Jørgen Jørgensen

“ All human wisdom is vanity, if not regulated by prudence. One error leads to another, and every deviation from the straight path is sure to lead the strayed sheep into the mazes of a labyrinth. I will only add that my transportation has been the means of totally eradicating from my breast all inclination for the horrid propensity which persecuted me for so many years. A return to the gaming-table would now be as severe a punishment as could well be inflicted on me, and such is the common effect of transportation on all prisoners in Van Diemen's Land. ”

“ Here is one highly rhetorical passage from Jorgenson's manuscript vindication of his conduct as King of Iceland. "If there are any charges against me, let the people making them come forward in an open, fair and candid manner; let me see the accusers face to face, and how easily shall I confront them! But this they dread, for the truth must prevail. Where in the name of God is there any man in Iceland that can make a just complaint against me? Is anyone injured in property or liberty? ”

“ Grave cause as I have seen to reprobate the vice of drunkenness during the manifold experiences of my chequered career, I am compelled to denounce that of gambling, though perhaps not so general, as a far more iniquitous and soul-absorbing propensity. The attacks of drunkenness are mainly in the first instance levelled at the body, but the demon of gambling lays siege at once to the citadel of the mind, and brings on the destruction of the body as a secondary consequence. When once this horrid vice has obtained possession of the heart, it absorbs and surmounts every other passion. ”

“ He is taught to value character as the only means of emancipation — I mean emancipation in the moral sense, for in Van Diemen's Land, although a man's sentence may be completed, unless he has cut himself free from criminal indulgences, unless he seeks by honest industry alone to earn his living, he is as much a convict, and even more so, more wretched in the eyes of the surrounding community, than if he were still in actual bondage, a prisoner of the Crown. Placed in assigned service, he is comparatively at large, and is in a certain sense master of his own conduct and actions. ”

“ As a human creature I enjoy the powers of contemplation, yet I should never be able to discern any wise design in the creation. Generation after generation follow each other in rapid succession, and to me it would appear as for no other visible purpose than to look about them for a few moments, then drop into the grave, and the grosser elements of nature would reign lords paramount of the creation. ”

“ After ten months' residence at Reading I obtained permission to employ myself as a British subject, and with that intent made my way to London, but most unfortunately I was picked up in the metropolis by my acquaintances of Tothill Fields prison, and was by them initiated into all the enticements and horrors of the gaming-table. For six months was I sunk in this wretched vortex of dissipation, until at last I found myself stripped of everything I had in the world, including a sixteenth share of a £20,000 prize in a state lottery. ”

“ Into Jorgenson's proposals for the extinction of the National Debt, it is unnecessary to enter, but the opinion he had formed of the land of his exile, when the evening of his adventurous life was approaching, may be worth noting. Having, he says, for upwards of thirty-five years travelled in many parts of the globe, and looked at everything with a scrutinising eye, he knew of no country where man could live so happily as Van Diemen's Land, if only the British Government would leave the administration of local matters to those who understand them. ”

“ The effect of this little invention soon operated in my favour. I was invited to supper at the gate-house, and was comfortably lodged there for the night. After a hearty breakfast in the morning, affecting surprise that my cart had not yet come up, I said I would move on a few steps to look after it, and so proceeded on my journey. Much as I had failed in examining and reforming the passions of my own heart, the various vicissitudes of my life had led me to regard minutely the workings of human nature in the breasts of others. ”

“ What was meant by calling a man a fine fellow and saying he would do what was right, was that he would join in any species of robbery and under no circumstances, not even from the gallows, divulge anything that might bring a companion to justice. By a rogue in grain was implied any one who would not join in robberies and plunders, and who would exert his utmost power to detect and punish villany. The Government of Van Diemen's Land had ever found it a matter of extreme difficulty to establish a police that would devote their whole attention to the protection of life and property. ”

“ For some years I enjoyed an unwonted tranquillity and serenity of mind. I received nothing but kindness from Mr. Anstey, his lady and family, and all beneath his hospitable roof. I look back upon this period as one of the brightest in my life. I was free from care, and all anxiety was banished from my mind. Whilst holding office as Constable at Oatlands, I devoted myself to an object which the governor, Colonel Sir George Arthur, and the magistracy had very much at heart. ”

“ As he arrived on the Continent just in time to witness the final and
irrevocable overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo, Jorgenson could not resist the temptation of embodying in his record of travel a lengthy review of the character and conduct of the fallen Caesar. He sums Napoleon up as a great military commander, who fell into the same error which had proved fatal to so many other conquerors — that of teaching the art of war to their enemies, and then of disregarding them. ”

“ It is not surprising that Jorgenson should express himself very feelingly on the subject of the total absence of prisons in his mythical kingdom, for whilst his imagination was thus roaming at large, his body was confined within the limits of a Westminster prison as a punishment for the little unauthorised experiment in benevolent despotism that he himself had initiated in Iceland. "In the kingdom of Shandaria," he says, "there are never seen loathsome gaols, places of confinement, bolts, irons, and other such disgraceful implements and witnesses of human folly." ”

“ Having been promised a niche in Ross's Van Diemen's Land Annual, the only sanctuary and safe retreat of great names, the sole Westminster Abbey which these Australian regions can yet boast, I hasten to fill it up, before a greater man steps in to occupy the ground. It is curious that the most important event of a man's life should ever rest upon secondary evidence. No one, however, will dispute the fact that I was born in the city of Copenhagen in the year 1780. ”

“ Jorgenson's mythical kingdom is vaguely described as situated in Asia, beyond the dominions of the Great Mogul. According to the maps, its site is occupied by a vast desert, peopled only by a few nomadic tribes, but, according to Jorgenson, it is in reality one of the finest countries in the world, inhabited by a race whose manners, customs, religion,
government and laws are worthy of the most serious study and the heartiest admiration. ”

