§ MR. ADDERLEYrose to move an Amendment—
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, thanking Her Majesty for having issued a Commission of Inquiry into the operation of the Acts relating to Transportation and Penal Servitude, and into the manner in which sentences under the provisions of those Acts had been carried out, and praying that, pending that inquiry, the conditions on which any remission of punishment, or Licences to be at large, are given, may be strictly enforced according to the intention of those Acts.He said, that before the House proceeded to the discussion of the Army Estimates there was a prior question to consider, and that was, the personal security of the 1230 people at their own doors. Of what avail a costly regular army, if the police could not secure the inhabitants of this metropolis from being throttled and robbed in the streets? The Home Secretary had just told the House that our police were the envy of the world; but only a few months ago—during the last autumn—it was not safe for any gentleman to walk through the streets of London after dusk. It had been said that the death of a railway director in a collision was the best means of procuring reform of railway regulations; and as the garrotters last autumn fortunately selected a Member of that House as their first victim, attention had been strongly drawn to the acts of violence which were perpetrated in the streets. Upon this hint, Punch warned garrotters to be more cautious in future, and especially to avoid a Secretary of State for the Home Department. He held in his hand a petition from the Bristol Association for the amendment of Convict Discipline. The petitioners stated that they had heard with satisfaction of the appointment of a Commission on the subject of the discharge of men on tickets of leave; but that probably, while the Commission was inquiring, more than 2,000 criminals would be discharged with tickets of leave during the present year. The outcry raised on this subject last autumn was not confined to the metropolis, but was universal throughout the country —it was universal, and so loud as to compel Ministers either to action, or to an active avoidance of action; and of these two alternatives they selected the last, and referred the matter to a Commission. There was a good deal for a Commission to inquire about; but, in the mean time, he asked the House to press the Government to do that which they ought to have done at once—namely, to put the existing law in force. The outbreak last autumn was not unprecedented, but appeared to be a matter of periodical recurrence in this country; not on the part of an influx of new criminals, but generally on the part of old criminals, who having tasted what was called punishment, had found it so wholly devoid of terrors that when the opportunity recurred they recommenced their course of crime with only greater audacity. No one could tell whether the new Commission would take a long or a short time to make its Report. If it should be a long time, was it to be allowed that in the mean time 1231 thousands of criminals should be discharged in this country upon tickets of leave, the conditions of which he could show were never carried out, and which had, in fact, become nothing but a sham and delusion? If, on the other hand, the Commission should only take a short time to report, the argument was a thousand times stronger, that before the Report might lead to an alteration of the law, at all events the existing law should be properly tried, and that a needless repetition of changes should be avoided. The cause of the outbreak of crime to which he had adverted was the laxity of penal administration, rendering criminals more audacious than ever; and considering the powers with which the Ministers were invested by the law, he might say that they knew themselves to be the primary cause of that outbreak, and that they needed to do little else but stand out of the way of the existing law and let it take effect. Transportation was for a hundred years perseveringly looked on by this country as the main expedient for secondary punishment next to death, the proximo, morti paena; but during that time repeated experiments were made and successive modifications effected, until at last the sentence of transportation became wholly unintelligible, not only to the population, but to the Judges, and in its original sense practically became impossible. In 1853 an Act was passed, substituting penal servitude for sentences of less than fourteen years transportation, and licences to be at large, which were commonly called tickets of leave, were first introduced into our system as a mode of gradual discharge from punishment under check and control. A Select Committee of that House, presided over by the late lamented Mr. Baines, passed sixteen Resolutions, and in 1857 the last Act on the subject was passed, suppressing altogether the sentence of transportation, and substituling entirely for it penal servitude, accepting the recommendations of the Committee, and the system of licences under conditions and guarantees. These two Acts of 1853 and 1857 applied equally to England and Ireland; but they had been differently carried out in the two kingdoms. He would not enter into any comparison of the two administrations. He wished simply to point out the undoubted fact that the practice in England was utterly at variance with the law. Every Member of the House would admit that it was a most serious thing that 1232 the language of the criminal law should be at variance with the practice. That state of things was quite sufficient to account for any increase of outrage and crime, and it was enough to make the people tremble for the security of their lives and property. The law said that a man guilty of a crime just short of the penalty of death should be subjected to penal servitude, and under that sentence might ultimately be removed out of the country; or, if not—and that was what occurred in the great number of cases—that he should after imprisonment, in the first place, for a rigid unremittable term, varying from two years and a half to nine years, afterwards be liable to a further remissible term, which was capable of being reduced from one-sixth to one-third by the good conduct of the criminal while in prison. The conditions upon which that remission was given rested with the Secretary of State; and it would be easy to show that neither the remission nor the conditions upon which the remissions had been granted had been carried out by the Home Secretary at all in accordance with the intention of the Act, but rather in direct contravention of it. In speaking of the Home Secretary he wished it to be understood that he was not making any personal attack, but was dealing with the system of the Department in this matter. The intention of the Act might be gathered from