§ MR. BUTLERasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, When it will be convenient to present to the House the Return ordered by the House on the 3rd of July, 1862, relative to Ticket-of-Leave Prisoners; and whether he will object to lay upon the table a list of the cases in which the conditions of the Ticket of Leave had been dispensed with, and the grounds for dispensing with such conditions; also, whether the convict Redpath is at large under the licence of a Ticket of Leave; if, so, under what circumstances, and whether he can, with the permission of the colonial authorities, return to this country?
§ SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, the Return referred to by the hon. Gentleman was either on the table at that moment or would be in the course of the evening. As to the second part of the Question, he presumed the hon. Gentleman referred to the cases of ticket of leave holders a second time convicted, whose tickets had not been revoked. These persons were comprised in two classes—one in which the revocation had not been made because the sentence of imprisonment on the ticket of leave holder for his second conviction would not expire until so near the expiration of his original sentence that it was not thought worth while to remove him from the district or county prison to Milbank or Portland, or some other convict prison from which 264 he must be again almost immediately released. The second class comprised very few, whose second offences were of so trifling a character that their tickets had not been revoked. With regard to the convict Redpath, his was not a sentence of penal servitude. He was sentenced in 1857 to transportation for life, and was sent to Western Australia in August, 1858. He (Sir George Grey) believed that the attention of the then Home Secretary was not drawn to the fact that Redpath was among those embarked. It recently came to his (Sir George Grey's) knowledge that Redpath had received a ticket of leave under the colonial regulations. That of course he could not have received as yet if he had been under sentence of penal servitude in this country. As Redpath was sentenced to transportation for life, he could not return to this country unless he received a free pardon from the Crown, which it was very unlikely would be the case.