Thoughts on the Transportation System. 73 



recalcitrant society. In brief, we purpose to subject the 

 system as it subsisted for half a century in Australia to a 

 thorough analysis, inasmuch as it seems to us that, in our 

 present unnatiu'al social conditions, transportation, i. e. the 

 sudden transference of the criminal to totally new conditions 

 of external life, seems to furnish the much desired turning 

 point whence we may expect a lasting moral improvement of 

 the individual. Our Austrian 23risons, especially those in which 

 the cell system has not been introduced, are simply houses of 

 detention, not penitentiaries, still less reformatories. The in- 

 carcerated criminal is a burden to himself and to society, to 

 which he is only in the most exceptional cases restored 

 improved by confinement. The charge of maintaining him 

 increases year by year, without any return being made by 

 utilizing the labour of the prisoner. In penal colonies, on the 

 other hand, the convict works as much for his own benefit as 

 for that of society. He throws open new immeasurable tracts 

 of land to civilization, trade, and industry. The evil effects 

 of certain climates upon the health of the convict can be cor- 

 rected by proper ordinances, till it is reduced to a barely 

 appreciable minimum. The free settler is also exposed in 

 unsettled countries to dangerous illnesses, but as his circum- 

 stances improve these disappear before the cleared forest, the 

 cultivated patch, the drained swamp. 



We do not believe that were the option left them there is 

 oner solitary individual in our Austrian prisons, condemned to 

 periods of imprisonment of ten years and upwards, who would 



