The Inspectors General of Irish prisons say of their own proceedings, "All these occupations, though engrossing much time, sink into insignificance, when compared with the depressing incidents of our periodical inspections, which bring us into personal contact with every species of human misery, and make us despairingly cognizant of every form of social offence."

The total expense of gaols in Ireland is £129,135. The total cost of keeping a man in prison there, is £13 4s. 4d.; to which is to be added, the expense of constabulary, police, expense of convictions, cost of prisons, &c.

Total of persons confined in gaol, last year, in Ireland, including debtors, was 97,595! Deaths, 1190!

The cost of diet, in some cases, is 44d. per day, 2s. 10d. a week, £8 11s. 1d. a year.

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Remembering all these criminal figures, (yes, criminal, because they might be greatly reduced,) well might a Minister of the present cabinet say, "But what are we to do with the convicts in case of a Chartist insurrection?" And yet it is not this government that is specially at fault, denying to the starving people a morsel of land to live upon in our colonies. We have done so always and everywhere. An improvement has been made in Natal emigration, but still sufficient encouragement is not bestowed on those who would people and Christianize it. No obstruction should be interposed, particularly when the colony is running into debt at head quarters. The Customs' revenue should be the resource of the colony; but that is derived solely from population. In this matter, the poor are not thought of sufficiently,-they are made poorer, they have now no means to buy, and yet we fix high prices on colonial land. It should be given away to occupants, as it used to be in the old Roman colonies. We must again learn a lesson from the past, and follow the practice of our ancestors. Pepper-corn rents and yeomanry service is all that should be required. Small grants in good colonies will accomplish these great points,-relief of the poor themselves,-relief of the rich and middle classes, through a reduction of poor rates and county rates; -a diminution of crimes caused by necessity;-thriving colonies to employ our manufacturers, and rich colonies to pay their own expenses without subjecting England to pay for their civil and military government. All this may be done without a tax, nay, it will relieve both public taxes, county rates, and poor rates. There is not a man in the country that will not derive benefit. Our own shipping might be perpetually employed, and the population, instead of being a burthen here, be far greater promoters of England's wealth and grandeur, than had they remained at home, incarcerated in gaols and poor-law unions. Well may it be asked, what are we to do with the convicts in case of a Chartist insurrection? Prevent them being convicts.-Give land. Upon principles established, all are entitled to a sustenance. Shall it be demanded, as in

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France, in cash,-or will you give them the means of existence, by allowing them to possess land in your colonies? There is no refuge from this difficulty and the query of the Cabinet Minister, but this. The government of Natal is now in debt some £8000 or £10,000, besides the expense of supporting about 600 soldiers. This is nearly an entire waste. Not that the soldiers are not deserving of it; but it would be better if they were pure citizens, and had an interest in the soil. Grant every European soldier his discharge, and give him 100 acres of good land, and let them muster with the colonists for exercise, once a month. This will be a far better rampart than pure soldiery. In two years, England might save about £40,000 per annum in Natal, and the colony be better protected. To resist emigration is to resist diminution of the public burthens, to favor the increase of poverty, and to multiply the number of convicts. Moreover, unless the English Government keep pace with the advantages proposed to be granted by the United States, all the British colonies will be ruined for want of labor. We ought to anticipate the intended liberality.

Sum total of convictions for serious offences, in 1848, in England, 30,349; in Scotland, 4,909; in Ireland, 38,522. Total Guerella banditti against the laws of society, 73,770.

Double this number are loose on society; together a more formidable fact than if they were banded in force against the government.

What then, it is enquired, can be done with the convicts? Renew and improve the assignment system in the old penal colonies; or, better, form a new colony for the express purpose. True, there are evils in the assignment system,-but where all is evil, we must be content, and meet it as best we can. The assignment system has its advantages also. But to let all loose upon colonial society, is preposterous, not to say unjust and tyrannical. How would the proposition be received in Scotland, to harbour all the convicts of England and Ireland? The colonists must not be worse treated than Scotland. The Cape, for instance, has her own convicts, as every other country. We cannot send them to England, we are taxed to keep them in order, and England must bear her own burthen, or cure the morals of her people. New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land have not been able to bear the burthen of the few convicts sent there. In short, England must adopt emigration, or crime will increase, and then property will depreciate. This multiple of 73,770 convicts kept in England, with increasing poverty, and consequent increasing crime, will have the effect of reducing properties now worth £20,000, down to £3000. This has been done in Van Dieman's Land, as I have learnt from a solicitor lately established there, and who is now seeking a home in the Cape or Natal. Nearer still, it has been done in Ireland, and is commencing in England.

Paupers in the United Kingdom are now, one in nine out of the whole population; and leaving out infants and children who have not yet been taught to be honest or dishonest by society, the number of criminals guilty of serious offences probably amounts to one in the hundred.

There are, however, several remedies for the present evils of English Society. If Australia and Van Dieman's Land will not receive convicts, unaccompanied with extensive free emigration, a new colony must be formed for them. Emigration loans must be granted to the colonies, secured on the colonial revenue, and guaranteed by England. Poor rates should be made more available for emigration purposes; small grants of land should be given to settlers; to soldiers also, who should be allowed their discharge. Juvenile offenders require different treatment; and orphans, as the children of the state, should be snatched from perdition immediately; they should be educated by the state, and, according to their ages, transferred to a more mature establishment, where they should be taught farming and useful trades, and then sent forth to our colonies. Holland, when she founded the Cape Colony, sent out one thousand orphans above fifteen years of age. In the colonies, government might have model self-paying farms; some benevolent men, supervised by government, might conduct them, and divide all the profits amongst the orphans, when they left the establishment, which might be fixed at not later that fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen years of age. Many widows might be provided for in such establishments, happy to be so employed. We should thus be fathers to the fatherless, and make the widow's heart leap for joy.

