Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849
Various

Various

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849

THE TRANSPORTATION QUESTION

The great question of Secondary Punishments has now been settled by experience, so far as the mother country is concerned. It is now known that imprisonment has no effect whatever, either in deterring from crime, or in reforming criminals. Government, albeit most unwilling to recur to the old system of transportation, has been compelled to do so by the unanimous voice of the country; by the difficulty of finding accommodation for the prodigious increase of prisoners in the jails of the kingdom; and by the still greater difficulty, in these days of cheapness and declining incomes, of getting the persons intrusted with the duty of providing additional prison accommodation, to engage in the costly and tedious work of additional erections. An order in council has expressly, and most wisely, authorised a return to transportation, under such regulations as seem best calculated to reform the convicts, and diminish the dread very generally felt in the colonies, of being flooded with an inundation of crime from the mother country. And the principal difficulty felt now is, to find a colony willing to receive the penal settlers, and incur the risks thought to be consequent on their unrestricted admission.

It is not surprising that government should have been driven from the ruinous system of substituting imprisonment for transportation; for the results, even during the short period that it was followed out, were absolutely appalling. The actual augmentation of criminals was the least part of the evil; the increase of serious crimes, in consequence of the hardened offenders not being sent out of the country, but generally liberated after eighteen months' or two years' confinement, was the insupportable evil. The demoralisation so strongly felt and loudly complained of in Van Diemen's Land, from the accumulation of criminals, was rapidly taking place in this country. The persons tried under the aggravation of previous convictions in Scotland, in the three last years, have stood as follows: —

– Parliamentary Reports, 1846-48.

So rapid an increase of crimes, and especially among criminals previously convicted, sufficiently demonstrates the inadequacy of imprisonment as a means either of deterring from crimes, or reforming the criminals. The same result appears in England, where the rapid increase of criminals sentenced to transportation, within the same period, demonstrates the total inefficacy of the new imprisonment system.

And of the futility of the hope that the spread of education will have any effect in checking the increase of crime, decisive proof is afforded in the same criminal returns; for from them it appears that the number of educated criminals in England is above twice, in Scotland above three times and a half that of the uneducated, – the numbers, during the last three years, being as follows: —

– Parliamentary Returns, 1846-8.

Nay, what is still more alarming, it distinctly appears, from the same returns, that the proportion of educated criminals to uneducated is steadily on the increase in Great Britain. Take the centesimal proportions given in the last returns for England – those of 1848: —

– Parliamentary Returns for England, 1848, p. 12.

The great increase here is in the criminals who have received an imperfect education, which class has increased as much as that of the totally uneducated has diminished. Unhappily, imperfect education is precisely the species of instruction which alone, in the present days of cheapened production and diminishing wages, the great body of the poor are able to give to their children.

Mr Pearson, M.P., who has paid great attention to this subject, and whose high official situation in the city of London gives him such ample means of being acquainted with the practical working of the criminal law, has given the following valuable information in a public speech, which every one acquainted with the subject must know to be thoroughly well founded: —

