[1] Compare also the rule of the Twelve Tables, by which an animal
which had inflicted mischief might be surrendered in lieu of
compensation.
DEOGARH, the name of several towns of British India. (1) A town in the
Santal Parganas district of Bengal. Pop. (1901) 8838. It is famous for a
group of twenty-two temples dedicated to Siva, the resort of numerous
pilgrims. It is connected with the East Indian railway by a steam
tramway, 5 m. in length. (2) The headquarters of the Bamra feudatory
state in Bengal; 58 m. by road from the Bamra Road station on the
Bengal-Nagpur railway. Pop. (1901) 5702. The town, which is well laid
out, with parks and gardens, and pleasantly situated in a hollow among
hills, rapidly increased in population under the enlightened
administration of the raja, Sir Sudhal Rao, K.C.I.E. (b. 1860). It has a
state-supported high school affiliated to Calcutta University, with a
chemical and physical laboratory. (3) The chief town of the Deogarh
estate in the state of Udaipur, Rajputana, about 68 m. N.N.E. of the
city of Udaipur. It is walled, and contains a fine palace. Pop. (1901)
5384. The holder of the estate is styled _rawat_, and is one of the
first-class nobles of Mewar. (4) Deogarh Fort, the ancient Devagiri or
Deogiri (see DAULATABAD).
DÉOLS, a suburb of the French town of Châteauroux, in the department of
Indre. Pop. (1906) 2337. Déols lies to the north of Châteauroux, from
which it is separated by the Indre. It preserves a fine Romanesque tower
and other remains of the church of a famous Benedictine abbey, the most
important in Berry, founded in 917 by Ebbes the Noble, lord of Déols. A
gateway flanked by towers survives from the old ramparts of the town.
The parish church of St Stephen (15th and 16th centuries) has a
Romanesque façade and a crypt containing the ancient Christian tomb of
St Ludre and his father St Leocade, who according to tradition were
lords of the town in the 4th century. There are also interesting old
paintings of the 10th century representing the ancient abbey. The
pilgrimage to the tomb of St Ludre gave importance to Déols, which under
the name of _Vicus Dolensis_ was in existence in the Roman period. In
468 the Visigoths defeated the Gauls there, the victory carrying with it
the supremacy over the district of Berry. In the middle ages the head of
the family of Déols enjoyed the title of prince and held sway over
nearly all Lower Berry, of which the town itself was the capital. In the
10th century Raoul of Déols gave his castle to the monks of the abbey
and transferred his residence to Châteauroux. For centuries this change
did not affect the prosperity of the place, which was maintained by the
prestige of its abbey. But the burning of the abbey church by the
Protestants during the religious wars and in 1622 the suppression of the
abbey by the agency of Henry II., prince of Condé and of Déols, owing to
the corruption of the monks, led to its decadence.
DEPARTMENT (Fr. _département_, from _départir_, to separate into parts),
a division. The word is used of the branches of the administration in a
state or municipality; in Great Britain it is applied to the subordinate
divisions only of the great offices and boards of state, such as the
bankruptcy department of the Board of Trade, but in the United States
these subordinate divisions are known as "bureaus," while "department"
is used of the eight chief branches of the executive.
A particular use of the word is that for a territorial division of
France, corresponding loosely to an English county. Previous to the
French Revolution, the local unit in France was the province, but this
division was too closely bound up with the administrative mismanagement
of the old régime. Accordingly, at the suggestion of Mirabeau, France
was redivided on entirely new lines, the thirty-four provinces being
broken up into eighty-three departments (see FRENCH REVOLUTION). The
idea was to render them as nearly as possible equal to a certain average
of size and population, though this was not always adhered to. They
derived their names principally from rivers, mountains or other
prominent geographical features. Under Napoleon the number was increased
to one hundred and thirty, but in 1815 it was reduced to eighty-six. In
1860 three new departments were created out of the newly annexed
territory of Savoy and Nice. In 1871 three departments (Bas-Rhin,
Haut-Rhin and Moselle) were lost after the German war. Of the remains of
the Haut-Rhin was formed the territory of Belfort, and the fragments of
the Moselle were incorporated in the department of Meurthe, which was
renamed Meurthe-et-Moselle, making the number at present eighty-seven.
For a complete list of the departments see FRANCE. Each department is
presided over by an officer called a prefect, appointed by the
government, and assisted by a prefectorial council (_conseil de
préfecture_). The departments are subdivided into arrondissements, each
in charge of a sub-prefect. Arrondissements are again subdivided into
cantons, and these into communes, somewhat equivalent to the English
parish (see FRANCE: _LOCAL GOVERNMENT_).
