IX

Thus have we seen how so much of the mischief of our societate was brought about :-How we fought and feasted; how some of us fell in the field and others under the table. How some of us turned our backs on home. Who took the posts of those, and who played their parts, and how. And who took their own parts, God bless them! How then some of us fell and how some us rose or were "raised." How some of us married and were given in marriage. How some of us worked. How some of us played and drank. How some of us starved. How the rest of us suffered. And now we come to see how something came home to some of us, after a long time; and to reflect a little as to how much of all this was of our own fault, and how much of it our misfortune.

We have seen that in the general crash of interests connected with the land the incumbrancer was the last to suffer. Some have gone so far as to say that, under the circumstances, this was not altogether equitable; that at least he should have had a child's share in the loss of the inheritance. The Legislature, however, in its wisdom, deemed otherwise; judging that, inasmuch as investment with respect to land having been, by the proprietary laws, practically confined to mortgage, it was but just that the whole loss entailed by their own acts and deeds should devolve upon the proprietors, that they and those who derived from them should suffer all the evil consequences oftheir own bad laws. "The sins of the fathers" hare been visited upon their children to the third and fourth generations."

Mark, however, that even the mortgagee-incumbrancer did not escape loss when, as in many instances of cottiered estates, he was found fool enough to lend up to the rack-rent valuation. The later the incumbrance, of course the more speculative or the more silly must have been the incumbrancer. And now that the price of land has fallen, with the cottier system, the latest incumbrancer receives in answer to his claim -"No effects." He speculated, and has lost.

Thus, too, turning our eyes backward, considering the connection of fact with fact, passing therefore from Incumbrancing to the extravagance which introduced it, we shall see how Bayard's saying, "Ce qui vient du gant s'en va par la gorge"-"What comes by the gauntlet goes when extra labor was to be had for next to nothing, and when the home-market was exclusive, we need not expect that land will reach to the old price when industry is to be compensated and labor paid for, when the home-market is free to the competition of the world, and population reduced one-sixth. While so large room for labor remains, it matters little, with respect to rent, what increase of produce there may be; since every increase beyond a fixed point is gained at a more than proportionate increase of cost. It is only when the space for cultivation is limited, that it becomes profitable to expend labor upon the nicer care of garden culture; for the fact stands, that a certain amount of labor and other capital is to be expended, and it is matter for calculation whether or not such capital can be employed more profitably in one mode of farming than in the other: it is manifest that Swiss cultivation in a North American clearing would not be the most profitable work. Here in Ireland, so long as the extent of land in a waste or untilled state is nearly as considerable as at present, there appears no room for doubt that fine farming must be the less profitable. The landlord must then, except in the case before named, be the loser eventually by free trade. Its immediate effect, however, was, as was said, upon the occupier. In many cases it placed the "feather too much" upon the backs already burdened by the blight.

through the gullet," the exponent of the social economics of Feudalism, describes as well the strong handed spendthrift of a later age: extravagance, surviving the nobler qualities with which it kept breach, and bed, and board. So in this instance, as in many others, we shall find that Good and Evil, twin born, do not die together; and that there is a measure of justice in the decrees of Fame :

"Men's evil manners live in brass;

Their virtues we write in water."

Furthermore, call them by what names you will, lordly luxury and base excess-genteel extravagance and vulgar improvidence, these, however different in degree, were not only the same in kind but were nearly related, closely allied to one another. "Tis of human nature that men are extravagant in proportion to the facility with which they obtain the means of expenditure; are improvident in a ratio with the ease of obtaining means of subsistence. In no other civilised country was so fatal a facility of augmenting income or of growing the staple food; in no other country, within the same period, did extravagance attain to such a height or population to such numbers. And when events removed the means of raising subsidiary income through potato rents, and sustenance by potatoes, the ruin of estated property and the havoc of human life were such as no other civilised country, not even France during the Revolution, suffered.

ART. V.-CONVICTS-TRANSPORTATION AND REFORMATION.

First Report from the Select Committee on Transportation, together with Minutes of Evidence-Ordered to be Printed, May, 1856.

What is to become of our Convict population ?-How is the dreadful amount of crime prevailing in these countries to be suppress d?and what arrangements are to be made for the future support of those who have been convicted, but who are about to be again cast on society with the stigma of convictism on their character, are questions that have of late commanded a considerable amount of public attention, and which have called forth a considerable diversity of public opinion. England has for the last century quietly rid herself of these troublesome subjects, by transferring them to her colonies, there to propogate the influence of their baneful habits, and to infest the growing population with the experience of her greatest criminals-but of late years the inhabitants of nearly all those colonies have, after considerable exertion and agitation, succeeded in suppressing this system, by declining to receive any more.

Hence the question, "what is to become of our convict population?" a question more easily asked than answered, and one which has been recently deemed of sufficient importance and difficulty to merit the consideration of a Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to inquire into the convict system generally.