"In the year 1810, which is the earliest account that we possess in any of our archives, the number of commitments, of assize and sessions cases, was 5146. In the year 1848, the number of commitments for sessions and assize cases was 30,349. Population during that period had increased but 60 per cent, whilst the commitments for crime had increased 420 per cent. I should not be candid with this assembly if I did not at once say, that there are various disturbing circumstances which intervene, during that period, to prevent the apparent increase of commitments being the real estimate of the actual increase. There was the transition from war to peace. We all know, that from the days of Hollingshed, the old chronicler, it has been said that war takes to itself a portion of the loose population, who find in the casualties of war, its dangers, rewards and profligate indulgences, something like a kindred feeling to the war made upon society by the predatory classes. Hence we find that, when war ceases, a number of that class of the community are thrown back on the honest portion of society, which, during the period of war, had been drained off. Besides this, there are other co-operating causes. There is the improved police, the constabulary, rural or metropolitan, who undoubtedly detect many of those offences which were formerly committed with impunity. There is also the act of parliament for paying prosecutors and witnesses their expenses, which led to an increased number of prosecutors in proportion to the number of crimes actually detected. These circumstances have, no doubt, exercised a considerable influence over the increase in the commitments; but after having for 35 years paid the closest attention to the subject, having filled, and still filling, a high office in regard to the administration of the law in the city of London, I am bound to say, that, making full deduction from the number which every feeling of anxiety to raise the country from the imputation of increasing in its criminal character dictates – after making every deduction, I am bound with shame and humility to acknowledge, that it leaves a very large amount of increase in the actual, the positive number of commitments for crime. Sir, this is indeed a humiliating acknowledgment; but happily the statistics of this country, in other particulars, warrant us in drawing comfort from the conviction, that even this fact affords no true representation of the state of the moral character of the people – no evidence of their increasing degradation of character or conduct, in anything like the proportion or degree that those statistics would appear to show. I appeal to history – I appeal to the recollection of every man in this assembly, who, like myself, has passed the meridian of life, whether society has not advanced in morals as well as in arts, science, and literature, and everything which tends to improve the social character of the people. Let any man who has read not our country's history alone, but the tales and novels of former times – and we must frequently look to them, rather than to the records of history, for a faithful transcript of the morals of the age in which they were written, – let any man recur to the productions of Fielding and of Smollett, and say whether the habits, manners, and morals of the great masses of our population are not materially improved within the last century. Great popular delusions prevail as to the causes of the increase of commitments for criminal offences in this country, which I deem it to be my duty to endeavour to dispel. Some ascribe the increase to the want of instruction of our youth, some to the absence of religious teaching, some to the increased intemperance, and some to the increased poverty of the people. I assert that there is no foundation for the opinions that ascribe the increase of crime to these causes. If the absence of education were the cause of crime, surely crime would be found to have diminished since education has increased. For the purpose of comparing the present and past state of education, for its influence upon the criminal statistics of the nation, I will not go back to the time when the single Bible in the parish was chained to a pillar in the church; or when the barons affixed their cross to documents, from inability to write their names. I refer to dates, and times, and circumstances within our own recollection. In the year 1814 the report of the National Society says, there were only 100,000 children receiving the benefit of education. Now there are above 1,000,000 under that excellent institution, besides the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands who are receiving education under the auspices of the Lancasterian Society Schools. But some may say that the value of education is not to be estimated by numbers. Well then, I reject numbers, if you please, and try it by its quality. I ask any man who listens to me if he does not know that the national schools, and other gratuitous establishments in this country, now give privileges in education which children in a respectable condition of life could hardly obtain, such was the defective state of instruction in this country, 40 or 50 years ago. (Cheers.) No man, therefore, can say that the increase of crime is attributable to the absence of education. If it were so, with education increased 800 per cent during the last 30 years, crime would have diminished, instead of increased, 400 per cent." —Times, Aug. 28, 1849.

The immense expense with which the maintenance of such prodigious numbers of prisoners in jail is attended, is another most serious evil, especially in these days of retrenchment, diminished profits, and economy. From the last Report of the Jail Commissioners for Scotland – that for 1848 – it appears that the average cost of each prisoner over the whole country for a year, after deducting his earnings in confinement, is £16, 7s. 6d. As this is the cost after labour has been generally introduced into prisons, and the greatest efforts to reduce expense have been made, it may fairly be presumed that it cannot be reduced lower. The average number of prisoners constantly in jail in Scotland is now about 3500, which, at £16, 7s. 6d. a-head, will come to about £53,000 a-year.[1 - Prison Report 1848, p. 73.] Applying this proportion to the 60,000 criminals, now on an average constantly in confinement in the two islands,[2 - In 1848, the number committed for serious offences was 73,770.] the annual expense of their maintenance cannot be under a million sterling. The prison and county rates of England alone, which include the cost of prosecutions, are £1,300,000 a-year. But that result, enormous as it is in a country in which poor-rates and all local burdens are so rapidly augmenting, is but a part of the evil. Under the present system a thief is seldom transported, at least in Scotland, till he has been three or four years plying his trade; during which period his gains by depredations, and expenses of maintenance, cannot have averaged less than £25 yearly. Thus it may with safety be affirmed, that every thief transported from Scotland has cost the country, before he goes, at least £100; and that has been expended in training him up to such habits of hardened depravity, that he is probably as great a curse to the colony to which he is sent, as he had proved a burden to that from which he was conveyed. Sixteen pounds would have been the cost of his transportation in the outset of his career, when, from his habits of crime not being matured, he had a fair chance of proving an acquisition, instead of a curse, to the place of his destination.