DE PERE, a city of Brown county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., on both sides of the
Fox river, 6 m. above its mouth, and 109 m. N. of Milwaukee. Pop. (1890)
3625; (1900) 4038, of whom 1025 were foreign-born; (1905, state census)
4523. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western and Chicago, Milwaukee
& St Paul railways, by interurban electric lines and by lake and river
steamboat lines, it being the head of lake navigation on the Fox river.
Two bridges here span the Fox, which is from {1/3}m. to ½m. in
width. It is a shipping and transfer point and has paper mills, machine
shops, flour mills, sash, door and blind factories, a launch and
pleasure-boat factory, and knitting works, cheese factories and dairies,
brick yards and grain elevators. There is an excellent water-power. De
Pere is the seat of St Norbert's college (Roman Catholic, 1902) and has
a public library. North of the city is located the state reformatory. On
the coming of the first European, Jean Nicolet, who visited the place in
1634-1635, De Pere was the site of a polyglot Indian settlement of
several thousand attracted by the fishing at the first rapids of the Fox
river. Here in 1670 Father Claude Allouez established the mission of St
Francis Xavier, the second in what is now Wisconsin. From the name
_Rapides des Peres_, which the French applied to the place, was derived
the name De Pere. Here Nicolas Perrot, the first French commandant in
the North-West, established his headquarters, and Father Jacques
Marquette wrote the journal of his journey to the Mississippi. A few
miles south of the city lived for many years Eleazer Williams (c.
1787-1857), the alleged "lost dauphin" Louis XVII. of France and an
authority on Indians, especially Iroquois. De Pere was incorporated as a
village in 1857, and was chartered as a city in 1883.
DEPEW, CHAUNCEY MITCHELL (1834- ), American lawyer and politician, was
born in Peekskill, New York, on the 23rd of April 1834, of a Huguenot
family (originally Du Puis or De Puy). He graduated at Yale in 1856,
entered politics as a Whig--his father had been a Democrat--was admitted
to the bar in 1858, was a member of the New York Assembly in 1861-1862,
and was secretary of state of New York state in 1864-1865. He refused a
nomination to be United States minister to Japan, and through his
friendship with Cornelius and William H. Vanderbilt in 1866 became
attorney for the New York & Harlem railway, in 1869 was appointed
attorney of the newly consolidated New York Central & Hudson river
railway, of which he soon became a director, and in 1875 was made
general counsel for the entire Vanderbilt system of railways. He became
second vice-president of the New York Central & Hudson river in 1869 and
was its president in 1885-1898, and in 1898 was made chairman of the
board of directors of the Vanderbilt system. In 1872 he joined the
Liberal-Republican movement, and was nominated and defeated for the
office of lieutenant-governor of New York. In 1888 in the National
Republican convention he was a candidate for the presidential
nomination, but withdrew his name in favour of Benjamin Harrison, whose
offer to him in 1889 of the portfolio of state he refused. In 1899 he
was elected United States senator from New York state, and in 1904 was
re-elected for the term ending in 1911. His great personal popularity,
augmented by his ability as an orator, suffered considerably after 1905,
the inquiry into life insurance company methods by a committee of the
state legislature resulting in acute criticism of his actions as a
director of the Equitable Life Assurance Society and as counsel to Henry
B. Hyde and his son. Among his best-known orations are that delivered at
the unveiling of the Bartholdi statue of Liberty enlightening the World
(1886), an address at the Washington Centennial in New York (1889), and
the Columbian oration at the dedication ceremonies of the Chicago
World's Fair (1892).
DEPILATORY (from Lat. _depilare_, to pull out the _pilus_ or hair), any
substance, preparation or process which will remove superfluous hair.
For this purpose caustic alkalis, alkaline earths and also orpiment
(trisulphide of arsenic) are used, the last being somewhat dangerous. No
application is permanent in its effect, as the hair always grows again.
The only permanent method, which is, however, painful, slow in operation
and likely to leave small scars, is by the use of an electric current
for the destruction of the follicles by electrolysis.
DEPORTATION, or TRANSPORTATION, a system of punishment for crime, of
which the essential factor is the removal of the criminal to a penal
settlement outside his own country. It is to be distinguished from mere
expulsion (q.v.) from a country, though the term "deportation" is now
used in that sense in English law under the Aliens Act 1905 (see ALIEN).
Strictly, the deportation or transportation system has ceased to exist
in England, though the removal or exclusion of undesirable persons from
British territory, under various Orders in Council, is possible in
places subject to the Foreign Jurisdiction Acts, and in the case of
criminals under the Extradition Acts.
American plantations.
