Untitled

Star (Christchurch), Issue 684, 2 August 1870, Page 4

Peopling Alaska.— The New York Times Bays : — Alaska is really but an extension of Siberia. It is worth wbile to ask why may not a system which has made much of the one make something of the other. Siberia has been made a double benefit to Russia. It has served as an outlet to her most troublesome population, as well as added greatly to her wealth and revenues. The annual number of exiles sent to Siberia amounts to about 12,000, made up of all sorts of offenders — murderers, thieves,, burglars, smugglers, and all the characters that in. other countries would be hung or committed to prison or the treadmill. The mere political offenders are but few in comparison, but there are plenty of vagabonds who were caught roaming, and whose only offence was that they could give no satisfactory account of their doings or intentions. It would be hard to imagine worse material for the settlement of a new land than a mass so compounded of tho worst criminals and the most inveterate idlers. Yet, under liberal treatment, it does not take long to transform them. Every exile receives a piece of land, a horse, two cows, and provisions for a year. The first three years he has no taxes to pay, and dnring tbe following ten only the half of the usual assessment. Thus, if he chooses to exert himself, he has every reason to hope for an improvement in his condition, and at the same time fear is made to help

keep him in the right path, for he well knows that his first trespass would infallibly send him to the mines— by no means an agreeable prospect. It seems to be pretty well established that tbe system of penal colonization by Russia has worked quite as successfully in frozen Siberia as did that by England amid the wastes of New Holland. Our own country is not yet prepared to adopt any system of the sort. But the time may not be far distant when it will be called for under the positive necessity of protecting ourselves from an increasing criminal population by a method which has commended itself to almost every European Government. Many things are combining to work out this conclusion. It is getting to be universally conceded tbat our penitentiary system, as it exists, is, in general, a great failure, that -it reforms but an insignificant- fraction of those subject to it, and casts gback the mass upon society, worse, if anything, than before. ... It is not at all unlikely that the time will come when Alaska will be valued as a reservoir in part, at least, for the ever-increasing flood of foreign criminals cast upon our shores. There iB no other part of our national domain suitable for that purpose, and probably none will ever be obtained so well suited to it.