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sufficiently extensive scale. Again, it should be kept in mind, as Jeremy Bentham long ago pointed out, that transportation involves a serious injustice, unless means be taken for bringing to England, on the expiration of his sentence, every convict who may wish to return. A sentence of expatriation for a limited term of years must not be converted into banishment for life, as it often practically is. Here again we see a moral difficulty in the way of the mere "getting-rid-of-the-convicts" policy, which may be disregarded, but cannot be fairly overcome. We want by transportation to relieve ourselves of our worst criminals. Free colonies (if they will consent to receive any) will consent to receive only our best. The proposed amendments in the act of 1853, to which we have so often adverted, are intended to give the opportunity of selecting the least dangerous offenders for removal to Western Australia, and for keeping the most desperate characters, the incorrigibles, at home. But apart from these considerations, to the dogmatic assertion, We must transport our criminals, the question, Whither? is a sufficient answer. The Falkland Islands, indeed, of which it is the fashion to say so much now, would probably afford means for employing convicts usefully, while under punishment, in the formation of a dry dock, and the repair of vessels which may touch there, after rounding Cape Horn, as well as in the fisheries with which they abound. But these occupations of all others would present the greatest facilities for escape. And it is difficult to see what could be done with the men after discharge. There is no probability of a large free population ever being collected in the islands. The only kind of farming for which their soil and products are adapted is the breeding and grazing of cattle, which requires the employment of but few men. The islands do not produce wheat; neither coals nor minerals are to be found in them. Under these circumstances, when the suggested docks are once completed, and the fences for the preservation of the tussac grass erected, it would be difficult to find work for any considerable number of convicts, or means of disposing of them when they regain their liberty. It is suggested by some that grants of land should be made them; that they should be set up in the world as graziers.* We have not yet heard the proposition that ought, in consistency, to be subjoined to this-that their farms shall be well stocked at the public expense. We need not waste words in arguing against any such scheme. If transportation is to be a punishment at all, it must be a terror to evil-doers, and not an advantage to them. Every practicable facility, indeed, should be allowed for providing discharged offenders with the means of honest subsistence; but it should be, so far as the procuring

* See Captain Sulivan's Evidence before the Lords, especially qu. 500-502.

of it is independent of their own exertions, a bare subsistence, on which the honest labourer, however humble his own lot, can look without envy. Apart, however, from the moral objections of various kinds which attach to the suggestion just mentioned, the economical ones, which have been developed in respect to the too cheap disposal of the crown-lands in Australia, apply to it in all their force. Taking every thing into account, we believe that the Committee of the Lords came to a wise decision when they resolved, "That according to the evidence before this Committee, it would not be desirable to send convicted prisoners . . . . . to the Falkland Islands." Of the countless other localities which have been named, by those who knew little about them, to those who knew less,-the Gulf of Carpentaria, Northern Australia, Hudson's Bay Territory, Vaucouver's Island, &c., -we need say nothing, because, by common consent, they are altogether out of the question. Political considerations and peculiarities of soil,-one or the other, or both, -present insuperable obstacles to converting them into penal

colonies.

We have now reviewed the main features of recent convictsystems, and discussed the expediency or feasibility of proposed legislation. The conclusion which we derive from the facts to which our attention has been called is, that transportation has had a fair, a too patient trial; that it has altogether failed; that this failure, though aggravated occasionally by incidental causes, was yet inherent in the nature of the punishment itself, from which no permanent good to our dependencies, or real relief to ourselves, or opportunity of reform to the convicts, can ever be expected. Further, if all this be questioned, the indisputable fact still remains, that we have no colony at once fitted and willing to receive the sweepings of our gaols. The alternative to which we are compelled, therefore, is, to keep our convicts at home, andmake the best of them. Till we recognise this as inevitable, no good will be done. We regret that Ministers should have thought fit to amuse the public mind with hopes (which they themselves evidently do not share) of a renewal and extension of transportation. In this way they manage to put off for a time the necessity of grappling with a great social problem; but the difficulty will increase with delay. Without entering into details, for which we have no space, and which would be premature at present, we believe that the development and extended application of the system successfully pursued in our convict-prisons, and its adoption in all places of confinement in the kingdom, is a step which it is very desirable, and will be soon found needful, to take. Sir G. Grey's proposal to legalise sentences of penal servitude for terms of two years and more, is an advance in the direction indi

cated; but it is only a very slight advance. More than 70,000 criminals are annually sentenced to less than six months' confinement. They are imprisoned in our county and borough gaols, where they are supported and yet further demoralised at the public expense. The terms of detention now usual are too short to allow of any effectual reformatory influences, if such could exist in provincial prisons as at present administered. By the establishment of industrial prisons of various kinds in the several districts of the kingdom, the great mass of English offenders might be made to defray the cost of their own maintenance while in custody, and perhaps something more. This is no mere hypothesis. Though a result never yet accomplished in England, it has been achieved elsewhere. "In the gaols of Massachusetts, in the United States," says Mr. Pearson," the prisoners, out of the produce of their industry, maintained themselves and their keepers, paid for their diet, clothing, and bedding, for the repairs of the prison, and the salary of every officer, from the governor down to the lowest turnkey; and by the sale of surplus productions they were enabled to present each prisoner, on his discharge, with four dollars and a new suit of clothes-to create a sinking-fund to liquidate the cost of constructing the building, and to subscribe a considerable sum to that excellent institution, the Boston Prison Discipline Society."* Effects scarcely less successful have been realised in Belgium and France; in the Spanish prison of Valencia, under Colonel Montesinos; and at Munich, by M. Obermaier.

