TRANSPORT

of the amputated roots may heal over, and be prepared to emit new fibrous roots after the tree is transplanted; or, and which is the more general mode, the trench may be filled up with finely pulverized soil, in order to encourage the production of fibrous roots; and at the end of a year, or of two years if the tree is very large, it may be removed to its final situation. Hitherto we have said nothing of the trunk and branches of the tree to be removed. In a moist climate, such as that of Ireland or the west of Scotland, all the branches may be retained; but in dry climates, such as that of England, the branches require to be thinned out in proportion to the roots cut off; and in dry and warm climates, such as that of central France, the greater number of the branches require to be removed. The proper season for transplanting all ligneous plants, whether small or large, is in autumn, after the leaves of deciduous trees have dropt, and when the sap of evergreen trees, in consequence of the decline of temperature, is comparativelv in a dormant state. TRA'NSPORT. A ve el hired by government to convey stores, troops, . T I I AN SPORT A'TION. In Law, a species of punishment. It is not known to the common law of England, and was originally a commutation of punishment, pardon being granted to various descriptions of offenders on condition of undergoing transportation: generally for seven or fourteen years, or for life. It is now a statutable punishment for a great variety of offences. It is said to have been first inflicted as a punishment by 39 Eliz. c. 4., enacting that such rogues as were dangerous to the inferior people should be banished. At that time the English plantations in North America were the receptacles of transported convicts. Virginia, the Jerseys, Delaware, Maryland, . are the districts which received the greatest acce ion to their population from this cause. At the very commencement of the practice, the same arguments were employed against it by Lord Bacon which are urged at this day by many law reformers. " It is," he says, " a shameful and unble ed thing to take the scum of people, and wicked condemned men, to be those with whom you plant." It was not, however, brought into general use as a punishment until 1718, by 4 Geo. 1., which act gave the courts a discretionary power to banish felons entitled to clergy to the American plantations. After the lo of the greater part of our American colonies, several years elapsed before the government fixed on any place by way of substitute. At length, in 1787, Botany Bay, on the coast of New South Wales, was fixed upon: 760 convicts were despatched that year. But when the expedition arrived, it was discovered that Botany Bav (discovered by Cook in 1770) afforded no practicable site for the colony; which was consequently landed at Port Jackson, where the town of Sydney was founded. From that period to the present great numbers of convicts have been transported to Port Jackson, and to the later founded colony of Van Diemen's Land — our only two penal settle, ments. Much has been done of late years towairds regulating the condition of the convicts in the colony, and subjecting the worse part of them to severe privations; in particular, by transporting some of them to particular depots, where they are liable to close inspection and hard labour. Among the writers who have lately contended against the policy of continuing the punishment of transportation, we may jiarticularly mention Archbishop Whately. (See his Tracts on Secondary Punishments and Transportation.) Returning from transportation before the legal expiration of sentence was an offence formerly punishable with death; but by 4 & 5 W. 4. c. 67. those who commit the offence, or aid others in its commi ion, are punishable with transportation for life. A great ma of evidence on the effect of transportation as a punishment for crime in Great Britain, and its effect on the moral condition of the Australian colonies, will be found in the volumes published by the two committees of 1838 and 1839. It requires, however, to be read with much caution, on account of the evident bias of the committees themselves; for every one knows how effectually the inclinations of a committee give a colour to the evidence taken before it, from the mode in which the operation is performed. The views of that committee, resembling those of Archbishop Whately, of the inutility of the punishment here, and its mischievous effects in the colonies, have had some effect on the proceedings of government; so far, at least, as to produce the abolition of the practice of the immediate a ignment of convicts as labourers on their arrival, and the detention of considerable numbers in the hulks in lieu of the full execution of their sentence. Many of the vices ascribed to the system are undeniable; but it must never be forgotten that the truly philosophical or sensible mode of looking at it is by comparison with other secondary punishments. Take any mode of punishment in the abstract, and the eyes of the inquirer will soon detect so much of misciiief caused to the sufferers, and so little visible good produced on the community, as to tempt him to regard it as detestable. In the first place, transportation must be considered without 1253 TRAPEZIUM. the bad practice of immediate and indiscriminate a ignment, which was a mere abuse. Thus corrected, let it be compared with the best regulated system of imprisonment — 1. In respect of its effects on the convict himself; and it may be doubted whether in the Penitentiary, whether on the silent or separate system, the mind of the majority of sufferers goes through a more wholesome proce than in the penal settlements, notwithstanding all we have heard even of the frightful condition of Norfolk Island, which is not an ordinary sample. 