colonies has led to a great accumulation of criminals in the country; and it has got, in consequence, into the unhealthy condition of living subjects when the natural evacuations are stopped; and in the second place, the ticket-of-leave system, -a system essentially false in principle in the circumstances, -has greatly exaggerated the evil. We cannot, however, agree with those who give a paramount place to the latter cause. Were it to be abolished to-morrow, and criminals imprisoned for the shorter periods,—whether five, seven, or fourteen years,— -in no case released until the close of the legitimate terms recorded in their sentences,—the master evil would still remain. The felon, now let loose upon the public at the end of some two or three years, would in the other case not be let loose upon it until the end of five years, or of seven, or fourteen; but ultimately he would be let loose upon it; and, even if inclined to live honestly, he would have quite as little chance of procuring the necessary employment at the end of the longer as of the shorter term. There is only one way in which the master evil in the case is to be remedied. The old means of evacuation must, at whatever cost, be procured. Britain, whatever difficulties may lie in the way, must again have recourse to the scheme of penal colonies, or both life and property must continue to remain insecure. And, though difficulties do lie in the way, we do not see that they are by any means insurmountable. Half the trouble which our ancestors had in extirpating the native wolves would suffice to rid us of a greatly more formidable class of wild beasts,-the incorrigible criminals. It is surely not at all necessary that a penal colony should be a paradise. It was no advantage, but, on the contrary, much the reverse, that during even the healthiest state of the country, the incipient felon looked with longing eyes on the representations of New South Wales given in the print-shop windows, and then went off to qualify himself by some bold

act for a free passage. A penal colony should be simply a country in which the discharged felon could earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, just as our humbler people do at home, and in which the circumstances of the community would be such as to render the life of the marauder not only a more dangerous, but also a more toilsome and difficult one than that of the honest worker who laboured fairly for his bread. And a colony of this character ought not to be difficult to find. The country once heard a great deal about the Falkland Islands. Rather more than eighty years ago (1771), it was on the eve of entering, mainly on their account, into a war with France; and on that occasion Johnson wrote his famous tract to dissuade Britain from the contest, by showing that the islands were of really little value, and would be dearly purchased at such a price. But now that all dispute regarding them has ceased,-for, for the last quarter of a century they have been in the uninterrupted possession of this country,—they might be found very valuable as a penal colony. They have an area of about thirteen thousand square miles; their mean temperature during the year is exactly that of Edinburgh, with summers, however, a little warmer, and winters a little colder, than our Scotch ones; their surface is green; the grass-lands are peculiarly luxuriant, and form such a paradise for cattle, that the tame breeds are becoming wild in the interior, and promise to be very numerous; and the bays and sounds which indent the coasts abound in fish. Further, so imperfectly are they colonized, that though the expense of maintaining them costs the country about six thousand pounds per annum, their entire exports fall short of four thousand. In fine, at a very slight sacrifice, these islands could be converted into a hopeful penal colony, that would fully absorb the more dangerous criminals of the country for a quarter of a century to come.

But while recognising the lack of penal colonies, and the

consequent accumulation of our criminals within the country, as the main causes of that increase of serious crime against both the person and property which has taken place during the last eight or ten years, we must not undervalue the influence of the other cause,-that ticket-of-leave system which has let loose so many dangerous felons on society ere half their terms of punishment had expired. The principle of the system is utterly false and unsolid in all its circumstances and details. A fond mother was once heard addressing her son as follows:-"Be a good, religious boy, my little Johnnie; fear God, and honour your parents; and I will give you two pretty red-cheeked apples." Nor is it difficult to say what sort of a religion would be the effect of such a promise. Little Johnnie's two apples'-worth of the fear of God and the honour of parents would be a very hypocritical fear, and a very fictitious honour. And the ticket-of-leave system proceeds wholly on the same principle. Be religious and moral, it virtually says to the convict, for a given time, and you will get, when it has expired, the two red-cheeked apples. It has a grand disadvantage, too, over the scheme of the fond mother. She might no doubt succeed in making little Johnnie a little hypocrite; but the two apples, when made over to him, if really good ones, might be productive of farther hurt to neither himself nor the family. Not so the premium or behaviour held out to the convict. The proffered reward bears simply to the effect that he is to be set loose on society, to prey upon it anew. There is in reality no scheme in existence by which convicts in the mass can be dealt with as our paper-makers deal with their filth-begrimmed rags. We cannot put them in at the one end of a penitentiary in the soiled state, and take them out white and pure at the other. True, we must not limit the grace of God. It is just possible, however improbable, that little Johnnie, notwithstanding the sad stumbling-block of the two apples, or that a convict

notwithstanding the greatly sadder stumbling-block of the ticket-of-leave system, might be in reality converted; but neither on the apple scheme nor any other will there be any wholesale conversions of either the little Johnnies or the greater felons of the country. Regarded as a whole, the latter will enter the penitentiaries as felons, and as felons they will leave them; but if, by seeming to be religious, and by exercising a degree of self-constraint in a place in which there is exceedingly little to tempt, they will have the prospect held out to them of quitting their place of confinement at an early day, the men of strong wills and of self-control among them, always the more dangerous class,-will not fail to conform to the conditions. And thus the picked felons will be ever and anon let loose long ere their time, to rob in order that they may live, and to murder in order that their robberies may be concealed. In the brief passage which we have quoted from Sir Walter's "Life of Fielding," we find him remarking, that one of the less known publications of the old magistrate and novelist contained hints, some of which had been adopted, and “ 'some of which are worthy of more attention than they have received." And we would reckon among the latter the hints contained in the chapter entitled, “Of the Encouragement given to Robbers by frequent Pardons." Pardons at the time,‚—a consequence of the extreme severity of the English criminal code,-were very numerous and very capricious, though neither so numerous nor so capricious as the ticket-of-leave system has rendered them now. And what were the effects which they produced? Simply this, as determined by a singularly shrewd and sagacious man, who knew more of the matter than any one else, that from the hope of impunity which they created, they hanged ten times more felons than they saved from the gallows, and greatly increased the amount of crime.-November 29, 1856.

THE LEGISLATIVE COURT.

"ON the 22d of Aprile" (1532) says Calderwood, in his "Ecclesiastical History," so recently published, for the first time, by the Wodrow Society," the Colledge of the Judges was established in Edinburgh," "for judgment of pecuniall and civil causes." "In the beginning," continues the historian, "many things were profitablie devised by them, and justice ministered with equitie. But the event answered not the expectatioun of men; for, seeing in Scotland there be almost no lawes except the acts of Parliament, whereof manie are not perpetuall but temporarie, and the Judges hinder what they may the making of such lawes, the goods of all men are committed to the arbitriement and decisioun of fyfteen men that have perpetuall power, which, in truth, is but tyranicall impyre, seeing their own arbitriements stand for lawe."

Such was the objection raised by Calderwood two hundred years ago to the constitution and practice of the Court of Session, at a time when no case of harassing and irritating collision with the ecclesiastical courts had arisen, to disturb the equanimity or cloud the judgment of the shrewd old Churchman. Such, too, was the decision pronounced regarding it nearly a century earlier by Buchanan, whom, in this significant and very pregnant passage, the ecclesiastical chronicler has been content closely to follow,--so closely, indeed, that the passage may be deemed rather a translation than a piece of original writing. The Court was comparatively in its infancy,-an institution of but about fifty years' standing, when it was characterized by the older historian as an arbitrary erection, opposed in its constitution to the very genius of freedom. And why? It is according to the genius of freedom that a people be governed by laws which they