NEW NORFOLK-ISLANDS IN THE PACIFIC.

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 638, 26 May 1852, Page 3

NEW NORFOLK-ISLANDS IN THE PACIFIC.

(Prom (he " Spectator," Dec. 27 ) A report has been put in circulation, through i provincial journal, that new penal colonies are t( he formed in the far South. It is possible thai the Liverpool Albion may have been mibinformed hut it is also possible that the statement may b( quite true, and it is at least specific. The statement is, that " the Lords of the Admiralty havt given directions for the immediate equipment ol two vessels to proceed upon an exploratory expedition to the South Sea islands, including New Caledonia and the Fejees, with a view to ascertain the capabilities they respectively present for the purposes in question" — penal settlements, and coaling stations for steamers. "We also learn that her Majesty's ships Herald and Arrow arc destined for this service ;" Captain Mangles Denham to have the command. Such is the story ; and there is in it an air of probability. We know wow puzzled her Majesty's Ministers have been to hit upon some mode for disposing oi convipts ; we know that the Australian AntiConvict League increases in numbers and influence ; that the Australian generally are angered at the idea of receiving more convicts ; that the discovery of the gold beds in Australia must make the custody of convicts all but impossible anywhere within the shores of that compact continent ; that convicts have been sent begging for reception from colony to colony, and welcomed only in the unimportant colony of "Western Australian, repulsed with rebellion from the Cape of Good Hope ; Aye know that the newfangled cento of half-measures or less than half-measures, the j " probationary" plan, has disappointed expectation ; and we know that, in default of better correctional discipline, of better morals in the country, of better arrangements to prevent the facticious multiplication of criminals, the number of convicts is increasing on the hands of her Majesty's Ministers. They are in as great a puzzle as an eminent manufacturing chemist, whom we once saw brought to his wits-end in facing the question where to cast the dry rubbish of his vast factory. Ministers indeed have had advice upon the subject. They have been most perservingly and ably advised by Captain Maconochie, how to adopt a principle of correctional industry, which would render the convict a comparatively harmless and tractable animal ; but the plan is too simple for official ideas in these superphilosophic days. Ministers have preferred a plan of " model prison," where the prisoner was to be veiled lest his blushes he seen, fed into a moral state of his physiology, lectured and preached into a beatific condition, and then given forth to the world as a blessing. Some prisoner have gone crazy under the process of correctional coddling ; stronger minds have preserved their tone — unaltered ; and the " model prison" is now one of those pretty state toys which the authors don't very well know how to get rid of quietly, without notice or ridicule. If a little local earthquake could swallow it up, "unbeknown," during a French revolution or any other vast diversion, how glad didactic officials would feel ! On the other hand, the Ministers of the country have been advised, with much simple painstaking and clear intelligence, by Mr. Adderly, the Member for North Staffordshire, how they might diminish the number of convicts, by revising those laws and regulations which contribute to multiply criminals, — especiaUgftabad prison regulations, the substitution of fiHra- P 1% i son training for proper tuition of the vHßfond young, anj ineffective laws for the relief!)?, the poor undfl real hunger and Avant of work. But Ministen are too busy with importan£~ affairs of state t| look after the material Avelfare~of the country J3O carefully as the advice implies. Intrigues to ge| into office, or to keep in it — devices to get up sham reform movements, which will return "political capital" — contrivances to make the calamities of foreign nations fall in with the nice little Downing-street arrangements for patching up untoward " Ministerial crises,"— Avith alHhcs« important affairs of state, how can Ministers attend to prisons and paupers \ Do prisoners and paupers deserve such special attention \ Besides, Sir Georgo Groy and Lord Grey have their own fancies aud hobbies ; and what is the use of being

n office if a man is not to do what lie likes with his own ? Moreover, they have "tried" everything. They have tried abolishing transportation under the dictation of Sir William Molcsworth's Committee ; they have tried model-prisoning ; they have tried the " distribution" system ; they have tried Captain Maconochie at Norfolk Island — where he succeeded as far as they let him and as longgas he stopped ; they have tried the ticket-of-leave plan ; they have tried the probation plan ; and now why should they not fall back on new penal settlements ? It is true that amended ways have been *' tried" only in a superficial, slighting mode, or mixed up with incompatible plans, merely for the credit of saying that such a plan was to be " tried" ; but still the official conscience holds itself quit. If you warn them that they will make another Norfolk Island Grooat Island in the Pacific, they may reply — " Well, we cannot help it ; human nature is human nature, aboriginally black and bad and inclining to the Norfolk Island type ; if you doubt, you are a shocking sceptical philosopher ; and convict nature being naturally hideous, convict keepers must not be nice." If it is necessary, however, to establish convict depots, why send them to the Antipodes, instead of keeping them at home, where they could be much more efficiently guarded ? To this question the standing reply is to point to the Bagnes in France. But the example of another country, noted for the ill keeping of her convict force, is no answer to the demand for a proper system of keeping. The only-sound and sensible plan evidently is, to do all that is possible in the way of diminishing the number of convicts accruing ; and then to bestow the rest so as to be effectively guarded, and placed under a system of correctional discipline, as much as possible simple, efficient, and sclf-snpporting. If convicts can be properly kept, they can be properly kept at home. Meanwhile, however, by the permission of the general apathy and disgust at interference in public affairs, Ministers are likely enough to indulge the official propensity to found new states like Norfolk Island.