THE "TIMES" IN DEFENCE OF CONVICTISM! (From the Spectator.)

New Zealander, Volume 5, Issue 355, 15 September 1849, Page 2

THE "TIMES" IN DEFENCE OF CONVICTISM! (From the Spectator.)

Like the celebrated barrister who bad found that he had spoken on the wronef'side, nnd too convincingly, the Times occasionally finds itself, a* standing counsel for the Colonial Office, much embarrassed for its own former eloquence. For example, on Monday last it wa< struggling agninit hope in the effort to say something for Lord Grey'i latest project for convict transportation ; but the good old Times had left the writer scarcely an inch of ground to stand upon, and to he im obliged to accommodate himself as well as ho might on two scraps of quagmire ; a sort of literary posture-making more surprising than dignified. The writer was defending the plan ofsrnding convicts from England to the Cape of Good Hope. The Leading Journal had indeed " ever deprecated the scheme of swamping our Colonial settlement* with convicts;" but it views Lord Grey's plan of thin-sowing " with a mitigated dislike," which waims into praise— "it may be fail ly questioned whether the real calamity which both colonies [New South Wales and Van Diemen's Lmd] endured w. re not the quantity rather than the quulity of the lal>ou ers, whone forced wot It gave ferli ity to th»ir soil and brought weulth to their harbouis. Had the number of convicts been always kept below a certain amount, — had it never been permitted to thorn tt> divide a whole colony, ns they did Van Diemen's Land, with the free inhabitants — we much doubt whither the enormities of the tiuiispoitation system, or the complaints of the coloniitu, would ever huvc been so gross and so notorious." Perhaps notio gross or so no'orious. "The evil is lens apparent, and m»y become imperceptible, when the couvicts, in«tead of constituting the half, or Uih majority of a settlement, form but an i»considerable ft action ot its people ; find when, instead of being collected in masses, they are diffused through a wide and trackless province, subjected to domestic discipline, and punishable hy magisterial authority." And how, w« may ask, is that to be effected, with an extremely tcattcred population of convicts ? Is each one to (unaccompanied by a spatial policeman ; and if so, at whose cost >» said policeman to be in-jintHined, Mother-country's or Colony's? If not, what winged angel is to be " magistrate " over the scattered sons of sin, }>o that they be "punishable" The Times has viewed the " pollution" of New South Wales und Van Diemen's Land ' with horror," but regards the " physical and moral conditions" of tbo Cape to bo •• exceptional features." To begin— , " The colony, exclusive of its new acquisitions, contains an area of 130,000 square miles, and a population of 120,000 Whites. Small and scattered as this is, the) c is every probability that it will diminish rather than incieasc " A charming circumstance! Tho population of Egypt has decreased under the rule of Mohammed AH, —a fact semetinv k cited to show how harsh and destructive his rule has been to tho native fellahs : under the dominion of th<i Colonial OiUce, the population of the Cape, says the Timci, will probably diminish rather thin increase. Tlu wr tcrconclu les his strango pleading with some of the oddest of pleas, showing how utterly he must have exhausted the stock when, as Chief Justice Pcnnefdther said, he was "on the other bide." •• If at tho end of ten years the system were found pernicious to the inhabitants, it might be cuecked"; but the Caps must meanwhile try a htile depravity, and see hovr it can stand the poison. "It is only an experiment ": "both our experiments"— that of convict-colonizing, which endeavoured " to raide a social fabric on the mira and filth of selected depravity," and that ol more closo imprisonment, which "exposed a fellow creature to the contamination of the hulks, the infamies of Norfolk Island, or the miseries, of solitary confinement" — " havo been failu»es," and therefore " we must try some third course ''—by mixing the two ! So Lord Grey and his cousin G>torgo seize on the corpus vile of the Cape fop their experimental recreation* m the intervals of business j and the Times indulges Hum by apologizing fo* their amusement !

Talk on Colonies.— The talk is, that emigration is a very good thing, and is going on very well ; but that, l Ke other good things, there may be too much of it} that government having got the colonies imo a fix, under the promise of leading half free awl half convict labour, meditate saddling ihem exclusively with the latter, chiefly at colonial expense ; that the colonies will be compelled to take it, rather than go without, espedally when the money has been advanced or voted to the executive ; that the only money the home govern* ment will give to emigration is to clear rural workhouses and relieve manoeuvring landlords ; that pauper labour is exactly what the coloimts view as a plague and u burden ; that the Colonial Office snap their fingeisat ictiionsfranccs 10,000 miles away ; that a connivance at jobbery u the characteristic of the ty item tluoughout the department; that Earl Grey and Mr. Havre* know it, but can't help themsolvci ;]that the latter ii a man of the best intcn'ioni, but being a sub* ordiuate is feeble for good— while hi a chief, whose ia-

firmity of temper growl worse nnd worse diily, and is by no means sweetened through the strictures on the Vanconvcr family affair, is potent for mischief only, arising from pursuing his own crotchet to the opposition of every other person's; that the orotchet is never the same for any two consecutive days in the week ; and the wayward and vacillating Stanley wag immobility itself, compnrcd to his successor, whose '• prestige " of highmindedncss and disinterestedness, which so wholesomely qualified his capaciousness in public esteem, fioin the lit form Bill days, is impaiied through its coqucttings with tlu? West Indi.i despatches last session, and his iiepoti<s'H£ inlriguei With the Whig UlytSC*. lii-4 relative, old Ellice, of Coventry, in the Hudson's Hay bwgaining ; that, in short, the Colonial < flice is unimprovable* as long as its fuuoiiom me administered on the existing phn, or by the existing class of men, ci.her Whw or T° r y> who take their cue from the clerks Bnd the atmosphere of the bureau, nnd becomo demoralised at the immensity and irri'sponsihili y of the patronage at their disposal ; aivl that the only care for this state of things is the extension of representative governments to our foreign dependencies. The further talk is, that the intended government co-operation with parochial authorities, the representatives of pseudophilanthropic landlord!, has transpired prematuicly ; thai there is a T. Y. in Park-street, Westminster, in 18'1'S, who hnß been as " indiscreet " as his prototype in another department in 1843 ; that the news of this " ruse " is on its way to New South Wales long hefore this, and that a howl of lemonstrnncefrom the Pacificis likely to scare D )wning»Btreet before the ensuing st-ssion is three months old ; that the anomalous state in which the transportatio 1 question is, suggests endless embarrassments to a distracted minister— any tendency to the old penal code being sure to provoke general indignation, any further departure from it b< ing equally sure to elicit fresh remonstrances from Brougham and the lawycis— and an adherence to things as they are being impossible, for judges now senience criminals to tuniportalioti without knowing whether or not it will l)C carried into effect, or whether there really are penal settlements at all ; that those and a variety of other circumstances favour a belie! that a crisis in the colonial policy, fostered and matured by the Metternich of the depaitmcnt, Stephen, is at hand, and will not pass awny vu hout carrying with it an amount of abuse, the magnitude of which will uppnl the historian who may luve to lecord them and the nation's eudu.auce of them.— Liverpool Journal.