CRIME AND TRANSPORTATION. [From the "Times."]

New Zealander, Volume 6, Issue 471, 19 October 1850, Page 3

CRIME AND TRANSPORTATION. [From the "Times."]

A burglar is sent (o expiate his crimps in a penal settlement, and a vagabond makes up his arrears of duty in a stoneyurd, or on the treadwheel. Tins however, is not the only expiation that is performed. Our gaols and our colonies are purgntoncs not merely for their wretched and too often irreclaimable inmates, but also for the nation which builds these gaols, which hounds thoic colonies, puoplas them with criminals, which exliaubts its ingenuity, its character, and its resources, in the vain uttevmpt to reform those whom it casts from its bosom. So there is an expiation going on inside und outside those walls. While the felon is doing iiis dieary tusk, or sickening in a hideous solitude, a Home Secretary is rucking his braini for new schemes of convict discipline, a Colonial Secretary is wandering over the earth in quest of a shore which he mny possess with hi* legion of crime, committee! arc bewildering themselves with criminal returns, and enormous sums are lavished in vain. The heart of the nation is sickened and the national sense is revolted at. the disgusting and unprofitable nature of its never ■ending:, still-begining toil. In return for its trouble and expense there arc published horrid details that sound inure like premature revelations of the nether wot Id than aught this tun ever shone upon. Every sentence pas«cd by the Judge is double. The wrctc 1 tit the bar is sentenced to buIKt — the public which stands by is sentenced to the tuak of imposing, measuimg, directing his sufferings towards lvi reformation and thr good of society. Of thu two our sentence is the hardest. It runs much as follows: — " Good pco- " pie, you have Buffered the prisoner at the bar to run " into evil courses; you have suft'eied him to grow up "ignoiant, uninformed, brutal, malic'iou-, without pru- " deuce, or conscience, or i eligion ; you have not even "provided him with the opportunity of earning his " diily bread ; the result of your disgraceful neglect ii 11 that he has broken your own laws ; and accordingly " I sentence you to miiintuin him, and employ him, " und teach bun, and, if posiiiblo, it-pair your past nig"- " lect by muking him fit for society. You will find " this a costly, disagreeable, and embarrassing, if not "an impossible task, but you must attempt it." So the wretch walks back to his prison, listless, stupid, und indifferent, but at all events free from anxiety. Society also proceeds to the scene of its punishment, whicli is full of anxiety.. It knows not what to do. When we follow the convict to his prison we read over the portal, " Hope enters not heie." It is addressed, not to the inmates, but to us who build, and maintain, and visit this hcIL For us there is scarcely a hope of success. Yet while wo are ready to sink under the weight of this terrible doom, we cannot deny it* justice. It the btute has not educated its childieu out of prison/ now can it expect to do so in a prison? If, with all the means and appliances of ihu gloiious earth, and this great moral creation, it has tailed of cavernous fabric of buck walls, flagged courts, iron beds, clean fioois, well ventilated cells, treadwheels, hemp, silence, and whatever cUe the demiurgua of the prison may ordain? We have neglected what was possible, and our penalty i» that which is impoßuble-— lxion's wheel, the rolling stove ofSiSYi'HUS, and the leaky tub of the DuuaiJst From begmging to end it is bnt disappointment. What was twenty years ugo, a promising discovery in the science of convict reformation is now an obbolute error. The traed whctl was once thought un invention worthy of being classed with vuccination and the iteam-enginc. It has given way to iudustnal education, which in its turn has been found too much of an amusement, and to great a boon to undeserving objects. The solitary system is still newer, and it fatill retains its reputation for terriblu cflicacy ; but human nutuie will not stand more thiinn iwvlvemonth of nn — another hulf-year breaks down boih body and mind, and bur* dens society with an invalid or an idiot. Some years ago the chapels of our prisons where so built that each prisoner saw no one but the minister. The idea wus too ingenious to be true. The partitions me now removed, or likely to be soon, snd congiegulional woiship once more permitted. Piibon dietaries have undeigone a few fluctuations— at one wo fed up the body of ihe felon, at another time we subduud his spuit. It is luid to say whut iu!e to go by when the circumstances aic so entirely exceptional. Theße lesser changes are nothing to the absolute revolution which the cmtuiy has witnessed. A hundred years ago a prison woi really a prison, where thenuturul consequence of crime were heaped on its devoted head in hideous concent ration. Dirl, vermin, fever, famine, cold, nakediie«H, riol, drunkenness, blasphemy and every other phjsical and morul contagion, gave u ternblc realuy to the sentdnco of the j'idge. Howauu robbed tins purgatory of i's principle horrors, and now, behold another evil ; the prison is a palace by the side of the collage. '1 hi murderer is comfortable, und the the children perhaps of Ins victim tuffeuug all kinds ol wretchedness. The gaol bus lost its tenors. The village labourer cannot net hulf so much for the housing, the clothing, the feeding, the teaching, and the comloiting of his wile and family as the Stum lavishes on the single person ot a miscreant whose 8 ( >le claim to its attention u tone at roc out crime.

These, how many ins and outs have we had vvult transportation, and how many more si) fill we have before we have done with it-— if that should ever come I We transported to New South Wdlei till even that colony, created in the very image of crime, could bear no more. Long before that a lower hell had been found nenessary, and Norfolk Island became to New South. Wales what New South Wales wai to England. At length, after much controversy, beginning and ending in the unquestionable truth that penal settlements are ua utter abomination, it was settled to transport no more, or to trumport more sparingly, and on lomewhat different conditions. Since that decision not a session, has passed without at least one new experiment. We have traaiported to Van Diemen's Land, ceased to transport* and transported again ! we have sent reformed convic's to Sydney, and also to the Cape ; in the former case with temporary success, in th« latter with instant failure. Wo are now trying Western Austnrlia. We have changed from the assignment system to working in gangs ; we have tried tickets of leave, conditional pardons, and " exile," and are now trying ticketi of leave again. Our conditions with the colonial employers and Governments hiive undergone, and art still undergoing, equal alterations. At home we are as much at a loss .19 ever what to do with thoi>e whom we intend to send out, and those whom we cannot send out. Some years ago the collective witdoiu of the nulion and the new lights of philanthropy insisted much on the diflfeience he! ween penal and reformatory establishments, nnd while Milbank was le r t Ja the hands of ihe Home Secretary, Pmkliurst and Pcntonvilte enjoyed the rmrc paicntnl attention of Her MajkstV in Council. But the woid " reformation" Ims not been found to solve nil (he difficulties of the problem, or to convert incorrigible rogues into promising pupils. So all these establishments and that fresh novelty, the prision at Portland, are all to bo placed in the same hands — under what sys'em, or with what liope of better results, we will not pretend to any. We are not among those who would argue any great amount of blame from this history of hopeful experiments and disastrous failures. It is the mateiial itself which defies a happier result. All pnitiei have failed. The felon has proved a match for them all. We arc witnessing experiment No, 100 in the seiies, or No. 1,000 if wo Rtart earlier in our computation ; but our children will count a bundled moie in the catalogue, all that we can hope is, that we may gain a little by the experiencs of each year ; and to that'we add our own feivent desire tha' the British public and Legis* lature would direct their efforts more to the comparatively easy work of retaining in employment, comfort, and duty those vfhjm otherwise it will be almost mpoasible to reform.