_Earlier British Transportation System._--At a time when the British
statute-book bristled with capital felonies, when the pick-pocket or
sheep-stealer was hanged out of hand, when Sir Samuel Romilly, to whose
strenuous exertions the amelioration of the penal code is in a great
measure due, declared that the laws of England were written in blood,
another and less sanguinary penalty came into great favour. The
deportation of criminals beyond the seas grew naturally out of the laws
which prescribed banishment for certain offences. The Vagrancy Act of
Elizabeth's reign contained in it the germ of transportation, by
empowering justices in quarter sessions to banish offenders and order
them to be conveyed into such parts beyond the seas as should be
assigned by the privy council. Full effect was given to this statute in
the next reign, as is proved by a letter of James I. dated 1619, in
which the king directs "a hundred dissolute persons" to be sent to
Virginia. Another act of similar tenor was passed in the reign of
Charles II., in which the term "transportation" appears to have been
first used. A further and more systematic development of the system of
transportation took place in 1617, when an act was passed by which
offenders who had escaped the death penalty were handed over to
contractors, who engaged to transport them to the American colonies.
These contractors were vested with a property in the labour of the
convicts for a certain term, generally from seven to fourteen years, and
this right they frequently sold. Labour in those early days was scarce
in the new settlements; and before the general adoption of negro slavery
there was a keen competition for felon hands. An organized system of
kidnapping prevailed along the British coasts; young lads were seized
and sold into what was practically white slavery in the American
plantations. These malpractices were checked, but the legitimate traffic
in convict labour continued, until it was ended peremptorily by the
revolt of the American colonies and the achievement of their
independence in 1776.[1]
The British legislature, making a virtue of necessity, discovered that
transportation to the colonies was bound to be attended by various
inconveniences, particularly by depriving the kingdom of many subjects
whose labour might be useful to the community; and an act was
accordingly passed which provides that convicts sentenced to
transportation might be employed at hard labour at home. At the same
time the consideration of some scheme for their disposal was entrusted
to three eminent public men--Sir William Blackstone, Mr Eden (afterwards
Lord Auckland) and John Howard. The result of their labours was an act
for the establishment of penitentiary houses, dated 1778. This act is of
peculiar importance. It contains the first public enunciation of a
general principle of prison treatment, and shows that even at that early
date the system since nearly universally adopted was fully understood.
The object in view was thus stated. It was hoped "by sobriety,
cleanliness and medical assistance, by a regular series of labour, by
solitary confinement during the intervals of work and by due religious
instruction to preserve and amend the health of the unhappy offenders,
to inure them to habits of industry, to guard them from pernicious
company, to accustom them to serious reflection and to teach them both
the principles and practice of every Christian and moral duty." The
experience of succeeding years has added little to these the true
principles of penal discipline; they form the basis of every species of
prison system carried out since the passing of an act of 1779.
Australian penal settlements.
No immediate action was taken by the committee appointed. Its members
were not in accord as to the choice of site. One was for Islington,
another for Limehouse; Howard only stipulated for some healthy place
well supplied with water and conveniently situated for supervision. He
was strongly of opinion that the penitentiary should be built by convict
labour. Howard withdrew from the commission, and new members were
appointed, who were on the eve of beginning the first penitentiary when
the discoveries of Captain Cook in the South Seas turned the attention
of the government towards these new lands. The vast territories of
Australasia promised an unlimited field for convict colonization, and
for the moment the scheme for penitentiary houses fell to the ground.
Public opinion generally preferred the idea of establishing penal
settlements at a distance from home. "There was general confidence,"
says Merivale in his work on colonization, "in the favourite theory that
the best mode of punishing offenders was that which removed them from
the scene of offence and temptation, cut them off by a great gulf of
space from all their former connexions, and gave them the opportunity of
redeeming past crimes by becoming useful members of society." These
views so far prevailed that an expedition consisting of nine transports
and two men-of-war, the "first fleet" of Australian annals, sailed in
March 1787 for New South Wales. This first fleet reached Botany Bay in
January 1788, but passed on and landed at Port Jackson, where it entered
and occupied Sydney harbour. From that time forward convicts were sent
in constantly increasing numbers from England to the Antipodes. Yet the
early settlement at Sydney had not greatly prospered. The infant colony
had had a bitter struggle for existence. It had been hoped that the
community would raise its own produce and speedily become
self-supporting. But the soil was unfruitful; the convicts knew nothing
of farming. All lived upon rations sent out from home; and when convoys
with relief lingered by the way famine stared all in the face. The
colony was long a penal settlement and nothing more, peopled only by two
classes, convicts and their masters; criminal bondsmen on the one hand
who had forfeited their independence and were bound to labour without
wages for the state, on the other officials to guard and exact the due
performance of tasks. A few free families were encouraged to emigrate,
but they were lost in the mass they were intended to leaven, swamped and
outnumbered by the convicts, shiploads of whom continued to pour in year
after year. When the influx increased, difficulties as to their
employment arose. Free settlers were too few to give work to more than a
small proportion. Moreover, a new policy was in the ascendant, initiated
by Governor Macquarie, who considered the convicts and their
rehabilitation his chief care, and steadily discouraged the immigration
of any but those who "came out for their country's good." The great bulk
of the convict labour thus remained in government hands.