the Resolutions of the Committee which it embodied, and it was, that when a sentence was remitted, it did not then terminate, but was only suspended during the good behaviour of the released prisoner. That suspension of punishment was to be granted on a guarantee of past good conduct, and a certain test of labour, which the prisoner might perform in prison. It also could be cancelled by the same discretion which granted it. Nothing could be clearer than the meaning of the Act, which was based upon the 5th, 12th, and 16th Resolutions of the Select Committee in 1856, which stated distinctly that the remission should be a provisional abridgment of the second part of the term of imprisonment, the first part being rigid and incapable of abridgment; and that such abridgment should involve the sentence being still held over the head of the criminal. The practice, however, during the first few years after the Act of 1853 was passed, was to turn loose all sorts of prisoners, good, bad, and indifferent, at the end of the minimum period of incarceration, on the assumption that they had all 1233 behaved well and were all fit to receive the proposed conditional liberation to its utmost extent. He could not conceive a more direct and complete contravention of the law than such a practice as that; and he was sorry to find that even down to the present day it was, to a large degree, continued. The latest Returns showed that the proportion of convicts who were discharged at the end of the minimum term was so large and regular, as to preclude the notion that the test of industry and good conduct was really applied. He did not wonder under such circumstances at the general misunderstanding of what was implied by a "licence." The word was equivocal, like the old phrase "licensed to be drunk on the premises," and was capable of a very different interpretation from that intended. The reckless manner in which licences had been granted had rendered the precautions of the legislature a farce, and the sentences of Judges absolute lies. The conditions on which licences were to be held also, had been, and were still, not fulfilled. Endorsed on the ticket of leave was a condition which distinctly stated that if the holder were found consorting with bad company, or were suspected of pursuing criminal courses, he would be liable to be sent back to prison to finish the full term of his original sentence, without any fresh conviction. In point of fact, however, the practice was quite the reverse, for down to the present moment a ticket of leave was not cancelled until the holders had committed a new infraction of the law. The Returns from Wakefield and other places illustrated that feature of the system in a very striking manner. Sir Joshua Jebb, at the Social Science Congress of 1862, had himself stated that the Returns prepared by the direction of the Home Secretary showed that out of 300 ticket-of-leave holders known to the police, at out a half were pursuing criminal courses. [Sir GEOBGE GREY: That was a mistake.] Sir Joshua Jebb further stated, that upon the Return being made, the Home Secretary directed that the holders of licences should be informed, that if they continued to pursue a criminal course, their licences would be revoked; and that after the expiration of a month another Return was ordered to be made, but not one of the ticket-of-leave holders could be found. In England, it seemed that a fresh infraction of the law was always waited for, before the cancelling of a licence. Without going into a comparison of the Irish system with 1234 the English, he would only call attention to the fact, that, besides conditions being enforced, the conditions under which licences were held in the former case were much more stringent than in the latter; and yet, in adopting that stricter course, the Irish Government had only followed out the recommendations of the Committee of 1856. Every ticket-of-leave man in Ireland was placed under the surveillance of the police, to whom he had to report himself once a month, failing which a warrant issued for his re-capture. General Cartwright, a high authority on such a subject, had declared that there was no reason why the same system should not be introduced in England. Moreover, a licence could not be obtained in Ireland until a convict had gone through not only the stages of punishment enforced in England, but an intermediate stage besides to which there was no parallel in the sister country. But he did not intend to propose the addition of a single word to the endorsement on a ticket of leave. He knew, that if he were to propose anything new, the Government would at once suggest another inquiry. He simply wanted that the House should press the Government, pending the inquiry now in progress, to put the existing law in force. There could be no doubt, as he had shown, that the recent extraordinary outbreak of crime was due, not only to the confused state of the statute-book, but also to the lax state of penal administration and the lenity of prison discipline. A Committee of Inquiry had been appointed on that last subject in another place. It really seemed as if a Royal Commission and a Committee of Inquiry were two wet blankets held up by the Government in the face of every man bold enough to propose any practical amelioration either of the law or of the practice. He would even abstain from asking the Government to carry out the existing law if he saw any intention on their part to do so. The steps recently taken by the Home Office showed, on the contrary, an intention still further to depart from the law. A Home Office circular had been sent even after the Commission was appointed to all the Judges, informing them that in future there was to be no remission of punishment to men sentenced for the second time to penal servitude. That circular, at first sight, seemed to indicate a tendency towards a more stringent carrying out of the law; but, in truth, its real 1235 tendency was precisely the reverse, much as it had pleased a great many Chairmen of Quarter Sessions. It would have no effect whatever on the length of sentences; the only difference it could make would be that in the worst cases—cases of second convictions for serious crimes—the discharge, whenever the sentence ended, would be given without any of the checks and safeguards supplied by police supervision. The second step volunteered by the Home Secretary pending the inquiry by the Commission would prove equally ineffective. Finding the country to be very anxious that something in the nature of police supervision should be exercised over persons having licences, he had directed that prisoners should be discharged only from Milbank, and in the presence of officers of police. Such a kind of police parade, if it deserved the name of supervision at all, would have all the evils of espionage without a