John Dunmore Lang

“ Now, as it is evidently impossible, in the present condition of the Australian colonies, that the practice of assigning convicts as servants to private individuals should realize any one of these requisites of punishment, I conceive it is absolutely necessary, for ensuring the future efficiency of transportation, as a species of punishment, that that practice should be forthwith and for ever discontinued ”

“ As to the third class of the free inhabitants of New South Wales, I mean the inhabitants of towns, it is just as preposterous to continue to assign convicts to such persons, to be employed, as they almost uniformly are at present, as house-servants, as it would be to assign them for employment in the same capacity to the inhabitants of any town in Great Britain or Ireland, provided there were the same means of preventing their escape in the mother country as there are in New South Wales. ”

“ On the other hand, the colonial proprietors of sheep and cattle are now well able to employ free emigrant herdsmen and shepherds; and the small additional expense which the employment of such persons would cost them, in comparison with that of convict labour, would be repaid them ten times over in the preservation and security, and consequently in the greatly increased value, of their flocks and herds. The continued assignment of convict servants to this class of colonial settlers is therefore no longer necessary, as a means of advancing their individual prosperity ”

“ The interests of the British empire, which undoubtedly require that transportation should be rendered really efficient for these purposes, are not to be sacrificed for the private advantage of the free settlers of that colony. ”

“ But if a reputable free emigrant tenantry could be procured, so as to afford eligible terms to both proprietor and tenant, very few settlers of respectability in New South Wales would continue to cultivate their own land, especially if the assignment system were discontinued. ”

“ Besides, assigned servants in the town of Sydney have a thousand ways and means of procuring money, and all those unhallowed indulgences that money can purchase every where, without the knowledge or permission of their masters: or, at all events, they have the means of passing the term of their servitude in comparative idleness, and in the acquisition or perpetuation of habits that render them unfit for any useful purpose, and a mere dead weight upon the community, on the expiration of their period of bondage. ”

“ The legislator should therefore incline rather to mildness than to severity, and depend, for the moral effect of the punishment he denounces, on its being uniform in its operation, definite in its amount, and certain in its infliction. ”

“ The three classes of colonists above enumerated are now becoming quite distinct*from each other; the extensive proprietor of sheep and cattle seldom growing more grain than is absolutely necessary for the supply of his own establishment, and frequently depending even for that supply on purchase from others; while the cultivation of grain and of other farm produce for the colonial market is progressively falling into the hands of settlers of an inferior class ”

“ Besides, the facility with which the assigned convict servants of many private individuals can procure ardent spirits, and the temptation which is thus held out to them to resort, as they too often do successfully, to dishonest and vicious practices to procure this indulgence, effectually preclude the possibility of reformation, in the case of a large majority of that class of the convict population. ”

“ The property and wealth of the first of these classes consisting chiefly in their flocks and herds, the convict labourers assigned to settlers of that class are employed exclusively as shepherds and herdsmen ”