road. And yet it is my
firm conviction that I, or any other man possessing ordinary
intelligence and insight into human character and experience of convict
life, could, with the utmost ease, have selected from the inmates of
our prisons a very large number for exportation, whom our colonists
would have been glad to receive, and who would have been rescued from a
life of ignominy or crime at home. The question may very naturally be
asked--Why could not our prison officials have done the same? The only
answer I can give is that our prison officials (excepting the very
highest) are directly interested in _maintaining_ and _increasing_,
and not in _reducing_, the number of our convicts, and they are
therefore inclined to favour the liberation of those whom they are
pretty sure will soon return.

As a fair and forcible example of the advantage which might have been
taken of the "Transportation Act," in dealing with a certain class of
prisoners, and also as an illustration--not nearly so forcible as
others I have alluded to, and will yet notice--of the fault of the
authorities in the matter of selection, I will mention one case. Three
young men received sentence of twenty years' penal servitude for rape.
One of them, quite a youth, was more a spectator of than a principal in
the crime, the other two being the really guilty parties. The three
were in due course sent to Portsmouth. The guilty pair were sent
abroad, and liberated before the end of five years from the date of
their conviction. One of them is now married and settled comfortably
abroad, and the other lodges with him. The other prisoner, being young
and not very muscular, received some injury while at work and was sent
to the Invalid Criminal Hospital in Surrey, and has to remain in
prison, in a state useless to himself and to society, for eight or nine
years longer than his more guilty companions.

But the day has gone by for successful re-establishment of a penal
colony. I do not think there are many who would commit crimes for the
express purpose of getting abroad, unless the colony was very
attractive; but no country where officers can be got to reside will
ever be looked upon with dread by the majority of criminals. A penal
colony, I am convinced, would have no deterring influence on the minds
of those convicts who are most difficult to deal with. It would have
such an effect upon certain classes of prisoners, but their numbers are
small, and less expensive r