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which is confirmed by circumstances,) he returned to this country, and when again recovered, received pardon. He then came back to his former haunts, when in about a month he committed another felony, for which he was sentenced to penal servitude, and I grieve to add, died of cholera a fortnight since in Millbank prison. It is with reluctance, but constrained by a sense of duty, that I refer to these melancholy instances of mistaken clemency. I have always deprecated uncertainty in the execution of our criminal laws, as both cruel towards offenders, and calamitous to the community. As respects the former, if hope be allowed that a penalty may be mitigated by professions of penitence, or propriety of conduct, hypocrisy is the certain consequence; a man then behaves well, but becomes no better; and when influenced by mere selfishness, he has restrained vicious propensities long enough to obtain his purpose, he is again allured to violate the law by the expectation that, if detected, he need but repeat his deceitful practices to procure the same result. On the contrary, if, instead of thus fostering crime, and however undesignedly, yet too surely, promoting the temporal and eternal ruin of the wretched victims of such miscalled mercy, it be determined and well-understood that a certain I say not a severepunishment, unchangeable through any conduct of the criminal, will be inflicted, the convict then submits with patience to that punishment; he attends to instruction, and his character improves ; having no temptation to dissemble, he is sincere in his endeavours to amend, and in the peace of mind which accompanies this very process of improvement, he finds a recompence. Such a inan, when liberated, has learned the wisdom of leading an honest life; higher and holier motives influence his conduct, and he has sought for, and secured that power which alone can prevent a relapse. You will kindly pardon this apparent digression, but a desire to be faithful, and a deep feeling of compassion towards those, for whose welfare, as God's minister, I am appointed to watch, compel me, humbly, but earnestly, to protest against that uncertainty in the execution of the law, which proves both preventive of correction and an incentive to crime."

Whatever may be the result; it is, however, a consolation to reflect that one benefit must, at all events, accrue from the enactment we have been just considering: the benefit we refer to, is so ably put forward in the following extract from the Times, t that we need offer no apology to our readers for inserting it

"Thus much, however, is certain, that by removing the punishment of our crime from distant and unknown countries, and placing it in the very centre of our social system, we shall bring home to the minds of the people of this country that which they have never had before a thorough sense of the responsibility of the community for

See "Reading Mercury, Oxford Gazette, Newbury Herald, and Berks County Paper," Saturday, October 21, 1854.

† See "Times," October 20th, 1853.

the crime it brings up, and for the necessity of dealing, not only with the disease itself when fully developed, but with what have been well called its premonitory symptoms. The more difficult, the more distressing, the more humiliating we find it to punish the full-grown criminal, the more sensible we are of the contamination which he carries with him, and the sacrifice at which any attempt at his refor mation must be carried out, the more anxious shall we be to diminish the numbers of this formidable and unmanageable class, by counteracting the first incentives to vice, and breaking up those seminaries and nurseries where it is inculcated and instilled. The effect of bringing secondary punishments nearer home will be, to make that attention to the subject earnest and incessant, which now is languid and intermitting. It is the intention of Providence that every community should bear the weight of the crime that it produces, and, if we have hitherto contrived to evade that intention, we have paid the penalty of it in another shape, by the encouragement of a spirit of remissness which has made us the prey of successive generations of criminals, whom we have brought up to plunder us, that we in our turn may, at a vast expense and with much trouble, send them to perpetrate the same outrages on our remote dependencies. We are now to bear our own burden, and the result will be, if we mistake not, a very serious determination on the part of the community to make that burden as light as possible."

We have now brought our task to a conclusion:

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We have endeavoured to communicate to our readers information on a very important social question, in an attractive form, and have therefore avoided unnecessary details. The subject is one of great extent, embracing interests of vast importance, and affording a sphere for unlimited benevolence and philanthropy. We are persuaded also, that it is upon public opinion we must chiefly rely for its speedy and satisfactory solution. Government can do much to hasten such a result, but it requires to be supported as well as urged, and the reflection that we shall have contributed, in ever so small a degree, to the furtherance of so desirable an object, will afford us no little satisfaction.

We will now take leave of the subject, expressing our hope-indeed we may say our confidence, that at no distant period, Prison Discipline and the management of our Convict Establishments will be placed upon a basis "worthy of the greatness, the wisdom and the benevolence of England"—a result, in our minds, as deserving of the admiration of posterity, as the most glorious victory or the noblest feat of arins.

ART. IV. -REMOVAL OF IRISH POOR.

Minutes of Evidence taken before Select Committee appointed to inquire into the Operation of the Act 8 & 9 Vict. c. 117, relating to the Removal from England of Chargeable Poor Persons Born in Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scilly, Jersey, or Guernsey; and also into the Operation of the Act 8 & 9 Vict. c. 83, relating to the Removal from Scotland of Chargeable Poor Persons Born in England, Ireland, or the Isle of Man. 1854.

