John Dunmore Lang

“ To consider transportation as a punishment, in the case of a large majority of such convicts, is pre-eminently absurd. Those of them that are employed as domestic servants have generally much lighter labour to perform, and much better fare, than free servants in the mother country; and after a few years' service, they obtain tickets of leave, or certificates of freedom; when they begin the world for themselves with prospects of success in business, or with means of dissipation, utterly beyond the reach of the industrious classes in England. ”

“ The acquisition of large fortunes by such persons and by such means, has, doubtless, had a powerful and direct influence in frustrating one of the great ends of transportation—the prevention of crime in the mother country—by holding out the colony as the paradise of criminals to the whole class in England; it being consistent with the nature of man to look only to the prizes in the grand lottery of crime, and to disregard the blanks. ”

“ It may be urged, indeed, that convict labour, in the way of assignment to free settlers, is indispensably necessary for the development of the resources of the colony, and for securing its rapid and progressive advancement; while, on the other hand, the employment of all the convicts, who might hereafter be transported to New South Wales, at government labour and under government superintendence, would subject the British government to an enormous and intolerable expense. ”

“ Now supposing that this had actually been the case, it was most impolitic for the mother country to effect so paltry a saving on the annual expense of maintaining her unruly convicts beyond seas, at so prodigious an expense to the moral welfare of a flourishing colony, and at so great a loss to herself in a different respect: for the annual importation of three thousand additional free emigrants into New South Wales, which the misappropriated revenue could have effected, would not only have enabled the colony to meet the whole amount of its police expenditure at a much earlier period ”

“ That there should be any difficulty, however, in subjecting a convict under sentence of transportation to as hard and incessant labour at a penal settlement in New Holland as it is possible to subject him to in England, I cannot conceive: on the contrary, the facilities of apportioning the comparative severity of the labour to the comparative criminality of the convict, are much greater in a new country than in one in a high state of improvement. ”

“ In short, the convict would be the greatest gainer of all, under the proposed new system of management; in being preserved, on the one hand, from numberless and strong temptations, and in being strongly stimulated, on the other, to industry and virtue. Transportation would thus be a punishment in reality, and would be found sufficiently formidable to deter many from crime ”

“ I trust the same principle of thorough reform, which has already been so beneficially exemplified in other departments of the public service, will, ere long, be extended to that important dependency of the empire, in the way of providing an effectual remedy, in so far as such a remedy can yet be provided, for those great evils that have already resulted, and may yet result to it, from the mismanagement of the transportation system. ”

“ For in regard to the latter of these modes of employing convict labour; as the increase of value, of which property is susceptible in a new country, from the mere increase of population, is incredible in England; it is fully in the power of the mother country, by taking a judicious advantage of this fact, to repay herself eventually for all her outlay in the maintenance of such portion of her convicts as should be employed in clearing the way for the progressive settlement of a free emigrant population. ”

“ It would have rendered it necessary for the ticket-of-leave holder, or emancipated convict, to obtain his livelihood by honest industry, in clearing and cultivating land, or in the service or employment of reputable freemen, instead of living a life of idleness and luxurious indulgence, or preying like a horse-leech upon society, as a publican or general dealer. ”

“ In a moral and religious light, the introduction of a numerous and virtuous free emigrant population into the colony of New South Wales, cannot fail to afford a highly gratifying prospect to all who are sincerely desirous of promoting the best interests of that important dependency of the empire. ”

“ In short, as drunkenness is the parent of crime, it must be self-evident, that a colony, in which the consumption of ardent spirits is so enormous as it now is in New South Wales, and the temptations to that species of indulgence so numerous, can no longer be a fit place for transported criminals under the system of management hitherto pursued in that colony. ”

“ But in proportion as the humbler class of settlers should succeed in establishing themselves in comfort and independence, they would be induced, under the guidance of their ministers and schoolmasters, to secure the benefits of a superior education for their children; and would thus be the means of eventually raising up an aristocracy of virtue and talent, of incomparably more value, in a convict colony, than an aristocracy of birth, or wealth, or employment. ”

“ Convict labour is a species of public property, which the state has a right, and is in duty bound, to turn to the best account for the public benefit: but there can be no question as to whether convict labour can be employed more advantageously for the public in the colonies, where labour is in requisition and proportionably valuable, than in the mother country, where it is in superabundance and proportionably cheap. ”

