THE COLLAPSE OF DEPORTATION
Lamentable state of Van Diemen's Land--Colony on the brink of
ruin--Latest convict schemes a complete failure--Glut of labour and
deadlock in employment--Terrible state of Norfolk Island--Convicts
rule--Report of special commissioner--Ill-advised leniency--Severer
discipline introduced--Interference with so-called rights
aggravates misconduct--Many murders committed--New commandant
appointed--Offenders brought to trial--Fourteen hanged--Norfolk
Island condemned--Creation of new Colony in Northern Australia
Gladstone's scheme--Change of Ministry and new measures--Exile to
Van Diemen's Land checked--The new Colonies refuse to receive
convicts--Western Australia alone admits them--An insufficient
outlet--New ideas.
Within three years of the establishment of the new system, already
described at length, by which transportation was to be robbed of all its
evils, the most deplorable results showed themselves. The condition of
Van Diemen's Land had become most lamentable. It was filled to
overflowing with convicts. There were in all 25,000, half of whom were
still in the hands of government; and besides these numbers there were
three thousand pass-holders waiting for hire, but unable to obtain
employment. The latter would be reinforced by as many more in the year
immediately following. The colony itself was on the verge of
bankruptcy: its finances embarrassed, its trades and industries
depressed. With all this was a wholesale exodus of all classes of free
people--the better class, to avoid the ruin that stared them in the
face, and working men, because higher wages were offered elsewhere in
the neighbouring colonies. Already, in fact, the new system of probation
had broken down. It had given rise to evils greater than any which it
had been expected to replace. Not only was Van Diemen's Land itself on
the brink of ruin, but the consequences to the convicts were almost too
terrible to be described. Mr. Pitcairn, a resident of Hobart Town,
raised an indignant protest, in which he urges that "all that the free
colonists suffer, even the total destruction of Van Diemen's Land as a
free colony, is as nothing to what the wretched convicts are forced to
submit to. It is not bodily suffering that I refer to: it is the
pollution of their minds and hearts which is forced upon them and which
they cannot escape from. Loathsome as are the details of their miserable
state, it is impossible to see thousands of men debased and depraved
without at least making an attempt to save others from the same fate."
The congregation of criminals in large numbers without due supervision,
meant simply wholesale, wide-spread pollution. Assignment, with all its
faults, had at least the merit of dispersing the evil over a wide area.
Not only in its debasing effects upon the convicts themselves was the
system quite a failure. Half the scheme became a dead letter from the
impoverished condition of the colony. Of what avail was it to prepare
prisoners gradually for honest labour when there was no labour upon
which they could be employed? The whole gist and essence of the scheme
was that after years of restraint the criminal, purged of his evil
propensities, would gladly lend himself out for hire. But what if there
were no hirers? Yet this was practically the state of the case.
Following inevitably from the unnatural over-crowding of Van Diemen's
Land, there came a great glut in the labour market. Had the colony been
thoroughly prosperous, and as big as the neighbouring island-continent,
it could hardly have found employment for the thousands of convicts
poured in year by year. Being quite the reverse--small and almost
stagnant--a species of deadlock was the certain result of this
tremendous influx. To make matters worse, goaded, doubtless, by the
excessive costliness of the whole scheme, the imperial government
insisted that all hirers should pay a tax over and above the regular
wages for every convict engaged, and this whether the hirer was a
private person or the public works department of the colony. Neither
private nor public funds could stand this charge. In the general
distress, employers of labour could hardly afford the moderate wages
asked; while the local revenues were equally impecunious. Yet there were
many works urgently needed in the colony, which the colonial government
was quite disposed to execute--provided they got their labour for
nothing. But to pay for it was impossible. In fact, this imperial
penuriousness defeated its own object. The home government would not let
out its labour except at a price which no one would pay; so the
thousands who might at least have lived at their own expense, remained
at that of the government. They were put to raise produce for their own
support; but they earned nothing, and ate their heads off into the
bargain. They had, moreover, a grievance. They were denied all fruition
in the status to which, by their own conduct and according to prescribed
rules, they arrived. They had been promised that after a certain
probationary period they would pass into a stage of semi-freedom. Yet
here, after all, they were in a condition little superior to the
convicts in the gangs--in the very stage, that is to say, which the
pass-holders had left behind them. The authorities had, in fact, broken
faith with them. This was a fatal flaw in the scheme; a link broken in
the chain; a gap in the sequence of progressive probation enough to
bring the whole to ruin.