Before that Committee were examined men who had devoted much attention to the subject, whose sympathies are enlisted in the cause of reformation, and whose opinions are, therefore, of the utmost importance in devising a scheme calculated to improve the convict while in durance, and to restore him to society, with some evidence of having been benefited by the discipline which the law has imposed, instead of casting him loose, after a period, with his mind demoralised, in proportion to the extent of his incarceration. Few questions present such difficulties that a Committee of the House of Commons, with its ample power of examining witnesses and acquiring practical information, will not be able to unravel, and to suggest sufficient remedies; but in the case before us there are points that can only be determined by inquiry on the spot, and we, therefore, regret, that, in addition to the Committee appointed to consider this important matter, some measures were not adopted to inquire into the detail of the convict system in our Colonies, and to ascertain by that means the causes of failure and disappointment in that system which has met with such determined opposition from the colonists.

From this source, we think, the most valuable information could have been derived, and the most practical suggestions gleaned for future guidance. We propose, in examining a few of the suggestions supplied in evidence to the Committee, to state our own experience of the management and discipline of convicts in Van Dieman's Land, thereby supplying, so far as we can, an important addition to the labors of the Committee; and pointing out what we conceive to have been the causes of failure in resorting to transportation as a punishment, as well as showing the reasons why a convict population has heretofore been a serious evil in those colonies, where, under different circumstances and management, they would have been a decided advantage, both as supplying cheap labor, not otherwise to be procured, and as creating a large circulation of government money.

The witness, to whose views we give the palm, for good reasoning and somewhat of novelty, is Captain Walter Crofton.

We find that, that gentleman, on taking charge of the Convict Department in Ireland, had peculiar difficulties to encounterover crowded prisons-"no systematic discipline-the prisoners morally and physically prostrate in every way-there was the want of the element of hope in them, of education, and of everything one would wish to find,"-this was in the year 1854. At the period of his examination before the Committee, we find that, by a display of extraordinary energy and zeal, all this had been remedied, that a complete system had been established, proper classification and separation, means of instruction and lecture adopted, and that even in the short period from the date of his appointment to that of giving evidence, Captain Crofton was able to speak of "extraordinary results"and we doubt not that, under Captain Crofton'ssystem, as explained in evidence, the best results will continue to follow.

The first point of novelty in Captain Crofton's evidence, to which we draw attention, is, his opposition to the generally approved method of granting tickets-of-leave, as a matter of right, to convicts after they have served a stated short period of their sentence with good conduct. On this subject he says, However convenient it may be for Prison Authorities to hold out as an inducement to good prison conduct that the prisoners should lose 25 per cent. of their punishment, or be released at the end of the third year instead of the end of the fourth, I cannot think that such a course will tend to genuine reformation. I should be unbelieving in the reformation of any man who would require so strong a stimulus as to be let off one-fourth his punishment to induce his reformation." These sentiments have our full concurrence. We do not believe that the inducement to good conduct by that system is of the right sort, nor can we be satisfied that any improvement so effected could be of a lasting character. We are disposed to the opinion rather, that the outward evidence of improvement would be more the result of expediency in the convict, than of any inward moral conviction of the benefits of a different course of life-therefore we think, with Captain Crofton, that some other and more tangible test should be tried before granting such an indulgence. The manner in which Captain Crofton proposes to apply this test is, in our opinion, the best calculated for the purpose; instead of turning the convicts loose upon the world the moment they have served the regulation proportion of their sentence, with a ticket-of-leave, they are

according to the plan explained by Captain Crofton, removed to other Institutions where they are detained until they can procure satisfactory offers of employment, or give sufficient guarantee that they have the means of earning an honest livelihood. It is during this detention that the right tests of reformation are applied; they are allowed increased liberty of action; they are employed as far as possible like free laborers; they are, some of them, sent of messages through the city, sometimes with money, their own earnings, in their pockets, and thus gradually introduced into the new stage of liberty about to be enjoyed by them under their tickets-of-leave.

Captain Crofton does not report any instances of failure or misconduct on the part of the convicts during this preliminary indulgence. Certainly if such did occur the convict was not yet sufficiently reformed to obtain his ticket, and hence the value of this gradual test under circumstances accompanied by a certain amount of temptation. This is, to us, a new feature in the code of Convict Discipline, but it is one that has our fullest approval as a sure test of reformation. We were always opposed to the uniform application of any rule in granting indulgence or shortening the sentence of the law. We wish to see an end put to that system which makes the convict feel that he is entitled to his conditional pardon when he has served a stated period of his sentence, if, even, he only "saves his distance" in point of good conduct. We, like Captain Crofton, want to see some real evidences of reformation before we again set him at large. Had such evidences been at all times insisted upon, and had the gradual test applied by Captain Crofton been brought to bear more generally on all convicts abroad before discharging them to earn their own livelihood, England would never have found herself in the "fix" she is in at present, wanting fields for transportation, while her colonies, sadly oppressed for want of laborers, refuse to receive her convicts. We deny that those colonies opposed transportation altogether on the ground of "pride" against being a convict community, or that such a ground of opposition formed even an important point in the motive for suppressing transportation. We shall hereafter show what were the real causes of grievances, and we think we shall make it evident that the failure of transportation, either to reform the convicts, or to supply the labor wants of the colonies, is more attributable to the system of treatment pursued towards