of these classes to perpetual surveillance, to summary jurisdiction for life, and, in the event of their obtaining conditional freedom after a long course of good behaviour, to compulsory residence in a particular district or settlement; in which ardent spirits, the grand incentive to crime, should be absolutely prohibited, and strong inducements held forth to reputable and virtuous conduct. On the other hand, if a series of penitentiaries were to be formed in England on the American model, in which criminals, guilty of such crimes as at present subject the perpetrator to a sentence of transportation for seven years, should be subjected to hard labour and solitary confinement for two, three, or four years; not only might transportation for seven years be discontinued as a species of punishment, but a considerable number of criminals, of the class to which that punishment is at present awarded, might be permanently reclaimed and retained in England. If hard labour and solitary confinement, however, in a well-regulated English penitentiary, should be found insufficient to repress the criminal propensities of the culprit, who has been subjected to such punishment for a first offence, let that culprit, on being convicted a second time, be transported either for life or for fourteen years, according to the nature and aggravation of his two offences,
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AND COLONIZATION.
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