The Lyttelton Times

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 81, 24 July 1852, Page 6

The Lyttelton Times

July 24, 1852

The Provincial Councils' Ordinance has been disallowed. In a Despatch dated the 2nd of April, 1851, which we publish at full length, in another column, Earl Grey acknowledges the receipt of the draught of the

Provincial Councils' Bill, and notices two important points in which he considers it so objectionable, as to induce him to use the following language : —

" The Ordinance, therefore, requires amendment in these particulars, and as it is convenient that the law for the establishment of Provincial Councils should be contained in a single Ordinance, the best course will be to repeal the present one, and reenact it with the necessary alterations. In the meantime, as her Majesty cannot he advised to confirm it in its present shape, I shall defer submitting it to the Queen when it arrives."

The Ordinance, as Lord Grey anticipated, was passed and sent home, and is of course disallowed'; and Sir George Grey is directed to make a new law.

Now, in a Despatch dated February 19, 1851, Lord Grey states hia opinion, that the Provincial Councils should be established by Local Ordinance, before the general constitution of the colony is settled by Act of Parliament. He says—.

"It would, in my opinion, be attended with much convenience, that the Provincial Councils should be re-constituted on this basis, before the constitution of the General Legislature is altered."

From these despatches it is manifest that the Bill which Parliament has probably by this time passed, will deal only with the General Legislature, and not with the Provincial Councils.

Now then, shall we register? Shall we register under the Provincial Councils' Ordinance ? It is disallowed by the Crown ! It is not a law of the Colony! Shall we register for the General Legislature ? We do not even know the franchise which the Act of Parliament has granted. It is plainly absurd to suppose that when the law arrives from England, these electoral rolls now making up will be sufficient, and that we shall be deprived of our votes then, because we will not register now. The law will of course be proclaimed and put in operation by the Governor. It cannot be otherwise. Impeachment were the alternative. In fine then, the question is at rest, as it will not make the smallest difference whether the people register or not. The Ordinance is no longer law, and these electoral rolls when made, will be waste paper.

It is but a few weeks ago that we deprecated agitation. Agitation, however necessary, is never without its attendant evils in any community ; evils, however, which our country sometimes calls upon us to endure, when principle must be asserted and right done. Sir George Grey has commenced this new agitation, by attempting to enforce an Ordinance which he must have known at the time was not the law of the land. But even had it been so, we object to putting that Ordinance in force ; not for the sake of forming a political agitation, but because it is that very agitation which we most earnestly deprecate, and the results of w^hich we dread, upon the moral and political condition of the colony. For were such Provincial Councils constituted, the battle would really only commence. Detested and despised by the people, those bodies would be but scenes of feud and faction from one end of New Zealand to the other. An honest despotism would be as odious, but

scarcely as injurious to the welfare of these islands.

Let us be thankful then, that the Ordinance is no more : let us wait in the hope that the first Parliament of New Zealand will enact a sound, constitutional, and popular law, giving to the people of each Settlement real and substantial power to manage their own local affairs.

We have from time to time brought the subject of transportation before our readers. It is brought before them sometimes in a less agreeable manner; as it was a short time ago, when a runaway convict committed a burglary in the town. But there is one view of the [question which has not_ as far as we know, occupied so much attention as it deserves in the colonies. We mean the question "what is to become of our own criminals" ? If we are justly so indignant at the outrage committed upon the Colonies by the transportation of the felons of England to their shores, we should not forget that each Colony is, in fact, committing the same offence. The courts of justice in all the Colonies continue to sentence convicted criminals to transportation ; but, transportation whither ? Where do we send our criminals from New Zealand ? To Van Dieman's Land —the common sewer of England's Empire ! But surely Van Dieman's Land may complain of New Zealand as justly as of England. Nor can we see any greater justification in the one case than in the other.