As the question of imprisonment or transportation, so far as Great Britain and Ireland are concerned, is now settled by the demonstrative evidence of the return of a reluctant government to the system which in an evil hour they abandoned, it may seem unnecessary to go into detail in order to show how absolutely necessary it was to do so; and how entirely the boasted system of imprisonment, with all its adjuncts of separation, silence, hard labour, and moral and religious instruction, has failed either in checking crime, or producing any visible reformation in the criminals. No one practically acquainted with the subject ever entertained the slightest doubt that this would be the case; and in two articles directed to the subject in this magazine, in 1844, we distinctly foretold what the result would be.[3 - See the "Increase of Crime, and Imprisonment, and Transportation," Blackwood's Magazine, May and July 1844, vol. lv. p. 532, and vol. lvi. p. 1.] To those who, following in the wake of prelates or philanthropists, how respectable soever, such as Archbishop Whately, who know nothing whatever of the subject except from the fallacious evidence of parliamentary committees, worked up by their own theoretical imaginations, we recommend the study of the Tables below, compiled from the parliamentary returns since the imprisonment system began, to show to what a pass the adoption of their rash visions has brought the criminal administration of the country.[4 - Table showing the number of commitments for serious offences in the undermentioned years in England, Scotland, and Ireland: —]

It is not surprising that it should be so, and that all the pains taken, and philanthropy wasted, in endeavouring to reform criminals in jail in this country, or hindering them from returning to their old habits when let loose within it, should have proved abortive. Two reasons of paramount efficacy have rendered them all nugatory. The first of these is, that the theory regarding the possibility of reforming offenders when in prison, or suffering punishment in this country, is wholly erroneous, and proceeds on an entire misconception of the principles by which alone such a reformation can in any case be effected. In prison, how solitary soever, you can work only on the intellectual faculties. The active powers or feelings can receive no development within the four walls of a cell, for they have no object by which they can be called forth. But nine-tenths of mankind in any rank, and most certainly nineteen-twentieths of persons bred as criminals, are wholly inaccessible to the influence of the intellect, considered as a restraint or regulator of their passions. If they had been capable of being influenced in that way, they would never have become criminals. Persons who fall into the habits which bring them under the lash of the criminal law, are almost always those in whom, either from natural disposition, or the unhappy circumstances of early habits and training, the intellectual faculties are almost entirely in abeyance, so far as self-control is concerned; and any development they have is only directed to procuring gratification for, or furthering the objects of the senses. To address to such persons the moral discipline of a prison, however admirably conducted, is as hopeless as it would be to descant to a man born blind on the objects of sight, or to preach to an ignorant boor in the Greek or Hebrew tongue. Sense is to them all in all. Esau is the true prototype of this class of men; they are always ready to exchange their birthright for a mess of pottage.

No length of solitary confinement, or scarce any amount of moral or religious instruction, can awaken in them either the slightest repentance for their crimes, or the least power of self-control when temptation is again thrown in their way. They regard the period of imprisonment as a blank in their lives – a time of woful monotony and total deprivation of enjoyment, which only renders it the more imperative on them, the moment it is terminated, to begin anew with fresh zest their old enjoyments. Their first object is to make up for months of compulsory sobriety by days of voluntary intoxication. At the close of a short period of hideous saturnalia, they are generally involved in some fresh housebreaking or robbery, to pay for their long train of indulgence; and soon find themselves again immured in their old quarters, only the more determined to run through the same course of forced regularity and willing indulgence. They are often able to feign reformation, so as to impose on their jailors, and obtain liberation on pretended amendment of character. But it is rarely if ever that they are really reclaimed; and hence the perpetual recurrences of the same characters in the criminal courts; till the magistrates, tired of imprisoning them, send them to the assizes or quarter-sessions for transportation. Even then, however, their career is often far from being terminated in this country. The keepers of the public penitentiaries become tired of keeping them. When they cannot send them abroad, their cells are soon crowded; and they take advantage of a feigned amendment to open the prison doors and let them go. They are soon found again in their old haunts, and at their old practices. At the spring circuit held at Glasgow in April 1848, when the effects of the recent imprisonment mania were visible, – out of 117 ordinary criminals indicted, no less than twenty-two had been sentenced to transportation at Glasgow, for periods not less than seven years, within the preceding two years; and the previous conviction and sentence of transportation was charged as an aggravation of their new offence against each in the indictment.

The next reason which renders imprisonment, in an old society and amidst a redundant population, utterly inefficacious as a means of reforming criminals is, that, even if they do imbibe better ideas and principles during their confinement, they find it impossible on their liberation to get into any honest employment, or gain admission into any well-doing circle, where they may put their newly-acquired principles into practice. If, indeed, there existed a government or parochial institution, into which they might be received on leaving prison, and by which they might be marched straightway to the nearest seaport, and there embarked for Canada or Australia, a great step would be made towards giving them the means of durable reformation. But as there is none such in existence, and as they scarcely ever are possessed of money enough, on leaving prison, to carry them across the Atlantic, they are of necessity obliged to remain in their own country – and that, to persons in their situation, is certain ruin. In new colonies, or thinly-peopled countries, such as Australia or Siberia, convicts, from the scarcity of labour, may in general be able to find employment; and from the absence of temptation, and the severance of the links which bound them to their old associates, they are often there found to do well. But nothing of that sort can be expected in an old and thickly-peopled country, where the competition for employment is universal, and masters, having the choice of honest servants of untainted character, cannot be expected to take persons who have been convicted of crimes, and exposed to the pollutions of a jail.

