FRENCH PENAL COLONIES
Penal exile in favour with other nations--Systems of France, Italy,
Spain and Portugal--Earliest French ventures--Guiana a fiasco--High
sounding names--Renewed attempt--Settlement made in New Caledonia
in 1864--Capital at Noumea--Convict population increases--Noumea in
1888--Results of convict labour meagre--Loose discipline and low
moral tone--Agricultural settlements--Life at the smaller
stations--Arab convicts--Enforced labour unremunerative--Delay in
development--The emancipists--Same warfare with free settlers as in
Australia--A later view--Visited by Mr. George Griffith in
1900--Free immigrants refuse to remain--Present condition proof of
failure of penal exile.
The vast and costly efforts of Great Britain to make use of exile as the
penalty for crime, and the strange, unlooked for results achieved, have
been set forth. These efforts were undoubtedly successful, although not
in the manner expected. To add a great colony to the British Empire was
no small feat, even though the sources were impure and the foundations
laid by the dregs of society. But the gain was some compensation for the
means adopted. In any case, the convict stigma has long since been
washed out by honest industry and reputable development. A vast
territory, richly endowed, offered special advantages to an
enterprising people with the genius of colonisation. Other nations, who
overlooked the difficulties faced and overcome by England, have
endeavoured to follow in her footsteps, and have made but little
progress. France, as we shall see, has gone to great lengths in the
practice of deportation, but to no purpose. Portugal still transports
her criminals to the African colony of Angola, where the system is
established on a small scale and has exhibited no glaring defects. Italy
has long favoured the formation of criminal colonies on the many islands
that surround her coast, and has removed numbers of prisoners to
agricultural stations at Sardinia, to Pianosa and Gorgona in the Tuscan
Archipelago, as well as to Monte Cristo and Capraja. Spain had a penal
settlement at Ceuta on the north African shore as far back as the
fifteenth century, and has more recently added large stations at Melilla
and Alhucemas. Spanish experience in convict colonies is said to be
satisfactory, but the conditions are much the same as in Australia,--no
better, if no worse.
The efforts of France to found penal colonies range far back into
history. They date from a period long antecedent to the latest craze for
colonial aggrandisement. The very first attempt to sow the seeds of a
prosperous community with the failures of society was in 1763, when the
colonisation of French Guiana, already often attempted without success,
was again tried on an ambitious scale. The project failed miserably. An
expedition fourteen thousand strong, recruited mainly from the scum and
sweepings of the streets of Paris, melted away within a year, and
starvation carried off all whom the deadly climate spared. A second
similar experiment was tried in 1766, with a like disastrous result. No
serious importance could be attached to the colonising efforts of the
victims exiled to Guiana by the revolutionary tribunals. Barely half the
number survived the voyage, and the balance were in no condition to act
as pioneers. The records of French Guiana are full of such fiascos, the
most unsuccessful of which was the philanthropic attempt of the Baron
Milius, in 1823, to establish a penal colony on the banks of the Mana,
by the marriage and expatriation of habitual criminals, _recidivistes_,
and degraded women,--a most ill-judged undertaking, speedily productive
of ghastly horrors.
After this, penal colonisation seems to have fallen into disfavour with
France. Not only was it not renewed, but the principle of criminal
deportation, of exile as a penalty, was formally condemned in 1847, both
by such eminent publicists as MM. Lucas, De Beaumont and De Tocqueville,
and by the government of the hour. Yet within a few years the practice
was suddenly restored. To the new men in power there was probably
something attractive in the theory of transportation, as may be seen
from the high-sounding phrases that accompanied their decrees. The idea
was not merely to banish the dangerous social elements to a distant
soil: the young republic wished to prove that "humanity presided over
all its actions." Deportation, with the disciplinary processes that
surrounded it, was expected to bring about the moral regeneration of
those subjected to it; the criminal would be transformed into a useful
citizen; no longer a terror in his old home, he would aid the
development of and become a positive benefactor to the new. The
government was, indeed, so fascinated by the prospective advantages of
transportation to the convicts themselves, that it expected them to
accept it as a boon. Registers were opened at all the _bagnes_, or
seaport convict-stations, on which prisoners might inscribe their names
as volunteers for the high favour of removal to the promised land beyond
the seas. The philanthropic wish to benefit the exile was not, however,
the sole object of the government, as may be seen in various articles in
the decrees. The hope of founding substantial colonial possessions was
not disguised. The convict might benefit by expatriation, but so would
his new country, and to a greater degree. He went out, in a measure, for
his own good; he remained, perforce, for that of the community. It was
ruled that even when emancipated he was to be kept in the colony; those
sentenced for eight years and less must spend there a second period as
long as the original sentence; those sentenced for more than eight
years must remain in the colony for life. Their labour and their best
energies were thus impounded for the general good, in the sanguine
expectation that they were being utilised in the progress and
development of French colonisation.