We are often in the habit of speaking as if the transportation of criminals from Great Britain were a mere act of wanton and deliberate wickedness, which ought to be, and might be, put a stop to at any moment. But it is not so. The question which England has to solve is " what shall we do with our criminals" ? It is not an easy question. . A multitude of felons are passed from the presence of the Judges every year, to the hands of the Executive. It is not one band of men who may be got rid of; but a continual stream. They pour on from the dock to the gaol, and from the gaol to the Colonies, and are so, as far as England is concerned, disposed of. But, choke up this stream ; cut off tbe outlet; —and what is to become of all the vile and vicious multitude which would soon accumulate in the prisons and the hulks ? We are not saying that all this is any justification of the offence of forcing these convicts upon the Colonies : that nothing can justify: nor can we conceive any amount of resistance to such gross oppression which is not justifiable before God and man : all we are saying now is, that the evil arises from a difficulty —a difficulty which may no doubt be solved—which it is the part of a statesman to solve; and the object we have in view now is to point out that the same difficulty occurs in this Colony as in England, although on a much smaller scale—and that we must at once look it steadily in the face. We ought to solve the problem for ourselves " what shall we do with our criminals" ? We cannot continue to complain of England whilst we imitate her Example. Let us set her the example'of solving the difficulty.

There is great inconsistency and some absurdity in the maintenance of a form of sen-

tence which does notconvey any idea of the punishment to be inflicted. Most of the felons of England are sentenced to transportation for terms of longer or shorter duration. Few of them comparatively, as a matter of fact, undergo that punishment. England has long ceased to transport to the Colonies the felons suffering under sentences for seven years and less. It was found too expensive a system to be continued except for prisoners for fourteen years and upwards. The others are worked in various prisons in England, and some are sent to Bermuda. With regard to all, however, the real punishment inflicted is that of Slavery : whether carried out to a new scene or worked in the prisons of England—the felon is really condemned to be a slave : that is to say, he forfeits his civil rights, is deprived of his liberty, and is compelled to work without wages. He is the Slave of the State.

This being the case, why mystify the matter by calling it " transportation." Why not let the Judge condemn the convicted felon to so many years slavery to the State, —his labour to be disposed of as the Executive power may think proper. The labour of these State Slaves should be made use of in the general public works, or might even be disposed of to individuals, or to companies ; for as the State has the expense of maintaining its Slaves, it would be well if it could dispose of their labour so as to realize the cost of their maintenance. So far the " what-to-do-with-criminals " question is simple enough ; but this is not where the shoe pinches most severely in England : it is the after-punishment time which puzzles the English. The landlords and farmers do not care so much that the criminal is punished, as that he is removed ; and removed so far, and to such a scene, that, although the law would allow him to come back at the expiration of his sentence, come back he never does. They congratulate themselves that they have got rid of him ; " the country is well rid of him;" that is the real charm of the transportation system to the respectable of all classes in England. The difficulty then is rather what to do with the expirees than what to do with the convicts ; and upon this point we differ widely from the general opinion prevalent in England.

It is just, that, when the sentence has expired, the criminal should return to all his privileges again as though he had never sinned. Thus would the multiplicity of its criminals become, as it ought to be, an avenging power to scourge a people for neglect of duty. If England had not been able to hide away her felons, as her dead, out of her sight ; if they had returned upon her hands from the gaols in the same constant stream in which they flowed from the bar of justice —could she have afforded to leave the great mass of the people in their present condition ? Instead of subjecting her felons to reformatory discipline, about which there has been so much maudlin sentamentalism of late years, would it not have occurred to her that the reformation should commence before conviction for crime, not after ? In fine, would she not have been compelled to deal manfully with those social evils, out of which spring chartist meetings and socialist theories, operative strikes and poor law

horrors—the real condition of the people question. Her process hitherto has warded of the danger for a time. Poverty creates discontent; and untaught discontent, crime ; and crime, transportation ; and so the conntry is fairly rid of it—the dangerous parts of it at all events. But the threatened discontinuance of transportation is already attracting the minds of politicians to a larger view of the question. Mr. Adderley in his pamphlet last year arrived at the conclusion that the real question is—not, what s hall we do with our criminals, but can we not lessen their number altogether by grappling with the sources of crime itself—repealing game law—extending education, and so on.

Now in our case, this part of the difficulty under which England suffers, has no existence. We have no large class of society here who are born and educated in poverty and crime, such as exists in the large towns of England. Here there is, so to speak, no poverty—nothing that would be called pauperism in England or in Ireland. The proportion of criminals to the rest of the community is extremely small. The question to us, therefore, of what shall we do with our felons, is one admitting of easy solution. Let them be condemned to slavery to the State for a certain period, and then let them return to their former condition so far as they may be able to attain it. We hope one of the first Acts of our new Parliament will be to provide for the discontinuance of the punishment of transportation from this Colony altogether.