Practically speaking, it is impossible for persons who have been in jail to get into any honest or steady employment in their own country; and if they do by chance, or by the ignorance of their employers of their previous history, get into a situation, it is ere long discovered, by the associates who come about them, where they have been, and they speedily lose it. If you ask any person who has been transported in consequence of repeated convictions, why he did not take warning by the first, the answer uniformly is, that he could not get into employment, and was obliged to take to thieving, or starve. Add to this that the newly-reformed criminal, on leaving jail, and idling about, half starved, in search of work, of necessity, as well as from inclination, finds his way back to his old residence, where his character is known, and he is speedily surrounded by his old associates, who, in lieu of starving integrity, offer him a life of joyous and well-fed depravity. It can hardly be expected that human virtue, and least of all the infant virtue of a newly-reformed criminal, can withstand so rude a trial. Accordingly, when the author once asked Mr Brebner, the late governor of the Glasgow bridewell, what proportion of formed criminals he ever knew to have been reformed by prison discipline, he answered that the proportion was easily told, for he never knew one. And in the late debate in parliament on this subject, it was stated by the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, that while the prison discipline at Pentonville promised the most cheering results, it was among those trained there, and subsequently transported, that the improvement was visible; for that no such results were observed among those who, after liberation, were allowed to remain in this country.

But while it is thus proved, both by principle and experience, that the moral reformation of offenders cannot be effected by imprisonment, even under the most improved system, in this country, yet, in one respect, a very great amelioration of the prisoner's habits, and extension of his powers, is evidently practicable. It is easy to teach a prisoner a trade; and such is the proficiency which is rapidly acquired by the undivided attention to one object in a jail, that one objection which has been stated to the imprisonment system is, that it interferes with the employment of honest industry out of doors. No one can walk through any of the well-regulated prisons in Great Britain without seeing that, whatever else you cannot do, it is easy to teach such a proficiency in trade to the convicts as may render them, if their depraved inclinations can be arrested, useful members of society, and give them the means of earning a livelihood by honest industry. Many of them are exceedingly clever, evince great aptitude for the learning of handicrafts, and exert the utmost diligence in their prosecution. Let no man, however, reckon on their reformation, because they are thus skilful and assiduous: turn them out of prison in this country, and you will soon see them drinking and thieving with increased alacrity, from the length of their previous confinement. It is evidently not intellectual cunning, or manual skill, or vigour in pursuit, which they in general want – it is the power of directing their faculties to proper objects, when at large in this country, which they are entirely without, and which no length of confinement, or amount of moral and religious instruction communicated in prison, is able to confer upon them. Here then is one great truth ascertained, by the only sure guide in such matters —experience– that while it is wholly impossible to give prisoners the power of controlling their passions, or abstaining from their evil propensities, when at large, by any amount of prison discipline, it is always not only possible, but easy, to communicate to them such handicraft skill, or power of exercising trades, as may, the moment the wicked dispositions are brought under control, render them useful and even valuable members of society.

Experience equally proves that, though the moral reformation of convicts in this country is so rare as, practically speaking, to be considered as impossible, yet this is very far indeed from being the case when they are removed to a distant land, where all connexion with their old associates is at once and for ever broken; where an honest career is not only open, but easy, to the most depraved, and a boundless supply of fertile but unappropriated land affords scope for the exercise of the desire of gain on legitimate objects, and affords no facilities for the commission of crime, or the acquisition of property, by the short-hand methods of theft or robbery. Lord Brougham, in a most able work, which is little known only because it runs counter to the prejudices of the age, has well explained the causes of this peculiarity: —

