The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-08-16 00:00:00

.amp, and those who have

Pvm-estants, are the
It will be 're-

aonths since a Bill was

introduced into the House of Commons, fOr the
more effectual prOteetion of females immured in

nunneries, and skiniiar prisons, on the Intelligible

ground that they were not free agents, but the
-victims of avarice or lust, and that the law was

inadequate. The Bill was carried through a first
-reading by t majority against the 'votes of the
Ministers ; End on the question of the second
reading, it was agreed to refer the •-subject to a
Select Comtnittee, in order to perfeot the details.
Since that time the Ministerialleader, who shows
his descent from his ancestor, the-Church robber,
by his unremitting promotion of Romanist designs,
has exercised his Parliamentary•tatt in preventing
any renewal of discussion upon -the subject, until
the close of the Session has compelled its postpone-
ment 'to another year, when -a similar course of
tactics may be employed for its ultimate defeat,
notwithstanding more than.one majority of our
representatives have votedinsits favour. The long-
desired settlement of a legal provision for dealing
-With Charitable Trusts was not permitted to pass
without a special exception: in favour of Rome ; so
that, while the Church Wand the interests of true

raigion are fettered
avowedly to prevent

with restrictions, which are
eligions influence being con-
Lious control, the

vested into sui
Church of Rome is allowed full freedom to exerthst
all the terrors of priestifilomination over the weak

lostate

minds of her devote(

The,eonduct of the NmistrN

4m these queitions is a via' carrying out of the
traitorous combination, `known as the Lichfield-
house compact. In England, a master can hardly
ask his workman for -a vote without exciting in-
dignant accusafirsis of interfering with the f

eedon

of election, whereas in Ireland the grossest system
of intimidation and violence is openly practised by
Romish priests for ,the:return of Romanist mem-
bers to the House of-`.Commons; and their par-
liamentary support to -the Ministry is purchased by
concessions such .as -those we have alluded' to.

The coalition Cabinet,. receive the support of .pro-
fessing Liberals, who trumpet their praises

as the

champions of liberty ;I but they are in reality the
slaves of the hardestta taskmasters, the mere tools of
Rome, traitors to their.conntry ; and were there: a
spark of English chivalry-existing in the breasts of
Radicals, they would long since have been igno-
miniously expelled from - office, with the execra-
tions of every honest man.

Tan Government have at length diseovered-thal
it is not the best use -Of-the British Colonies in
Australia, to make -them receptacles for the
criminals of this country, and that the necessity
has become urgent for abolishing the punishment
of transportation until at least some place has
:been found the banishment to which shall be
deemed a punishment to the criminal, and not to
the settler on whose society he is forced. This

lecision has been in a m

are forced upon the

Government, as the evil washecoming too great to
~be longer endured. The Cape Colonists pertina-
tiously refused to admit the -moral contamination,
•-and reached the verge oof - rebellion rather than
submit to the infliction ; and there can be no doubt
that those of AustraEa would not have been slow
>to /allow the example, and with far more injurious
consequences. They, indeed; had had bitter expe-
rience of the baleful effects •of suttb. a system; and
by many would have been deemedraorally justified
in resisting:, even at the hazard of *baking off their
allegiance to the mother country, which, by forcing
eonviets upon them, was their oppressor rather
thairtheir protector. In introducing, therefore, a
fill for4he abolition of transportation, which Lord
PA LAIBRSTON did on Tuesday in the Rouse of

Commons, the Ministry have but performed a duty
from which they had no alternative. it is, how-
ever, but justice to them to say, that it is a most
difficult question with which they have to deal, and
there was alsothe apprehension that

in :devising

any new mode of secondary punishment for
offences only short of the heaviest, it might not
prove efficacious in operating as a salutary cheek
to the commission of crime. However this :May
be, it was manifestly.dear that Australia, as a home
for emigrants, could no longer be continued as a
penal settlement, and we hail the proposed change
as one which in this respect will contribute more
than any other circumstance to promote the welfare
of that colony, and render it, in addition to its gold.
fields,a most valuable appartageto the British Crown.

