a
be
character and malignancy; secondly, that punishments separated by great interval must be assigned to crimes nearly allied in guilt and mischief Imprisonment may alike be the lot of the midnight robber and the petty thief; and, of two persons sentenced to death, one
may be hanged and the other only imprisoned with hard labour.
It will become necessary to inflict a prolonged imprisonment on those individuals who
are now
under sentences of transportation, and to superadd hard labour. I have consulted the Executive Council, and determined that the only additional punishment in the case
of the Chinese will be resort to the Cangue, or heavy wooden
Collar
as a
collar, with public Exposure. Transportation has exercised a most salutary influence in the case of the Chinese, and certainly operated
as a dissuasive from crime. All other punishments short of death appear to them light and insignificant, but exile in a foreign land had its terrors; and so important and essential do I consider that penalty, for the due
government of the vicious Chinese population, that I would consider the Expediency of some arrangement by which they should be sent to the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Malacca, and Penang) to which the transport should be short and cheap. Convicts from an Indian
government have long been sent thither.
The Chief Justice informs me
that