"The new emigrants, who at various times continued to flock to the extensive country of America, were by no means of the same description with the first settlers. Some of these were the scourings of jails, banished for their crimes; many of them were persons of desperate fortunes, to whom every place was equally uninviting; or men of notoriously abandoned lives, to whom any region was acceptable that offered them a shelter from the vengeance of the law, or the voice of public indignation. But a change of scene will work some improvement upon the most dissolute of characters. It is much to be removed from the scenes with which villany has been constantly associated, and the companions who have rendered it agreeable. It is something to have the leisure of a long voyage, with its awakening terrors, to promote reflection. Besides, to regain once more the privilege of that good name, which every unknown man may claim until he is tried, presents a powerful temptation to reform, and furnishes an opportunity of amendment denied in the scenes of exposure and destruction. If the convicts in the colony of New Holland, though surrounded on the voyage and in the settlement by the companions of their iniquities, have in a great degree been reclaimed by the mere change of scene, what might not be expected from such a change as we are considering? But the honest acquisition of a little property, and its attendant importance, is, beyond any other circumstance, the one most calculated to reform the conduct of a needy and profligate man, by inspiring him with a respect for himself and a feeling of his stake in the community, and by putting a harmless and comfortable life at least within the reach of his exertions. If the property is of a nature to require constant industry, in order to render it of any value; if it calls forth that sort of industry which devotes the labourer to a solitary life in the open air, and repays him not with wealth and luxury, but with subsistence and ease; if, in short, it is property in land, divided into small portions and peopled by few inhabitants, no combination of circumstances can be figured to contribute more directly to the reformation of the new cultivator's character and manners."[5 - Brougham's Colonial Policy, i. 61, 62.]

In addition to these admirable observations, it may be stated, as another, and perhaps the principal reason why transportation, when conducted on proper principles, is attended with such immediate and beneficial influences on the moral character of the convict, that it places him in situations where scope is afforded for the development of the domestic and generous affections. A counterpoise is provided to self. It is the impossibility of providing such a counterpoise within the four walls of a cell – the extreme difficulty of finding it, in any circumstances in which a prisoner can be placed, on his liberation from jail in his own country, which is the chief cause of the total failure of all attempts to work a moral reform on prisoners, when kept at home, by any, even the most approved system of jail discipline. But that which cannot be obtained at home is immediately, on transportation, found in the colonies. The criminal is no longer thrown back on himself in the solitude of a cell – he is not surrounded by thieves and prostitutes, urging him to resume his old habits, on leaving it. The female convict, on arriving in New South Wales, is almost immediately married; ere long the male, if he is industrious and well-behaved, has the means of being so. Regular habits then come to supplant dissolute – the natural affections spring up in the heart with the creation of the objects on which they are to be exercised. The solitary tenant of a cell – the dissolute frequenter of spirit-cellars and bagnios, acquires a home. The affections of the fireside begin to spring up, because a fireside is obtained.

Incalculable is the effect of this change of circumstances on the character of the most depraved. Accordingly it is mentioned by Mr Cunningham, in his very interesting Account of New South Wales, that great numbers of young women taken from the streets of London, who have resisted all efforts of Christian zeal and philanthropy in Magdalene Asylums or Penitentiaries at home, and embark for New South Wales in the most shocking state of depravity, become sensibly improved in their manners, and are not unfrequently entirely reformed by forming, during the voyage, temporary connections with sailors, to whom, when the choice is once made, they generally remain faithful: so powerful and immediate is the effect of an approach even to a home, and lasting ties, on the female heart.[6 - Cunningham's New South Wales, i. 262.] The feelings which offspring produces are never entirely obliterated in the breast of woman. It has been often observed, that though dissolute females generally, when they remain at home, find it impossible to reform their own lives, yet they rarely, if they have the power, fail to bring up their children at a distance from their haunts of iniquity. So powerful is the love of children, and the secret sense of shame at their own vices, in the breasts even of the most depraved of the female sex.

It has been proved, accordingly, by experience, on the very largest scale, not only that the reformation of offenders, when transported to a colony in a distant part of the world, takes place, if they are preserved in a due proportion of numerical inferiority to the untainted population, to an extent unparalleled in any other situation; but that, when so regulated, they constitute the greatest possible addition to the strength, progress, and riches of a colony. From official papers laid before parliament, before the unhappy crowding of convicts in New South Wales began, and the gang-system was introduced, it appears that between the years 1800 and 1817 – that is, in seventeen years – out of 17,000 convicts transported to New South Wales, no less than six thousand had, at the close of the period, obtained their freedom from their good conduct, and had earned among them, by their free labour, property to the amount of £1,500,000! It may be safely affirmed that the history of the world does not afford so astonishing and gratifying an instance of the moral reformation of offenders, or one pointing so clearly to the true system to be pursued regarding them. It will be recollected that this reformation took place when 17,000 convicts were transported in seventeen years – that is, on an average, 1000 a-year only – and when the gang-system was unknown, and the convict on landing at Sidney was immediately assigned to a free colonist, by whom he was forthwith marched up the country into a remote situation, and employed under his master's direction in rural labour or occupations.