But at any rate the pass-holders were better off than the
"conditional-pardon" or "ticket-of-leave" men. The first named had still
a lien on the government. They were certain of food, and a roof over
their heads at the various hiring depôts. But those who were in a stage
further ahead towards freedom were upon their own resources. These men
were "thrown upon the world with nothing but their labour to support
them." But no labour was in demand. What, then, was to become of them?
They must steal, or starve; and as the outcome of either alternative,
the community might expect to be weighted with a large and increasing
population of thieves and paupers.
Nor would any description of the main island alone suffice to place in a
proper light the actual state of affairs. Norfolk Island, the chief
penal settlement, had deteriorated so rapidly, that what was bad before,
had grown to be infinitely and irremediably worse. Naylor, a clergyman,
writing about this time, paints a terrible picture of the island. Rules
disregarded; convicts of every degree mingled indiscriminately in the
settlement. Some of the prisoners had been convicted, and reconvicted,
and had passed through every grade of punishment in hulks, chain-gangs,
or penal settlements. Among them were "flash men," who kept the island
in awe, and bearded the commandant himself; bodies of from seventy to
one hundred often in open mutiny, refusing to work, and submitting only
when terms had been arranged to their satisfaction. The island was kept
in perpetual alarm; houses were robbed in open day; yet no successful
efforts were made to bring the culprits to justice. An official long
resident on the island tells the following incident: that a favourite
parrot, with its cage, was stolen from his house, and the thief was
known, and seen with the bird. He kept it in his barrack-room, and took
it daily with him to his work. Yet no one dared to interfere with him!
The bird was left in his possession, and he altogether escaped
punishment. The commandant was deliberately knocked down by one of these
ruffians and received severe contusions. The state of the island might
well awaken alarm.
In 1846 a special commissioner was despatched from headquarters at
Hobart Town, to report from personal observation on the state of the
settlement. It is abundantly evident from his report, which will be
found _in extenso_ in a Blue-Book on convict discipline, issued in
February, 1847, that some terrific explosion of the seething elements
collected together at Norfolk Island might be looked for at any early
day. Mr. Stewart, the commissioner, attributed the condition of the
settlement chiefly to the lax discipline maintained by its commandant.
This gentleman certainly appears to have been chosen unwisely. He was
quite the wrong man for the place, utterly unfitted for the arduous
duties he was called upon to perform. Of a weak and vacillating
disposition, he seldom had the courage to act upon his own judgment. It
was openly alleged that his decisions rested with his chief clerk. Most
of his subordinates were at loggerheads with one another, but he never
dared to settle their quarrels himself. Points the most trivial were
referred always to headquarters. He was equally wanting in resolute
determination in dealing with the great mass of convicts who
constituted the bulk of his command. With them he was forever
temporising and making allowances; so that rules, never too severe, came
by degrees to be sensibly relaxed, till leniency grew into culpable
pampering and childish considerateness. As might have been expected, the
objects of his tender solicitude were utterly ungrateful. He interfered
sometimes to soften the sentences of the sitting magistrate, even when
they were light enough; but his kindness was only mistaken for weakness,
and the men in his charge became day by day more insolent and
insubordinate. Where firmness was required in almost every particular,
in order to maintain anything like a controlling supervision, it was
altogether wanting. This commandant was considered by his supreme chief,
to be "totally unfitted for the peculiar situation in which he is
placed, either from want of experience, or from an absence in his own
character of the qualifications necessary to control criminals."
