already—that he cannot walk about in the
open air when he wishes; that he cannot
smoke, drink strong liquors, gamble, or stop
out o' nights; that he is compelled to wear a
prison dress instead of his own clothes, and
that any property he may possess, as a
convict, is forfeited to the state. But how long
this state of things is to continue; or where
the ten, fifteen, or twenty years, or the
perpetuity of his captivity are to be lived out,
he has no more than a very faint and misty
notion. He may find himself, two or three
years hence, on board the Justicia hulk at
Woolwich, at Melbourne or Sydney, in
Devonport dockyard, on the Plymouth breakwater,
in the Portland stone quarries, in a
private room at Pentonville, or (and this
consummation is just as likely as the others) he
may find himself, after a short detention, at
large, breathing the sweet air of his dear
native Whitechapel or Westminster again— a
ticket-of-leave in his pocket; a graduate in
the university of crime; a bachelor of thieves'
arts, with only a few more terms to keep
before he goes back to the Central Criminal
Court to be received M.A.

The British public knows very little of what
becomes of the convicts. Some .of them are
in the dockyards, that is apparent; some in
this penitentiary; some in that; many
enjoying perfect liberty, though their term of
punishment be not half expired; which is
unpleasantly evident from the daring burglary
at the house over the way, committed by
ticket-of-leave men last Friday night, and
from the startling garotte robbery by a
liberated convict which is to be inquired into at
Bow Street Police-office this morning. But
where are the vast majority? Australia won't
hare them; Van Diemen's Land repudiates
them; the Cape of Good Hope would like to
see them (ironically) come there. The earthly
Hades at Norfolk Island is broken up; the
American plantations have been out of
fashion for the transported for a century.
We can't receive them into the bosoms of
our families, and set them to baste the
meat for seven years, or entreat them to
nurse the baby for the term of their natural
lives. We can't have them continually sailing
up and down the seas in quest of a colony
which will take them in. We would rather
not have them walking about Regent Street,
with bludgeons, pitch-plasters, chloroform
sponges, and slip-knotted handkerchiefs in
their pockets. They are an eyesore to us
even in Woolwich or Portsmouth yards,
skulking among the frank, jovial, open-faced
men-of-war's men and the smart stalwart
soldiers. We grumble against the pet prisons,
the horticultural show-houses of rascality, the
menageries of crime—wild beast shows well
kept, well swept, well ordered, with nice sweet
shins of beef for the animals (fed at regular
hours), and well-dressed visitors crowding to
see the hippopotamus of burglary taking his
bath, or the chimpanzee of larceny holding
a good book like a Christian, or the bludgeoning
tiger being stirred up with a long pole
and not howling, or the worthy governor or
worthy chaplain emulating the exploits of
Mr. Van Amburg—putting their heads in the
lion's mouth, and not having them bitten off.
Where are the convicts to go? Where do they
go? And while we ask, well-meaning
philanthropists echo the same question dolorously,
while the government cry still more dolorously
that they would like very much to be told
what to do with the convicts, and where to
send them. Whereupon A bellows out,
"Botany Bay!" forgetting that we have tried
the Bay, and that it has now narrowed into
a river running upon golden sands, even the
Pactolus, and that the inhabitants of its
auriferous banks refuse disdainfully to have
anything to do with British scum. Follows B,
who roars, "Hang them!" unmindful that we
have tried that, too, and have not found it
answer. Follows (at a long distance behind)
Z, who has a small voice, and is too weak to
struggle to the front, and who says mildly,
'' Teach and wash and tend them, before they
come up into the dock for judgment; let there
be clean straw, sweet shins of beef, and good
books outside as well as inside the menagerie,
and do not let a human being wait till he be a
criminal to be cared for, like the bear in the
Garden of Plants, who only became famous
from the day he ate a baby."

Whatever becomes of the convicts in the
present muddled state of transition into which
the questions of secondary punishments and
prison discipline have sunk, it is not the less
certain that judges of the land declare that
they do not know whether the sentences they
are passing will be carried out or not; and
that criminals avowedly contemn the punishment
of transportation, and are pleasantly
conscious that it will not be carried out in its
terrible entirety. Meanwhile we, who are not
yet transported, only dimly know two things:
that transportation to the colonies is at an
end, and that large numbers of determined
ruffians are daily let loose upon tickets-of-
leave, and return from wherever they came
to swell the already not immaculate population
of our large towns, and exercise assault,
battery, theft, burglary, shop-lifting, hocussing,
and other branches of their profession,
with as much vigour and with more success
than heretofore.

Let us see what the state of affairs is in
the dominions of the Emperor of the French.
Until very lately, grave and, in many cases,
capital crimes were punished by travaux
forcés (hard labour) for a term of years or
for perpetuity at the dockyard Bagnes—
better known under the generic name of the
galleys. But our neighbours are now in the
same state of muddled transition as to
secondary punishments that we in England
are. The Bagnes were the same hells upon
earth that our Norfolk Island was. A large
section of French philanthropists and social