This period marked the first phase in the history of transportation. The
penal colony, having triumphed over early dangers and difficulties, was
crowded with convicts in a state of semi-freedom, maintained at the
public expense and utilized in the development of the latent resources
of the country. The methods employed by Governor Macquarie were not,
perhaps, invariably the best; the time was hardly ripe as yet for the
erection of palatial buildings in Sydney, while the congregation of the
workmen in large bodies tended greatly to their demoralization. But some
of the works undertaken and carried out were of incalculable service to
the young colony; and its early advance in wealth and prosperity was
greatly due to the magnificent roads, bridges and other facilities of
inter-communication for which it was indebted to Governor Macquarie. As
time passed the criminal sewage flowing from the Old World to the New
greatly increased in volume under milder and more humane laws. Many now
escaped the gallows, and much of the overcrowding of the gaols at home
was caused by the gangs of convicts awaiting transhipment to the
Antipodes. They were packed off, however, with all convenient despatch,
and the numbers on government hands in the colonies multiplied
exceedingly, causing increasing embarrassment as to their disposal.
Moreover, the expense of the Australian convict establishments was
enormous.
Assignment system.
Some change in system was inevitable, and the plan of "assignment" was
introduced; in other words, that of freely lending the convicts to any
who would relieve the authorities of the burdensome charge. By this time
free settlers were arriving in greater number, invited by a different
and more liberal policy than that of Governor Macquarie. Inducements
were especially offered to persons possessed of capital to assist in the
development of the country. Assignment developed rapidly; soon eager
competition arose for the convict hands that had been at first so
reluctantly taken. Great facilities existed for utilizing them on the
wide areas of grazing land and on the new stations in the interior. A
pastoral life, without temptations and contaminating influences, was
well suited for convicts. As the colony grew richer and more populous,
other than agricultural employers became assignees, and numerous
enterprises were set on foot. The trades and callings which minister to
the needs of all civilized communities were more and more largely
pursued. There was plenty of work for skilled convicts in the towns, and
the services of the more intelligent were highly prized. It was a great
boon to secure gratis the assistance of men specially trained as clerks,
book-keepers or handicraftsmen. Hence all manner of intrigues and
manoeuvres were afoot on the arrival of drafts and there was a
scramble for the best hands. Here at once was a palpable flaw in the
system of assignment. The lot of the convict was altogether unequal.
Some, the dull, unlettered and unskilled, were drafted up country to
heavy manual labour at which they remained, while clever expert rogues
found pleasant, congenial and often profitable employment in the towns.
The contrast was very marked from the first, but it became the more
apparent when in due course it was seen that some were still engaged in
irksome toil, while others who had come out by the same ship had already
attained to affluence and ease. For the latter transportation was no
punishment, but often the reverse. It meant too often transfer to a new
world under conditions more favourable to success, removed from the
keener competition of the old. By adroit management, too, convicts often
obtained the command of funds, the product of nefarious transactions at
home, which wives or near relatives or unconvicted accomplices presently
brought out to them. It was easy for the free new-comers to secure the
assignment of their convict friends; and the latter, although still
nominally servants and in the background, at once assumed the real
control. Another system productive of much evil was the employment of
convict clerks in positions of trust in various government offices;
convicts did much of the legal work of the colony; a convict was clerk
to the attorney general; others were schoolmasters and were entrusted
with the education of youth.
Evils of convict system.