The revival of transportation was formally promulgated by the law of
May, 1854, which declared that thereafter the punishment of _travaux
forcés_ should be undergone in establishments created in a French
colonial possession other than Algeria. As the only available outlet at
this time was French Guiana, this tropical colony alone was adopted as a
convict receptacle. In doing so, the very first principles of penal
legislation were ignored. To consign even convicts to a pestilential
climate, and expand the lesser penalty into capital punishment, was a
monstrous and illegal misuse of power. Exile to French Guiana meant
nearly certain death. For three years every attempt to colonise the
country had ended in disaster. Yet the government of Napoleon III
accepted deportation with a light heart and on the most extended scale.
The French government, slow to accept the evidence of facts, has never
abandoned deportation to Guiana. But it is no longer sanguine of
success, and the attempt to colonise is continued with other than
native-born Frenchmen. The total convict population of Guiana, as shown
in recent French official returns, had dwindled down to 3,441, and of
these barely a thousand were Europeans; the rest were Arabs from
Algeria, and Annamites, Asiatic blacks from the new French possessions
in Cochin-China and Tonquin. The Europeans were made up, in nearly equal
proportions, of convicts still undergoing sentence, and emancipists
compelled to reside in the colony. Large numbers of both classes are now
retained in the penitentiaries on the seacoast, where they can be
constantly employed at industrial labour under cover; as at Cayenne, the
capital, where vast administrative establishments exist, built at great
outlay in more prosperous times.
The French government has sought by every means to encourage the young
settlement of Saint Laurent, but its progress has always been
disappointing. It has been dependent for some years past upon the Arab
recruits, and the French officials already sorrowfully confess that
members of the Arab race transplanted to French Guiana are not of the
stuff to make good colonists. They are idle, discontented, and a prey to
unceasing homesickness. A great effort has been made by the
administration to attach the Arab emigrant to the land of exile by
transporting thither--I use the words of a late report--"the image of
the Arab family, its customs, habits and religion." Marriages are
encouraged with Arab women according to the Mussulman law. But little
success has attended these well-meant efforts. The Arab soon develops
nomadic instincts; he will not stick to one spot, but wanders abroad in
search of work which will give him the means of a speedy return to
Algeria. Not seldom he shows a clean pair of heels. Escapes in French
Guiana have been a source of trouble and annoyance to the authorities.
The total number of convicts who had escaped or disappeared from French
Guiana between 1852 and 1883 was 3,146; and since Arabs have been sent
there, they have supplied the largest proportion of fugitives. They went
off in bands; nothing could check them; no surveillance was effective.
The Government cutters cruising along the mouth of the river were easily
evaded, and the country boats once gained, they were soon out of the
colony. A report from the governor-general of Algeria in 1890 states
that a great cause of the insecurity of Algeria is the presence in the
colony of large numbers of Arab convicts who have escaped from Guiana
and returned home. Hence transportation has little terrors for the Arab
population, knowing how easily exile may be avoided.
A more remarkable case of escape was that of a French convict sent to
Guiana, who was anxious to see the Paris Exposition of 1889. He became
possessed of some eight hundred francs through successful gambling, and
spent six hundred in taking passage to Amsterdam; he embarked without
let or hindrance and went direct to Paris on arrival. He was present at
the opening of the exposition, where he stood not far from the
president of the republic. Later on he was captured for a fresh offence,
and taken to one of the large Paris prisons, where he was at once
recognised as a convict exiled not long before to Cayenne. He admitted
the charge; he had gratified his wish, had enjoyed _quelques bons
moments_, and was satisfied to go back to Guiana, as he would not have
to pay his own passage out. It was, in fact, established beyond question
that it was easier to escape from Cayenne, and even New Caledonia, than
from a _maison centrale_ in the department of the Seine.
It must be sufficiently plain from the foregoing facts that the attempts
to colonise French Guiana with convicts have ended in more or less
disheartening failure. Even in sections where the climate was not fatal
to Europeans, the conditions of life were opposed to the growth of a
prosperous community. There was little increase of population possible.
