John Dunmore Lang

“ 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. ”

“ There is no reason for supposing that convicts would be more diseased on their arrival in America sixty or eighty years ago, than convicts usually are at the present day on their arrival in New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land, especially when the captain had to sell them by auction on their arrival, to procure payment for their passage-out; and the probability is, that under such treatment as they were then subjected to in the American colonies, many of them would acquire industrious habits, and would settle themselves reputably in the New World on attaining their freedom. ”

“ The very complaints of the American colonists, on the subject of the importation of convicts, demonstrate that society was constituted from the first on a right basis in America, notwithstanding the prevalence and operation of the transportation system for upwards of a century and a half; that the number of the free and untainted portion of the population was uniformly beyond all comparison greater than that of the transported criminals and their immediate descendants ”

“ In fact, the very circumstance of a man's standing forward in any country to claim certain political privileges, on the ground of his being an emancipated convict, is a presumptive proof of his not being really reformed ”

“ That a somewhat similar system has proved by no means equally efficient in the Australian colonies, is, I believe, universally acknowledged: but when we contrast the state of thing's in these colonies, in reference to the gross amount of their convict population, as compared with the free emigrants of all classes, with the state of things under the old colonial regime in America, the cause of the very different result of the more recent experiment becomes self-evident. ”

“ Of the free emigrants above mentioned, 1536 have been unmarried females, who had also been assisted in their emigration by bounties, in the shape of passage- money, from the revenues of the colony. But when we take into consideration the original constitution and character of colonial society, and the strong temptations to which unprotected females must in such a society be exposed; when we take into consideration the improbability of inducing any considerable number of really virtuous females to emigrate to a distant country, and especially to a convict colony, without natural protectors ”

“ If these ten thousand free emigrants had all been virtuous and industrious persons, I admit that their influence in neutralizing and counteracting the natural influence of this immense accumulation of depravity would have been exceedingly powerful ”

“ There was, doubtless, at that period a native population of all ages of nearly 9000 souls; but it is evident that that population cannot be taken into account in estimating the character of the materials of which society was originally composed in the colony of New South Wales. ”

“ The testimony of President Jefferson, as to the convicts transported to America being generally eaten up with disease, seldom marrying, and having few children, is to be received with as many grains of salt as his statement as to their gross number. ”

“ I have no book by me which enables me to point out the date of its commencement; but I do not think the whole number sent would amount to two thousand; and being principally men eaten up with disease, they married seldom, and propagated little. I do not suppose that themselves and their descendants are at present four thousand, which is little more than one-thousandth part of the whole inhabitants."—'Memoirs and Correspondence of President Jefferson,' vol. ”