Under a system so anomalous and uncertain the main object of
transportation as a method of penal discipline and repression was in
danger of being quite overlooked. Yet the state could not entirely
abdicate its functions, although it surrendered to a great extent the
care of criminals to private persons. It had established a code of
penalties for the coercion of the ill-conducted, while it kept the worst
perforce in its own hands. The master was always at liberty to appeal to
the strong arm of the law. A message carried to a neighbouring
magistrate, often by the culprit himself, brought down the prompt
retribution of the lash. Convicts might be flogged for petty offences,
for idleness, drunkenness, turbulence, absconding and so forth. At the
out-stations some show of decorum and regularity was observed, although
the work done was generally scanty and the convicts were secretly given
to all manner of evil courses. The town convicts were worse, because
they were far less controlled. They were nominally under the
surveillance and supervision of the police, which amounted to nothing
at all. They came and went, and amused themselves after working hours,
so that Sydney and all the large towns were hotbeds of vice and
immorality. The masters as a rule made no attempt to watch over their
charges; many of them were absolutely unfitted to do so, being
themselves of low character, "emancipists" frequently, old convicts
conditionally pardoned or who had finished their terms. No effort was
made to prevent the assignment of convicts to improper persons; every
applicant got what he wanted, even though his own character would not
bear inspection. All whom the masters could not manage--the incorrigible
upon whom the lash and bread and water had been tried in vain--were
returned to government charge. These, in short, comprised the whole of
the refuse of colonial convictdom. Every man who could not agree with
his master, or who was to undergo a penalty greater than flogging or
less than capital punishment, came back to government and was disposed
of in one of three ways, (1) the road parties, (2) the chain gang, or
(3) the penal settlements. (1) In the first case, the convicts might be
kept in the vicinity of the towns or marched about the country according
to the work in hand; the labour was severe, but, owing to inefficient
supervision, never intolerable; the diet was ample and there was no
great restraint upon independence within certain wide limits. To the
slackness of control over the road parties was directly traceable the
frequent escape of desperadoes, who, defying recapture, recruited the
gangs of bushrangers which were a constant terror to the whole country.
In (2) the chain or iron gangs, as they were sometimes styled,
discipline was far more rigorous. It was maintained by the constant
presence of a military guard, and when most efficiently organized the
gang was governed by a military officer who was also a magistrate. The
work was really hard, the custody close--in hulk, stockaded barrack or
caravan; the first was at Sydney, the second in the interior, the last
when the undertaking required constant change of place. All were locked
up from sunset to sunrise; all wore heavy leg irons; and all were liable
to immediate flagellation. The convict "scourger" was one of the regular
officials attached to every chain gang. (3) The third and ultimate
receptacle was the penal settlement, to which no offenders were
transferred till all other methods of treatment had failed. These were
terrible cesspools of iniquity, so bad that it seemed, to use the words
of one who knew them well, that "the heart of a man who went to them was
taken from him and he was given that of a beast." The horrors
accumulated at Norfolk Island, Moreton Bay, Port Arthur and Tasman's
Peninsula are almost beyond description. The convicts herded together in
them were soon utterly degraded and brutalized; no wonder that reckless
despair took possession of them, that death on the gallows for murder
purposely committed, or the slow terror from starvation following escape
into surrounding wilds was often welcomed as a relief.
The stage which transportation was now reaching and the actual condition
of affairs in the Australian colonies about this period do not appear to
have been much understood in England. Earnest and thoughtful men might
busy themselves with prison discipline at home, and the legislature
might watch with peculiar interest the results obtained from the special
treatment of a limited number of selected offenders in Millbank
penitentiary. But for the great mass of criminality deported to a
distant shore no very active concern was shown. The country for a long
time seemed satisfied with transportation. Portions of the system might
be open to criticism. Thus the Commons committee of 1832 freely
condemned the hulks at Woolwich and other arsenals in which a large
number of convicts were kept while waiting embarkation. It was reported
that the indiscriminate association of prisoners in them produced more
vice, profaneness and demoralization than in the ordinary prisons. After
dark the wildest orgies went on unchecked--dancing, fighting, gambling,
singing and so forth; it was easy to get drink and tobacco and to see
friends from outside. The labour hours were short and the tasks light;
"altogether the situation of the convict in the hulks," says the report,
"cannot be considered penal; it is a state of restriction, but hardly of
punishment."
Australian objections.
