The Sun.
London, England, 1850-03-15 00:00:00

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

HOUSE OF LORDS, March 14.
The LORD CHANCELLOR took his seat upon the Wool-

sack at Five o'clock.
The Archbishop of YORK presented a petition from
Selby against a Sunday delivery in the Post-office.
Lord PORTMA.N presented a petition from Somer-
setshire in favour of the Bill authorising marriage with a

•
deceased wife's sister.
Lord BROUGHAM moved for certain returns relat-
ing to the practice of the Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council.
The NOBLE and LEARNED LORD also presented a peti-
tion in favour of an extension of the jurisdiction of

county courts.
CONVICT PRISONS BILL.
Earl GREY moved the second reading of this Bill.

At present the prisons for the reception of persons un-
der sentence of transportation were Millbank, Park-
hurst, Pentonville, and Portland. They were calcu-
lated to accommodate 5,600 prisoners, and
were under four separate authorities. With a
view of introducing an uniformity of manage
ment, the same gentlemen had been appointed as in-
specters by ell those authorities. It was intended
by this Bill to place all those Fersons under the autho-
rity of visitors appointed by the Crown. The difficulty
of devising an efficient system of secondary
punishments was great, and the utmost that
could be expected was, that they could only
arrive at a satisfactory result after a long series of ex
r aliments, all tending to progressive improvement. A
Committee of the House of Commons sat on this sub-
ject in 1838, and opened the eyes of the public to the
existence of many evils, and soon after the report
of that Committee Pentonville Prison was erected
as an experimental prison. A reformation took
place in the year 1844, in the plan of punishment
adopted for convicts in Van Diemen's Land, by
which the assignment: system was done away with
and a system of discipline under the superintendence of
the authorities substituted for it. The measures then
adopted failed for want of adequate means in Van Die-
men's Land for carrying them out, and from the large
number of convicts sent out. It had been the intention
of Lord John Russell, when Secretary of the
Colonies, to transport only a small proportion
of convicts, and to keep the greater portion at
the hulks, but in consequence of a resolution of the
House of Commons in 1841, condemning the retention
in this country of convicts sentenced to transportation,
a number of convicts were at once thrown upon Van
Diemen's Land amounting to 7,942, and in the
three subsequent years, 17,637 male convicts
were transported there. The consequence was
a most extensive system of demoralization,
to remedy which his predecessors had determined to
stop transportation for two years. The present Govern-
ment had approved of that measure, and had determined
that penal labour in this country, Bermuda, or Gib-
raltar, should always precede transportation to dis-
tant lands, such penal labour to be always pre-
ceded for a certain period by separate confirtment.
At the same time it was determined to adopt a system
of sending out persons under sentence to the distant
colonies not as convicts, but as exiles, with conditional
pardons. This system had not succeeded as its framers
could have wished. It bad always been found that mere
removal without penal labour was not effectual,
and it was found that it was impossible to
organize a system of penal labour and co-
ercion in the Australian colonies. Hence it was con-
cluded that that part of the sentence which included
coercion and penal labour ought to be inflicted at home,
and that a portion of that punishment should consist of
separate imprisonment. There were some who held
that separate imprisonment was efficient because they
looked only to the physical condition of the
convict. It had however been found in practice
anything but a light punishment; the great fault was
that it could not bo carried out for a sufficient length of
time. Human nature could not bear it beyond eighteen
months, and the evidence of medical authorities went to
show that it ought not to be continued beyond twelve
months. It inspired great horror and dread in cri-
minal persons who had undergone it and were again
convicted than of those who had undergone any other
secondary punishment. A criminal would rather undergo
any discipline than suffer separate imprisonment. It
was therefore proposed that all persons sentenced to
transportation should undergo a certain period of
separate imprisonment, and the means now existed for
applying it. A considerable portion of Millbank had been
fitted up for that purpose, and in certain county gaols
cells had been fitted up, so that there was now accom-
modation for the separate imprisonment of 2,000 per-
sons. It was proposed that afterwards these convicts
should be employed for a certain period on penal labour
or public works in Gibraltar or Bermuda, or
other places. It was certainly necessary to
devise some punishment additional to eighteen
months' solitary confinement for great crimes.
He thought a useful method had been devised by the
engineering officers of Bermuda, who bad devised an
excellent system of task-work, which had answered
admirably. The greater number of criminals
were averse to continuous labour, and when
they found that the consequences of crime
were to subject them to continuous labour of
a much harder character than any to which an honest
man was subjected, the consequence could not but be
most heneficial; besides, continuous hard work so
fatigued the convict, that at the conclusion of the day he
was not inclined to indulge in immoral conversa-
tion, but was too glad to take his rest.
He objected to the hulk system as at once inefficient
I and costly, and be preferred employing convicts on
public works. There was a convict prison at Portland;
the situation was such as to enable the authorities to
keep the convicts completely isolated, and they had there
