to the hardest labour, his companions had not belied the sentiment originally manifested towards this man, who was now placed with themselves at the 'grande fatigue.' Each vied with the other to do the work of the priest. One took from him his pick-axe or his spade--another harnessed himself in the place of the priest to the overladen trucks. They would not even willingly allow him to wheel a barrow they not only performed their own allotted tasks, but, among them, they performed his also. The chaplain, undoubtedly, desired that the period of probation which the clerical convict was doomed to undergo before he could obtain a mitigation of punishment might be shortened; but the spirit of justice struggled within him against the impulses of compassion. Fearing that motives of confraternity might be assigned to the pity felt by an innocent priest for one that was guilty, the chaplain did not dare to petition the governors of the prison in favour of the degraded ecclesiastic. The convicts guessed at the abbe's scruple, and united in petitioning that the priest of Chartres might be relieved from the heavier labours of the harbour. Far from murmuring at a privilege that might be accorded to his old social position and to the character with which he had been invested, every one asked for a light employment in favour of the priest. He is now employed in one of the offices connected with the hydraulic constructions."

It would seem as if society hardly need despair of men whose conduct could be regulated by such generous impulses. With proper training, the convict might be rendered worthy of again holding a station in the community which had rejected him. But, in truth, the training that might be useful is not systematic; and in most cases the criminal, if he ever leaves the Bagne, leaves it punished but not improved-degraded but not repentant-humiliated before society and its more bitter enemy than ever. It is so well understood that the liberated forçat is hostile to his kind and to the laws which bind alike them and himself; and that he drops his chains only to take up arms against both: that the legislature provides accordingly, and in the contest which it knows must ensue places him at every possible disadvantage. It does not think of aiding him to form an alliance with untainted society: on the contrary, it keeps him in antagonism with the public; and, while it attempts to paralyse an arm ready to strike for evil, does nothing to help to upraise it for the commission of good. A convict leaves the Bagne a marked He is furnished with papers stating who and what he is, and these he is bound to produce to every little personage in authority whom he encounters on his homeward way. His punishment is thus made to exceed its legal term, and after the allotted expiation he is still held the suspected debtor of society. From the opened door of his prison to that of his

man.

family, perhaps closed against him, he affords a continuous spectacle to his fellow-citizens. He waits at the gate of every mairie to be expedited on his way; and, as he stands expectant of the permission to pass on, crowds surround him to gaze and mock at his fallen condition, By the time he reaches the locality assigned to him for his residence, he is in the humour of a chafed tiger. He may not dwell in the capital, nor in fortified cities, nor near the coast: he is thus cut off from the chief sources of labour; he is unable to find employment: he is an outcast whom every one knows and every one dreads and avoids. Thus, rejected by all and adopted by none, there is little room for wonder that he again falls into sin. Some few have found good and wise men who have taken an interest in them, who have kept the community uninstructed with regard to their "antecedents," and who have thus encouraged them to win the good which they were anxious to achieve; but, in too many cases, the reverse is the fact. There is no attempt made to give the old offender a chance of retrieving his lost position. It is bruited abroad that he is from the gallies, and such a report keeps him a pariah for ever. The natural consequence follows: some wilfully commit a trivial crime which is just sufficient to fling them back again into their old position: others take up a bloodier following-war against society-and do their best to keep free from the consequences of their calling: others again break their ban-as escaping from the surveillance of the authorities is called-and, plunging into the forbidden capital, either deliberately resume a life of guilt or endeavour amid its crowds and its vocations to earn a precarious but an honest living. In either of these cases the repentant offender runs the same risk, and no more, than his more guilty comrade does. The man who breaks his ban is, on recapture, subject to captivity and hard labour for the term of his natural life; and the law does not much trouble itself to enquire whether he has broken it for the sake of living honestly and has so lived, or whether it has been done out of mere recklessness and a desire to indulge in deeds of fraud, of violence, or of blood.

From first to last, the galley-slave system of France has been a system founded, conducted, and maintained, on principles unsound in themselves, and unfair alike to government and to individuals. The author of the system was a Sovereign who, to achieve it, committed a crime which deserved the first application of a penalty invented for less illustrious rogues. In this respect, how different was the conduct of the

English Sovereign who founded the short-lived system of galley-labour in England! That Sovereign was Elizabeth: her decree of foundation is extant and it is characteristic of her. It explains that she has one galley completed and three more building: the rowers necessary for the former she takes from the public prisons, judging it better that prisoners should be employed for the service of the State they have offended than that they should be its idle pensioners. In cases of future need, the almost absolute Queen voluntarily strips herself of the sole irresponsible prerogative enjoyed by an English Sovereign-that of mercy. In short, Elizabeth established a commission, the members of which were empowered, as the service of her gallies might require men, to select from among those condemned to death and to commute their punishment for the lighter, but still serious enough, penalty of labour at the oar on behalf of the service of the Queen. The galley-slaves of England as they bent to their work had, at least, something to be grateful for.