But no objection was raised to transportation. It was considered by this
same committee "a most valuable expedient in the system of secondary
punishment." They only thought it necessary to suggest that exile should
be preceded by a period of severe probationary punishment in England, a
proposal which was reiterated later on and actually adopted. It was in
the country most closely affected that dissatisfaction first began to
find voice. Already in 1832 the most reputable sections of Australian
society were beginning to murmur grievously. Transportation had fostered
the growth of a strong party--that representing convict views--and these
were advocated boldly in unprincipled prints. This party, constantly
recruited from the emancipists and ticket-of-leave holders, gradually
grew very numerous, and threatened soon to swamp the honest and
untainted parts of the community. As years passed the prevalence of
crime, and the universally low tone of morality due to the convict
element, became more and more in the ascendant. At length in 1835 Judge
Burton made a loud protest, and in a charge to the grand jury of Sydney
plainly intimated that transportation must cease. While it existed, he
said, the colonies could never rise to their proper position; they could
not claim free institutions. This bold but forcible language commanded
attention. It was speedily echoed in England, and particularly by
Archbishop Whately, who argued that transportation failed in all the
leading requisites of any system of secondary punishment. Transportation
exercised no salutary terror in offenders; it was no longer exile to an
unknown inhospitable region, but to one flowing with milk and honey,
whither innumerable friends and associates had gone already. The most
glowing descriptions came back of the wealth which any clever fellow
might easily amass; stories were told and names mentioned of those who
had made ample fortunes in Australia in a few years. As a matter of fact
the convicts, or at least large numbers of them, had prospered
exceedingly. Some had incomes of twenty, thirty, even forty thousand
pounds a year. The deteriorating effects of the system were plainly
manifest on the surface from the condition of the colony,--the
profligacy of the towns, the scant reprobation of crimes and those who
had committed them. Down below, in the openly sanctioned slavery called
assignment, in the demoralizing chain gangs and in the inexpressibly
horrible penal settlements, were more abundant and more awful proofs of
the general wickedness and corruption. Moreover these appalling results
were accompanied by colossal expenditure. The cost of the colonial
convict establishments, with the passages out, amounted annually to
upwards of £300,000; another £100,000 was expended on the military
garrisons; and various items brought the whole outlay to about half a
million per annum. It may be argued that this was not a heavy price to
pay for peopling a continent and laying the foundations of a vast
Australasian empire. But that empire could never have expanded to its
present dimensions if it had depended on convict immigration alone.
There was a point, too, at which all development, all progress, would
have come to a full stop had it not been relieved of its stigma as a
penal colony.
Reform movement.
That point was reached between 1835 and 1840, when a powerful party came
into existence in New South Wales, pledged to bring about the
abandonment of transportation. A strongly hostile feeling was also
gaining ground in England. In 1837 a new committee of the House of
Commons had made a patient and searching investigation into the merits
and demerits of the system and freely condemned it. The government had
no choice but to give way; it could not ignore the protests of the
colonists, backed up by such an authoritative expression of opinion. In
1840 orders were issued to suspend the deportation of criminals to New
South Wales. But what was to become of the convicts? It was impossible
to keep them at home. The hulks which might have served had also failed;
the faultiness of their internal management had been fully proved. The
committee had recommended the erection of more penitentiaries. But the
costly experiment of Millbank had been barren of results. The model
prison at Pentonville, in process of construction under the pressure of
a movement towards prison reform, could offer but limited
accommodation. A proposal was put forward to construct convict barracks
in the vicinity of the great arsenals; but this, which contained really
the germ of the present British penal system, was premature. The
government in this dilemma steered a middle course and resolved to
adhere to transportation, but under a greatly modified and it was hoped
much improved form. The colony of Van Diemen's Land, younger and less
self-reliant than its neighbour, had also endured convict immigration
but had made no protest. It was resolved to direct the whole stream of
deportation upon Van Diemen's Land, which was thus constituted one vast
colonial prison. The main principle of the new system was one of
probation; hence its name. All convicts were to pass through various
stages and degrees of punishment according to their conduct and
character. Some general depot was needed where the necessary observation
could be made, and it was found at Millbank penitentiary. Thence boys
were sent to the prison for juveniles at Parkhurst; the most promising
subjects among the adults were selected to undergo the experimental
discipline of solitude and separation at Pentonville; less hopeful cases
went to the hulks; and all adults alike passed on to the Antipodes.
Fresh stages awaited the convict on his arrival at Van Diemen's Land.
The first was limited to "lifers" and colonial convicts sentenced a
second time. It consisted in detention at one of the penal stations,
either Norfolk Island or Tasman's Peninsula, where the disgraceful
conditions already described continued unchanged to the very last. The
second stage received the largest number, who were subjected in it to
gang labour, working under restraint in various parts of the colony.
These probation stations, as they were called, were intended to
inculcate habits of industry and subordination; they were provided with
supervisors and religious instructors; and had they not been tainted by
the vicious virus brought to them by others arriving from the penal
stations, they might have answered their purpose for a time. But they
became as bad as the worst of the penal settlements and contributed
greatly to the breakdown of the whole system. The third stage and the
first step towards freedom was the concession of a pass which permitted
the convict to be at large under certain conditions to seek work for
himself; the fourth was a ticket-of-leave, the possession of which
allowed him to come and go much as he pleased; the fifth and last was
absolute pardon, with the prospects of rehabilitation.
Gradual abandonment.