And that the colony itself prospers immensely from the forced labour of convicts being added, in not too great proportions, to the voluntary labour of freemen, is decisively proved by the astonishing progress which Australia has made during the last fifty years; the degree in which it has distanced all its competitors in which convict labour was unknown; and the marvellous amount of wealth and comfort, so much exceeding upon the whole that known in any other colony, which now exists among its inhabitants. We say upon the whole, because we are well aware that in some parts of Australia, particularly Van Diemen's Land, property has of late years been most seriously depreciated in value – partly from the monetary crisis, which has affected that distant settlement as well as the rest of the empire, and partly from the inordinate number of convicts who have been sent to that one locality, from the vast increase of crime at home, and the cessations of transportation to Sidney; – a number which has greatly exceeded the proper and salutary proportion to freemen, and has been attended with the most disastrous results. But that the introduction of convicts, when not too depraved, and kept in due subordination by being in a small minority compared to the freemen, is, so far from being an evil, the greatest possible advantage to a colony, is decisively proved by the parliamentary returns quoted below, showing the comparative progress during a long course of years of Australia, aided by convict labour, and the Cape of Good Hope and Canada, which have not enjoyed that advantage. These returns are decisive. They demonstrate that the progress of the convict colonies, during the last half century, has been three times as rapid as that of those enjoying equal or greater advantages, to whom convicts have not been sent; and that the present state of comforts they enjoy, as measured by the amount per head of British manufactures they consume, is also triple that of any other colony who have been kept entirely clear from the supposed stain, but real advantages, of forced labour.[7 - Table showing the annual exports of British manufactures to the undermentioned Colonies, from 1828 to 1846.]

Accordingly, the ablest and best-informed statistical writers and travellers on the Continent, struck with the safe and expeditious method of getting quit of and reforming its convicts which Great Britain enjoys, from its numerous colonies in every part of the world, and the want of which is so severely felt in the Continental states, are unanimous in considering the possession of such colonies, and consequent power of unlimited transportation, as one of the very greatest social advantages which England enjoys. Hear what one of the most enlightened of those writers, M. Malte-Brun, says on the subject: —

"England has long been in the habit of disposing of its wicked citizens in a way at once philosophic and politic, by sending them out to cultivate distant colonies. It was thus that the shores of the Delaware and the Potomac were peopled in America. After the American war, they were at a loss where to send the convicts, and the Cape of Good Hope was first thought of; but, on the recommendation of the learned Sir Joseph Banks, New South Wales obtained the preference. The first vessel arrived at Botany Bay on the 20th January 1788, and brought out 760 convicts, and according to a census taken in 1821, exhibited the following results in thirty-three years, viz. —

In 1832, that population had risen to 40,000 souls.[8 - It now (1849) exceeds 200,000 souls.] In 1821, there were in the colony 5000 horses, 120,000 horned cattle, and 350,000 sheep. It consumed, at that period, 8,500,000 francs' (£340,000) worth of English manufactures, being about £8, 10s. a-head, and exported to Europe about £100,000 worth in rude produce.

"Great division of opinion has existed in France, for a long course of years, on the possibility of diminishing the frequency of the punishment of death, as well as that of the galleys; but a serious difficulty has been alleged in the expense with which an establishment such as New South Wales would cost. It is worthy of remark, however, that from 1789 to the end of 1821, England had expended for the transport, maintenance, and other charges of 33,155 convicts, transported to New South Wales, £5,301,023, being scarce a third of what the prisoners would have cost in the prisons of Great Britain, without having the satisfaction of having changed into useful citizens those who were the shame and terror of society.

"When a vessel with convicts on board arrives in the colony, the men who are not married in it, are permitted to choose a wife among the female convicts. At the expiration of his term of punishment, every convict is at liberty to return to his own country, at his own expense. If he chooses to remain, he obtains a grant of land, and provisions for 18 months: if he is married the allotment is larger, and an adequate portion is allowed for each child. Numbers are provided with the means of emigration at the expense of government; they obtain 150 acres of land, seed-corn, and implements of husbandry. It is worthy of remark that, thanks to the vigilance of the authorities, the transported in that colony lose their depraved habits; that the women become well behaved and fruitful; and that the children do not inherit the vices of their parents. These results are sufficient to place the colony of New South Wales among the most noble philanthropic institutions in the world. After that, can any one ask the expense of the establishment?" – Malte-Brun, Géographie Universelle, xii. 194-196.