In spite, however, of either system-in spite, we may say, of any system-both England and France are equally puzzled, at this moment, as to what they shall do with their convict population. We, at all events, may learn from our neighbours, and also from this book, that to keep such a population at home is but to weaken those barriers which have been raised for the protection of society. Transportation is our safety-valve; and though the Cape and Australia are, justly enough, determined to have no more the trouble and disgrace of maintaining our expatriated convicts, the necessity is still supreme that our more guilty convicts must be expatriated.

The question is where?-and the answer is that no difficulty exists at least none ought to exist as to the locality. An Australian continent, with its extremities as wide apart as Constantinople is from Canterbury, cannot be wanting in suitable spots for convict settlements-spots where these locations might be made far enough off from any regular colonised district to be perfectly inoffensive to the most honest and fastidious of civilized communities. In South Africa, too, there is ample room and verge enough, hundreds of miles from the upright monotony of Cape Town, to found whole commonwealths, if need be, of probationary criminals. All that is wanted is energy to direct and perseverance to carry out. While there are waste lands, in distant regions, belonging to the British Crown—and there is no lack of them-we must not be told that England is perplexed as to the course to be taken with regard to her erring and guilty children.

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ART. VI.-1. A True Account of the Gunpowder Plot: Extracted from Dr. Lingard's History of England, and Dodd's Church History, including the Notes and Documents appended to the latter. By the Rev. M. A. TIERNEY, F.R.S. Dolman. 1851.

2. Wharton's Statute Law, now in Force, relating to Roman Catholics in England. London: Spettigue. 1851.

3. The Penal Laws of Queen Elizabeth and her Successors, Enacted for the Safety of the Throne and Government. With Proofs that a General Confederacy of Roman Catholic States with the Papacy, to Extirpate Protestants, rendered those Laws necessary. Ashby De La Zouch Protestant Tract Society.

OUR thoughts have been directed to the subject of the laws formerly in force against the Roman Catholics in this country by the re-publication of extracts from Lingard and Dodd (No. 1, at the head of this article) on the Gunpowder Plot; for the anonymous editor has felt very sore that the Times newspaper should have called the attention of its readers to the history of this atrocious conspiracy, and would fain persuade us that religion had nothing to do with the treasonable act :

"It (the Times) was throwing open its columns to every scribbler that sought to revile the religion, or excite hatred against the persons, of Catholics. No falsehood was too gross, no calumny too atrocious, to secure its favour, provided only that it was levelled against the unfortunate professors of the ancient faith. Their belief, their doctrines, their religious observances, were first falsified or distorted, and then held up to the ridicule or the execration of the world...... It is against one of these charges that the present publication is directed" (Preface viii).

We have never heard it said before that the Times was in the habit of throwing open its columns to every scribbler. On the contrary, we believe that journal is so very well able to take care of itself that we will not offer a single word in its vindication. The sentence which has occasioned all this wrath is the following:-"The only way in which it can be said that such persons (Catholics) suffered for religion is this-viz., that their religion led them into treason."

When a true account of the Gunpowder Plot was about to be produced, in refutation of this assertion in the Times journal, we naturally expected one of three things to be made apparent: either that the Gunpowder Plot was a fabrication, or that there was no complicity of the Romanists, or that it was not a

treasonable act. But nothing of the kind is attempted to be shown. On the contrary, it is admitted that it is strictly true in all its main features; and that it was concocted solely by Romanists, and not for private ends, but on account of religion; and that all the actors and accomplices therein were guilty of treason. How, then, can it be palliated? Only in a Jesuitical manner-only by that new code of morals which the Jesuits have introduced--one of their maxims being that a crime changes its character and becomes a virtue when the perpetration of it is conducive to the advantage of the Church; or even to remove one from whom we apprehend injury to ourselves or to those connected with us.

The truth of the common account is not denied: the connection of the plot with Romanism is not disputed; but the crime is sought to be palliated by alleging that "the Catholics" were very hardly used and had expected better treatment under the new reign; and they now thought that their only chance of restoring the golden days of Queen Mary lay in the wholesale destruction of King, Lords, and Commons, being all heretics and all equally hateful; and the substitution of the Papal supremacy on the ruins of the British Constitution.

The editor of these extracts subscribes himself "Vindicator;" but he has not diminished in the least the dark and hellish complexion of any one of the facts connected with this attempt to involve in one act of indiscriminate destruction the noblest and the best of a whole nation--all of them heads of families-none of them personal enemies of the conspirators. If it be thought a baseness to waylay and murder an unsuspecting individual in cold blood, and without personal provocation, what shall be thought of those who for months brooded over such a murder, and of all the foremost men of their native land, adding the higher guilt of treason to that of cowardly assassins?

In our opinion, the men engaged in the conspiracy were fools as well as villains and desperadoes; for, had the atrocity they contemplated taken effect, not a single Papist would have been left alive in England; the very mothers and wives of the murdered aristocracy would rise and cry for vengeance against them; and a slaughter as indiscriminate as the destruction would have run through all the land.

"Vindicator," speaking of his extracts from Dr. Lingard and Dodd, says :

"The former is a history of all the more material circumstances connected with the conspiracy: the latter supplies some additional

VOL. XXX.I