This scheme seemed admirable on paper; yet it failed completely when put
into practice. Colonial resources were quite unable to bear the
pressure. Within two or three years Van Diemen's Land was inundated with
convicts. Sixteen thousand were sent out in four years; the average
annual number in the colony was about 30,000, and this when there were
only 37,000 free settlers. Half the whole number of convicts remained in
government hands and were kept in the probation gangs, engaged upon
public works of great utility; but the other half, pass-holders and
ticket-of-leave men in a state of semi-freedom, could get little or no
employment. The supply greatly exceeded the demand; there were no hirers
of labour. Had the colony been as large and as prosperous as its
neighbour it could scarcely have absorbed the glut of workmen; but it
was really on the verge of bankruptcy--its finances were embarrassed,
its trades and industries at a standstill. But not only were the
convicts idle; they were utterly depraved. It was soon found that the
system which kept large bodies always together had a most pernicious
effect upon their moral condition. "The congregation of criminals in
large batches without adequate supervision meant simply wholesale,
widespread pollution," as was said at the time. These ever-present and
constantly increasing evils forced the government to reconsider its
position; and in 1846 transportation to Van Diemen's Land was
temporarily suspended for a couple of years, during which it was hoped
some relief might be afforded. The formation of a new convict colony in
North Australia had been contemplated; but the project, warmly espoused
by Mr Gladstone, then under-secretary of state for the colonies, was
presently abandoned; and it now became clear that no resumption of
transportation was possible. The measures taken to substitute other
methods of secondary punishment are set forth in the article Prison
(q.v.).
French practice.
_France._--France adopted deportation for criminals as far back as 1763,
when a penal colony was founded in French Guiana and failed
disastrously. An expedition was sent there, composed of the most evil
elements of the Paris population and numbering 14,000, all of whom died.
The attempt was repeated in 1766 and with the same miserable result.
Other failures are recorded, the worst being the scheme of the
philanthropist Baron Milius, who in 1823 planned to form a community on
the banks of the Mana (French Guiana) by the marriage of exiled convicts
and degraded women, which resulted in the most ghastly horrors. The
principle of deportation was then formally condemned by publicists and
government until suddenly in 1854 it was reintroduced into the French
penal code with many high-sounding phrases. Splendid results were to be
achieved in the creation of rich colonies afar, and the regeneration of
the criminal by new openings in a new land. The only outlet available at
the moment beyond the sea was French Guiana, and it was again to be
utilized despite its pestilential climate. Thousands were exiled, more
than half to find certain death; none of the penal settlements
prospered. No return was made by agricultural development, farms and
plantations proved a dead loss under the unfavourable conditions of
labour enforced in a malarious climate and unkindly soil, and it was
acknowledged by French officials that the attempt to establish a penal
colony on the equator was utterly futile. Deportation to Guiana was not
abandoned, but instead of native-born French exiles, convicts of subject
races, Arabs, Anamites and Asiatic blacks, were sent exclusively, with
no better success as regards colonization.
In 1864, however, it was possible to divert the stream elsewhere. New
Caledonia in the Australian Pacific was annexed to France in 1853. Ten
years later it became a new settlement for convict emigrants. A first
shipload was disembarked in 1864 at Noumea, and the foundations of the
city laid. Prison buildings were the first erected and were planted upon
the island of Nou, a small breakwater to the Bay of Noumea. Outwardly
all went well under the fostering care of the authorities. The
population steadily increased; an average total of 600 in 1867 rose in
the following year to 1554. In 1874 the convict population exceeded
5000; in 1880 it had risen to 8000; the total reached 9608 at the end of
December 1883. But from that time forward the numbers transported
annually fell, for it was found that this South Pacific island, with its
fertile soil and fairly temperate climate, by no means intimidated the
dangerous classes; and the French administration therefore resumed
deportation of French-born whites to Guiana, which was known as
notoriously unhealthy and was likely to act as a more positive
deterrent. The authorities divided their exiles between the two outlets,
choosing New Caledonia for the convicts who gave some promise of
regeneration, and sending criminals with the worst antecedents and
presumably incorrigible to the settlements on the equator. This was in
effect to hand over a fertile colony entirely to criminals. Free
immigration to New Caledonia was checked, and the colony became almost
exclusively penal. The natural growth of a prosperous colonial community
made no advance, and convict labour did little to stimulate it, the
public works, essential for development, and construction of roads were
neglected; there was no extensive clearance of lands, no steady
development of agriculture. From 1898 simple deportation practically
ceased, but the islands were full of convicts already sent, and they
still received the product of the latest invention in the criminal code
known as "relegation," a punishment directed against the recidivist or
incorrigible criminal whom no penal retribution had hitherto touched and
whom the French law felt justified in banishing for ever to the "back of
beyond." A certain period of time spent in a hard labour prison preceded
relegation, but the convicts on arrival were generally unfitted to
assist in colonization. They were for the most part decadent, morally
and physically; their labour was of no substantial value to colonists
or themselves, and there was small hope of profitable result when they
gained conditional liberation, with a concession of colonial land and a
possibility of rehabilitation by their own efforts abroad, for by their
sentence they were forbidden to hope for return to France. The
punishment of relegation was not long in favour, the number of sentences
to it fell year after year, and it has now been practically abandoned.
