Substance of a Speech on Transportation, Delivered in the House of Lords (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1840 Excerpt: ...them out of sight, or letting their apparent magnitude, like that of the heavenly bodies, be diminished by distance from the unreflecting spectator;--must seek not to evade detection, but to provide remedies. If we look to the real magnitude of difficulties, --the actual amount of mischief, --and not, merely, to the impression produced on men's minds at home, we shall see at once that the difference between the mother-country and a distant colony is precisely the reverse of what the advocates of transportation assume it to be. It must be, of course, an evil to any community to have discharged convicts thrown loose on society; but in a Penal Colony it must be, from the nature of the case, incomparably a greater evil than in this country. Such a Colony is the worst possible place for the liberated convicts; and they are the worst possible settlers. In this country, --in almost any country except a Penal Colony, the discharged offender finds himself in a society the general current of which runs counter to such conduct as he has been suffering for: the wealthiest persons, and those filling respectable situations, are (if not honest men) at all events not convicted criminals, but persons at least pretending to unsullied character: he has therefore the strongest inducement from example, and from interest, to seek to obtain and to preserve a good character: and he has generally the opportunity of fixing himself apart from his former associates, where his former delinquency is not known; and is thereby encouraged, as the phrase is, to turn over a new leaf. And under such an improved Police-system as any one may see from the published Report of the Constabulary Force Commission to be both practicable and much needed, there is every reason to hope that not only the num...