In Lord PALMERSTON'S statement to the House
of Commons he was not very explicit as to the de-
tails of his measure, which may be attributed to
the difficulty of his task, as he admitted that it
must rather be considered as an experiment than
as a matured system. It may be gathered, how-
ever, from his explanation, that in future the first
portion of the period of punishment is to be passed
in prison, where the treatment, it may be supposed,
is to be of a reformatory character. In the next
stage the criminal is to be employed on the public
works, as is the case now in the employment of
convict labour in the Dockyards and at Portland
Breakwater. Having undergone this probation
satisfactorily, the convict is to be entitled to a
ticket of leave, which will give him more liberty,
though he will still be under surveillance ; but as
it is not at all probable that he will be able to ob-
tain honest employment; and distress might com.

hey I

land 1

otlic

e eons

,oiled ha

red up

lared fl

the consequences of crime, when the c

a comfortable build

g, in which his r

and clothing were better, more regular

Is, beddi

adapted to his animal wants than eve

deprivation of his liberty ; and that ha

accompaniments wei
us favour from being

in his eyes when the

md. more

less

iluch in

e prisons of Engi

character in ti

id Were of

iminal

in gaol than would have supported several fa

out ; so that, where poverty was the temptation to
crime, it would have been truer economy to
have paid all the unemployed labourers in th
country, even fo"

- - unreraunerative wort

state of things was ,continued, through a kind
of morbid philanthropy for the criminal, whose
condition met with far more sympathy than did

the struggles of 'the honest labourer in his exer-

agh ans

tions to maintain his wife and family th
state of privation, rather than resort to the p
house or dishonesty. Had it not been for this
feeling, the remedy was easy of application, and
even now •niight be resorted to at far less cost than
either 'transportation or model prisons. In the
centre .of Dartmoor, a bleak 'and barren tract of

about '250;000 acres, some few miles 'from the
naval arsenal of Devonport, stands Prince-town,
more 'than ten miles distantin every direction from
any inhabited place, and isoluted by 'its sterility, the
soil `-being granite and peat-moss, from the haunts
of --iiinised man. It was --bunt of granite during
the.loug war, as a Preach prison, and was adapted
to contain ten thousand inmates, in addition to which
there are barracks capable of accommodating two
thousand soldiers as a guard. It: might 'be applied
as 'a means of punishment for all
our criminal s ,

and its terrors have :as wholesome 'an effect as
transportation had inits early days.
There is no
fear of contaminatioa, for it stands far removedfrom
all other dwellings; the dresses of the prisoners
might be such as to secure detection lathe event of
any attempt to escape ; labour might be found for

them in the conversion of the peat to useful
purposes ; and the hewing of granite for the
Government doelcsand sea walls; while the idle and
the profligate mjht be inspired With sufficient
dread of the punislunent in ceaseless-- toil, such as
many honest men have to endure; in'the intense
cold which,: from the elevation of Dartmoor,
very severe, wain hard fare. Too many of these
men have no ,fdlings to appeal to but those of
their animal wants ; they must suffer in their
bodies, if we would reach their uids ; and we

must not expel t:to see an abatement ,of,crime, the
increase of which Mr. Justice WIGITTMAN lamented
at the opening-6f the Liverpool Assizes:- *on Thurs-
day, until, in -.r.ddition to our efforks for the
education of 'the yOung, the criminal-is made to
feel, through the physical suffering -which he can
alone appreciate; le sad consequences-of, a depar-
ture from the paths of honest industry.

ie Cabi

Auence of At

&ed. I3v

desirous to acquire possession of -.31

:ned tc

anxious.

ldavia and Wal-

mbt, b,

render their retention by Turkey more

Le time may no

aration will be th

ifficult

ult of internal disturb-

negotiations

to the F'

For suc

gland no pretext for

cliplo-

'encti f

n the ahair

Places was th

:0 seek a more