_Other Countries._--Penal exile has been practised by some other
countries as a method of secondary punishment. Russia since 1823 has
directed a stream of offenders, mainly political, upon Siberia, and at
one time the yearly average sent was 18,000. The Siberian exile system,
the horrors of which cannot be exaggerated, belongs only in part to
penitentiary science, but it was very distinctly punitive and aimed at
regeneration of the individual and the development of the soil by new
settlements. Although the journey was made mostly on foot and not by sea
transport, the principle of deportation (or more exactly of removal) was
the essence of the system. The later practice, however, has been exactly
similar to transportation as originated by England and afterwards
followed by France. The penal colonization of the island of Sakhalin
reproduced the preceding methods, and the Russian convicts were conveyed
by ships through the Suez Canal to the Far East. Sakhalin was hopefully
intended as an outlet for released convicts and their rehabilitation by
their own efforts, precisely in the manner tried in Australia and New
Caledonia. The result repeated previous experiences. There was land to
reclaim, forests to cut down, marshes to drain, everything but a
temperate climate and a good will of the felon labourers to create a
prosperous colony. But the convicts would not work; a few sought to win
the right to occupy a concession of soil, but the bulk were pure
vagabonds, wandering to and fro in search of food. The agricultural
enterprise was a complete failure. The wrong sites for cultivation were
chosen, the labourers were unskilled and they handled very indifferent
tools. Want amounting to constant starvation was a constant rule; the
rations were insufficient and unwholesome, very little meat eked out
with salt fish and with entire absence of vegetables. The general tone
of morals was inconceivably low, and a universal passion for alcohol and
card-playing prevailed. According to one authority the life of the
convicts at Sakhalin was a frightful nightmare, "a mixture of debauchery
and innocence mixed with real sufferings and almost inconceivable
privations, corrupt in every one of its phases." The prisons hopelessly
ruined all who entered them, all classes were indiscriminately herded
together. It is now generally allowed that deportation, as practised,
had utterly failed, the chief reasons being the unmanageable numbers
sent and the absence of outlets for their employment, even at great
cost.
The prisons on Sakhalin have been described as hotbeds of vice; the only
classification of prisoners is one based on the length of sentence. Some
imperfect attempt is made to separate those waiting trial from the
recidivist or hardened offender, but too often the association is
indiscriminate. Prison discipline is generally slack and ineffective,
the staff of warders, from ill-judged economy, too weak to supervise or
control. The officers themselves are of inferior stamp, drunken,
untrustworthy, overbearing, much given to "trafficking" with the
prisoners, accepting bribes to assist escape, quick to misuse and
oppress their charges. Crime of the worst description is common.
Italy has practised deportation in planting various agricultural
colonies upon the islands to be found on her coast. They were meant to
imitate the intermediate prisons of the Irish system, where prisoners
might work out their redemption, when provisionally released. Two were
established on the islands of Pianoso and Gorgona, and there were
settlements made on Monte Christo and Capraia. They were used also to
give effect to the system of enforced residence or _domicilio coatto_.
Portugal also has tried deportation to the African colony of Angola on a
small scale with some success, and combined it with free emigration. The
settlers have been represented as well disposed towards the convicts,
gladly obtaining their services or helping them in the matter of
security. The convict element is orderly, and, although their treatment
is "_peu repressive et relativement debonnaire_," few commit offences.
The Andaman Islands have been utilized by the Indian government since
the mutiny (1857) for the deportation of heinous criminals (see ANDAMAN
ISLANDS).
AUTHORITIES.--Captain A. Phillip, R.N., _The Voyage of Governor
Phillip to New South Wales_ (1790); David Collins, _Account of the
English Colony of New South Wales_ (1798); Archbishop Whately,
_Remarks on Transportation_ (1834); Herman Merivale, _Colonization
and Colonies_ (1841); d'Haussonville, _Établissements pénitentiaires
en France et aux colonies_ (1875); George Griffith, _In a Prison
Land_; Cuche, _Science et legislation pénitentiaire_ (1905); Hawes,
_The Uttermost East_ (1906). (A. G.)