The ill-assorted marriages of convicts with degraded women of their own
class proved generally unproductive. Infant mortality was excessive;
children born in the colony could never be reared. The substitution of
Arabs for Europeans has been accompanied, as I have shown, with little
more success. Now, according to a late report of the French Colonial
Office, Annamite convicts, hitherto retained in their own country for
the completion of various important colonial works, are sent to French
Guiana. "The Annamite," says the report hopefully, "is a good
agriculturist; he can face the climate of Guiana without danger, and the
convicts of this race will doubtless largely contribute to the
development and cultivation of the colony."
The melancholy miscarriage of deportation to French Guiana did not
suffice to condemn it. The locality was only at fault, it was thought;
the system deserved a fuller and fairer trial. France now possessed a
better site for experiment, a territory in those same southern seas
where English transportation had so greatly prospered. New Caledonia was
annexed to France in 1853, but its colonisation had proceeded slowly,
and there was only a handful of white population when the first shipload
of convicts disembarked in 1864. A town, at this time little better than
a standing camp, was planted at Noumea, a spot chosen for its
capabilities for defence rather than its physical advantages. It had no
natural water supply, and the land around was barren. Exactly opposite
lay the little island of Nou, a natural breakwater to the Bay of Noumea,
well-watered, fertile, and commanded by the guns of the mainland, and
here the first convict depot was established. The earliest work of these
convict pioneers was to build a prison-house and to prepare for the
reception of new drafts. The labour was not severe, the discipline by no
means irksome, and some progress was made. Prison buildings rose upon
the island of Nou; a portion of the surrounding land was brought under
cultivation, and outwardly all went well. As years passed, the prison
population gradually increased. In 1867 the average total was six
hundred; in the following year it had increased to 1,554, after which
the yearly gain was continuous. Various causes contributed to this,
among them the gradual abolition of the _bagnes_ or convict stations at
the French arsenals, and the wholesale condemnation of Communists, many
of whom were deported to New Caledonia. In 1874 the convict population
exceeded five thousand. In 1880 it had risen to eight thousand; and
according to recent published official returns, the effective
population, taking convicts and emancipists together, numbered nearly
ten thousand. From May, 1864, to December 31, 1883, a total of 15,209
convicts had been transported to New Caledonia.
The development of the young colony was slow. Efforts were chiefly
concentrated upon the penitentiary island, and the convict labour was
but little utilised on the mainland. Those public works so indispensable
to the growth and prosperity of the settlement were neglected. The
construction of highroads was never attempted on any comprehensive
scale, and, notwithstanding the force of workmen available, Noumea, the
capital, was not enriched with useful buildings or rendered independent
of its physical defects. Henri Rochefort, who saw it in 1872, ridicules
its pretensions to be called a town. It might have been built of old
biscuit-boxes, he said; imposing streets named from some book of
battles--the Rue Magenta and the Rue Sebastopol, the Rue Inkerman and
the Avenue de l'Alma--were mere tracks sparsely dotted with huts,
single-storied and unpretending. The town lay at the bottom of a basin
surrounded by small hills. "It was like a cistern in wet weather, and in
the hot season it might be the crater of a volcano." A great mound, the
Butte Conneau, blocked up the mouth of the port and inconveniently
impeded traffic. Water was still scarce, and, according to Rochefort, a
barrel of it would be the most acceptable present to any inhabitant of
"Elephantiasopolis," as he christened Noumea from the endemic skin
affections. It took ten or a dozen years to improve Noumea. But by 1877
the Butte Conneau had been removed and levelled. About the same time an
aqueduct 8000 metres long was completed, which brought water to the
capital from Port de France and Yahoué. A number of more or less
ambitious residences had also been erected: a governor's house, bishop's
palace, administrative offices, hospitals, and barracks for the troops.
A later account of Noumea is given by M. Verschuur, who visited the
Antipodes in 1888-9, and spent some time in New Caledonia. On arrival he
was at first much struck by the appearance of Noumea. He was agreeably
impressed by the brightness and gaiety of its aspect as compared with
"the monotonous appearance of the little English towns" of Australia.
Cafés and taverns were numerous; crowds of lively folk filled the
streets through which he drove; and the well-built Government House,
surrounded by pretty grounds, looked homelike. A closer inspection much
modified his opinion. He remembered the large cities of the neighbouring
island continent with their imposing architecture, their fine public
gardens, and the prosperous home-like atmosphere pervading every part.