single practical advantage. The police could not retain a knowledge of all the prisoners whom they might see discharged from Milbank; but every discharged prisoner would fancy that the police were always dogging him, and the effect upon him could not fail to be unfortunate. Another circular had been issued from the Home Office, calling upon the mayors of boroughs and Chief Superintendents of Police, to make a return of all convicts discharged on tickets of leave residing within their respective districts. It was quite impossible that such a return could be made. Mayors and police Superintendents did not possess the requisite knowledge, nor could they obtain the desired information even from the prison authorities. It was much to he regretted, that in the Cabinet itself, no clear understanding seemed to exist as to what new regulations, if any, were being made. Not many days ago Lord Derby asked in another place, whether there were any new regulations issued. Earl Granville replied in the affirmative. On the same evening the Home Secretary stated in that House that there were no new regulations issued. The contradiction arose, he believed, from several operations in addition to those already mentioned having been suggested by the Home Secretary, but having been deferred. Those alterations extended to impoverishment of the dietary and other internal arrangements of prisons. He had shown that the law and the practice were at variance in England, and that the present state of things was well calculated to produce alarm; that a 1236 Commission might find much to inquire into, but that the Government were playing fresh tricks all the while they were inquiring, and he thought he was making a moderate request, when he asked the House to agree to address the Crown for a stoppage of further experiments, and an enforcement of the existing law at least till the Royal Commission reported.
§
Amendment proposed,
To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words" an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, thanking Her Majesty for having issued a Commission of Inquiry into the operation of the Acts relating to Transportation and Penal Servitude, and into the manner in which sentences under the provisions of those Acts have been carried out; and praying that, pending that inquiry, the conditions on which any remission of punishment, or Licences to be at large, are given, may be strictly enforced according to the intentions of those Acts,
— instead thereof.
§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to he left out stand part of the Question."
§ SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, he thought it would be extremely inconvenient that the House should agree to the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman proposed that they should tendor their thanks to Her Majesty for appointing a Commission of Inquiry; and then to take one important branch of the subject referred to that Commission out of its hands, without waiting till it had had fair time to finish its labours. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken of robberies with violence having been very frequent in the metropolis during the last six months, and had stated that the manner in which the law was administered against their perpetrators gave them such comparative impunity that no man's life or property would be safe. He would not now dispute with the right hon. Gentleman as to the cause of these crimes, though men quite as competent to judge did not agree with him in attributing them to the lax administration of the law. He would simply say, in justice to the police of the metropolis, that the measures they had taken, which it would not he very prudent to explain, aided by the efficient administration of the law by the Judges, had led to the apprehension and conviction of the offenders, and had put a stop to these outrages. The House would shortly be put in possession of the Report of the Royal Commis- 1237 sion, which he believed would tend to correct many of the misconceptions of the right hon. Gentleman. As the Commissioners were still sitting, he would not attempt to follow the right hon. Gentleman through all the points he had raised. Had it not been so, he should have thought it his duty to explain much more fully than he now proposed, the way in which the law was administered. For his own conduct in administering the law he wished to shrink from no responsibility; but as the present system had been administered under five successive Secretaries of State, he thought the right hon. Gentleman might be more diffident in asking the House to endorse his opinions. The right hon. Gentleman was under a total misapprehension in regard to the Act of 1857. It was the Act of 1853 which substituted for shorter sentences than fourteen years sentences of penal servitude, leaving it in the option of the Judge to pass a sentence of transportation or of penal servitude; and that statute authorized the Crown, in respect to either of those sentences, for the first time to grant licences to be at large to persons convicted of offences so punishable, those licences to be revocable on such conditions as the Crown might prescribe. The Act of 1857 did not refer at all to those licences. What it provided, following out the recommendation of the Committee of 1856, was that shorter sentences than seven years, formerly the minimum term of transportation, might be passed, and that sentences of penal servitude might be passed of not less than three years; and the result had been that the great majority of sentences of penal servitude since 1857 had been for three, four, or five years. But he was at a loss to find in these statutes any enactments that convicts released either absolutely or on ticket of leave should be placed under police surveillance. The conditions on which the licences were to be revoked were left entirely to the discretion of the Ministers of the Crown. The right hon. Genleman was quite mistaken in supposing that it was the practice immediately after 1857 to give unconditional remissions of punishments, and that therefore the public had been injured. The endorsement on the licence stated that the holder, though not actually convicted of another crime, was liable to be sent back to prison for the whole of the unexpired portion of his sentence if he associated with thieves or led a disorderly life. The question of the en- 1238 forcement of these conditions was one which was under the consideration of the Commission. The whole difficulty of the case lay in this:—That there were no means of instituting a judicial inquiry into the conduct of such a man, unless he were positively charged with a specific crime. The conviction for any offence, however small, of a man holding a ticket of leave was taken as indisputable proof that the condition on which he received his licence