liability, to which exception was specially taken, is vital to the interests of the public. Unless the principle embodied in it be carried out in some shape, the weak will always be at the mercy of the strong, the small farmer of the wealthy manufacturer. Of course, every possible precaution must be taken to prevent the putting forward of 'bogus claims,' but this may and ought to be done without depriving the public at large of a redress to which they are fairly entitled. It cannot be too often repeated that the sole reason which can justify the exercise of forbearance towards a company or an individual engaged in a lucrative undertaking, if that undertaking be injurious to others, is the paramount consideration of the importance of the trade of the country. But an exemption from the ordinary responsibilities, which attach to all alike, is based upon purely public grounds, and must have its limits. Sic utere tuo, ut alienum non lædas' is sound law as well as good morality.

We must not, indeed, impose restrictions so stringent or so unreasonable as to run the risk of driving trade abroad. But, short of this, we are bound to do all in our power to compel those who carry on a profitable business, not to do so on purely selfish principles. Private interests must undoubtedly be subordinated to the public good. Even the beauties of nature must give way if their preservation intact militates against undertakings which will even indirectly benefit mankind. But by a parity of reasoning one class cannot be permitted to monopolise gifts which were intended for all. The question, be it remembered, is essentially a poor man's question. For one landowner who has to lament over the decay of his ancestral oaks, or over a once fair prospect marred by tall chimneys and volumes of smoke, a thousand toilers suffer under the gradual withdrawal from their daily life of all that makes life pleasant, it may be of all that can render it tolerable. The owner of the soil has generally consolation in the increased value of his property. Its occupier can, if the nuisance becomes serious enough, seek another farm elsewhere. But the great mass of our operative population must live near the place of their daily employment, and dare not complain, while it is possible to avoid doing so, of any shortcomings upon the part of those to whom they look for their daily bread. In many cases, indeed, they are so imperfectly acquainted with the true laws of sanitary science that they could not complain, even if on other grounds they deemed it expedient to do so. Perhaps the greatest sufferers of all are those inhabitants of populous districts, unconnected with the trades in question, who derive no benefit from them, but who are very gradually, from the extension of some particular industry, being brought within the range of the gases generated by it. That they are not absolutely without a remedy is true. But the forms of procedure are at present so cumbrous, and so difficult to master, success is so problematical, and a large expenditure is so certain, that no one can be found with

courage to bell the cat.' We want an easy method of obtaining a judicial decision which will protect the manufacturer from vexatious suits, while it will secure to his neighbours full compensation and a certain remedy for every wrong that they may suffer. More than one scheme for attaining this desirable object has been sketched out by competent authorities. The public will not and ought not to be satisfied until one or other of them be adopted. Justice to the trades already under the Alkali Acts demands that other not less frequent or flagrant offenders should be subjected to similar control. Justice to those manufacturers who have done their best to conform to the spirit of the law demands that those who have done otherwise should be compelled to amend their ways. Justice to the owners and occupiers of the soil demands that the process of recouping themselves for proved injuries should not be needlessly cumbrous or expensive. Above all, justice to the public at large, of which so large a portion is too poor or too ignorant to protect itself, demands that the noxious agencies which tend to deteriorate the vital force, to detract from the rational enjoyment of life, or to injure its morale, should be reduced, so far as human legislation can reduce them, to a minimum.

MIDLETON.

EXPERIMENTS IN PUNISHMENT.

THE system on which sentences of secondary punishment are carried out in England was not established to accord with any à priori reasoning, nor to suit abstract theoretical principles. It has grown up, like most other English institutions, by successive alterations and improvements which have been made in accordance with the varying circumstances of the country and the demands of public feeling. For more than a hundred years punishment was the subject of incessant attention and repeated discussion. Parliamentary committees and Royal commissions were constantly engaged in inquiring into and reporting on it, the Acts of Parliament dealing with it were innumerable, and the Convict system as now in force in England is the result of the thought and deliberation of some of our greatest statesmen, guided and assisted by the experience of those whose practical connection with the subject has enabled them to study it in the way in which alone reliable information can be gained and sound opinions can be formed. It derives its character immediately from the transportation system on which it was founded, and which it has supplanted-a system which may almost be said to have been brought to perfection at the time it became necessary to abandon it. To understand and appreciate our present Convict system, therefore, it is necessary to know something of transportation and the various phases it passed through, up to that last improvement of it which, by order of Lord Grey in April 1848, was applied in Van Diemen's Land, and afterwards in Western Australia on the establishment of a new penal settlement in that colony; for then was established the plan of carrying out certain stages of the punishment in this country, which were followed by other stages fulfilled in the colony, so that when, gradually, actual transportation came to an end, and penal servitude in England was substituted for it, it was not necessary to establish a system de novo, but only to find a substitute for that part of it which was no longer possible.