But here a fresh difficulty arises. Granting, it will be said, that transportation is so immense a benefit to the mother country, in affording a safe and certain vent for its criminals; and to the colonies, by providing them with so ample a supply of forced labour, what is to be done when they will not receive it? The colonies are all up in arms against transportation; not one can be persuaded, on any terms, to receive these convicts. When a ship with convicts arrives, they begin talking about separation and independence, and reminding us of Bunker's Hill and Saratoga. The Cape shows us with what feelings colonies which have not yet received them view the introduction of criminals; Van Diemen's Land, how well founded their apprehensions are of the consequences of such an invasion of civilised depravity. This difficulty, at first sight, appears not only serious but insurmountable. On a nearer examination, however, it will be found that, however formidable it may appear, it could easily be got over; and that it is entirely owing to the true principles of transportation having been forgotten, and one of the first duties of government neglected by our rulers for the last thirty years.

It is very remarkable, and throws an important light on this question, that this horror at the influx of convicts, which has now become so general in the colonies as to render it almost impossible to find a place where they can with safety be landed, is entirely of recent origin. It never was heard of till within the last fifteen or twenty years. Previous to that time, and even much later, transportation was not only regarded by the penal colonies without aversion, but with the utmost possible complacency. They looked to a series of heavy assizes in Great Britain with the same feelings of anxious solicitude, as the working classes do to a good harvest, or the London tradesman to a gay and money-spending season. Spirits never were so high in Sidney, speculation never so rife, property never so valuable, profits never so certain, as when the convict ships arrived well stored with compulsory emigrants. If any one doubts this, let him open the early numbers of the Colonial Magazine, and he will find them filled with resolutions of public meetings in New South Wales, recounting the immense advantages the colony had derived from the forced labour of convicts, and most earnestly deprecating any intermission in their introduction. As a specimen, we subjoin a series of resolutions, by the Governor and Council of New South Wales, on a petition agreed to, at a public meeting held in Sidney, on 18th February 1838.

Resolutions of the Legislative Council, New South Wales, 17th July 1838

4. Resolved.– That, in opinion of this council, the numerous free emigrants of character and capital, including many officers of the army and navy, and East India Company's service, who have settled in this colony, with their families, together with a rising generation of native-born subjects, constitute a body of colonists who, in the exercise of the social and moral relations of life, are not inferior to the inhabitants of any other dependency of the British crown, and are sufficient to impress a character of respectability upon the colony at large.

5. Resolved.– That, in the opinion of this council, the rapid and increasing advance of this colony, in the short space of fifty years from its first establishment, in rural, commercial, and financial prosperity, proves indisputably the activity, the enterprise, and industry of the colonists, and is wholly incompatible with the state of society represented to exist here.

6. Resolved.– That, in the opinion of this council, the strong desire manifested by the colonists generally, to obtain moral and religious instruction, and the liberal contributions, which have been made from private funds, towards this most essential object, abundantly testify that the advancement of virtue and religion amongst them is regarded with becoming solicitude.

7. Resolved.– That, in the opinion of this council, if transportation and assignment have hitherto failed to produce all the good effects anticipated by their projectors, such failure may be traced to circumstances, many of which are no longer in existence, whilst others are in rapid progress of amendment. Amongst the most prominent causes of failure may be adduced the absence, at the first establishment of the colony, of adequate religious and moral instruction, and the want of proper means of classification in the several gaols throughout the colony, as well as of a sufficient number of free emigrants, properly qualified to become the assignees of convicts, and to be intrusted with their management and control.

8. Resolved.– That, in the opinion of this council, the great extension which has latterly been afforded of moral and religious instruction, the classification which may in future be made in the numerous gaols now in progress of erection, upon the most approved principles of inspection and separation, the most effectual punishment and classification of offenders in ironed gangs, according to their improved system of management – the numerous free emigrants now eligible as the assignees of convicts, and the accumulated experience of half a century – form a combination of circumstances, which renders the colony better adapted at the present, than at any former period, to carry into effect the praiseworthy intentions of the first founders of the system of transportation and assignment, which had no less for its object reformation of character than a just infliction of punishment.

9. Resolved.– That, in the opinion of this council, no system of penal discipline, or secondary punishment, will be found at once so cheap, so effective, and so reformatory, as that of well-regulated assignment – the good conduct of the convict, and his continuance at labour, being so obviously the interest of the assignee; whilst the partial solitude and privations, incidental to a pastoral or agricultural life in the remote districts of the colony, (which may be made the universal employment of convicts,) by effectually breaking a connexion with companions and habits of vice, is better calculated than any other system to produce moral reformation, when accompanied by adequate religious instruction.

