THE TRANSPORTATION QUESTION
The great question of Secondary Punishments has now been settled by experience, so far as the mother country is concerned. It is now known that imprisonment has no effect whatever, either in deterring from crime, or in reforming criminals. Government, albeit most unwilling to recur to the old system of transportation, has been compelled to do so by the unanimous voice of the country; by the difficulty of finding accommodation for the prodigious increase of prisoners in the jails of the kingdom; and by the still greater difficulty, in these days of cheapness and declining incomes, of getting the persons intrusted with the duty of providing additional prison accommodation, to engage in the costly and tedious work of additional erections. An order in council has expressly, and most wisely, authorised a return to transportation, under such regulations as seem best calculated to reform the convicts, and diminish the dread very generally felt in the colonies, of being flooded with an inundation of crime from the mother country. And the principal difficulty felt now is, to find a colony willing to receive the penal settlers, and incur the risks thought to be consequent on their unrestricted admission.
It is not surprising that government should have been driven from the ruinous system of substituting imprisonment for transportation; for the results, even during the short period that it was followed out, were absolutely appalling. The actual augmentation of criminals was the least part of the evil; the increase of serious crimes, in consequence of the hardened offenders not being sent out of the country, but generally liberated after eighteen months' or two years' confinement, was the insupportable evil. The demoralisation so strongly felt and loudly complained of in Van Diemen's Land, from the accumulation of criminals, was rapidly taking place in this country. The persons tried under the aggravation of previous convictions in Scotland, in the three last years, have stood as follows: —
– Parliamentary Reports, 1846-48.
So rapid an increase of crimes, and especially among criminals previously convicted, sufficiently demonstrates the inadequacy of imprisonment as a means either of deterring from crimes, or reforming the criminals. The same result appears in England, where the rapid increase of criminals sentenced to transportation, within the same period, demonstrates the total inefficacy of the new imprisonment system.
And of the futility of the hope that the spread of education will have any effect in checking the increase of crime, decisive proof is afforded in the same criminal returns; for from them it appears that the number of educated criminals in England is above twice, in Scotland above three times and a half that of the uneducated, – the numbers, during the last three years, being as follows: —
– Parliamentary Returns, 1846-8.
Nay, what is still more alarming, it distinctly appears, from the same returns, that the proportion of educated criminals to uneducated is steadily on the increase in Great Britain. Take the centesimal proportions given in the last returns for England – those of 1848: —
– Parliamentary Returns for England, 1848, p. 12.
The great increase here is in the criminals who have received an imperfect education, which class has increased as much as that of the totally uneducated has diminished. Unhappily, imperfect education is precisely the species of instruction which alone, in the present days of cheapened production and diminishing wages, the great body of the poor are able to give to their children.
Mr Pearson, M.P., who has paid great attention to this subject, and whose high official situation in the city of London gives him such ample means of being acquainted with the practical working of the criminal law, has given the following valuable information in a public speech, which every one acquainted with the subject must know to be thoroughly well founded: —
"In the year 1810, which is the earliest account that we possess in any of our archives, the number of commitments, of assize and sessions cases, was 5146. In the year 1848, the number of commitments for sessions and assize cases was 30,349. Population during that period had increased but 60 per cent, whilst the commitments for crime had increased 420 per cent. I should not be candid with this assembly if I did not at once say, that there are various disturbing circumstances which intervene, during that period, to prevent the apparent increase of commitments being the real estimate of the actual increase. There was the transition from war to peace. We all know, that from the days of Hollingshed, the old chronicler, it has been said that war takes to itself a portion of the loose population, who find in the casualties of war, its dangers, rewards and profligate indulgences, something like a kindred feeling to the war made upon society by the predatory classes. Hence we find that, when war ceases, a number of that class of the community are thrown back on the honest portion of society, which, during the period of war, had been drained off. Besides this, there are other co-operating causes. There is the improved police, the constabulary, rural or metropolitan, who undoubtedly detect many of those offences which were formerly committed with impunity. There is also the act of parliament for paying prosecutors and witnesses their expenses, which led to an increased number of prosecutors in proportion to the number of crimes actually detected. These circumstances have, no doubt, exercised a considerable influence over the increase in the commitments; but after having for 35 years paid the closest attention to the subject, having filled, and still filling, a high office in regard to the administration of the law in the city of London, I am bound to say, that, making full deduction from the number which every feeling of anxiety to raise the country from the imputation of increasing in its criminal character dictates – after making every deduction, I am bound with shame and humility to acknowledge, that it leaves a very large amount of increase in the actual, the positive number of commitments for crime. Sir, this is indeed a humiliating acknowledgment; but happily the statistics of this country, in other particulars, warrant us in drawing comfort from the conviction, that even this fact affords no true representation of the state of the moral character of the people – no evidence of their increasing degradation of character or conduct, in anything like the proportion or degree that those statistics would appear to show. I appeal to history – I appeal to the recollection of every man in this assembly, who, like myself, has passed the meridian of life, whether society has not advanced in morals as well as in arts, science, and literature, and everything which tends to improve the social character of the people. Let any man who has read not our country's history alone, but the tales and novels of former times – and we must frequently look to them, rather than to the records of history, for a faithful transcript of the morals of the age in which they were written, – let any man recur to the productions of Fielding and of Smollett, and say whether the habits, manners, and morals of the great masses of our population are not materially improved within the last century. Great popular delusions prevail as to the causes of the increase of commitments for criminal offences in this country, which I deem it to be my duty to endeavour to dispel. Some ascribe the increase to the want of instruction of our youth, some to the absence of religious teaching, some to the increased intemperance, and some to the increased poverty of the people. I assert that there is no foundation for the opinions that ascribe the increase of crime to these causes. If the absence of education were the cause of crime, surely crime would be found to have diminished since education has increased. For the purpose of comparing the present and past state of education, for its influence upon the criminal statistics of the nation, I will not go back to the time when the single Bible in the parish was chained to a pillar in the church; or when the barons affixed their cross to documents, from inability to write their names. I refer to dates, and times, and circumstances within our own recollection. In the year 1814 the report of the National Society says, there were only 100,000 children receiving the benefit of education. Now there are above 1,000,000 under that excellent institution, besides the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands who are receiving education under the auspices of the Lancasterian Society Schools. But some may say that the value of education is not to be estimated by numbers. Well then, I reject numbers, if you please,