“In an admirable article which appeared in the _Times_ of the 18th of April last, the writer has ‘hit the right nail on the head.’ After a graphic description of desperate and highly-skilled ruffians returning to their malpractices, after confinement, with greater zest than ever, he states—‘These constitute the ugly percentage of convicts with which nothing can be done, the true blackamoors of the system who can never be washed white.’ Here it is, and, perhaps, here only we fail. “We find the following, in Sir Joshua Jebb’s report for 1849:—‘In connexion with the subject of modification of the present system, I would submit the expediency of establishing a more severe system of discipline, and of enforcing a more protracted term of imprisonment, in the case of all men convicted of heinous offences, especially such as were accompanied by violence, and in certain cases. It is impossible to state the precise operations of such measures, or the extent to which they might be applied; but if the very worst characters were imprisoned for the whole term of life, or during their respective sentences, at some penal establishment at home, or in the colonies, others disposed of by tickets-of-leave in Western Australia, and the residue released at home with conditional pardons, or encouraged to emigrate, I believe that no sensible inconvenience could possibly be experienced.’ “The foregoing is a brief sketch of the English system and its results, deprived as it is of its mainstay, namely, a satisfactory means of disposing of the convicts who are subject to the two first probationary stages; and defective, as it is admitted to be, in the means of dealing with the ‘true blackamoors of the system.’”