The Irish reader who has witnessed the arrival of an English or Scotch steamer at any of the seaports on the eastern shore of this island, and has had the curiosity to wait until the entire of her living freight had been poured out on the quay or wharf, must have beheld a spectacle painful to his feelings as a man, and galling to his pride as an Irishman. At all times, the arrival of a large steamer from an English or Scotch port at our quays, is certain to present a scene of much bustle, and no small excitement. Long ere her paddles cease to revolve, loving eyes are strained to catch the first glimpse of some dear object; and as the gangway links the vessel to the land, how eager is the rush of the wife to the arms of a husband, of the child to the embrace of a parent! At such a moment friend greets friend with unusual ardour, and even distant acquaintances lose much of their conventional reserve. Nor is the stranger who visits Ireland for the first time, whether from motives of profit or a love of the picturesque, without a welcome: vigilant representatives of rival hotels contend for his preference, and eagerly endeavour to appropriate his luggage and himself.

But there is one class whom no anxious eyes seek out, to whom no ready hand is extended, to whose arms no fond relative rushes, to whom all are alike indifferent. They modestly wait back till the other passengers have left the ship, when they slowly pass over the gangway, weather-beaten and dejected. In number, they may be twenty, fifty, or even one hundred. Their eyes are dull and bleared, their steps faltering, their whole appearance indicative of misery and despair. Perhaps the last night's storm found them on the open sea, crouching beneath a scanty bit of tarpawlin, or clustering under the windward bulwarks, exposed to the keen

blast, and drenched by the spray-happy if no mad wave leaped over the bows, and swept the deck in its fury. These are Irish-born poor, whom prosperous countries and rich communities have cast out from their bosom; these are the victims of a law not in accordance with that charity which the Redeemer preached on earth, and which finds an instinctive response in the heart of every human being unhardened by the world's selfishness. These are the" removed poor," who have been got rid of by English, Welsh, and Scotch parishes, more or less according to the forms and observances prescribed by certain statutes made and provided with that benevolent

purpose.

Theirs is indeed unmitigated misery. Hope, that lights up the darkest scene to others, and casts its bright gleam over the ocean track of the adventurous emigrant, has for them no existence. The emigrant meets danger with a bold heart, and endures privation with a cheerful spirit. He is on his way to join members of his family who have pioneered the rude path to modest independence, or to prepare the way, with his own hard toil, for them to follow; and in the sanguine expectation of a newer and better fortune, he hears the storm rage without apprehension, and bears with patience the manifold discomforts of a crowded ship, and all the trying incidents of an unaccustomed element. But, alas! not so with the drooping miserables who crowd the deck of a Scotch or English steamer, or stand in stupid wonderment as they are landed on our quays. To them the present is full of shame and bitterness, the future fraught with perplexity and despair.

Many of that disconsolate company are most probably ignorant of everything connected with the city to which they have been sent, save its name. They were told that they would be shipped to Belfast, to Dublin, or to Cork; but they feel, and not without much reason, that they might have been as fitly dispatched to the uttermost boundary of the earth. As they quit the plank, and stand upon their natal soil, they know not where to turn, or to whom to appeal. If death and emigration have left them a relative in the land, it may be at a distance of fifty miles, one hundred miles, or more, from the port to which they had been humanely consigned; and how are they to reach that distant place, destitute of mcans, of energy, perhaps of health ?-for the zeal of English and Scotch officials is not always discriminating, and poor creatures

have ere now been huddled on the deck of a steamer, who were more suited to the ward of an hospital, as we may have to shew before we are done.

Others do recognize, though dimly, and through the veil of a remote memory, some prominent features of the city into which they are cast; but as they proceed to the humble quarter in which their childhood was passed, they find everything changed from what they had known it. In vain they inquire of such or such a name. The one has been dead for years; the other has gone to America at such a time; such a one has removed, and left no trace behind; another is sunk in the depths of poverty, and may be heard of at the workhouse, and, more discouraging still, another has risen in the world, and has no sympathy for the poor.

A compassionate spectator is appealed to by some bewildered mother, whose accent either bespeaks her English origin, or a residence in that generous land of such duration as one, unconscious of the justice of the laws affecting the Irish-born poor, might suppose should have constituted a citizenship not admitting of dispute. In the name of a mother's distress she implores to be directed to a magistrate who will assist, or at least advise her, or to some place where she may find shelter for the night; or it may happen that, to obtain that shelter for herself and her little children, who cling round her in infant helplessness, she is compelled to sacrifice at the nearest pawnoffice some much-needed article of her too scanty clothing.

Nor are the objects of the law's merciful solicitude all of the feebler sex; disabled men, fathers and grandsires, diversify and render more saddening this spectacle of woe. The unemployed artizan and the broken-down labourer, who has given. the skill of his brain and the strength of his manhood to another country, may be seen amongst the dejected crowd of " removed poor." Ask him his history-it is briefly told; and you may believe him too, although his oath would not weigh as a feather in the balance against the lightest word of the meanest official employed in his removal. He left Ireland in his boyhood, and from that day to the present he had looked upon England as his home. He married there-his wife, the feeble creature by his side, who tries to hush the moan of the poor child in her arms, can shew you her "marriage lines;" there he toiled for years in honest industry, supporting himself and his family by his labor; but an evil

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