10. Resolved.– That, in the opinion of this council, many men who, previously to their conviction, had been brought up in habits of idleness and vice, have acquired, by means of assignment, not only habits of industry and labour, but the knowledge of a remunerative employment, which, on becoming free, forms a strong inducement to continue in an honest course of life.

11. Resolved.– That, in the opinion of this council, the sudden discontinuance of transportation and assignment, by depriving the colonists of convict labour, must necessarily curtail their means of purchasing crown lands, and, consequently, the supply of funds for the purpose of immigration.

12. Resolved.– That, in the opinion of this council, the produce of the labour of convicts, in assignment, is thus one of the principal, though indirect means, of bringing into the colony free persons: it is obvious, therefore, that the continuance of emigration in any extended form, must necessarily depend upon the continuance of the assignment of convicts.[9 - Colonial Magazine, i. 431, 433.]

It is not surprising that they viewed, at this period, the transportation system in this light; for under it they had made advances in population, comfort, and riches, unparalleled in any other age or country of the world.

How, then, has it happened that so great a change has come over the views of the colonists on this subject; and that the system which they formerly regarded, with reason, as the sheet-anchor of their prosperity, is now almost universally looked to with unqualified aversion, as the certain forerunner of their destruction? The answer is easy. It is because transportation, as formerly conducted, was a blessing, and because, as conducted of late years, it has become a curse, that the change of opinion has arisen in regard to it. The feelings of the colonists, in both cases, were founded on experience – both were, in the circumstances in which they arose, equally well founded, and both were therefore equally entitled to respect and attention. We have only to restore the circumstances in which the convicts were a blessing, to revive the times in which their arrival will be regarded as a boon. And to effect this, can easily be shown not only to be attended with no difficulty, but only to require the simultaneous adoption by government of a system of punishment at home, and of voluntary emigration at the public expense abroad, attended with a very trifling expense, and calculated to relieve, beyond any other measure that could by possibility be devised, the existing distress among the labouring classes of Great Britain and Ireland.

To render the introduction of penal labour into a colony an advantage, three things are necessary. 1st, that the convicts sent out should be for the most part instructed in some simple rural art or occupation, of use in the country into which they are to be transplanted. 2d, that they should in general be beginners in crime, and a small number of them only hardened in depravity. 3d, what is most important of all, that they should be preserved in a due proportion, never exceeding a fourth or a fifth to the free and untainted settlers. Under these conditions, their introduction will always prove a blessing, and will be hailed as a boon. If they are neglected, they will prove a curse, and their arrival be regarded as a punishment.

Various circumstances have contributed, of late years, to render the convict system a dreadful evil, instead of, as formerly, a signal benefit to the colonies. But that affords no ground for despair; on the contrary, it furnishes the most well-grounded reason for hope. We are suffering under the effects of an erroneous regimen, not any inherent malady in the patient. Change this treatment, and his health will soon return.

It is well known that the greatest pains have of late years been taken, in this country, to instruct prisoners in jail in some useful handicraft; and that, so far has this been carried, that our best-regulated jails are more in fact great houses of industry. The general penitentiary at Pentonville, in particular, where the convicts sentenced to transportation are trained, previous to their removal to the penal settlements, is a perfect model of arrangement and attention in this important respect. But it is equally well known that it is only of late years that this signal reform has come into operation; and we have the satisfaction of knowing that already its salutary effects have been evinced, in the most signal manner, with the convicts sent abroad. Previous to the year 1840, scarcely anything was done on any considerable scale, either to teach ordinary prisoners trades in jail, to separate them from each other, or to prepare them, in the public penitentiaries, for the duties in which they were to be engaged, when they arrived at their distant destination. The county jails, now resounding with the clang of ceaseless occupation, pursued by prisoners in their separate cells, then only re-echoed the din of riot and revelling in the day-rooms where the idle prisoners were huddled together, and beguiled the weary hours of their captivity by stories of perpetrated crime, or plans for its renewal the moment they got out of confinement. But the ideas of men are all formed on the experience of facts, or the thoughts driven into them, for a considerable time back. The present universal horror at transportation is founded on the experience of the prisoners with which, for a quarter of a century, New South Wales had been flooded, from the idle day-rooms or profligate hulks of Great Britain. Some years must elapse before the effects of the improved discipline received, and laborious habits acquired, in the jails and penitentiaries of the mother country, produces any general effect on public opinion in its distant colonies.