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Wellington Independent, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3857, 15 July 1873, Page 2

Mr Justice Richmond, in his late charge to the Grand Jury at Pieton, suggested the perpetual confinement, in suitable penal establishments, of those who prove themselves habitually and incorrigibly criminal. Other portions of the same charge have received so much adverse criticism, that this suggestion is in danger of net receiving the consideration it deserves. Did the learned Judge borrow it from the recently-published most suggestive bonk entitled " Enigmas of Life : by W. R. Greg"? Certainly the idea was put into print about twelve months ago by Mr Greg ; and whether the Judge was or was not indebted to that gentleman

for the germ of the thought which led to the comments on the suppression of habitual criminals, those who take interest in the subject will thank us for printing Mr Greg's views. Iv his essay on " Realisable Ideals," he says :— We have fostered our criminal population just as we have fostered our pauper population, till this also has become a flourishing class, to be numbered not by tens bufc by hundreds of thousands. For generations we have labored with our usual injurious and ever-varying perversity. There is scarcely a single contradictory mistake thafc we have not committed. It waa long before scientific inquiry and reflection let in any light upon tho Bubjeot y and when light dawned at last, folly and sentimentality refused to follow the guidance of science. For generations our punishments were so savage that juries would not, convict. Our congtabulary were so scanty and inefficient that crime had, practically, acarcely any public foe ; and when, leaa than fifty years ago, something like an adequate police began fco be set on foot, there was an instant clamor that bhe liberties of the subject; were in danger. Due restraint oa knowu and habitual criminals ia still impeded in the name of fche same muchabused phrase ; and burglars and felons are allowed to walk abroad after repeated convictions, because the freedom of Englishmen j is fcoo sacred to be touched. The most mawkish sentimentality ia suffered to prevent the infliction of fche only punishments which are really dreaded by the hardened and fche ruffianly, as well aa those which alone could rescue and restore the iucipienk criminal. We will not hang the murderer, and have only lately and gingerly begun to flog the garotter and fche mutilator ; nor will we give adequately long terms of imprisonment to the less atrocious but confirmed class of malefactors. We persist, in spite of all warning and of all experience, in turning loose our villains on the world, time after time, as soon as a moderate term of detention has finished their education and defined their future course. All who have really studied tho question feel satisfied thafc professional crime — and the class thafc habitually lire by violation of tho law — might be well nigh exterminated by the perpetual seolusion of the incorrigible, and by the infliction of the special penalties which are truly deterrent;. Yet still, we go on from day to day, making criminals as comfortable as we can ; pitying them and petting them when the opportunity ocours ; raising an outcry against any penalties whioh are painful ; and thinking we have done enough, and arguing aa if we have done all we have a right to do, if we tie the bands of the most practised robber and ruffian for a time. All tuholesomeness of notion in reference fco this subject seems to have gone oufc of us, and fco be replaced by sentiment afc once shallow and morbid. We* have beon feeling towards the criminal neither as Christians, nor as statesmen, nor aa philosophers, nor even aa men of fche world. We neither abhor him nor cure him, nor diaarm him. We do nofc act; either on the reformatory, or tbe retributive, or fche purely defensive principle, bufc on a feeble muddle of all three. So he Urea, and thrives, and multiplies — nouriihed in the boiom of the eilly society on which he preya." Wo do not admit that Mr Justice Johnston's allegations as to the existence in New Zealand of " criminal and dangerous classes," are of foree — at present ; but we assert that " wholesomeness of notion" respecting many social questions, is a sore want in this colony. It is more to be regretted that Buch a lack of wholesomeneßS should exist in a new country than that its existence should have to be recognised in an old one. Here, " ideate" are easily " realis-able"-—or ought to ber-as compared with lands where grievous forms of social outcomes have grown into seeming permanency. But in respect of orime, of pauperism, and of intemperance, there is here far too much of the old British acceptance of consequent evils as evils that are not to be escaped. And a great good to New Zealand will have been secured, when its people have i been even partially awakened to the perception of the fact that no such evils ' are necessarily existent ; for then there ( may be hoped for something like fearlessness in acting out a wholesome opinion that the secondary causes of crime, pauperism, and intemperance must be removed as far as possible, und that he who will be a criminal, a pauper, or a sot, deserves to be dealt with as not entitled to the enjoyment of liberty of action.