ing their bad ingenuity in defrauding their neighbors, and where, though they must pass a life of hardship at first, they have the hope allowed them of ameliorating their condition by an improvement in conduct. They would thus go through the grades of

1. Detention in Norfolk island.

2. Probation gangs.

3. Probation passes, by virtue of which they become for the first time entitled to a portion of their wages.

4. Ticket of leave, which has all the effect of a pardon, except that they are restricted to the colony.

5. Pardon.

Even in these cases, when a convict had obtained to the fourth class, it would be desirable that his wife and children should be sent out to him at the mutual request of both parties.

The same order of Lord Stanley contains efficient instructions relative to the treatment of female convicts who would be in this subdivision.*

SECTION II.

2. Offences against property committed with violence. This class includes the various kinds of burglary; housebreaking; robbery; sending threatening_letters to extort money, &c. The total number of offenders sentenced in the year 1843, in the county of York for crimes included under this head, was 237: that of criminals of the first class 1246; so that we may reckon offenders of the second description at about one-fifth of the number of those of the first. First offenders are found but rarely among their ranks, although sometimes it hap

* Vide Order in Appendix.

+ Vide the tables of criminal offenders presented to both Houses of Parliament for 1844, page 40. I have selected the table of criminal offenders for the county of York, by way of showing the comparative number in each class, as from its large manufacturing and agricultural population it affords a fair criterion for the whole of England.

pens that a prisoner is presumed to be so from not having been before detected.

In all these cases I would leave the system of transportation upon a scale proportioned to the magnitude of the offence as it is at present. Much might indeed be said against the policy of allowing the return of a convict to his former associates in the mother country, even after any period of expatriation; but it is difficult to suggest degrees of transportation which would be understood at home, excepting those of duration of time: and a bad man is sometimes deterred from committing violence in addition to the robbery by the remembrance that in that case his offence, if detected, would be more severely visited. In all the offences of this class, however, the judge should be allowed to substitute "Compulsory Emigration" for transportation, where sufficient mitigating circumstances exist to justify the change.

SECTION III.

3. Forgery and offences against the Currency.

The observations already made on offenders who make use of their talents to defraud their fellow-men, apply to this class also. Forgery is never attempted by an uneducated man. If his knowledge of the law has served to preserve him from the penalties of its actual infraction before, it has not been from the lack of will to make a profit at the expense of society; but from a fear of the attendant punishment. He has previously done many a dishonest act, and the desire of profiting still more largely, has at last banished all thought of prudence from his mind, and he breaks the law. His nature had been corrupted long before.

Transportation is a fit punishment for such an individual, as also for the practised coiner: but this latter has frequently accomplices, more particularly in the offence of uttering counterfeit coin, whose character is of a very dif ferent description-foolish victims of the clever principals. Compulsory Emigration would deter and yet improve such persons. They are generally idle characters, who if they once learn that money can be gained more easily

by crime than by labor, are easily tempted to the commission of a first offence; but who, if not removed from the country, would pursue their vicious course farther, until they were at last detected in the commission of a great crime. Imprisonment is worse than useless in such

cases.

SECTION IV.

4. Offences against the person.

5. Malicious offences against property.

We now enter upon second great division of crime. The fourth class consists of murder; manslaughter; rape; abduction and assaults against the person, of various degrees of enormity. In number these again show a decrease from those we have last considered. The convictions in 1843, in the county of York, amounted only to 87 cases, many of these being assaults of a comparatively trivial nature, for which but a short period of imprisonment was inflicted.

The fifth class includes the various kinds of arson; destroying machinery; killing and maiming cattle; and other malicious offences against property of a like kind. Of these the convictions in the same county and year amounted to only 11.

In

I have been induced to consider these two classes together, since although differing very much in degree, they are in many instances the same in character. revenge I seek to do my neighbor an injury; if a stronger man I assault him; if weaker I injure his property; but whichsoever of these alternatives be taken, the criminal is a very different person from those we have formerly treated of. The animus which urges to the committal of larceny or robbery is personal advantage,-the animus in the other is the delight of occasioning a loss of life, or limb, or property to the individual injured. A thief is led into crime by the hope of gain, but would gladly receive the amount in pounds sterling, without having to undergo the labor attending the commission of the crime added to the chance of punishment upon detection;-the offender

against the person or the malicious injurer of property would often put himself into considerable personal peril, and sustain great pecuniary loss for the sake of obtaining his desired revenge.

With respect to the punishment now in force for the greater crimes of the fourth class, I have no observation to make. The question of the expediency of capital punishment in any case, has been so largely discussed, that it would be unnecessary to argue it here, nor would so small a treatise allow space for it. In practice there is seldom an execution in this country for any other crime than that of murder, and at present at least, no one has been able to devise any effectual substitute for capital punishment in this case. In others, where this awful sentence is recorded, it is generally commuted for transportation for life, and by a recent statute the same punishment may now by law be inflicted in many cases which used to be capital.

In determining on an adequate punishment for these offences, the difficulties are, that on the one hand it must be so severe as to deter a man from its commission, even when under the influence of excited passion; on the other, it ought in its nature to be such as to lead to an amendment, if possible, in the temperament of the offender. Short of death, transportation for life is, in its consequences, the most dreadful punishment; and the power of inflicting it must still be left with the judge, never to be inflicted in these cases unless the most urgent necessity demands it. Success may possibly attend the new orders of Lord Stanley; but hitherto every official document from Norfolk Island shows that by removing men of this description to a place where public opinion exercises no control, and where hardship and suffering irritate the mind, fuller sway is given to their before ill-governed passions and appetites. Again to repeat those dreadful words before quoted, "when a man comes to this island he loses the heart of a man, and gets the heart of a beast." Upon criminals, such as these the hope of worldly prosperity is not likely to operate:-unaccustomed to self-control, on the first opportunity they will again seek the gratification of their passions-again plunge into crime-encounter

re-transportation as the penalty, become wild ferocious animals in the hopelessness of Norfolk Island, and having become worse instead of better in consequence of the penalties inflicted by social law, will at last finish by meriting and suffering capital punishment: a consummation, as it appears from official documents, not unfrequently sought by the wretched convict.

But how will such a criminal best be reformed? He is not in general a calculator; self-interest will therefore have little influence upon him, and the prospect of raising himself in the world would not counterbalance long habits of vice, and ungoverned passion. The removing him to another country where the standard of civilization is lower than in this, although the means of employment may be greater, would be hurtful rather than beneficial in this case: but a separation from the world, in some place where the mind of the prisoner could be educated, moral discipline enforced, religious instruction afforded, and medical superintendence bestowed, might probably be successful after a time. When a man's passions can no longer be controlled by his reason, the first step has been taken towards insanity, and if their outbreak be such as to lead him to infringe the law, he should be treated as laboring under incipient disease of this kind. It is not by this intended that there should be an acquittal on the ground of insanity, but such criminals should upon conviction be removed to prison, there to remain for not less than twelve months, and longer until her majesty be pleased to release them, which should be on a certificate of confirmed good conduct from the visiting justices, on the testimony of the chaplain and governor. Their numbers have been shown to be small, the expense therefore would not be great: the prisons as they now exist would suffice, for the crowds of offenders which at present fill them would be otherwise disposed of: and upon their release from prison after so long a discipline it is not likely that they would repeat crimes against which the feeling of society is strong, which a watchful police renders hazardous, and which it is to be hoped, their own better regulated nature would recoil from.

But this kind of punishment would be inapplicable to