The example of France in
its practical application of this policy is not encouraging.
However, there is in transportation, as in the death penalty, an
unquestionable element of reason. For when it is perpetual, with
very faint chances of return, it is the best mode of ridding
society of its most injurious factors, without our being compelled
to keep them in those compulsory human hives which are known as
cellular prisons.
But again, there is the question of simple transportation, first
put into practice by England, which consists of planting convicts
on an island or desert continent, with the opportunity of living
by labour, or else of letting them loose in a savage country,
where the convicts, who in civilised countries are themselves half
savage, would represent a partial civilisation, and, from being
highwaymen and murderers, might become military leaders in
countries where, at any rate, the revival of their criminal
tendencies would meet with an immediate and energetic resistance,
in place of the slow machinery of our criminal trials.
For Italy, however, the question presents itself in a special
form; for there a sort of internal deportation, in the lands which
are not tilled on account of the malaria, would be far more
serviceable.
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