Of a truth, Norfolk Island was a government that could not be entrusted
to any but iron hands. That this commandant was clearly the wrong man
for the post cannot be questioned; nevertheless, he was not altogether
to blame for the terrible state of affairs existing. No doubt by his
wavering incompetence the original condition of the island was greatly
aggravated, but all these evils which presently broke out and bore such
noxious fruit, had been germinating long before his time. It had been
the custom for many years to treat the convicts with ill-advised
leniency. They had been allowed practically too much indulgence, and
were permitted to forget that they owed their location on that island
solely to their own grievous crimes and offences. They had been kept in
order by concession, and not by stern force; persuaded to be good,
rather than coerced when bad. Such a method of procedure can but have
one result with criminals. It is viewed by them as weakness of which
they are quick to take every advantage. Here, at Norfolk Island, under a
loose régime, the convicts had always been allowed their own way; half
the officers placed over them trafficked with them, and were their
free-and-easy familiar friends. On the introduction of the new system,
no attempt was made to sweep the place clean before the arrival of
greatly increased numbers. Old officers remained, and old convicts;
enough of both to perpetuate the old evils and to render them twice as
harmful under the new aspect of the settlement. Gardens were still
allowed; great freedom to come and go hither and thither, with no strict
observance of bounds; any number of private shops existed whereat the
convicts bought and sold, or bartered with each other for pork and
vegetables and other articles of general use. Worse than this, the
"Ring" was left untouched, and grew daily more and more powerful, till a
band of some forty or fifty cut-throat scoundrels ruled the whole
convictdom of the settlement. The members of this "Ring" were in league
with the cooks, from whom they obtained the best portions of the food,
abstracted from their fellow-prisoners' rations; but no one dared to
complain. Such was the malignant terrorism inspired by these fifty
ruffians, that they kept the whole body of the convicts in awe, and
their wholesale plunderings and pilferings flourished unchecked long
before any attempt was made to put them down. Under such conditions as
these, the management of the convicts in Norfolk Island was certainly a
disgrace to the authorities.
Following Mr. Stewart's visit, a more stringent system was attempted,
although not entirely carried out. The commandant was informed that he
must tighten the reins. One by one the highly prized privileges
disappeared: trafficking was now for the first time openly
discountenanced, and the prisoners at length saw themselves debarred
from many little luxuries and indulgences. A strictly coercive
labour-gang was established; the gardens were shut; the limits of bounds
rigorously enforced; and, last but not least, a firm attack was made
upon the method of messing, to check, if possible, the unlawful
misappropriation of food. In this last measure lay the seed of serious
trouble. It interfered directly with the vested interest of a small but
powerful oligarchy, the members of which were not disposed to surrender
lightly the rights they had so long arrogated to themselves. From the
moment that the robberies in the cook-house had been discovered, a
growing spirit of dissatisfaction and discontent was observable among
the more influential prisoners.
A second authorised attack in the same direction brought matters to a
crisis. Not the least of the evils attending the old plan of messing
was, that the prisoners themselves, one by one, were allowed access to
the kitchen, where they might cook anything they happened to have in
possession, whether obtained by fair means or foul. To meet these
culinary requirements, most of the "flash men" had collected pots and
pans of various sorts, constructed chiefly from the regulation mess-tins
and platters. It was decided as a bold stroke against illicit cookery,
to seize every _batterie de cuisine_ in the place. Accordingly, one
evening, after the convicts had been locked up for the night, a careful
search was made through the lumber-yard (the mess-room, so to speak),
and everything of illegal shape was seized. All these collected articles
were then and there removed to the convicts' barrack store. It must be
remarked here that several of the officials shrunk from executing this
duty. One free overseer, named Smith, who was also superintendent of the
cook-house, urged that he was all day among the prisoners, and felt his
life hardly safe if it were known that he had taken part in the search.