"But now I found myself in a small town somewhat resembling those of the
Antilles; the houses, which were all alike, were low and roughly built,
often of wood. Some of them were no better than the huts of the
backwoodsmen I had seen in the Australian bush. The shops were small,
and the wares displayed were inferior in quality and of a mixed
description. Toys hung side by side with saucepans and boots; calicoes
and hats were framed by jams and spirit-bottles. The streets were badly
kept and filthy; the roads outside the town had not been properly
levelled and the numerous bogs made travelling after dark very
dangerous. The only promenade was a public square planted with cocoanut
palms, which gave little shade. The harbour was meagre, the quays small
and inconvenient; but few ships can load or unload at the same time. If
there is one colony more than another where public building might be
carried on at the least expense, it is certainly New Caledonia, with its
hosts of convicts sentenced to 'hard labour.' In many of the places I
had visited, the numerous fine public works had been executed at great
cost; but here was a colony where labour would cost nothing and yet it
is never utilised. It is a strange anomaly, and a singular waste of
means, which might well be used for the advantage and progress of the
colony."
According to M. Verschuur, the amount of work gotten out of the convicts
was not very great. In his opinion France is maintaining in New
Caledonia an "army of drones who find means of evading the labour to
which they have been condemned. Many an honest, hard-working French
peasant might envy the fate which the government reserves for that part
of the population which is steeped in vice and crime. The law passed in
1854 prescribes that the convicts shall be kept to the most laborious
works of the colony." As soon as he landed, M. Verschuur heard an
excellent band playing in the public square. The bandsmen were all
convicts, who played three times a week and practised the rest of the
time. Men whose crimes had been the talk of all Paris were employed as
gardeners, or in the easiest kind of work, smoking and chatting with
their companions. The convicts work, nominally, eight hours a day; they
sleep another eight; and then there still remains another eight in which
they are absolutely idle. They do less than a quarter of the daily work
of an ordinary labourer. In the stone yard they simply work when they
see the warder is observing them. "I noticed a gang one day just outside
Noumea; out of the sixteen men, twelve were calmly seated on the heap of
stones they were supposed to be breaking, rolling cigarettes, and
talking; the remaining four made a stroke now and then, when the warder
chanced to glance that way. Several times, when travelling in the
interior of the country, I have come upon well-known murderers, living
in service with the unsuspecting inhabitants." A certain number were
regularly employed within the prison of Nou, where M. Verschuur saw them
engaged as shoemakers, carpenters, and at the blacksmith's forge. All
were busily at work, yet he was certain that before he entered with the
prison director, not a soul was doing anything. Great laxity, however,
prevailed in these shops. A convict carpenter was permitted to have
access to the stores of turpentine and spirits in the workshop, with
which abominable mixture he managed to get horribly drunk. Extraordinary
license was allowed in another direction. A convict quarrelled with and
murdered a comrade; they had been partners in a store kept inside the
prison for the sale of coffee, tobacco and spirits. The deeds of
partnership had been legally drawn up, and were actually engrossed upon
the official paper of the prison. It may be mentioned that this murderer
had been twice guilty of murder before and was yet allowed to keep a
knife in his possession, which he was seen to sharpen quite unrestrained
on the very morning of the last crime.
The influx of convicts produced many projects for their employment over
and above the development of Noumea. Following the practice that had
prevailed in Guiana, agricultural settlements, half farm, half prison,
were established at various points on the mainland. One of the first of
these was at Bourail, about a hundred miles from the capital. Another
was founded nearer home at Ourail, on the mouth of the Foa. A third was
at Canala, on the opposite and northern shore of the island. A fourth
was at its eastern end, in the Bay of Prony. Besides these a number of
smaller stations were distributed at various points through the colony.
The works undertaken were everywhere much of the same kind. At Bourail
the sugar cane was cultivated, and various vegetables; at Canala, rice,
maize and coffee; at Ourail the land was poor, and the settlement was
moved further up the river to Fonway, where the raising of tobacco, and
the cultivation of fruit trees and the quinine bush were attempted; at
the Bay of Prony the convicts became woodcutters to supply fuel for the
rest of the colony.