“ It is not wonderful, therefore, that every trace of the convict origin of a certain proportion of the population of the United States of America should have disappeared entirely long ago. The free emigrant inhabitants of the American colonies were too numerous, from the very first, to permit persons of this class and origin to form a separate body in the community, far less to give the tone to society. ”

“ It is in these circumstances that the home government are doubtless amused with the fallacy of a large annual balance of land-revenue in the treasury chest of New South Wales, over and above the whole expenditure required for supplying the whole existing demand for free labour in that colony. It is the bounden duty of the colonial government to see that there shall be no such balance in the colonial chest, and that every sixpence of the land-revenue be expended forthwith in importing virtuous and industrious free emigrants into the colonial territory. ”

“ Nay, it cannot be denied, that there are masters in New South Wales, who set so scandalous an example before their convict servants, and treat them on all occasions so much more like brutes than men, that the reformation of a convict in their employment is absolutely hopeless, and his depravation certain. ”

“ To carry out Lord Bacon's own metaphor, I would observe, that as the goodliest herbs and the most valuable fruit-trees, when first planted in the earth, have their roots covered or surrounded in the shape of manure with the filthiest and the most abominable of physical substances, so may a certain portion of the moral abominations of the empire, in the shape of "wicked, condemned men," be so disposed around the roots of that vigorous plant, a British colony, as to enable it to strike these roots the more quickly and the more deeply into the virgin soil. ”

“ As to any direct means of attempting the reformation of criminals, it is no want of charity to assert, that they have scarcely ever been had recourse to in any form under the colonial system of New South Wales. Even religious instruction, that most powerful means of reformation, was for a long period either withheld from the convicts altogether, or subjected to some counteracting and polluting influence, which served either entirely to neutralize its efficacy, or to convert it into a system of downright mockery and insult. ”

“ After what has already been advanced, it is perhaps unnecessary to enlarge on the very unwise and unwarrantable mode in which the land fund of the Australian colonies has hitherto been appropriated,—under the authority of Boards and Agents in London, having no interest in its judicious appropriation, and no adequate knowledge of the subject,—in inundating the colonies with vice and misery, whether in the form of free emigrant females, conveyed in whole ship-loads to New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land, without friends and without natural protectors ”

“ The progressive extension of the colony of New South Wales, and the rapid increase of its free population, which may now be reasonably anticipated from free immigration, will render a great variety of internal improvements, of the character of public works, absolutely necessary for its general welfare and advancement. ”

“ For the last two or three years the streets of Sydney have been absolutely infested, both by day and by night, with female emigrants of the vilest character, whose passage-out has been paid for from the funds of the colony: whereas, during the whole period of my previous residence of ten years in New South Wales I never observed any thing of that kind. The thoroughly demoralizing influence of such exhibitions on the youth of the colony may be easily conceived, for one bad woman let loose upon society does infinitely more harm than half a dozen bad men ”

“ In short, it is not the interest of the prudent settler, who merely studies his own personal advantage, to make his assigned convict servant feel his situation to be a state of punishment: but as all settlers are not gifted with this degree of prudence, (some individuals of that class yielding themselves up occasionally to the influence of violent passion, while others evince the utmost blindness in regard to their own interests,) the practice of assignment, as a species of punishment, is necessarily extremely unequal in its operation ”

“ Indian corn is little used as an article of food for men in New South Wales, although it forms a palatable diet, and constitutes a principal part of the sustenance of the virtuous peasantry of New England: it is of great value, however, in the colony for the rearing of all sorts of domestic stock, such as pigs, poultry, &c. The sweet potato, which also forms a palatable food for man, is wonderfully prolific at Moreton Bay; and arrow-root of the finest quality has been grown in the government-garden at Brisbane river, at the rate of a ton per acre. ”

“ Indeed, it must be acknowledged, that so long as convicts are disposed of in this manner, nothing like uniformity in the mode of treatment can possibly be enforced, while rewards and punishments will necessarily be meted out with comparatively little regard to the claims of justice or to individual desert. So unequal, indeed, is the system at present in operation, that transportation, like a lottery-ticket, may prove to the individual who draws it, and with equally little desert on his part, either a prize or a blank. ”

“ If His Majesty's government should refuse to listen to this voice from the wilderness of Australia, under the idea that the present system of management in regard to the disposal of transported criminals in New South Wales can be indefinitely continued, they will, in all likelihood, find themselves mistaken much sooner than they anticipate. The intolerable expense and the moral abominations of that preposterous system, both of which are increasing enormously every year, are already exciting general impatience and deep disgust among the reputable classes of colonial society ”