The Parliamentary reports and correspondence published by Government during the period of transportation give a vast deal of information as to the working of our system of secondary punishments throughout that period, especially that of the Select Committee of 1838. This was a remarkable period in the history of the system, as

it was then that it had received, so far as respects the number of persons subjected to it, its greatest development-the number of offenders who were sent out of the country in 1834 having been 4,920, falling gradually to 3,805 in 1838. The total number of convicts sent to Australia during the continuance of the system was 134,308.

Voluntary banishment as an alternative to hanging was common in mediæval times. The increase of crime in Henry the Eighth's reign is said to have led to 72,000 persons being hanged. In the thirty-ninth year of Elizabeth, banishment at the expense of the counties and boroughs was legalised as a substitute, and houses of correction encouraged. The Poor laws also were passed. "Transportation' was introduced in the reign of Charles the Second, and might be inflicted (1) by the justices at their quarter sessions on incorrigible rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars; (2) by one justice on an offender convicted a third time of attending an illegal prayer-meeting; (3) by the justices of assize on the moss-troopers of Northumberland and Cumberland. The Act 18 Charles II. cap. 3 is to the effect that benefit of clergy shall be taken away from great known and notorious thieves and spoil-takers in Northumberland and Cumberland, or otherwise that it shall be lawful for the justices of assize, &c., to transport, or cause to be transported, said offenders into any of His Majesty's dominions in America. This Act was continued by 17 Geo. II. till January 24, 1751. Persons on whom this punishment was inflicted were at first bound to transport themselves, under penalty of hanging if they failed to do so; but in this case, as it always will be, a heavy penalty does not compensate for uncertainty of detection, and it was soon found necessary to contract with some person to carry off the transported offenders, the contractor being remunerated by acquiring a right to the labour of the criminals for the duration of their sentences. practice was legalised in 1717 by 4 Geo. I. cap. 2, an Act which authorised transportation as a substitute for other punishments besides that of hanging. The preamble and general tenor of this Act are to the following effect :—

The

That the present laws are not effectual to deter from crime; that many offenders to whom the royal mercy hath been extended upon condition of transporting themselves to the West Indies, have often neglected to perform the said condition, but returned to their former wickedness, and been at last for new crimes brought to a shameful ignominious death. And whereas, in many of His Majesty's colonies and plantations in America, there is great want of servants, &c., be it enacted... that any person convicted of any offence for which he is liable to be whipt or burnt on the hand, or shall have been ordered to any workhouse . . may be sent to some of His Majesty's colonies and plantations in America. . . And the court before whom he is convicted shall have power to convey, transport, or make over such offenders to any such person as shall contract for the performance of such transportation, and to his assigns, for such term of years as the Act empowers, and they shall have property and interest in the service of such person for such term of years. Offenders returning before expiration of term to be liable

to death. The king may pardon such transportation, the offender paying his owner. Contractors to give security for performance of contract, and to obtain certificate from governor of colony of having fulfilled it.

Transportation was established, therefore, as a kind of slave trade, and offenders were put up to auction and sold for the period of their sentences by the person who had contracted to transport them. It is stated that, at one time, the rate was about 201. per head. Sometimes the contractor released them on payment of a sum of money, and it was said that some contractors who shipped their convicts at Bristol landed some of them on Lundy Island, a few miles down the channel. The mortality among the prisoners due to the unwholesomeness of the gaols, and the competition of the African slave-dealers, led subsequently to contractors requiring payment varying from a few shillings to 127. per head, which was provided by the local jurisdiction.

The American colonies, especially Barbadoes, Maryland, and New York, steadily protested against their country being made the receptacle for outcasts of this description, and the propriety of sending them either to the East Indies or to Africa was discussed, but without result. Time arrived, however, in 1776, when the difficulty could no longer be postponed. The war of American independence, of course, put an end to transportation so far as that continent was concerned, for the Government did not think it proper to continue to the loyal colonies an infliction which they could no longer force the independent provinces to submit to. The Government of that day thus found themselves face to face with two problems of extreme difficulty, the solution of which did not readily present itself, and which, as the sequel will show, they succeeded only in postponing, so that we have within recent years had to overcome the difficulties which our forefathers were in part baffled by, and in part released from, by good fortune, which cannot be repeated in our time. The first problem was that of providing prison accommodation for the large number of prisoners-estimated by Mr. Eden, in 1778, to number 1,000 annually-who henceforth could no longer be sent to the old penal settlements, and who would accumulate year by year till a vast total was reached. The second was that of so dealing with these accumulated outcasts, that either by fear of the punishment, or change of disposition, or in some other way, they should be as little dangerous to society in England, when the time came for their discharge, as they would be if they had been removed by transportation to a life of better opportunities and fewer temptations in the backwoods of America.

To solve the problem of providing prison accommodation, Acts of Parliament were passed enjoining the justices throughout the country to provide buildings for increased numbers in the bridewells or houses of correction-where it was proposed to place the criminals sentenced