has adapted New Holland for the
purpose, and left two of its shores as remote and
inaccessible as could be required for such an object.
For more desperate offenders, for those whose ten-
dencies are positively formidable, and whose
amendment it is folly to hope for, there remains
the last resource of perpetual and hopeless impri-
sonment at home. Such persons, seeing that
humanity does not permit penal hunger and mace-
ration, may as well be employed on public works,
such as those of Portland. The colonel himself
observes that there is plenty of this sort of work
to be done, and rather a want of convict labour
for the purpose. Indeed, this is about the only
suggestion of practical value in his letter, and as
soon as Parliament meets we trust that every ticket-
of-leave man caught at his old tricks may reap the
benefit of it.—Times.

A subscription has been opened in the city, at the
Royal and Imperial Mail Steam Packet office, on behalf
of the widows and orphans, altogether 40 in number, of
the captain, crew, &c,, of the Ostend mail packet
Violet, lost on Tuesday morning on the Goodwin Sands.
Notwithstanding the payment of the dividends there
was an active demand for money yesterday in the discount.
market, at rates slightly below those of the Bank of
England. The advances
hteoabv, a
be reimbursed
themburseadintooutnbtastfeasiltianbg-
lshment were extremely heavy,
due there during several days to come are believed to be
very larze.
The Nimroud, which took out two captains of th:
Royal Artillery, 115 non-commissioned officers and pri•
vats, 40 women, and 62 children, arrived at Sydney on
the 12th of October. The latest dates thence are the
13th.

THE WEATHER IN PARIS.—A very decided change
took place yesterday in the weather, which has all at
once become much colder. A considerable quantity of
snow fell on Monday night in the neighbourhood of
Paris, and yesterday morning the roofs of the houses
were all white. During the day the state •of ttie atmo-
sphere was exceedingly wintry to the feel, and the differ-
ence between the temperature then and that of the day
before was very marked. It is worthy of notice that
the prediction of the weather made about a fortnight
ago back by the Abbe O'Donnelly expressly mentions Jan.
6 as the day on which the change t) a decidedly colder
state of the atmosphere was to commence.
SEVERE PENALTY FOR SMUGGLINEL—The young man
Thomas Stoker, reported in The Sun last week as being
in custody at Shields on a charge cf smuggling 3j tons
of tobacco has been brought before the Northumberland
county magistrates and fined 5,0731. 17s. 11d. He was,.
removed to Morpeth gaol on Wednesday.