The following exhibits but a lamentable picture of the "milk and honey"
of this favoured land:
"The morals of the colony of New South Wales are of an exceedingly
depraved description. It is so far from being a country where men begin
a new life and enter upon a fresh course with resolutions of amendment,
that the testimony of all respectable men examined on the subject unites
in asserting that the habits of the freed men, even of those who have
acquired property and have families, are of the most dissipated
character. Of the emancipists, to whom grants of land have been made and
who are often wealthy, very few, not more it is said than half a dozen,
can be selected whose lives are not of a vicious description, who do not
indulge in dishonest practices of one sort or another, and who have not
risen to wealth by fostering and practising some species of villany.
These men procure convicts to be assigned to them, who become members of
the families, and assist them in carrying on their various frauds. In
Sydney the grog shops are very numerous, and grog shops are receiving
houses. A constant trade in stolen goods is going on between Sydney and
the remotest parts of the colony, and even between Sydney and this
country. The convicts in remote settlements have no means generally of
indulging in licentiousness, but they see constantly before them the
freed labourer who has, and they burn to enjoy similar privileges: and
should their place of occupation be too remote from a theatre of
indulgence, they get a week of holiday at Sydney, where they arrive in
numbers, and, for the time they stay, wallow in every species of
debauchery. In such a state of society the public standard of morality
must necessarily fall to a very low degree. The leaven spreads from the
corrupted part into the whole mass. Just as the slang of London thieves
is become the classical language of Sydney, so do necessarily a
familiarity with crime, hatred to law, and contempt for virtue, make
their way into the minds and hearts of those who are untainted with
actual crime. So far from a reformation being even begun in New South
Wales, it would seem that roguery had been carried a degree beyond even
the perfection it has reached here. Property is very insecure in Sydney,
and the most extraordinary robberies take place. Mr. James Walker, in
his evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, says 'the
colony has a curious effect upon the most practised thieves in this
country; one of the most experienced thieves in London has _something to
learn_ when he comes out there; probably he would be robbed the first
night he came into his hut.' This was the answer given by an experienced
settler to the question, whether he thought any considerable degree of
reformation took place among the convicts residing at a distance from
Sydney. It is nearly impossible that it should be otherwise. The master
can only punish his servant by travelling with him some twenty or thirty
miles to a police magistrate, by which he loses his own time, the labour
of his servant, perhaps for months, if he is condemned to a road gang,
and after his return has little advantage from his services.
Unwillingness to work for a master who has been the cause of his
punishment is a difficult feeling to counteract. The convict has the
game in his own hands: he either does no work, wounds himself, falls
sick, or perhaps, and it is not uncommon, spoils either the materials
entrusted to him, or the tools which have been put into his hands.
"Mr. Busby, when asked respecting the prevalence of bush-rangers, who
are escaped convicts and others who have taken to the bush, says, in his
Evidence (5th Aug. 1831,) that within the last twelve months, or two
years, bush-rangers have been so numerous that it was scarcely possible
to travel a hundred miles on the road without being stopped: there was
scarcely a newspaper, in which there were not two or three instances of
persons, of every rank, being stopped. It was quite an unusual thing
formerly--but of late there has been a regular system of highway
robbery. The laws that have been enacted to put down this horrible state
of things, will serve for an index of the condition of the colony. They
do away with every appearance of personal liberty. 'One act empowered
magistrates to issue a warrant, authorizing constables to enter or break
into any house, within their district or county, by day or night, at
their own discretion; and to seize any person they might suspect to be
highway robbers or burglars; or any individual in the colony, without
any warrant or authority, may take another into custody, on the mere
suspicion that he is a convict illegally at large: if it appear to the
magistrate that he had a just or probable cause for suspicion, he is
justified in doing so. The onus of proving that he is not a convict
illegally at large, is thrown upon the suspected person, and if that is
not established to the satisfaction of the magistrate, he is liable to
be retained in custody, or sent to Sydney to be examined and dealt
with.'
"The number of executions in New South Wales in the year 1830 exceeded
the whole number of executions in England and Wales, in the same year;
which, taking the proportion of the populations of the countries, makes
capital punishments upwards of three hundred and twenty-five times as
frequent as in the mother country. This horrid fact is pretty well, of
itself, an answer to all argument drawn from the idea of Reformation.
But direct testimony is abundant. Major McArthur, the son of one of the
wealthiest and most extensive settlers in the colony, and to whom it
owes so much for its present progress in production and commerce,
states, 'It is painful to know that those whose sentences have expired,
or to whom pardons have been granted, seldom or ever incline to reform,
even when they have acquired property. Intoxication and fraud are
habitual to them; and hardly six persons can be named throughout the
colony, who, being educated men, and having been transported for
felonies, have afterwards become sober, moral, and industrious members
of the community. Crime is of constant occurrence, and so completely
organized, that cattle are carried off from the settlers in large
numbers, and slaughtered for the traders in Sydney, who contract with
the commissariat. It is not, therefore, the vicious habits alone of the
town which are to be dreaded, but the effects that are communicated and
felt throughout the country. The agricultural labourer is encouraged to
plunder his master, by finding a ready sale for the property he steals,
and whenever his occupations call him to the towns, he sees and yields
himself to the vicious habits around him. He returns intoxicated and
unsettled to his employer's farm, and incites his comrades to the same
sensual indulgences, with equal disregard of the risk and the
consequences. To these causes the present vitiated and disorganized
state of the convicts in New South Wales is chiefly attributable; and
the extent of the evil maybe in some degree estimated, when it is stated
_that the expense of the police establishment amounts to more_ than
20,000_l_. per annum for a population of 40,000 souls."
_Foreign Quarterly Review._
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