Truly there is much to be done, but not too much for the energetic British nation. What has been done, has been done by our ancestors; what remains, is for us to do; and that is only just enough to prevent the extinction of our benevolence and public spirit.

The foregoing statements of Crime, are enough to appal the contemplative; but there are others, perhaps, passing them in feeling consideration for the poor, who require to be guided to conclusions by superior ratiocination and experience. I therefore shorten my own observations to give fresh currency to a recent article in the “Times.” "We yesterday published in a very short compass some grave particulars of the unfortunate county of Dorset. It is not simply the old story of wages inadequate for life, hovels unfit for habitation, and misery and sin alternately claiming our pity and our disgust. What compels our attention just now, is a sudden, rapid, and we fear a forced, aggravation of these evils. Measured by the infallible test of crime, Dorsetshire is fast sinking into a slough of wretchedness which threatens the peace and morality of the kingdom at large. The total number of convictions, which in 1846 was 796, and in the following year 821, mounted up in the year 1848 to 950, and up to the special general session, last Tuesday, for less than eleven months of the present year, to the astounding number of 1,193, being at the rate of 1,300 for the whole year. Unless something is done to stop this flood of crime, or the tide haply turns of itself, the county will have more than doubled its convictions within four years. Nor is it possible for us to take refuge in the thought that the increase is in petty offences. In no respect is it a light thing for a poor creature to be sent to gaol, whatever the offence. He has broken the laws of his country, and forfeited his character. His name and his morals are alike tainted

no light affair that a rural county, the abode of an ancient and respectable aristocracy, somewhat removed from the popular influences of the age, with a population of 175,043 by the last census, should produce in four years near 3,000 convictions, being at the rate of one conviction, in that period, for every 60 persons, or every 12 households.

"For our own part, we know not whether the spectacle of thousands driven to crime by distress, and falling into evil courses, not from bad to worse but from innocence to the first disobedience, is not the more painful downfall of the two. This regular progress of multitudes from the cottage to the union workhouse, and from the workhouse to the gaol, is a fearful and suspicious thing. It bears the marks of systematic tyranny, bringing all our social institutions to bear against the miserable peasant. Helpless and ignorant above all men as the British agricultural labourer undoubtedly is-save only in his work set before him-he has not the wit to better himself, even if he had the opportunity. When his wages are reduced below the scale of life's support, he is forced into the workhouse. As his residence there is still more onerous to his former employers than employment at ever so good wages, they take care to thrust him out as they thrust him in. They will not, however, thrust him back into his parish, where he will again come upon them for employment, but into the gaol, where the county, and not the parish, will be burdened with his maintenance. With this cheap but terrible threat, the guardians can either make the crowds under their charge submit to otherwise intolerable misery, or punish them, not only without cost, but even with positive gain. But there is hardly in all the earth a sadder sight than the multitudes of from 300 to 1,000 shut up in the workhouses. Broken hearts and fortunes, high spirits still untamed, minds in ruin and decay, good natures corrupted into evil, cheerful souls turned to bitterness, youth just beginning to struggle with the world, and vast masses of childhood, are there subjected, not to the educated, the gentle, and the good, but the rude, the rough, the coarse, the ignorant, and narrow-minded. The qualifications for the governor of a workhouse are those we expect in a gaoler, or a policeman, or the keeper of wild beasts. Human nature, be it ever so fallen, is yet too fine a thing to be bullied into goodness. None can reclaim it

but the good and noble. We want a race of heroes and apostles for the reformation of our paupers, and their conversion into men. With our workhouse staff, such as it is, low, vulgar, and brutal, and with the evil association of the unfortunate with the wicked, and the weak with the audacious, it is impossible but that the miserable inmates

lonies, at an equal cost, in the character and with the prospects of honest working men? Dorsetshire has lately, with the assistance of Government, sent out an unusual number of emigrants. Why should not it send out more, instead of wasting money, and ruining both body and soul by confining them in the workhouse or the gaol? The 1,800 sent to gaol this year will never be good for anything again. They will take themselves at the value which society has set upon them, and hold themselves unfit for honest employment. What chance has a man of getting on, when he has been once in gaol? A great part of them will ultimately find their way to our hulks, and to our penal settlements; costing the state many hundred pounds a-piece before it has done with them. Indeed, it is becoming day by day more evident that we must send out our labourers while they are honest, or at least while their characters are untainted, for before long every one of our colonies will follow the example of the Cape. Nay, Sydney has been beforehand with it. Early last June the whole population assembled in that place to protest against the colony being once more a penal settlement, and to carry their resolutions to that effect forthwith to the Government-house. Though they exhibited none of the vexatious puerilities of the Cape colonists, their determination was not the less evident, nor can we doubt of their success. We imagine the case of our colonies to be thus with regard to convict labour:-New colonies quite destitute of population, with large tracts of land marked out and sold, or perhaps changing hands, but not yet settled, ask for any sort of labour, no matter its moral character. They must have men of one sort or another, and have as yet no society capable of being corrupted, and no comforts capable of being marred. After a generation or two, however, society, attachment to the soil, colonial patriotism and pride, domestic comfort, and all that makes a country dear, have sprung up. The new generation will not have convicts. It cares more for security, honour, morality, and peace, than for cheap labour. So all our colonies will turn, will repudiate this reproach, and England will be left to seek fresh shores for the deposit of her refuse population, or make the best of it at home. With such a prospect before us, it is high time for the landowners in the less favoured districts, and we think for the Legislature also, to provide more effectual outlets for the perpetual increase of the people. We have always been of opinion that emigration is not so much a question of expense, or of inclination, as of arrangement, and that, on a proper scheme, the nation, the parishes, and the colonies might together provide for an almost unlimited number of emigrants.