had been violated, and the licence was accordingly revoked. No doubt, there were some instances in which, notwithstanding conviction for some further offence, the licence had not been revoked; but those were chiefly cases in which the punishment for the second offence exceeded the unexpired portion of the previous sentence. Where, too, the new offence was not of a sufficiently grave character to indicate a return to the criminal class—as, for example, hawking without a licence, bastardy cases, find the like—the licence was not revoked; but in all other instances—even where the second charge was drunkenness and assault —it was taken away, and the holder sent back to prison. There had been many instances in which, without the actual commission of any new offence, but yet where there was enough evidence to show that the ticket-of-leave holder was associating with thieves or relapsing into criminal courses, the licence had been withdrawn. But the difficulty was, as he had said, in obtaining clear proof on that point without a judicial inquiry. He thought the House would not like to pledge itself to an opinion that licences should be revoked without proof of any kind, but on the mere suspicion of some individual policeman that the conditions of the licence had been broken. In the pamphlet referred to by the right hon. Gentleman it was stated that a large number of these licence-holders were at large in Sheffield. Being greatly surprised at the statement, in September last he wrote for information on that point, and received from the Sheffield police a very long list of names. He afterwards communicated with the Mayor, and he learnt that most of these names were names of persons who, having expiated their offences, were then at large, and belonging, no doubt, a considerable portion of them, to the criminal class. But under no construction of the law could these persons be placed under the surveillance of the police; they were as free as any other class of 1239 men in the kingdom until they again rendered themselves amenable to punishment. Seven of the entire list were, however, believed by the local police to be relapsing into criminal courses. On an investigation it was found that of these seven only one was the holder of a ticket of leave; but it took six weeks to satisfy the Mayor of Sheffield, who undertook the investigation, that the circumstances were such that the licence should be revoked. That would be the real difficulty of the case; and if the views of the right hon. Gentleman were allowed to prevail—if the holders of tickets of leave were to have them revoked without any judicial inquiry —it would be necessary to establish for them what, indeed, existed in penal colonies, a code applicable only to those persons, rendering them subject to a summary jurisdiction to which no other class was amenable.
Before sitting down he wished to notice two or three statements made by the right hon. Gentleman. One of them related to an error which appeared in a statement of figures appended to the letter of the West Riding magistrates in reply to Sir Joshua Jebb. Now, he had written to those magistrates on the subject, and it turned out that the numbers, instead of 200, should have been only 29, and they promised to correct the inaccuracy if the pamphlet reached a second edition. Then again, the right hon. Gentleman was mistaken in supposing that there had been any interference in regard to holders of tickets of leave sentenced a second time. In point of fact, some time before the Commission was issued, in consequence of the number of robberies attended with violence supposed to be committed by licence-holders, although subsequent investigation proved that they had not been committed by them at all to the extent alleged, it was thought desirable, to meet these very cases, that instructions should be given that the published rules with regard to the remission of sentences should not be acted on in the case of any prisoner so circumstanced; on the ground, that if a second crime were committed, the person committing it proved by that fact that he belonged to that class of offenders to whom no indulgence should be shown. With respect to the circular to mayors and borough authorities, he had never heard of it till the extracts were read from it at the table. He supposed it must have been issued by the Commission—certainly he 1240 had never seen it. An erroneous impression was entertained in regard to the extent to which street robberies accompanied by violence had been committed by persons previously convicted. Of a list of those violent street robberies it turned out that only two were committed by men who were licence-holders, and four by parties who had been sentenced to transportation or penal servitude. With regard to penal servitude, the right hon. Gentleman complained that very different language was held by different Ministers on the subject of the dietary of prisoners. Now, the Commission had only reference to those prisoners who passed through convict prisons under the conduct of the Government; while the Committee of the House of Lords had reference to the management of borough and county gaols, which were regulated quite differently from convict prisons. The administration of punishment in county and borough gaols, which were chiefly under the justices, formed a very useful subject of inquiry; but the right hon. Gentleman proposed for inquiry what would undoubtedly come before the Commission; and if the Address were adopted, the subject would be withdrawn from their attention. With respect to letters of licence, it was a condition that a ticket of leave or licence should be available only within the limits of the United Kingdom; and therefore, knowing that the moment a convict left the country he was illegally at large, the Government had not encouraged emigration. But they had shut their eyes to it, knowing how desirable it was that discharged men should seek the means of obtaining an honest living; and they had paid the gratuities, which would otherwise have been paid to the discharged prisoners themselves, to the Prisoners' Aid Society, which had undertaken to promote emigration among this class. The system of directly encouraging emigration among this class was adopted in Ireland, and no doubt it had its advantages arising from the peculiar circumstances of that country; and a gentleman was salaried to visit and ad-vise discharged prisoners. He wished to draw no invidious comparison between the two countries; but if the Address of the right hon. Gentleman were adopted, the effect would be that many would be found at large who had no legal right to emigrate. He hoped, when the Commission reported, the right hon. Gentleman would carefully read the evidence, and thereby 1241 correct his knowledge of facts. At present it would certainly be premature to adopt his Address.
