The Sun.
London, England, 1828-12-22 00:00:00

fore, just that life should be protected by the loss of
life in those who attempt to take it; and it is for the
interest of society to increase, by every possible
means, the horror of homicide. There always will
be overflows of passion and excesses, produced by
insanity; but we conceive, that as far as calculating
crime is concerned, murder may be rendered exceed-
ingly rare. The confining executions to atrocious
crimes would, in this respect, be attended with the
most beneficial effects.
(FROM THE MORNING HERALD.)

It seems not merely extraorcliiwy, but, to our
conception, totally unaccountable, that while the
public are every day exclaiming against the increase
of crime, and of the little protection which they re-
ceive from the police, as now constituted, the most
obvious modes of lessening the evil are overlooked
and disregarded. We Would ask Mr. Peel how he,
or any man, can expect crimes or criminals mate-
rially to diminish, while, instead of transporting
the latter on the one haled, or reforming them
in our gaols and hulks upon the other, crowds
of them, made any thing but better by the
punishments they have undergone, return daily
upon the town and its environs, to renew their
depredations ? A better police might, perhaps,
prevent a few more of such depredations, and
catch a few more of the depredators, than they. now
do; but we never yet heard that the way to put out
la fire was to a•ld fresh fuel to it, or that a stream
became diminished by opening freSh currents to
.unite with it. Yet such, or nearly such, is our con-
duct with regard crime. We profess to transport
offenders whom we never transport; but, instead of
doing so, we congregate them in hordes, where they
become expert and hardened in their vocation. We
send them to Houses of Correction, where, as far as
amendment gees, they are nut corrected at all. 'We
turn them loose upon society to re-enact the very
same parts we profess to blame them for pur-
suing, while we actually leave the greater part
of them no other alternative; and then, forsooth,
we profess to wonder that crime should increase,
that criminals should be so numerous, and that
the means of arresting the progress of the one, aed
the numbers of the other, should be so inefficient.—
.

•
Returning to our similies, we would say, " If you
wish to slacken or put out the fire, take away the
fuel; if to lessen a current, divert the tributary
streams from which it is supplied." It would not
only be an act of justice towards society, but of
mercy towards the individuals, that this system of
feeding and keeping up nurseries for clime should
to abandoned. It is quite clear that every thing
short of cutting off the criminal from the society his
crimes have injured is found totally wanting in any
power as a preventive of future crime. By "cutting:off"
we do not mean by the punishment of death—on the
too rifeness of which in our Statute 13o.:1. our opinions
have been often recorded—but we laok upon trans-
portation as that sort of cutting which can alone
protect society on the one hand, ur, on the other, the
individual himself, from the pursuit of courses for
which he has unfortunately but too often, as we
have already said, no other alternative. For lesser
crimes, of course, lesser punishments must be in-
flicted; but it would be well if the short period of
transportation, viz. for seven years, were abolished
altogether, because at present it is a mere nominal
sentence, scarcely ever enforced—and, instead of it, ,
let fourteen years- or for life be the periods named
and acted upon. The law, to be effectual, should
be a terror to the disobedient. At present it is
known in its operation to have, in the majority of
instances, few, if any terrors at all ; and, while some-
thing like impunity awaits the breach of it, who
can wonder that crimes increase and criminals
abound ?

FROM THE NEWS,
" Her march is o'er the mountain wares,
Her home is on the deep."
GREAT BRITAIN, As A NAVAL POWER.—We have,
in a former article, expressed our opinions touching
the British system of colonization ; to which we
now append some reflections, as to how far that sys-
tem may be calculated to affect our naval supremacy;
and in what degree we may be called on to support
it, weak and disconnected as it may be. It appears
that Government is about establishing another settle-
ment in Austrclia ; and that the principal appoint-
ments are already made. It is the fashion now to
call New Holland by the name of Australia. It was
the expectation or hope of Cooke, the great Navi-
gator, to discover a Terra Australis, or Sel:thern
Continent ; and hence we presume the digned title
now bestowed on the Botany Bay of English rogues
and—et cetera. It is not quite sixty years ago
(1773-4) since the attempt was made to break in
upon the Antarctic Circle; which is a circle of ice;
though our own Orkney Islands are not more than
about ten degrees removed from the same latitude in
the north. We find the immense depth of com-
parative sterility in the south, spreading thirty de-
grees from the pole, in all directions. Sandwich
land being the extreme point to the south (at the
same distance from the Pole as the Orkneys; and
not far from the same degree of longitude.) A
similar line drawn over the Northern hemisphere from
East to West, would cut of two thirds of the land of
Me whole habitable Globe; including Greenland (a
northern continent probably of itself, and essentially
unknown), Norway and Swede i.; and a great part of
Russia and North America, &c. &c. The extreme
point of South America therefore comprehends
nearly all that we know of a ,southern climate (viz.
of the temperature of Europa and the United States
of America); for Australia does not extend more
than 40 degrees beyond the equator; it is therefore
neither one thing nor another; nor have geographers
ever agreed even in what quarter* of the world it
should be classed. Though a most valuable coun-

try if it were more available to us, comprehending
and combining as it does a warm variety of climate,
ranging from within a few degrees of the Seine to
the Senegal,—its remoteness must for ever prevent
it from retaining much in common with its mother
country, excepting perhaps those habits and pro-
pensities which it were better should be lost to both.
A South-west Settlement on Australia would place
a communication with this distant country in a com-
parative facile communication with the trade of
tudia; but still it is extending the labor ions system
ou! which we have staked ourselves. Our Colonies
aught have been chosen on account of their dis•
more front the parent State ; and from each other.
We have Sat lemews cut the shores of Hudson's
in Newfoundland and Canada ;
Bay, and Labrador ;
ice ventral Eastern Coasts of the Americas is studded
with our flags, from the Arctic Circle to the Equa-
tor. IS :c have continenttil or insular occupations ex-
tending at various distances from London to Canton,
our step-ladders in the 1.)
bringing together the South of Asia and the North
of Europe; while ),
Medi-
terranean we bring 111 contact 150 degrees of East
I Longitude with 100 degrees West.
Although you
can scarcely trace so minute an island as England on
the map of the world, you will discover, almost as our
Antipodes,—the depot of our native rog,ucs ; sloughed
off by the Law from the more !wrathy parent body,
rising upon the eye and the mind, as a sort of exclu-
sive Empire of the Southern hemisphere! Without
a Navy having a tremendous ascendancy among the
other nations, of the earth, we could not retain such
a various and scattered theatre of dominion for one
hour. 'We navigate all seas, at nearly all periods of
the year ; and this may to a certain extent prove
that sort of u nursery for seamen, which no other
nation can lay pretension to. But is there not much
necessary .wea/eizess in such a position ; and must it
not for ever entad Ott us those exvnecs whicii de-
stroy the comforts and the subst ,ice of the people
at home ? We assume the Sovereignty of the
South ; we have no competitor nearer than the Em-
per of China, who never fights; and who finds
quite enough to rio in disposing of his rice and his
bamboo at home.t Now though we have rept oboted

* Geographers divide the habitable Globe into four
quarters, and call Europe one cf them ; when in fact it is
only a decent western border or flounce to the skirt of the
Continent of Asia; et which said other quarter, it may he
Shout-ninth ; while in power it may be regarded as the
whole world.

fi 'We shall notice the sp►culatione as to a Southern Con-
tinent beyond the Antartic Circle, in Some future number.