WHO SHOULD KEEP OUR CONVICTS ? [From the Spectator.}

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 448, 17 November 1849, Page 4

WHO SHOULD KEEP OUR CONVICTS ? [From the Spectator.}

There is one question which those who undertake the responsibility of renewing convict transportation are bound to answer — by what moral right they inflict on the colonies a burden which they deem too grievous for the mother-country ? For the pretext which Lord Grey advances against the Cape of Good Hope, that money has been advanced to the colony, will not bear a second look ; and the shifting counsels which prevail among Mr. Gladstone, Sir George Grey, and the other leading men of Parliament,show that they are all at sea, without distinct or settled conclusions. They want the will or capacity to grapple with the question, and in the meantime they are avowedly making tentative " experiments." Be it so ; if England cannot produce statesmen who will probe questions that press for settlement until they arrive at fixed principles — if England can for the time produce nothing but empirical experimentalists — on her be the penalty ; but by what right do. the quasi statesmen, engaged in these experiments without principles, shuffle the gross consequences of their trial-schemes upon the colonies ? Before they inflict any burden so heavy, so noxious, and so degrading, they are bound at least to make out tbeir case for doing so. The proposal is, to land yearly on ihe shores of the colonies a certain number of convicted felons, of whom England wishes to get rid. The colonists at large deprecate the invasion ; the Cape of Good Hope entreats that it may not be contaminated as Australia has been ; New South Wales implores that it may be suffered to continue the work, already begun, of freeing itself from past contamination. But whether the colonists urged these most reasonable claims or not, the fact is selfevident, that England ought not to impose the consequences of her own criminal producing tendencies upon the colonies. Not a pretext advanced for the evasion of responsibility will stand examination. It is said, for instance, that if we retain our convicts at home, we shall create horrible depositories of crime, like the Bagnes at Toulon and Brest ; but it is not necessary that we form our convict establishments on bad models, which ought to be compared only with our gaols before the time of Harvey, or our chain gangs in the colonies before they were abolished. It is said that we cannot imprison so many because it would be too expensive ; but the well known case of Glasgow bridewell shows that the prisoners may be detained at a less cost than the newest of Lord Grey's convict systems will entail. It is said that the prisoner's health would suffer from a longer confinement than twelve or eighteen months ; we have seen prisoners in good health who had been in' separate confinement for three or four years ; and improvements mjgfct be made even in our best prisons. That

deterring punishment must be sought before reformation ; but no evidence has been advanced to show that compulsory reformation is not the most deterring of punishments' to the lawless — not the alternative of punishment, but the most effective form of it. That if we do not send the convicts abroad, they will return upon society ; but how do we prevent their returning upon society by deliberately pouring their bands upon society in, the colonies ? The statesmanship which consents to use that pretext deserves no naras but the homely and opprobious one of " slut's tidiness" — a sham order, made by hiding dirt and rubbish out of sight. It was some such instinct which used to make the Dracos of the good old hanging times bury their criminals as fast as possible. Our " humanity" makes us scruple about killing — out nerves have grown nicer and more effeminate : so we pack over our criminals to the colonies, tt is true that such a mode of disposing them multiplies crime in the colonies — even murder and lifedestroying depravity ; so that for every life saved from the hangman probably we throw away several lives'; but those disagreeable consequences fall abroad ; the criminals do not come back upon " society" — meaning our own society ; and if the horrors are really greater, our own stomachs are saved the sickening. The colonies are very bad places for bestowing criminals at large on parole or " ticket of leave," because the population being so much smaller the ratio of criminals to the whole is increased in an immense degree, and the character of a thinly populated country enfeebles effective superintendence, Ob, but the convicts you say are to be reformed. Indeed, you can reform criminals ? you have at last found out that you can really reform criminals ? You have been told so before, and you doubted it. But if you can, why should you not keep them at home ? why be so alarmed at the prospect of their " returning back upon society V* Is it lest they should fail to get employment ? Are the colonists so much more charitable, intelligent, and wise, that they will accord employment which the prejudices of home keeping folks refuse ? Ask the South Australians and the Cape colonists, who refuse the boys from Parkhurst, and deprecate Lord Grey's criminals though warranted to be regenerate ; ask Mr. Matthew Hill and the employers of the youths at Birmingham whom he has rescued at the outset of a career of crime. The advocates of transportation have loot fairly tried auy one of their own assertions by experience — not even by the experience which lies ready made to their hands. They set about the task of administering the criminal law — a work of magnitude which grows as the population grows — without fixed principles or settled plans ; they shift from one difficulty to another, and fall back upon condemned schemes with a periodicity of vacillation.