Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/169

 war on the spot, intercepting all communication and all conveyances. In aid of the pursuits of science, we have seen belligerent powers afford a free passage to naturalists and mathematicians, but it may be doubted whether, for the sake of morals, the same favour would be shown to convicts, who might, after all, be only soldiers disguised.

Let us however for a moment admit that these obstacles are removed, and that transportation is possible, should it be perpetual for all convicts indifferently? Or should we go on the plan observed with the galley-slaves, by graduating the term of labour? In the first case, you would destroy all proportion between punishments and crimes; since the man who, according to this code would only have to serve a certain time at the galleys, would not see his country again any more than the man sentenced to transportation for life. In England, where the least period of sentence (seven years) is assigned as well to a robbery of twenty-four sous as for severe violence exercised against a magistrate, this disproportion exists; but it often palliates the severities of a legislation which punishes with death offences sentenced by us only to imprisonment. So, at the English assizes it is no uncommon thing to hear a prisoner, after sentence of transportation has been passed upon him, say, "Thank'ye, my lord."

If the transportation be not for life, we should fall into the delusion which the Counsels generally point out every year, by exclaiming against the mixing of the liberated convicts with the people. Our freed transports would return to society with nearly the same vices that they had contracted at the Bagne. All tends to confirm the idea that they would be more incorrigible than the transported Englishman, whom a national spirit for travelling and colonization frequently attaches to the soil where he has been transplanted.

Considering, then, colonization as nearly impossible,