at present 300 convicts employed in the construction
of that most useful of public works the Portland Break-
water and harbour of refuge, and the experiment had
hitherto been attended with the most complete
succem He had aft-r grave consideration come to the
reluctant conclusion that it was necessary to
maintain the convict settlement at Norfolk
Island—to that settlement a small portion, and
a small portion only, of the worst convicts should be
removed. He thought that the dread of transportation
to Norfolk Island would produce a wholesome effect
upon the other convicts. It was with great reluctance
he had come to that determination, and he was aware of
the objections which existed to sending the worst de-
scription of convicts to a distant land, but still he was
led to believe, that the sending of that class to a distant
place, where they would be under the severest restraint,
would exercise a wholesome influence on the remainder,
and tend to maintain discipline among those who were
employed on the public works. It was also essential
that there should be some place to which convicts in the
colonies, having tickets of leave, could be removed and
placed under the control of Government in case of mis-
conduct. As he had before stated, it was desirable that
removal to a distant colony should form part of the sen-
tence of transportation, for various reasons. It had
been found by experience that punishment should con-
sist of a combination of various elements. To ono class
of men a sentence of transportation from their native
land to a distant place would strike the utmost terror—
whilst to others it would be an additional incentive to
crime. To a man of sensitive feelings the idea of being
compelled to labour in company with the worst of cha-
racters, in a convict's dress, and in the public view,
would be the severest torture, whilst others would be
callous to all sense of shame. Some would prefer the
comparative comforts of a prison to the precarious sub-
sistence they obtained out of it—whilst to others the
deprivation of freedom would be acutely felt. It had,
therefore, been deemed advisable to combine these
elements. Another reason why it had been determined
to retain removal to a distant colony as a part - of the
punishment, was to give the convict a better chance of
retrieving his:lost position in society, by placing him in a
colony where his having been a convict would not ope-
rate as a bar to his finding employment. In this coun-
try he had no such chance, as, even if animated by the
most earnest desire to gain an honest livelihood, his con-
viction was an insuperable obstacle to his so doing, while
if he went to a spot where he was unknown, he was
liable to be discovered at any moment by some one of
his old associates, and again driven to crime for a liveli-
hood.—(Hear, hear.) In :a penal colony, on the con-
trary, he might rise to respectability, and even wealth;
and this was proved by the number of former convicts
who, according to calculations made at the Colonial-
office, were now subsisting by their own exertion, there
being in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land no
fewer than forty-eight thousand persons who had gone
there as transports, while the number of " ticket-of-
leave men" made an addition of twenty thousand. But for
this system of transportation all these persons would now
have been at large in this country, having no resources
except crime, and the result of that might have been
guessed, by looking at a neighbouring country and its
army of forcats. He believed that under a proper sys-
tem of management the colonies might receive convicts,
after they had emerged from the discipline which
they had undergone, not only without injury to those
colonies, but with positive advantage. At present the
convicts were sent out with tickets of leave instead of
conditional pardons. The difference being this, a ticket-
of-leave man might remain about the tour, and so fall
in with his old associates, and under the present system
of allowing certain gratuities to men of good conduct
while on the public works, a man so situated, if posses-
sing any money might be robbed, and induced by want
to resort again to crime. But a men having a conditional
pardon might be required to go at once into the more
distant regions of the colony, and to accept employment
from any respectable settler, who might offer a fair re-
muneration.—(Hear.) These conditions, it was pro-
posed, should be invariably insisted on. They should
also be required to pay a certain sum of money out of
their earnings before they should be entitled to an un-
conditional pardon, the motive for requiring such pay-
ment not being any desire to obtain a sum of money,
but to carry out the system of punishment and die-
ciplice under which the convict was placed. Ever since
transportation had been a punishment the Crown had a
property in the services of the convict. Under the system
of assignment those services were transferred to the
master, who had a right to make him work in return for
certain specified rations and a supply of clothing; that
is, they were neither more nor less than slaves. Ie
o'den times they were literally slaves. In the early days
of transportation to Virginia, the convicts were sold by
public auction far the term of their sentence; and the
pictures which were drawn by Defoe in one of his works
of the nature of transportation to the plantations were so
near to truth that he would content himsel with referring
t ) them as an exemplification of what transportation was
is those days. The system of assignment had been
found productive of many evils, and it had, therefore,
very properly been abolished. By requiring a sum of
money as a condition to entire freedom, they also ba-
lievcd that they gave the convict an additional stimulus
to industry and good conduct. The sum thus raised
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