Others demurred also; but eventually the work was done.
Next morning, when the convicts went to breakfast, they missed their
highly prized kitchen utensils. A storm quickly gathered, and broke
forth with ungovernable fury. A great mass of men, numbering several
hundreds, streamed at once out of the lumber-yard, and hurried towards
the barrack stores. Everything fell before them: fastenings, woodwork,
doorposts. There within were the cans, the cause of all this coil. These
they gathered up at once, and then turned back, still _en masse_, to the
lumber-yard. They were in search now of victims. Their thirst was for
blood, and nothing less would quench it. They sought first the officers
they hated most; and chief among these was Smith, the overseer of the
kitchen. A convict named Westwood, by birth a gentleman, and having
received a superior education, commonly called "Jacky-Jacky," was
ringleader, and marched at the head of the mutineers. All were
armed--some with long poles, others with axes, most with knives. It was
a case of _sauve qui peut_ with the officers. There were not more than
half a dozen constables on duty, and warning came to four of them too
late. Smith, who had remained in the cook-house, was caught and murdered
on the spot. Another officer, Morris, was also killed. Two others were
struck down with mortal hurts. All the wounds inflicted were about the
head and face. One man had his forehead cut open deep down into the
cavity of the head. He had also a frightful gash from the eye down the
cheek, through which the roof of the mouth was visible. Another had the
whole of one side of his face completely smashed in, from the temple to
the mouth. A third unfortunate man had his skull fractured. All this
had happened in less time than it takes to tell it. Then the mutineers
cried out for more blood. Leaving the lumber-yard, they made for the
police huts, driving the few remaining constables before them, and
striking down all they overtook. At the police huts they smashed the
windows and did what damage they could. They were then for proceeding
onward. "Let's get that villain Barrow," was now the cry--Mr. Barrow
being the stipendiary magistrate, whom they hated with especially keen
hatred. They were determined, so it was afterwards said, to murder every
official on the island, and then to take to the bush.
By this time active opposition was close at hand. First came a military
guard, which formed across the road, and checked all further advance of
the mutineers. Presently Mr. Barrow himself appeared upon the scene with
a larger detachment of troops, and in the presence of this exhibition of
force the convicts retired quietly enough to their barracks.
The strength of the storm therefore was now spent. The mutineers were
either for the moment satisfied with their efforts, or--which is more
probable--they were cowed by the troops, and felt that it was now the
turn for authority to play its hand. Accompanied by a strong escort of
soldiers, the stipendiary magistrate went in amongst the convicts,
examined all carefully, and then and there arrested every one who bore a
single spot or stain of blood. Seven were thus singled out at once,
among them Jacky-Jacky and several members of the "Ring." Forty-five
others, who were strongly suspected of complicity in the murders, were
also arrested; and all these, heavily ironed, were for immediate
security chained together in a row to the iron runners of the boat-shed.
But such was the alarm on the island, that the commandant was
strenuously urged to remove these ringleaders at once to Van Diemen's
Land.
Indeed it was felt on all sides that there was no longer any safety for
either life or property. The convict population had reached the pitch of
anarchy and insubordination. It was indeed thought that the storm would
soon break out with renewed fury. The success which the mutineers had
won would doubtless tempt them to fresh efforts. They gave signs, too,
that they were ready to recommence. When the corpses of the murdered men
were carried past the barracks, the convicts within yelled in derision,
and cried that these victims should not be the last. The apprehension
was so great, that some officials maintained that the convicts ought to
remain immured in their barracks until a reinforcement of troops
arrived. There were some, too, who doubted the loyalty of the soldiers,
saying that the troops would yet make common cause with the convicts.
But this was never proved. What was really evident, was that the
soldiers were harassed and overworn by the incessant duties they had
been called upon recently to perform. They had been continually under
arms, and were often on guard six nights out of the seven. Fortunately
Sir Eardly Wilmot, Governor of Van Diemen's Land, had acted on Mr.
