The repetition of violent offences by men who are reported
to have tickets-of-leave is perhaps the reason why we again see set attacks upon " the ticket-of-leave system." Mr. Wilson Over- end, Chairman of the West Yorkshire Quarter-Sessions, announces 160 committals of ticket-of-leave men for fresh crimes ; and his diatribe furnishes the text for influential writers. In this we perceive nothing new. The censors continue to censure the prison-arrangements at present carried out under Colonel Jobb,— speaking of it as if it were " the ticket-of-leave system " pro- posed by the Prison-reformers ; which is just about as reasonable as if the tenets of the Mormons were adduced as an exposure and refutation of Christianity. There are indeed many defects in the present make shift system. The sentence of transportation is an official lie, and one of the most mischievous of the numerous class of formal falsehoods. The prisoner is sentenced to be " transported," everybody knowing that he is not to be trans- ported. But when public writers call out for a measure to realize the sentence, they demand what is known to be an im- possibility, and help in preventing the true reforms which would relieve the country from its ticket-of-leave men.
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