John Dunmore Lang

“ A process of this kind would render the transportation system really subservient to colonization, while it would speedily establish along the coasts of Australia an industrious and virtuous population; whose characters and example would prove conducive in the highest degree to the reformation of the convicts, and render the continuance of transportation a blessing to the empire, rather than a curse. ”

“ Why, a very small portion of the convict labour, which has been absolutely thrown away at the penal settlement of Moreton Bay during the last ten years, would have been sufficient to have effected the immediate settlement of at least ten thousand of the virtuous and industrious, but unemployed and starving poor of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, in that most promising locality. ”

“ There is a second mode of employing convict labour in the territory of New South Wales, which the rapid extension of the colony, and the prospect of a greatly increased immigration, under the land-selling system, would enable the colonial government to have recourse to with much benefit to the community, and which would ensure the ultimate repayment of the whole cost of the maintenance of the convicts so employed. ”

“ Labour of this kind is highly suitable for convicts undergoing penal discipline—much more so indeed than agriculture. Besides, on obtaining their freedom or tickets of leave, convicts, who had been trained to this species of labour in government employ, would betake themselves to such labour for hire, from habit as well as from necessity, and would thus become useful pioneers of civilization and improvement. At Moreton Bay, between the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth parallels of south latitude, there has been a penal settlement established for more than ten years past. ”

“ And if such a population were carried out passage-free, which it is evident can now be effected without cost to any party, to be settled along with their ministers and schoolmasters along the fertile banks of a noble river, and supplied with provisions on credit from the king's stores for six months or thereabouts, will any man suppose that they would not willingly pay a rent for their little farms till they could afford to purchase them, or that they would not speedily prove a source of revenue and of national strength, instead of being, as at present, a serious burden to the state? ”

“ Efficient superintendence, solitary confinement by night, and regular religious instruction, could also be afforded under such a system of management, much more easily than under the assignment system; while exemplary conduct during a certain term of years might still entitle the convict to a ticket of leave, and enable him to return eventually to society. ”

“ In a colony, however, in which all such labour has hitherto been performed exclusively by convicts, it is not to be expected that free emigrants, even of the class of labourers, would willingly accept employment of this kind, even for wages ”

“ Now it would greatly facilitate the formation of such settlements, and diminish the hardships of the first free settlers, if the government were to prepare the way for settlers of this kind by convict labour. Agricultural emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland would be apt to sink into despondency, if they found, on arriving in the colony, with the prospect of being speedily established in towns and agricultural settlements, that they had to form their town out of a dense forest, and to cut down whole acres of hard timber ere they could turn up a rood of land. ”