Stewart's representations, and had despatched reinforcements long before
this, which landed on the island a day or two after the actual outbreak.
The most serious dangers were therefore at an end.
But the state of Norfolk Island called for some radical reformatory
measures. If anything further had been needed to prove the incompetence
of the commandant, it was to be found in his latest proceedings. Sudden
changes, passing from laxity to strictness, had been made in the
regulations; yet no precautionary measures were taken to meet that
violent resistance which the convicts had long openly threatened. The
last act of authority, the removal of the cooking utensils, should at
least have been backed by an imposing exhibition of armed force. It was,
indeed, time to substitute new men and new measures. The Hobart Town
executive council resolved unanimously to suspend the commandant and to
replace him by Mr. Price, the police magistrate of Hobart Town, a
gentleman of knowledge, firmness, and long experience with the convict
population in the island. His instructions were precise. He was to
disarm the convicts and take from them the knives they habitually
carried; to make all wear, without distinction, the convict dress; to
compel close attendance on divine service; to institute messes,
regulate the muster, insist upon exact obedience to all rules, and above
all, to enforce the due separation of the convicts at night. By close
attention to these regulations it was hoped that peace and good order
would soon be restored to the settlement.
At the same time condign punishment was meted out to the mutineers. A
judge went down posthaste to the island, a court was formed immediately
on his arrival, trials proceeded with, and fourteen were hanged the same
day. This salutary example, with the measures promptly introduced by Mr.
Price, soon restored order to the island. The new commandant was
undoubtedly a man of great courage and decision of character. He acted
always for himself, and looked into everything with his own eyes. Being
perpetually on the move about the settlement, nothing escaped him.
Frequently when he met convicts, though he might have with him only one
constable as orderly, he would halt them, and search them from head to
foot. If they had knives or other forbidden articles, he impounded them
forthwith; saying as often as not, "I'll have you to understand, my men,
that in twelve months you shall see a gold watch upon the road and yet
not pick it up." Under his able government the evils of Norfolk Island
were sensibly lessened; but nothing could wash the place clean. So
convinced was the imperial government of this, that they had resolved,
even before the news of the mutiny, to break up the settlement. But
after that, positive instructions were sent out to carry this into
effect, and by degrees the place was altogether abandoned.
Indeed, the results of "probation," as they had shown themselves, were
far from ignored at home, and the members of successive administrations
had sought anxiously to provide some remedy for evils so plainly
apparent. Mr. Gladstone among others, when Under Secretary of State for
the Colonies, propounded an elaborate scheme for the establishment of a
new settlement in North Australia. This new colony was to provide an
outlet for the overplus in labour, which at that time in Van Diemen's
Land choked up every avenue to employment. "It is founded"--to use Mr.
Gladstone's own words--"as a receptacle for convicts who, by pardon or
lapse of time, have regained their freedom, but who may be unable to
find elsewhere an effective demand for their services." It was to be a
colony of emancipists. The earliest settlers would be exiles sent out
from England, with whose assistance the governor of the new colony was
to prepare for the arrival of the rest from Van Diemen's Land. The first
points which would require attention, were the selection of the best
sites for a town and harbour, the reservation of certain crown lands,
and the distribution of the rest to the various sorts of settlers. All
these points were fully discussed and provided for minutely by Mr.
Gladstone. Every other detail was equally well arranged. As economy was
to be the soul of the new settlement, its officials were to rank lower
than those of other colonies. The governor was to be styled only
superintendent, and the judge, chairman of quarter sessions. The whole
settlement was to be subordinate to New South Wales. And, as the word
"convict" was somewhat unsavoury to the Australian colonists, Mr.
Gladstone provided also for this.