2. In respect of its effects on the ill-disposed population at home; and here, defective as transportation is commonly supposed to be, the experience of any one conversant with courts of justice will decide which sentence appears to produce the greatest impre ion when announced, — imprisonment, or banishment. And it must not be forgotten that it is not the real severity, but the action on the imagination, which deters from crime: the worst inflictions of the gaol are thought little of by any one except the syfferer, while the evils of expatriation are greater in idea than in reality. 3. In respect of the ultimate reform of the offender; and here transportation po e es an incalculable advantage over every other secondary punishment. The convict who has undergone it begins life afresh: he remains, indeed, under some disabilities, sufiicient to mark the sense entertained by society of the difference between him and the man unstained by crime; but there is nothing to prevent his rising by regular and honest conduct, if he chooses, into a station of comfort, and even of respectability. The man who leaves a gaol is utterly ruined: society has devised, perhaps can devise, no means of extending to him ajuspostliminii, and bringing him back within the pale of citizenship. His character is gone for ever; and if it could be really ascertained how many among relapsed offenders are actually driven into the recommi ion of crime by the hopele ne and infamy of their condition, if not by the actual want which results from it, we suspect that many who are now ready to give their suffrage for the abolition of transportation would be induced at least to pause until they can see their way through this difficulty. TRANSPOSl'TION, in Algebra, is the transposing of a term from one side of an equation to the other, and is in effect the adding of equal quantities to or subtracting equal quantities from each side of the equation, the sig?i of the quantity being changed from + to —, or from — to +. For example, if a + x = c — d, by transposing. a we have x = c — d — a; or if a + b =■ c — x,hy transposing X and a + 6 we get ar = c — fl — 6. The object of transposition generally is to bring all the unknown, terms to one side of the equation for more conveniently, finding their value with respect to the known terms. Transposition. In Music, the change which takes place by performing the same melody in a higher or lower pitch, which may always be effected by altering the signature as the pitch of the new key note may require. TRANSUBSTANTIATION. The doctrine held by the church of Rome, that in the Eucharist the bread and wine are annihilated and replaced by the body and blood of Christ. In one of its liturgical offices it says, " This is not bread, but God and Man, my Saviour." It is maintained by Protestants that this dogma, which was made the principal test of a true faith by the Papists at the Reformation, is not found in Scripture, which in the most literal acceptation only a erts of the elements that they are Christ's body and blood; i. e. that the substances coexist in some mysterious manner. Nor can they discover it in the writings of the fathers, or in the canons of the early church. They affirm that the first theologian who a erted even the consubstantiation, or union of substances, was Paschaslus, in the ninth century, and that he was accused of making too gro an explanation of the mystery. It was in the course of these disputes, and in consequence of the formal and definite statement of their opinions to which controversialists were forced, that this idea of transub at i on came into fashion among theologians; nor was it ever propounded as an article of faith by the authority of a council till the beginning of the 13th century in the papacy of Innocent III. TRANSUDA'TION. (Lat. trans and sudo, I transpire.) The oozing of fluids through membranes, or through porous bodies. TRANSVERSAL. In Geometry, the name applied to a line (whether straight or curved) which traverses or intersects any system of other lines; as when a straight line intersects the three sides of a triangle. The properties of straight and circular transversals are discu ed by Carnot,.in his Geometric de Position, and E ai sur la Theorie des Transver sales. TRANSVERSE AXIS, in Conic Sections, is the diameter which pa es through both foci. It is the longest diameter in the ellipse, the shortest in the hyperbola; and in the parabola it is infinite, as in that curve all diameters are. See Conic Sections. TRAPE'ZIUM (Gr. t€«t£^«, table), in Geometry, is the geneial name for a plane figure bounded by four straight lines. When two opposite sides are parallel, it ia 4L 3 Page 1267