§ MR. HENRY SEYMOURsaid, he thought the House was deeply indebted to the right hon. Member who had moved the Address, for bringing forward the subject; and regretted that the Secretary of State had not given a more satisfactory answer. He confessed that he was unable to sec where the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adderley) had fallen into inaccuracy. The twelfth recommendation of the Commissioners' Report was conditional only. In the fifteenth and sixteenth recommendations they suggested that the convicts should be watched by the police. Now, the facts were, that great numbers of convicts were being discharged from the prisons, and tickets of leave were given to prisoners set at large, who might be watched by the police, without any Act of Parliament being passed for that purpose; and it was for that reason that the right hon. Gentleman opposite had brought this Motion before the House. He was under the impression that the system in Ireland, and in England, was equally under the control of the Home Office, and that the right hon. Baronet was at the head of either system. Yet in the two countries we had two systems in operation founded on two different principles. he could not understand the objections of the right hon. Gentleman to giving them that security for persons and property, when convicts were sent out on a ticket of leave, which was recommended by the Committee of that House, by a number of Magistrates, by General Cartwright, Inspector General of Constabulary, and by many of the Chief Constables of different Counties, and which really, as far as he could find out, had no opponents in this country except the right hon. Baronet (Sir George Grey) and Sir Joshua Jebb. It all depended upon the fiat of the right hon. Gentleman, whether convicts dismissed to-morrow on tickets of leave should be placed under the surveillance of the police. The system of the right hon. Gentleman had proved an utter failure; whereas the surveillance that was required would not act in any kind of way to prevent a man from obtaining employment. He certainly could not understand why seven years should have been allowed to elapse with two different; systems in operation, without a comparison being made to ascertain which excelled, so that we might have one uniform plan. If 1242 the right hon. Baronet had taken this course, there would have been no need of a Commission. What had the Commission to discover beyond what was found by the Committees in 1856? If those recommendations had been carried out, the whole system of secondary punishments would have been gone into; but the right hon. Baronet, in not having dealt with the whole convict body, had not got his case ready for a Commission to deal with. Looking at the results of the Committee of 1856, he could not understand what the present Commission were to find out additional, and he was disappointed that the right hon. Gentleman (Sir George Grey) had not acceded to the Address of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. There was £11,000,000 worth of property consumed annually by crime, either in its repression or in depredations; and of this sum £4,000,000 were spent in its repression. There were 21,000 policemen, or one to every six of the criminal class, which was not the proper proportion, or one that ought to exist in any well-ordered state. This was a subject which must interest every Member of the House, and he trusted, that notwithstanding the opposition which had been given, the right hon. Gentleman would re-consider the question, and be prepared to examine and see whether he could not place the convicts, which are henceforward liberated, under some kind of surveillance that would enable the police to know what had become of him.