[Illustration: _Ruins of Prison Church, Tasmania_
The settlements in Tasmania formed an important feature of the English
system of progressive penal servitude. Religious instruction was
abundantly furnished, and a record of each prisoner's daily conduct was
carefully kept, so that attendance at the regular church services
naturally assisted the convict in his progress toward the last two
stages of ticket-of-leave and pardon.]
In anticipation of the possible objections of the people of New South
Wales to the establishment of a new convict settlement on the continent
of Australia, Mr. Gladstone put his foot down firmly, and declared he
would admit no such protest. "It would be with sincere regret," he says,
"that I should learn that so important a body of Her Majesty's subjects
were inclined to oppose themselves to the measures I have thus attempted
to explain. Any such opposition must be encountered by reminding those
from whom it might proceed, in terms alike respectful and decided, that
it is impossible that Her Majesty should be advised to surrender what
appears to be one of the vital interests of the British Empire at large,
and one of the chief benefits which the British Empire can at present
derive from the dominion which we have acquired over the vast
territories of the crown in Australia. I think that by maintaining such
a colony as a depot of labour, available to meet the local wants of the
older colony, or to find employment for the capital accumulated there,
we may rather promote than impede the development of the resources of
New South Wales. But even if that hope should be disappointed, I should
not, therefore, be able to admit that the United Kingdom was making an
unjust or unreasonable exercise of the right of sovereignty over those
vast regions of the earth, in thus devoting a part of them to the relief
of Van Diemen's Land, and consequently to render that island the
receptacle for as many convicts as it may be hereafter necessary to
transport there. Having practically relieved New South Wales, at no
small inconvenience to ourselves, from the burden (as soon as it became
a burden) of receiving convicts from this country, we are acquitted of
any obligations in that respect which any colonist, the most jealous for
the interests of his native or adopted country, could ascribe to us."
But it never came to this. No antagonism in this instance ever arose
between the colonial and imperial governments, for Mr. Gladstone and his
colleagues just then went out of power, and the project of the new
colony in North Australia was given up by the new ministry which had to
deal with the question in two phases: first, the evils actually in
existence from the over-crowding of Van Diemen's Land must be mitigated,
if they could not be removed; and secondly, some plan must be adopted to
obviate their recurrence in the future. The first point was touched by
suspending transportation altogether for two years. The stream thus
checked, would have to be directed elsewhere; but in the meantime, Van
Diemen's Land would be relieved: in the course of two years the
probation-gangs would be emptied, and the great labour pressure caused
by the crowds of pass-holders would have disappeared. To deal still
further with the actual difficulty, new and able men were appointed as
administrators: Sir William Denison was to go out as governor, and Mr.
Hampton comptroller-general of convicts. So much for the first point.
The second embraced a wider field. The government was bound, not only to
provide for the thousands with which it had saddled itself by the
cessation of transportation to Van Diemen's Land for a couple of years,
but it had to look further ahead and legislate for future years. It was
now decided that transportation, as it had hitherto been understood and
carried out, should come to an end. Although two years had been the
limit of its temporary suspension, any expectation of recurring to the
old system at the end of that period was "altogether illusory." The new
system, stated briefly, was to consist of a limited period of separate
imprisonment at home, succeeded by employment on public works, either
abroad at Bermuda or Gibraltar, or in this country; and ultimately
followed in ordinary cases by exile or banishment for the remaining term
of the original sentence. The following was now to be the ordering of
the lives of convicts:
A term of separate confinement, continuing from six to eighteen months,
according to sentence and the manner in which prisoners bore the
punishment; forced labour at home penal establishments, or at Gibraltar
or Bermuda, this term to depend also on sentence, but the time by
arrangement of tasks to be shortened by industry; and finally
tickets-of-leave in the colonies.
This system remained in force with sanguine hopes of success, until a
year or two after the establishment of the system, when Van Diemen's
Land, the principal colonial outlet, waxed virtuous, and would have no
more convicts, whether whitewashed or not, at any price. The colony
would not have them at any price nor in any shape or form. Although
pains were taken to explain that these were well-disposed
"ticket-of-leave men," not convicts, their reception was violently
opposed. A struggle ensued, but in the end the imperial government gave
way, and the last convict ship sailed for Van Diemen's Land in 1852.
