The dread is no doubt extremely great of this punishment by all but very hardened offenders, but they who have no character, and, in many cases, no friends to lose, must of necessity dread it least, whereas it is expedient that they should dread it most. There are of course exceptions to this rule, and Norfolk Island and the terrors of chain gangs flit as a grim vision more or less vaguely before the eyes of some even of the most hopeless culprits; but we believe that some notion nevertheless generally prevails among this class that there is a chance of ultimate if not immediate improvement in their lot, which compensates in great measure for the prestige of the punishment and the conventional dread of exile. The Report rightly remarks that— "The degree of weight which may be given to the evidence generally, or to the testimony of particular witnesses, in any discussion upon the administration of criminal justice, must depend in a great measure upon the answer to another question-viz. what particular mode of executing the sentence, either of transportation or of imprisonment, is in the contemplation of the witness or of the persons whose opinions he professes to give." Many, doubtless, are influenced by reports of the prosperity and success of convicts who have chosen to avail themselves of the unquestionable opportunity of doing well opened to industry, sobriety, and general good conduct in the colony. The works recently published on Australia1 leave no doubt on the subject. Convicts are kept down far more by their habitual system of spending their earnings in rum than any other cause. But the knowledge of these facts, and of instances of success, materially diminish the dread of transportation in the mind of the class of prisoners who have least to hope for in England, and whom, we repeat, it is most of all expedient to hold in terror of transportation. This material point is not sufficiently felt by the Committee or pourtrayed in the evidence. Thus the following opinion must, we think, be taken with some degree of qualification. "There can be little doubt that a sentence which imports an entire separation for life, or for a very long period, from his criminal associates and from his family, must have a greater degree of terror for an offender than any imprisonment at home, which holds out the hope within a shorter period of rejoining his family and renewing all his criminal associations. But before forming any sound opinion upon the relative merits of these different modes of secondary punishment, it would be necessary to clearly understand and fully to consider all the details through which either one or the other is to be carried into execution." 1 "Settlers and Convicts," There is no difference of opinion, however, among the witnesses that "it would be extremely unwise to abandon transportation." We think so too. The only question is how shall it be modified both in the preparation for it here and in the mode of its execution in the colony so as to divest it of those atrocious evils with which the present system afflicts both the convict, the home country, and the colony? Following up the remarks made on transportation (very immethodically interrupted by other matter in the Report) we find it the opinion of the Committee that "The punishment of transportation should be retained for serious offences; that such punishment should, in some cases, be carried into effect immediately, in others, at a later period; that the first stages of the punishment, whether carried into effect in this country or in the colonies, should be of a reformatory as well as of a penal character, and that the later stages, at all events, should be carried into effect in the colonies, the convict being for that purpose retained under that qualified restraint to which, under the existing system of transportation, men holding tickets of leave, or conditional pardon, are subjected." The The lines we have here printed in italics embody the most. important fruit of the Committee's inquiry. It appears to us to be a most sound and wise conclusion. We rejoice exceedingly at the good sense and advanced thought exhibited in this ultimatum. The necessity of reformation as well as punishment is one of the most important and pressing kind. We have adopted punishment without reformation for centuries, and the result has been the growth of the worst species of crime, far exceeding the growth of the population, and in the face of all the efforts made of late years to civilize and moralise the people. We are planting a new world based on crime, and reared in crime, uncorrected, and, in no small proportion, increased in guilt. fact seems never to have entered into the heads of our legislators that mere naked correction hardens and makes men worse-not better than before: and that without making them better we do nothing to check crime except by mere terror-one of the lowest and least efficient preventives, as experience amply proves. The effect, however, is doubly increased of the neglect to reform when we people a fresh world with these unreformed criminals! An infinite amount of horrid detail of the crime culminating in the colonies has been accumulated and published. It began, we believe, with the labours of Dr. Whateley. Fresh details were procured by Sir William Molesworth, and volumes have been written since on the subject. But, heretofore, nothing has been done. The Report on this point says: "The Committee must not be supposed to have either overlooked or underrated the alarming state of crime and depravity which appears to have arisen in parts of the Australian colonies, but they think that these evils might be remedied by alterations in the police, the penal, the religious, and the moral system to which the convicts, after undergoing reformatory discipline either at home or in the colonies, are subjected, together with such measures as would remedy the existing disproportion of the sexes in the colonies." They also say "The papers lately presented to Parliament, and referred to the Committee, lead to the inference that in many parts of our colonial possessions there will be a readiness to receive and employ convicts after they have undergone a period of reformatory discipline either at home or in the colonies. The accounts received of the behaviour of the prisoners sent out from Pentonville and Parkhurst, and the opinions expressed in the colonies respecting them, are very encouraging on this point." It will be thoroughly unpardonable in the government if they neglect this advice. They have now a heavy responsibility upon them. They have first of all to organise reformatory establishments. Every thing depends on this; it should be done at home, under the highest superintendence, and with all the aids which the best zeal and skill combined can bestow upon the work. We cannot enter upon the detail of this branch of