The inner life of one of the smaller stations, the labour camp of Saint
Louis, has been graphically described by M. Mayer, a political
transport, who published the "Souvenirs d'un Deporté," relating his
personal experiences, on his return to France. This camp consisted of
124 convicts, a heterogeneous collection, herded together
indiscriminately in the wretched _cases_, or straw-thatched huts, the
prevailing prison architecture of New Caledonia. Among these, of whom
forty were political and non-criminal convicts, there were twenty-six
Arabs, four Chinamen and two negroes. Several notorious desperadoes,
Frenchmen born, were associated with the rest. One had been at the head
of a band of poisoners of Marseilles; another, who had murdered a girl
in Paris, had been arrested and sentenced during the Commune by a
Communist commissary, who, by a strange fate, was now his comrade
convict in this same camp of Saint Louis. Except for the scantiness of
diet and the enforced association with the worst criminals, M. Mayer did
not find the work hard. The hours of labour varied; the daily minimum
was eight, the maximum from ten to twelve. But the work performed was
desultory and generally unproductive. The principal aim was to clear the
land by removing the rocks, which were afterward broken up for
road-making material. The supervision was lax and ineffective; the few
warders were most active in misappropriating rations. The chief warder
himself, who had a fine garden and poultry yard, stole the wine and soft
bread issued for the sick. Many convicts eked out their meagre fare by
cooking roots and wild fruits, _pommes de lianes_ and Caledonian
saffron.
The lot of the Arabs was most enviable; they monopolised all situations
of trust. One was the quartermaster, another the chief cook, and others
worked as carpenters, bootmakers, and blacksmiths. The baleful practice
of putting one convict in authority over another, long condemned by
enlightened prison legislators, was always in full force in New
Caledonia. Strange to say, too, the French authorities preferred to
choose their felon overseers from an alien race. The Arabs seem to have
found most favour with their masters, although, if Mayer is to be
believed, these Arab officials were all fierce, untamed ruffians. Yet
they were entrusted with great authority over their less fortunate
comrades, and were especially esteemed for the vigour with which they
administered corporal punishment. Mayer has preserved the picture of one
Algerian savage, six feet high, who went about seeking quarrels and
striking his fellow convicts on the smallest excuse. This man was
considered an artist with the _martinet_, or French cat-o'-nine-tails,
and was said to be able to draw blood at the first stroke.
It is an admitted axiom in penal science that enforced labour is not
easily made productive. Unless peculiar incentives to work, such as
provided by the English mark system, are employed under a strict yet
enlightened discipline, the results have always been meagre and
disappointing. As these conditions were absent from New Caledonia, the
consequences are what might have been foreseen. Notwithstanding the very
considerable efforts made and the vast quantity of convict labour always
available, the colony still owns no great public works; while large and
sustained efforts to develop its agricultural resources by the same
means have also failed. No doubt the nature of the soil has been
unfavourable.
New Caledonia, while not without its natural advantages, such as a
nearly perfect climate, freedom from reptiles and animal life inimical
to man, is not very richly endowed except in unprospected and
undeveloped mineral wealth. The island consists of a rugged backbone of
mountains clothed with dense forests and grooved with rushing torrents,
along whose banks lie the only cultivable ground. A thin and sandy soil
covers a substratum of hard rock, which makes but scanty return for the
labour bestowed and serves best for pasturage. Hence the convict farms
already referred to have never been profitably worked. Those especially
of Bourail and Koe, the largest and most ambitious, show a positive
loss. At the former only three and a half tons of sugar were turned out
in one year by four hundred men, and ten years of toil had brought only
fifty hectares of land into cultivation. At Koe, five years' receipts
were valued at 50,000 francs, and the expenses for the same period just
trebled that sum. In 1883 the minister of marine approved the
suppression of the penitentiary farms on the island of Nou and at
Canala, and the limitation of the sugar cane cultivation at Bourail, on
the ground that the returns were altogether inadequate to the outlay.
It was only too evident, as the outcome of early years, that efforts had
been misdirected, and that the labour had been wasted and frittered away
instead of being more usefully employed for the benefit of the whole
colony. One signal instance of the shortcomings of the colonial
administrators is shown by their neglect to develop the means of
internal communication. It was not until 1883, that is to say, after
nearly twenty years of colonial life, that road-making, that
indispensable preliminary to development, was undertaken on any
extensive scale. New Caledonia, an island 230 miles long and 50 miles
broad, owned only 57 kilometres of road before the year 1882. It was
Captain Pallu de la Barriere, a governor whose administration was
severely criticised on account of his excessive humanitarianism, but
whose views as regards the utilisation of convict labour were
far-seeing, who removed this reproach. His idea was to substitute what
he called movable camps for the _bagnes sedentaires_ or permanent
penitentiaries. He thought that the severest toil should be the lot of
all convicts, at least at first; and this, he conceived, could be best
compassed by employing them in road-making, thus benefiting the colony
while effectively punishing the convict. His whole scheme of
organisation reads like a page from the despatches of British colonial
governors some thirty years previous. The measures he proposed, his
plans for housing the convicts and providing for their safe custody,
were almost identical with those in force with the road-gangs of New
South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. He was very hopeful; he had no fear
of escapes or of aggravated misconduct scattered over the wide area
which he now proposed to people with convict gangs. His intentions were
no doubt excellent, but in the twenty years following the initiation of
his scheme they have borne no very substantial fruit.