Hard labour during detention would, as we have on another occasion urged, have both a deterring and reforming effect, in addition to its economical advantages. No doubt a considerable outlay would be requisite at first; but it would be money well invested. No doubt it would be difficult to find fit officers for as many industrial prisons as would be needed if the system were all at once introduced; but by trying the experiment (if it can be so named, after its proved success in the United States and on the Continent) in one or two districts, and extending it as its usefulness became manifest, a training school would be formed for future officers, the number of whom might be proportioned to the demand for them. Whether the prisons should be mainly agricultural, or in any cases fitted up rather for manufactures and the practice of mechanical arts, is a question which need not be entered on now. The general principle once granted, that convicts must be kept at home, and made self-supporting, experience will gradually show the best means of securing these ends. We should have, we believe, comparatively few recommittals. Prisoners on their discharge would still have obstacles to

*Letter to the Lord Mayor, pp. 35, 36.

contend with, but to a degree much less than at present. They would be fitter for work, and more inclined to it, than now is ordinarily the case; and this being known, they would meet with readier employment. The formation of patronage-societies would no doubt be a useful aid to many discharged offenders, and, by affording timely assistance, might prevent relapses into crime otherwise inevitable. But though a valuable appendage, such societies do not form a part of a judicious scheme of secondary punishments, and are therefore beyond the scope of our subject; our remarks on which we conclude with the following forcible reflections of Mr. Pearson :

"If the honest millions, as they pass through life, can, and do, during what is recognised as the producing age, not only provide for their own wants, but create a large surplus, by which the non-producing classes are supported and the institutions of society are maintained, it surely ought not to be endured that any portion of the same race, and of the producing age, . . . . should be permitted to renounce their allegiance to the fundamental law of their existence, and declare in practice, that by the sweat of the face of other men, they will eat of earth's choicest fruits.

The only rational, merciful, and effectual corrective of such offenders against all laws, human and divine, is, I repeat, to classify and place them in secure prisons, surrounded by lofty and substantial walls, to subject them week by week to seventy, or, at least, sixty hours of useful and profitable work, to allow them sixty, or at most, seventy hours for food, rest, cleanliness, and their other bodily requirements; to give them twenty-eight hours with means and opportunities for mental, moral, and spiritual instruction, and for the public and private worship of God.* . . . . If any Government having thus placed at its disposal annually the hundred millions of hours of confiscated labour, which 30,000 criminals would yield, cannot make the class not only self-supporting, but productive of a surplus for the future benefit of those who produce it, such a Government would be pronounced by men of business unfit to be at the head of a great manufacturing and commercial people."+

Of course we do not insist on the exact distribution of time which recommends itself to Mr. Pearson.

Letter to the Lord Mayor, pp. 30, 31.

ART. III.-THE CLUBS OF LONDON.

Miscellanies: Prose and Verse. By W. M. Thackeray. Vol. I. The Book of Snobs. London: Bradbury and Evans.

Handbook of London, Past and Present. By Peter Cunningham, F.S.A. London: John Murray.

Letters of Horace Walpole. Complete Edition. Edited by Peter Cunningham, F.S.A. Vols. I. and II. London: Bentley.

WHY does not some great author write the "Mysteries of the Club-Houses; or, St. James's Street unveiled?" asks the great historiographer of the snobs. Considering the magnificent figure those palaces of Pall Mall make in our metropolis,-the celebrities, social, political, and literary, included in their thousands of members, -the associations which float about the older of them, as White's and Brookes's, Boodle's and Arthur's, the stateliness of their decorations, the luxuriousness of their upholstery, the elaborateness of their kitchens,it has always puzzled us why "the Clubs of London" have not been more written about. We only know of one book under that title;* and a very miserable book it is. The first volume is made up of threadbare stories of Brookes's, dully, pertly, inaccurately, and lengthily told; with irrelevant chapters on Irish bulls, the Irish peasantry, and fighting Fitzgerald. The second volume comprises a hundred-and-thirty pages of tedious personality about the sublime Society of the Beefsteaks; a chapter on the Hole-in-the-Wall Club at Norwich; another on "the King of Clubs," the least intolerable part of the book; and a collection of supplementary anecdotes,—the new ones not good, and the good ones not new. The Clubs of London deserve a historian of a very different kind from the Irish bookseller's hack; in which class, from internal evidence, we should rank the author of this trashy compilation.

Properly comprehended, the history of London Clubs is the history of London manners since the Restoration. Nay, tracing the Club to its antecedents, we fairly get back to Shakespeare's London, with what Ben Jonson's Tom Barber calls its four cardinal quarters of news

"The Court, St. Paul's, Exchange, and Westminster Hall."

The Club now-a-days, in fact, is for your man-about-town what the staple of news, the ordinary, and the tobacco-office, together,

*The Clubs of London; with Anecdotes of their Members, Sketches of Character, and Conversations. In 2 vols. London: Colburn, 1828.

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