MR. HENLEYsaid, it was not his intention to follow the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. H. Seymour) in the wild and discursive field which he had travelled over. He thanked God, being a member of the Commission, that they had not to go into the whole subject of secondary punishments. It was a large field; and he was quite sure, that if they were to undertake that matter, it would be made a very short inquiry indeed. Nor would he go into the question—also not a small one—whether any and what means ought to be taken to obtain a more perfect surveillance of the police over the criminal population. That, also, was a rather large inquiry. Many people thought that the police had got power enough; and, at all events, it was a very large question. He would confine himself strictly to the Motion of his right hon. Friend (Mr. Adderley). He would abstain from going into the comparative merits of the Irish and 1243 English systems, which was a question his right hon. Friend (Mr. Adderley) himself had not raised; indeed, so far as he could upon such a subject, he had carefully avoided it. He could only say this, that he knew of nothing that would lead him to the same conclusion as the hon. Member opposite had come to. When the facts of the Irish system were looked into, he doubted very much whether any one would be able to come to the conclusion which the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Seymour) seemed to regard as so certain. Of this he was quite sure, that if all the recommendations of the Committee were to be carried out, there would be considerable difficulty in following the Irish system. He believed, that if a man received a licence of leave in Ireland, he could walk into England and Scotland without the least check; and therefore if they were to be hindered, and kept under strict surveillance, the result would be that some of the criminals who figured in the English prisons we might not have the privilege of seeing so frequently as we do now. His right hon. Friend (Mr. Adderley) had gone at considerable length into the recommendations of the Committee of 1856, and he stated that in 1857 there was a wholesale abuse of the system; and that for two or three years after the practice was even more lavishly resorted to. Well, what was the result? Why, from 1857 to 1860 there was the most remarkable diminution in crime ever known in this country; so that during the time that, according to him, the greatest abuse of this system was going on, the gaols were almost getting empty. Anybody who knew anything of the condition of our prisons in 1860 would know that we never had so little crime. Still, if there were any force in the reasoning of his right hon. Friend, there must have been a great benefit and advantage to us, so far as security of life and property was concerned, from this relaxation of a system whereby criminals were let out upon us. In 1860 a more stringent, and, according to the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adderley), a sounder line was adopted; and from that time criminals began to increase, and gradually crept up; and though we had not yet got so bad as we were in 1857, yet he was afraid, that when the Returns for 1862 were laid before the House, it would be found that we were getting back to the state of things that existed at that time. He believed that this increase and decrease of crime 1244 did not rest upon the treatment of the criminal population. He believed that they were to be accounted for by deeper causes; and that, from time to time, we should have ebbs and flows in crime; and if we set to work to alter our laws upon every occasion—-upon every ebb and flow of crime—we should be led into a greater mass of confusion than we were in at the present. His right hon. Friend alluded to the Return from the different police authorities of the country ordered by the House for that Commission. It was not ordered, so far as he knew, for any other purpose. Of course the information obtained that way was good, so far as it went; it was valuable as showing two things—how far the police were vigilant, and what number of criminals they knew of and what they were doing; and if the police, who were in the proportion of 1 to 1,000 of the population of the country, and of 1 to 500 in the metropolis, were worth their salt, they should be able to exercise considerable oversight over the criminal population. For himself, he could not see what good such a Resolution as this, if carried out, would do; and he was one of those who thought the right hon. the Secretary of State had not exercised an unsound discretion when he required something like proof that a man was going wrong after he was let out. He quite agreed with him, that the simple assertion that a person was doing wrong ought not to be received, except upon a full inquiry. He was one of those who thought that no man ought to be condemned unheard; and certainly to deprive a man of the remission of sentence of one year or six months was a thing that ought not to be done without his having the power of answering what was alleged against him. He would vote against this Motion if it went to a division; but he hoped his right hon. Friend would not divide the House upon it, but be content with the expression of opinion that had taken place.
§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEsaid, he thought that his right hon. Friend (Mr. Adderley) might congratulate himself upon some of the results he had attained by bringing the subject before the House; and he must say, that looking to the state of public opinion upon this subject, it would hardly have been satisfactory if this House had allowed the Session to pass without some discussion on be important a question. Some points elicited in the reply of the right hon. Gentleman the 1245 Secretary of State were not unsatisfactory, and they would tend to dissipate some erroneous impressions which existed in the minds of the people on this question. But with reference to what had just been stated as to the possible utility of such a Motion as this, there was one point of view in which they should look at it. A Commission is now sitting to inquire into the whole subject; that Commission would shortly make its Report, to which he should expect some weight would he attached, while upon its recommendations possibly some legislation might be founded. They had had in former years inquiries by Committees of this and the other House of Parliament, and upon the recommendations of those Committees Acts of Parliament had been passed and steps had been taken with the intention of carrying out the suggestions of those Committees. The question was whether the recommendations of those Committees had been actually carried into effect— because this fact had a certain bearing upon the Report which they expected from the Commission. The Act which was passed following the Report of the Committee some years ago was expected to prove satisfactory, because it was supposed to carry out the recommendations of that Committee. What they wanted to know was whether these recommendations had really been acted upon or not, because they wanted also to know whether the recommendations which they expected from the Commission would be carried out or avoided in practice by the Legislature; and whether, pending this inquiry, Government would give directions to carry out the Act as was intended by the Parliament which passed it? Attention had been called to one particular point — namely, the conditions endorsed on the ticket of leave. His right hon. Friend did not mean to say that the law was violated by the executive Government, because the Act gave the Secretary of State the power of issuing these tickets of leave under such conditions as he thought fit. It was, however, clearly the intention of the Committee of 1856, and of the Government which endorsed their recommendations, that when the conditions were so endorsed, the tickets of leave given should be a reality and not a sham—not that they should be tickets allowing a person to act unconditionally free, and that the person should be subject to severer punishment in case he committed a second 1246 offence—and it was undoubtedly the intention of that Committee that these tickets should he some kind of security for the good conduct of the prisoners allowed to go at large. The general impression of the public was that the ticket of leave was a sham, and the ticket-of-leave men themselves seemed to be of the same opinion. They thought all they had to do was to keep themselves out of the clutch of the law a second time. The right hon. Gentleman had told them there were great difficulties in revoking the ticket of leave, unless the law were a second time violated by the holder; and yet, he said, he had sometimes revoked it though no new crime had been committed. It was evident there was a great deal of confusion in connection with the whole subject. His right hon. Friend had done good service in bringing the question forward, and in doing so he had given expression to the feelings of the public. He hoped the Commission would recommend some intelligible course of action which the Legislature might adopt, and that the Government would give an assurance that whatever might be agreed upon would be carried into effect.