The colonial administration has found even less satisfaction in the
emancipists than in the convicts still under restraint. The former are a
great and increasing body, for whom work cannot easily be found. The
hope that the labour markets of the colony would absorb a great
proportion soon proved illusory. For some time past the free colonists,
by no means a numerous class, have declined to employ emancipists,
declaring that while they claimed the free man's wages they would not
give the free man's work. The settlers preferred to import native labour
from the neighbouring islands, especially the New Hebrides, thus coming
into direct conflict with the authorities, who soon put their veto on
such importation. The settlers were told that if they wanted hands they
must seek them among the emancipists, and all protests were silenced by
reminding the colonists that New Caledonia was a penal settlement and
that if they lived there they must abide by its constitution. At this
time there were some four or five thousand emancipists living as free
charges, lodged, fed and clothed at the cost of the state, yet making
absolutely no return. The greater number of these were kept in a
military camp under some semblance of discipline, but undergoing little
restraint beyond the prohibition to wander abroad, and within the limits
of the camp the occupants could do as they pleased.
Later and more specific information is now at hand in the accounts
brought back by an enterprising traveller, Mr. George Griffith, who
visited New Caledonia in 1900. The penal colonisation undertaken by
France with such philanthropic motives, and so sedulously carried out,
has resulted in failure. The experience is the same as that of New South
Wales and Tasmania; the penalty of banishment and penal exile inflicted
upon the majority of convicts has been accomplished, but not the
regeneration, to any appreciable extent, of the criminal classes. Their
conversion into a prosperous community, self-reliant, self-supporting
and able to stand alone, is still a vague, unrealised dream. All the
conditions that favoured the growth of its great neighbour have been
absent in New Caledonia, and it was hampered also by special
disadvantages. There has been none of the steady influx of free
settlers such as immigrated to Australia when first difficulties were
removed, nor yet the amazing stimulus of the discovery of gold as on the
near-by continent. Peculiar racial disadvantages have further impeded
development.
The present state of New Caledonia affords abundant proof of the truth
of this position. It will doubtless never advance to the rank of a
first-class colony. It is still and must always be a prison house beyond
sea peopled mainly by convicts past or present, by those in various
stages of ameliorating change, but who cannot shake off the original
taint, and the general low level is maintained by constant reinforcement
of those who have it full upon them. To-day the larger part of the
population of the colony is based upon the criminal element, which is
divided into three principal classes: First, the _forçats_, or convicted
prisoners still in a state of servitude; second, the _libérés_ or
emancipists in semi-freedom, who emerge in due course from the first
class, and, third, the _relégues_ or those sent from France to serve a
sentence of perpetual exile. There is hope in the future for the first,
partially attained freedom and approaching comfortable assurance for the
second, but for the last named there is nothing but black despair. Life
alone remains theirs, but with not the faintest prospect of remission or
release.
It is obvious that under such conditions healthy colonisation is about
as impossible as healthy physical being in a colony of lepers. Free
emigrants may declare it their intention, but they will not persevere in
the attempt to build up new homes under such false conditions; they will
not leave the mother country, or if they do, will take the earliest
opportunity to return to the hard, clean, industrious life of
agricultural France. We have seen that, with the larger influx of the
vigorous Anglo-Saxon, the same difficulties were faced and overcome; but
at what risks, what degradation and how great a waste of men and means!
New Caledonia is nevertheless an interesting study, and its present
condition an object lesson in penal legislation. It is a prison planted
in the tropics, to a large extent worked and governed on the same lines
as the prisons in the heart of a mother country. Wrong-doers are
transported to the other end of the globe to endure a penalty that might
be better inflicted, more cheaply and under better supervision and
control, by the strong arm of an omnipresent public opinion at home.