the subject now; but unless there be express institutions for the purpose, on an extensive and efficient scale, no adequate good will be done. No convict, moreover, can by any possibility be fit for transportation under eighteen months home reformation. The committee very properly object to short terms of imprisonment even for the reformation of juvenile offenders; a fortiori for hardened adult criminals. The question how imprisonment shall be modeled and adapted to this end, is one of great moment. The Committee say,— "How far imprisonment can be so far altered as to be efficacious, either as preparatory to transportation or as a punishment by itself, is a question of difficulty, upon which little evidence could be given, inasmuch as no sufficient experience has yet been had of the improved systems which are now in partial operation. The evidence all tends to show the great importance of our prison discipline. Solitary confinement ought on no account to be inflicted beyond a very short time, as three or four weeks, with a considerable interval after each week, and only two or at most three weeks during a period of eighteen months or two years. Its effects on both the bodily and mental health are such as plainly to prescribe these limits. "The evidence also establishes an important distinction between solitary confinement and the discipline of the separate system. For the cure of moral evil time is so essential a condition, that any system incapable of being long continued must fail of attaining its object. For this reason solitary confinement, which cannot be prolonged without injury to the prisoner, must fail. The silent system, as it has been termed, i. e. criminals working together in silence, is objectionable as leading to a multiplicity of gaol offences, and inefficient as wanting that power of forcing men to commune with themselves, which criminals especially dread and require. The separate system, where it has been fairly tried, seems to supply exactly what is needed, forcing the mind to self-communion, and allowing this to be broken only by communication with those morally the superiors of the convict. Nor does this system, on the balance of the evidence, appear to the Committee to be inconsistent with the health of the prisoners in body or mind, although on this last point there is a difference of opinion, some witnesses regarding this discipline as hurtful, not indeed to the structure and functions of the understanding, but to the energies of the will. On this subject the Committee would recommend, first, that great care be taken in administering the system of separate confinement with labour; and, secondly, that the number of prisons adapted to the practice of it be multiplied." The mental and moral discipline is one of still more importance, and is sadly slurred over by the Committee. Without it there is no surety for the permanence of the effects of discipline. As regards the silent system, and the proposed modification of the separate system, "allowing it to be broken only by communion with those morally the superiors of the convict;' this may tend to the moral reformation of the convict, nothing leads to it more effectually; but it will not perfect the work. Powerful moralising agencies should be continually in operation. The system adopted greatly abroad of working convicts in gangs and in public, is condemned by the Committee. "The working of convicts exposed to public view is condemned by most of those who have been consulted or examined, as a practice tending to harden the offender, as revolting to the feelings of the community, and even as calculated to excite a feeling in the convict's favour. The French authorities have with great courtesy and candour communicated to the Committee valuable information upon this subject; and this information, corroborated by a witness examined upon the state of the bagnes or places of forced labour in France, leads to a very unfavourable opinion respecting the punishment as there conducted. "It is moreover clear upon the evidence that this kind of working would tend to undo the effects of any reformatory system which might be adopted prior to such working. "The objections, however, to this practice are materially diminished if the convicts be employed in remote and comparatively unpeopled districts,' such as may be found in some of the colonial possessions of the crown, or in other situations where the labour of convicts may be employed without all the evils attendant upon working under the public gaze." To the preparatory imprisonment, means must be afforded of giving the necessary useful labour without the galling and needless pain of publicity. Nothing can be easier than su h an extension of the industrial system. The Committee finds that, "Witnesses of the most competent authority from Ireland are of opinion that the system of employing large bodies of convicts toge ther in the public view could not be adopted with safety in that country, where the sympathy of the mass of the people would be in favour of the criminal, especially in all cases of agrarian crimes, and that it would be consequently necessary to transfer to England all Irish criminals destined to be employed on public works, in case this mode of punishment were adopted.'" The same objection we know has been found to exist in Switzerland and elsewhere abroad. The Report states also that "both from France and elsewhere, of the evil effects produced by the liberation of many convicts yearly, as their terms of imprisonment expire, would seem strongly to inculcate the necessity of obviating the great inconvenience of setting at liberty in this country on the expiration of their sentences those who had once been convicted of serious crimes. "It appears that Christiania, the capital of Norway, is so injuriously affected by the proportion which the liberated convicts bear to the population-nearly one in thirty-that the inhabitants have been called upon by the police to provide the means of their own security from such persons. In France, where between 7,000 and 8,000 convicts are liberated yearly, the superintendence of the police (surveillance), and the compulsory and fixed ridence of the convict, are found very insufficient, especially since the invention of railways. The residence of the liberated convicts is found to be a permanent danger to society. The system of imprisonment (reclusion), or of the bagnes or travaux forcés, is of little effect in reforming, or even in deterring from a repetition of the offences punished, and the proportion of those recommitted for new offences is not less than thirty per cent. Thus, of about 90,000 persons tried in the whole kingdom, above 15,000, or one-sixth of the whole number, had already suffered imprisonment, to say nothing of the corrupting effects produced on the community, even by those who escape a second punishment." |