§ MR. HADFIELDsaid, he was of opinion that the Report of the Commission would show that the ticket-of-leave system had been completely successful. Nearly 6,000 persons had been discharged under it, and at least 90 per cent of them had not relapsed into crime. In Ireland, out of 724 tickets of leave, only 71 persons (51 men and 20 women, or less than 10 per cent) had again offended. Of these 51 men 21 did not offend until the full term of their imprisonment had expired, and of the 20 women three only had offended before that time. If the number of recommittals as shown by the Returns were reduced for offences of a trifling character—for felonies not accompanied with violence — it would be found very small indeed. But it was a subject of great regret that no provision should be made for persons who, having lost their character, were let loose upon society without a friend in the world. The majority of these persons were penniless, powerless, and friendless, and, in fact, the greatest objects of compassion a Christian mind could look for.
§ MR. NEWDEGATEtrusted that his right hon. Friend (Mr. Adderley) would withdraw the Motion before the House. He was bound to ask his right hon. Friend to do this, because his right hon. Friend 1247 had made a proposal in the quarter sessions for Warwickshire, at which they were both present, similar to that before the House, and he (Mr. Newdegate) had presented a petition to the House signed by the magistrates there present, which was adopted in opposition to the proposal then made. The feeling amongst the magistrates was one of thankfulness to the Government for having issued the Commission, and their petition was that the existing law with respect to secondary punishments might be changed. That was the general feeling of the country and of the magistrates; it would therefore be impossible that their representatives could concur in condemning the Government for not carrying out satisfactorily a law which they believed to be imperfect. He believed that the opinion of the great majority of the people and of the intelligent classes was that the abandonment of transportation had been a very great misfortune to this country, and a misfortune to those unhappy persons who had fallen into crime. The fact that such persons were unable to find employment here was a proof of the high tone of the morality of the country. It had been admitted over and over again by Sir William Denison, by the Home Secretary, and by Earl Grey, that under the system of transportation and of assignment in the colonies, persons who had been convicted of crime were enabled to recover themselves and become honest members of society. Such a system, therefore, was merciful to the unhappy person who had fallen into crime; and he trusted that nothing that had passed in that debate would be held to prejudice the consideration of that question by the Commissioners. The people of this county were earnest in their desire that the Commissioners should investigate the subject, with a view of ascertaining whether some new sphere might not be discovered to which our criminals might be transported, where they could have a chance of recovering their position, for this they could not do in this country unless its tone of morality had been degraded. A comparison had been instituted between the success of the present system of secondary punishments in this country and in Ireland. The fact was, that England had not yet a system of police like that in Ireland, and he spoke confidently when he said that the people of this country did not wish or need to have a like system; if any system of secondary punishments were introduced here that would require such 1248 a change in the character of our police force, the people of this country would consider that system very dearly purchased.
§ MR. BENTINCKconcurred with his right hon. Friend (Mr. Adderley) in proposing that immediate steps should be taken to make the law with reference to this question more stringent. Nothing had been said as to when it was likely that the Report of the Commission would appear; and it seemed to him that one material point had been altogether over-looked in this discussion—namely, whether, when they had the Report, it was likely that they would be able to act upon it. He thought that the speech and the Motion of his right hon. Friend were contradictory of each other, because in one he asked the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir G. Grey) to deal in a summary way with this question, and in the other he sanctioned delay. He objected to the Motion of his right hon. Friend because it countenanced delay. It appeared to him that the great error that had been committed in this matter was in the course taken by the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir G. Grey) in referring this matter to a Commission. The right hon. Gentleman had not touched on that subject. He was at a loss to understand what ground the right hon. Gentleman, in the position he occupied, had for referring this subject to a Commission. He was at a loss to understand how any Commission, however ably it might be composed, could become possessed of better or more reliable information than that which was in the possession of the right hon. Gentleman. It was simply shifting responsibility. What was the use of an executive Government at all if they were not prepared to deal with questions like this? It seemed to him that this was one of those cases in which the right hon. Gentleman ought to have acted on his own responsibility. It had been said that there had not been lately such a marked increase in crime as there had been previous to 1857. That might be the case with regard to general crime; but there had been a large increase lately in a particular description of crime perpetrated by a particular class of men—men who had been liberated under the existing system; and it was for that very reason that it was incumbent on the right hon. Baronet himself to deal with the question. He (Mr. Bentinck) entirely concurred with the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. Newdegate) that they would never 1249 arrive at a good result until they again resorted to the system of transportation. Nothing else would save society from a repetition of those practices which had recently created such a strong feeling in the public mind.