Some remote advantages are no doubt obtained in the later stages of the
terms of imprisonment, and at least society is rinsed effectively of its
lees and leavings.
The principal home for the _forçats_ in the penal stage of exile is
still on the island of Nou, already mentioned and immediately opposite
Noumea, the capital of the colony, which is now, after fifty years of
life, a pretty white town of villas and squares, and streets of shops
brightened by a luxuriant tropical vegetation. On the island of Nou a
pleasant looking settlement of white houses and shady streets has been
formed at the foot of a hill crowned with the imposing and extensive
prison buildings. On this commanding site and at this remote point,
so-called penitentiary science has planted the same sort of machine for
the coercion of erring humanity as may be seen nearly everywhere else on
the civilised globe. The latest experiment is being made with the oldest
methods. Here are separate cells, dark cells and condemned cells, bolts
and bars, iron doors and loaded revolvers. France desires to emancipate
her criminals and set them on the high road to regenerated life, but
they must tread the old thorny paths and suffer the same trials by the
way as their predecessors elsewhere. Discipline must be maintained, and
it is enforced at times by terrible means. The lash and the
"cat-o'-nine-tails" are not permitted, but a most ingenious deceptive
method of torture has been invented, mild enough at first sight, yet
more cruel than the rack, thumb-saw or boot.
Mr. George Griffith's description of the punishment as it existed when
he saw it--happily much modified soon afterward--is horrifying in the
extreme. The "black cell" was absolutely isolated. Not a sound reached
it, not a ray of light penetrated it, and in his day the doors were only
opened once in thirty days, when the hapless inmate was extracted for
an hour's exercise and the doctor's inspection. The effect of this
treatment may be best realised by Mr. Griffith's own words when he was
permitted to extend relief to one of the inmates.
"Out of the corner (of the cell) came something in human shape,
crouching forward, rubbing its eyes and blinking at the unaccustomed
light. It had been three years and a half in that horrible hole about
three yards long and half as wide. I gave him a feast of sunshine and
outer air by taking his place for a few minutes. After the first two or
three, the minutes lengthened into hours. I had absolutely no sense of
light. I was as blind as though I had been born without eyes. The
blackness seemed to come down on me like some solid thing and drive my
straining eyes back into my head. It was darkness that could be felt,
for I felt it, and the silence was like the silence of upper space. When
the double doors opened again, the rays of light seemed to strike my
eyes like daggers. The criminal whose place I had taken had a record of
infamy which no printable words could express, and yet I confess I
pitied him as he went back into that living death of darkness and
silence."
The extreme penalty of death is by no means rare in New Caledonia, and
the condemned cells in the prison of the island of Nou, six in number,
are sometimes simultaneously full. An execution in that far-off place of
penitence reproduces the scene in Paris; the preliminaries are the same
and the ceremony is identical. The same cruel uncertainty hangs over the
fate of the condemned, who hears his doom only an hour or two before he
is guillotined. The commandant of the island, the chaplain and the chief
warden, visit him at three o'clock in the morning and convey the dread
summons, _c'est pour aujourdhui_, the final, fatal decision he has been
awaiting day after day for weeks. Then follows _la toilette de la mort_,
the dressing for death, when the headsman "_Monsieur de l'Ile Nou_,"
pinions him and cuts away the collar of his shirt lest it should break
the fall of the swiftly descending knife.
The actual performance takes place in the great courtyard, where the
scaffold has been erected and the audience is ready. All the great
officials of the colony are there, and a sufficient number of troops to
overawe the body of convicts arranged row behind row within full view of
the stage to which the principal performer ascends. He is allowed to
make a short address to his comrades, kneeling and bareheaded before
him. Then he is put into position upon a sloping plank, which slides
into place so that his neck is pushed out through an opening and is
ready for the swift-falling blade.
The _forçats_ are distributed all over the colony where there is work in
progress, on farms and agricultural stations, clearing forest primeval
and in mining operations of a very arduous character. The idle and
ill-conducted, the incorrigible who will not labour and are in a chronic
state of insubordination, are committed to disciplinary camps partly for
punishment, partly for seclusion. Nowhere is the régime more severe, the
daily rations less, the daily task harder. There are none of the small
luxuries of wine and tobacco, and they sleep on guard beds with a leg in
iron chained to a bar at the end. The penalty of solitary confinement on
bread and water is promptly inflicted for any breach of discipline, and
those who prove perfectly intractable are sent as hopeless to the cells
of the central prison at the island of Nou. Henceforth there is no
further change--they are deemed hopeless and incurable.
