BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCIX. NOVEMBER, 1849. Vol. LXVI.
CONTENTS.
| The Transportation Question, | 519 |
| My Peninsular Medal. By an Old Peninsular. Part I., | 539 |
| Disenchantment. By Delta, | 563 |
| Across the Atlantic, | 567 |
| Peace and War Agitators, | 581 |
| The French Novels of 1849, | 607 |
| Dies Boreales. No. V. Christopher under Canvass, | 620 |
EDINBURGH:WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
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PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCIX. NOVEMBER, 1849. Vol. LXVI.
THE TRANSPORTATION QUESTION.
The great question of SecondaryPunishments has now been settledby experience, so far as the mothercountry is concerned. It is nowknown that imprisonment has noeffect whatever, either in deterringfrom crime, or in reforming criminals.Government, albeit most unwillingto recur to the old system of transportation,has been compelled to doso by the unanimous voice of thecountry; by the difficulty of findingaccommodation for the prodigious increaseof prisoners in the jails of thekingdom; and by the still greater difficulty,in these days of cheapness anddeclining incomes, of getting the personsintrusted with the duty of providingadditional prison accommodation,to engage in the costly and tedious workof additional erections. An order incouncil has expressly, and most wisely,authorised a return to transportation,under such regulations as seem bestcalculated to reform the convicts, anddiminish the dread very generally feltin the colonies, of being flooded withan inundation of crime from the mothercountry. And the principal difficultyfelt now is, to find a colony willing toreceive the penal settlers, and incur therisks thought to be consequent on theirunrestricted admission.
It is not surprising that governmentshould have been driven from theruinous system of substituting imprisonmentfor transportation; for theresults, even during the short periodthat it was followed out, were absolutelyappalling. The actual augmentationof criminals was the least partof the evil; the increase of seriouscrimes, in consequence of the hardenedoffenders not being sent out ofthe country, but generally liberatedafter eighteen months' or two years'confinement, was the insupportableevil. The demoralisation so stronglyfelt and loudly complained of in Van