§ MR. CAVEsaid, the real reason why the present system worked well in Ireland was because the convicts were obliged themselves to report to the police what their mode of living was. It was quite a mistake to suppose that these men could only be employed in a degraded state of society. The reason they were employed in Ireland was that in reality a ticket of leave there was a certificate of good character, A ticket of leave in this country, on the contrary, was a mere certificate that the person had been convicted of crime. The Act of 1853 gave the Home Secretary the widest power to endorse on tickets of leave whatever conditions were thought desirable; and if the conditions were less strict in this country than in Ireland, the Home Secretary had authority in his own hands to remove the discrepancy. The proper object of a ticket of leave was to prevent an offender, by means of the supervision to which he should be subjected, from committing a second offence; but, instead of that course being pursued in this country, the ticket-of-leave man was now told that after he committed a second offence his ticket of leave would be revoked. That was not the right course of proceeding, for it was calculated to set every man against the criminal who obtained a release, to make every one his enemy, and also to exasperate the criminal against society, because it was rendered impossible for him to obtain a livelihood in an honest manner. The Home Secretary had spoken as if his right hon. Friend (Mr. Adderley) had started at a ghost which no one saw but himself. Why, during the whole winter the country had been sounding the alarm. If this question had been raised for discussion a few months ago, there would not have been such empty benches as were to be seen in the House on the present occasion. Every one then felt his life and property unsafe on account of the prevailing outrages. But the tide had now rather turned, in consequence of the extraordinary exertions of the police in driving these offenders into the provinces, and there was, unfortunately, at present a certain stagnation. This was a most unfortunate circumstance, when it was wished that the law should be enforced. Precisely the 1250 same thing occurred in 1856. A series of outrages between 1853 and 1856 roused the nation, and a call was raised for some change in the law, but the question was shelved by being referred to a Committee. There was, as the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire had said, an ebb and flow in crime, caused by various circumstances. It was during the flow that the laws were tested; and because the pressure of the flood of crime ceased for a time to bear against the gates, which had proved inadequate to restrain it when that pressure was at its height, it by no means followed that the law was in a satisfactory state. Returns, such as that which had been quoted, showing the proportion of reformed ticket-of-leave men, were perfectly illusory, for it was admitted that little was known of what became of the holders, he remembered what Serjeant Adams had once told him of the advice he gave to the holder of a ticket of leave—namely, to throw it over the first bridge, in order that he might not be known in that capacity, he was by no means one of those who advocated a return to the severity of penal discipline, but he was decidedly opposed to the continuance of a system which suggested to the struggling, honest man whether it might not be better after all to become a criminal.
§ COLONEL SYKESsaid, he had always considered it a gross inhumanity to release felons without affording them some means of obtaining a honest livelihood. Destitute, of the means of self-support, they must either steal or starve. Transportation was unquestionably a means of ridding the country of this class of the population; and if colonies objected to receive transported criminals, there were plenty of waste lands in which communities might be founded, as that in New South Wales had originally-been. That colony was founded by felons, and yet it had become a highly respectable community. In nine cases out of ten want of employment was at the root of the evil, and no legislative act had tended to diminish juvenile vagrancy like the establishment of the Shoe-black Brigades, the boys in which not alone earned sufficient for their on support, but were actually putting money into the savings banks.
§ MR. POLLARD-URQUHARTsaid, as allusion had been made to the working of the convict system in Ireland, he wished to remind the House that the position of the two countries was very different. There were two causes of its failure in England — 1251 the existence of large and crowded cities, and the existence of a professional criminal class, neither of which were to be found in Ireland. Whenever there appeared in Ireland men desirous of following crime as a profession, they generally came over to England, from a belief that there was a larger field open to them there for the exercise of their abilities. Under the ticket-of-leave system there should be established a proper surveillance, by which the conduct of the holders could be observed and reported upon. He, however, believed that our criminal system would never work properly without transportation. There were plenty of the possessions of the Crown that were suited for the purpose, and he deprecated that morbid sensibility which would hesitate to send criminals to places because they were too but or too cold. He objected to the principle of considering the health of the criminal more than the health of the soldier or the sailor.
§ MR. ADDERLEYsaid, he would withdraw his Amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.