OUR CRIMINAL CLASSES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5540, 30 December 1878, Page 2

OUR CRIMINAL CLASSES.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE NEW ZEALAND TISIEB. Sir, —I read in. your issue o£ the 25th inst. an extract from a paper written by William llowitt, advocating a return to the punishment of transportation, in which the author says that “ in Victoria he used to see Sir William Denison, the Governor of Tasmania, daily abused by the Frees os a despot and a slavedriver, because he employed the convicts upon public works." As I happened to bo in Victoria before William Howitt’a arrival in that colony, and remained there for some years after ho returned homo to England, and also as I was a reader of the Victorian Press (and I am credited by my friends with having a good memory), X venture to assert that William Howitt’s memory has failed him as to why the Victorian Press abused the Governor of Tasmania. ' I recollect well that he was abused tor liberating hordes of convicts under a conditional pardon that permitted them to go anywhere except return to the United Kingdom, and the consequence was that the attractions of the Victorian goldfields cleared Tasmania of the greatest rascal that ever was let loose on a neighboring community. In the first years of goldmining every traveller went armed as a protection against the ruffianism. that Sir William. Denison let loose to find their way on to Victorian soil, and indignation meetings were held and a law was passed to render Sir William Denison’s conditionally pardoned convicts liable to throe years’ imprisonment if found in Victoria, before com-

pleting the fall term of their sentence on obtaining a full and free pardon. The Act was several times disallowed by the Home Government, as infringing on the prerogative of the Crown, and as often renewed ia the colony, William Howitt tella something about an Irish convict and his Irish, convict wife, that might have murdered him, but did not do it. How very pretty and interesting ! f b aV e met hundreds of men who have b*en convicts in Tasmania, and have listened to many tales of crimes committed by them, and being a good listener the narrators were generally pleased to fancy that those tales met with the approbation of the listener. From what I have seen and heard I would say that ©very country that creates and fosters a criminal class should be prevented from sending them to other countries, to be there let loose in communities that have enough to do with providing for their own criminals.—l am, &c., An Old Victorian. : Ftildlng, Dec. 27.