One form of punishment is peculiar to these camps. It might be called
perpetual motion. A number of convicts, twenty or thirty, are ranged in
single rank in a large shed, some sixty feet in length and forty in
breadth, and set to march round and round incessantly, pausing only for
a couple of minutes every half hour. Stone seats, each a kind of flat
topped pyramid, are fixed at intervals around the shed and afford a
brief rest from time to time, but the march is speedily resumed and
continues from dawn to sunset of the nearly interminable day.
The tardy development of the colony has been shown as it was at an
earlier date. Twenty years more and it still lags behind. After forty
years of occupation, with an average total of from eight to ten
thousand able-bodied criminals available, but little progress has been
made. The colony is still but sparsely provided with roads. The internal
communications are barely fifty miles in length; one road, fit only for
two-wheeled traffic and thirty miles in length, connects Noumea with
Bailoupari, and there are some short roads in the agricultural
settlement of Bourail. There are as yet no railways and no network of
telegraphic wires. All of the transit from point to point is performed
by small coastwise steamers.
Bourail is the show place where the _forçats_ blossom into the
emancipists, and where penal labour is replaced by individual effort of
the state-aided freedmen, the criminal who has expiated his offence and
is now to make himself a new life. Liberal assistance is given to those
who intend to do well. After fair assurance of amendment, the forger or
assassin, the unfortunate felon who got into the clutches of the law,
gets a new start, a concession of land with capital advanced to stock
it, materials to build his home, tools and agricultural implements, six
months' food, and seed to sow the first harvest. Some of them thrive and
prosper exceedingly; it is much the same as in early Australian days,
but no doubt to a lesser degree, for not a few fail and must return to
servitude with more successful comrades or free settlers. There are
those who champion the system as the best solution of the disposal of
the worst offenders who cannot be rehabilitated under the conditions
existing in a country long settled. The logic is a little weak perhaps,
and it is difficult to concede that crime should be the official avenue
to state assistance.
A good story is told of one reformed criminal who prospered exceedingly
and was congratulated by the governor of the colony when he came up to
receive the prize awarded for raising first-class stock. He was reminded
how by the fostering care of a paternal government he had been
transformed from the degraded _forçat_ into an honest owner of property.
The ex-convict was moved to tears, but his emotion was caused by his
regretting the time he had lost before he came to benefit by the change.
"Had I had any idea of the good fortune awaiting me," he whined, "I
would have arrived here ten years sooner." In other words, he would have
qualified ten years earlier by committing the deed which resulted in his
transportation--cutting his wife's throat.
The boons extended to the reformed one are not limited to a life of ease
and comfort in the colony. Rehabilitation may be earned, and with it
permission to return to the mother country with the restoration of civil
rights. Several have sold their farms and effects to the colony, and
have gone home to France as _rentiers_. Their reappearance hardly tends
to emphasise the deterrent effect of penal exile.
That the conditions in New Caledonia were until within the last few
years in many respects more encouraging, and that the labour of the
colonists was increasingly productive, may be gathered from the
following extract from the London _Times_ in 1890:
"The governor states that agriculture, which has hitherto been of only
secondary importance, seems to be entering upon a period of rapid
development under the influence of the fresh means of action afforded it
by the immigration from the New Hebrides, and New Caledonia will produce
this year 400 tons of coffee, while it is expected that in four years'
time the production will exceed 1,000 tons. The cultivation of the sugar
cane and of wheat is also making good progress.... The governor reports
that what New Caledonia is most deficient in is labour, but he adds that
the work done by the convicts, and especially at the Thio penitentiary,
is much more satisfactory than that of the convicts in Guiana, while the
men who have served their time and who choose can always find employment
at wages from 4s. to 5s. a day, and at piece work they in many cases
earn 10s. a day."
Some ten years later reports continued to be favourable as to the
prosperity of New Caledonia. According to the governor, the population
was steadily increasing and the demand for the minerals mined on the
island was so great that it could not be satisfied. In 1903, however,
the _Times_ published a news item stating that "emigration from France
has practically ceased and numbers of colonists have left," the cause of
the exodus being the high taxation and great cost of living. In the same
year, the agent-general for South Australia wrote to the French
government pointing out how anxious Australia was to see the use of New
Caledonia as a penal settlement abandoned, and a date fixed after which
prisoners should not be sent to the Pacific.