“ Mournful indeed were the prospects before me, yet I felt a cheering ray of hope that time would heal the deepest wounds, and that fresh energy and a constant reliance on Providence in this new and improving land would tend to blot out the harrowing memories of a dismal past, and conduce to a brighter future. ”

“ Even in capital offences the chances of escape are so many. But this, I conceive, is only half the evil effect of the uncertainty or gambling, as it may well be called, of the law. For by the same rule on which the criminal calculates the chances of escape, he frames his mind at the same time to the alternative of the last punishment. Common-sense tells us that this is only the simple process of cause and effect, operating on the material of human nature. ”

“ If I have shed the blood of a fellow creature in Iceland, either justly or unjustly, let my head pay for it! If I have enriched myself to the detriment of a single individual, let my left hand be cut off! ”

“ Saxe-Weimar was my next stopping-place, and there I had the high honour of being introduced to the venerable Goethe. I met him in the library of the Duke, a magnificent collection of upwards of 200,000 volumes. Goethe was a member of the Privy Council, besides filling the office of librarian to the Duke, a situation, needless to say, far more congenial to his literary tastes and habits. Though growing old at this time, the illustrious dramatic poet, the Shakespeare of Germany, was as full of life and spirits as a young student. ”

“ With the celebrity he acquired by virtue of his daring revolutionary achievement in Iceland, the patronage subsequently accorded him by the British Foreign Office, the prestige of his successful diplomatic missions on the Continent, and the acquaintance of the eminent men with whom he had official intercourse in France and Germany, Jorgenson could have easily ascended the ladder of honourable distinction, had he but refrained from his ruinous vice of gambling, and marked out for himself a steady and systematic course of action. ”

“ The new scenes and occupations in which they are suddenly and abruptly placed, like the transplanting of a tree, make them pine and suffer for a time, until restraint becomes a habit, and in both body and mind the convict becomes a new man. ”

“ When the sensibilities of the heart are drawn forth by the early culture of the mind, and by the endearing excitements which social and refined intercourse produces, the loss of character entailed by a reverse of fortune or the ignominy of a public condemnation, to say nothing of the stings of conscience, is far more severely felt than it could possibly be by one who had never tasted the pleasures of society, whose education had been mainly acquired in the schools of vice, and whose life had been spent in the dissipations of idleness. ”

“ The unabated outrages of the blacks at length determined Sir George Arthur to make a call on the public spirit of the colonists. By proclamation His Excellency called out a levy en masse to cope with the crying evil of the day. It was vain to expect, he pointed out, that the country could be freed from the incursions of the savage tribes unless the settlers themselves came forward, and zealously united their best energies with those of the Government in making such a general and simultaneous effort as the occasion demanded. ”

“ On paying my respects to the mayor, I soon found by his abortive attempts to speak it, that he could not read French very well, the language in which my billet was written. A little ready presence of mind is necessary for most men to avoid being thrown back upon the world, and I have on almost all occasions, both in the old world and the new, found that a certain degree of modest assurance is a great help to a man in getting through life. ”

“ I have long had by me several incidents of the hulks which I intended to have published, but a sense of shame prevented me from doing so, and I now feel happy that the hulk establishments are broken up, for hitherto they have proved nothing but schools of abominable pollution. Those who have been discharged from them have overrun England and spread vice and immorality everywhere in their track. ”

“ Captain Flinders voyaged all the way to Sydney in an open boat, to obtain succour for his shipwrecked companions, and succeeded in his heroic mission. He resumed his homeward voyage in a small craft, called the Cumberland, that had been placed at his command by the Governor of New South Wales. It is painful, and even heart-rending to me to recite the distressing details of the subsequent misfortunes of my old commander, that most indefatigable explorer of these Australian coasts, to whom posterity will ever owe a heavy debt of gratitude. ”

“ A very few, as a matter of great favour, are permitted to wear a slight bezel on one leg and are exempted from dockyard labour. I was one of those thus privileged. All communication with the rest of the world is cut off, no person is allowed on board, a visitor must stand on a platform by the side of the hulk, and can only speak to a prisoner in the presence of an officer. Any money or articles given to a prisoner must be handed over to the chief mate; all letters, even from members of parliament, to a convict are opened, and if the captain does not choose to deliver them, he need not do so. ”

“ The most daring and unconventional of novelists would never dream of crowding into the life of a hero of the circulating libraries such a rapid succession of extraordinary adventures as actually befell this Anglo-Danish fortune-seeker in the nineteenth century. The apex of his adventurous career was reached when, through a combination of circumstances that he had never anticipated, he found himself elevated to the position of an autocrat in Iceland, the sovereign of a little Arctic kingdom. ”

“ The British Government has hitherto regarded the transportation of prisoners as the chief mode of providing labour in the colonies. Punishment and utility have been connected so as to render convict labour alike beneficial to the colonists and conducive to the best interests of the parent state. All convicts sent out are newly clad, and ample rations of wholesome food are apportioned to them. Health is preserved by cleanliness, which is strictly attended to, and the shipowners are bound by the terms of their charter to supply each prisoner with at least half-a-gallon of water per day. ”

“ With the substantial sum he received from the Foreign Office, in recognition of his Continental services, Jorgenson formed the good resolution of emigrating to America, and settling down to a steady life at last. But once more he fell a victim to his besetting sin, and the consequences this time were disastrous. He abandoned himself to the worship of the fickle goddess who presides over the chances of the cards, and for a considerable period lived the feverish life, and experienced all the vicissitudes of the London gambler in those high-pressure days. ”