While we cannot withhold approval of the course the colony adopted,
there is no doubt that it was almost suicidal. Mr. Trollope, who visited
Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1871, describes in graphic
language the consequences to the colony of its conduct. Absolute
stagnation and want of enterprise were everywhere apparent, the
skeletons of great works in ruins, others half finished and doomed to
decay for want of hands, land relapsing into uncultivation, towns
deserted, grass growing in the streets--the whole place lifeless and
inert. Possibly, if the question had been put at another time the answer
might have been different. But in 1850, the discomforts entailed by
transportation were so recent and disagreeable, that free colonists
could not be brought to believe that by a better system of
administration such evils might be altogether avoided.
Nor were the people of Van Diemen's Land singular in their resolve. Even
before they had in plain language so declined, other colonies had
displayed a similar unmistakable reluctance to become receptacles for
convicts. As early as 1848, the British government, in search of new
fields for transportation, had addressed a circular to all colonial
governors, pointing out in persuasive periods, the advantages to be
gained by accepting this valuable labour which, nevertheless, no one
cared to have. Strange to say, only one colony--that of Western
Australia--replied affirmatively to this appeal. At the Cape of Good
Hope, the appearance of the convict ship _Neptune_, from Bermuda, in
September, 1849, produced a tumultuous and indignant protest. The moment
her arrival was signalled, the church bells began to toll half-minute
time, and a public notice was put forth by the anti-convict association,
calling on the people to be calm. At the same time the municipal
commissioners addressed the governor, Sir Harry Smith, begging that the
_Neptune_ might be forthwith ordered to leave the shores of the Cape.
"The convicts," they said, "must not, cannot, and shall not be landed or
kept in any of the ports of the colony." Sir Harry's answer was that he
must carry out his orders; upon which the people drew a cordon round the
ship and cut off supplies from Government House, so that His Excellency
could get no meat, and had to bake his own bread. Finally, he agreed to
compromise, and the _Neptune_ was allowed to remain in the bay till a
vessel could be sent home for instructions. The authorities at home
considered the opposition at the Cape too serious to be resisted, and
directed the _Neptune_ to proceed elsewhere.
At other places the bent of the colonial mind made itself equally
unmistakable, so that it was at length openly announced in the House of
Commons, that unless the colonies grew more amenable, transportation
must cease.
As all these various questions covered a period of several years, it can
hardly be said that the crisis which necessitated change came suddenly
or all at once. The government was loath to surrender till the very last
the idea of maintaining the existing system or something like it, but
they were not without fair warning that they were building on hopes
delusive and insecure. And it is evident that throughout the period of
doubt they gave the question the most anxious care, although the evident
disposition was more towards tinkering up what was rickety and useless,
than substituting a radically new plan. To this, no doubt, they were in
a measure forced. The mere idea of retaining a large mass of convicts at
home was hailed by the public with alarm; and it became almost an axiom
that offenders sooner or later, but as a rule inevitably, must be
banished from the country. This was long the underlying principle of
every scheme. The convicts must be removed to a distance, not
necessarily as a punishment--it might be as a boon to themselves--but in
any case as a benefit to their country. In point of symmetry the method
is undoubtedly admirable; theoretically perfect now as it was then. The
assisted emigration of discharged prisoners supplies the easiest means
of providing them with that honest labour which is theoretically
supposed to preserve them from a relapse into crime. But whether as
freemen, exiles, or convicts in chains, they were all indelibly branded
with the stigma of their guilt, and we cannot even now find a country
ready to receive them. At the time indicated, the resolute attitude of
all the colonies compelled England to reconsider her position. She was
forced, in fact, though sorely against her will, to make the best of a
bad bargain and keep nearly all her convicts at home.