PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
C.O.
Reference :-
• 885
2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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feel, under all circumstances, I should not act until further advice and instructions shall be received. I therefore earnestly beg you will afford
this to me.
* remain, &c,
(Signed) "ROB. G. LAVERS."
To it 1 instantly made the following reply :-
"My dear Sir,
Parsonage, Norfolk Island, August 28, 1845.
1 have most carefully examined the papers you sent me, with especial reference to the points upon which you request my opinion, There are certainly glaring inaccuracies in the warrant, which appear to me to vitiate its authority as a public instrument, upon which human life depends. 1st. The designation renders it void by uncertainty. There is no such person in the island as R. G. Lavers, Superintendent of Con- viets, nor was there at the time the warrant was signed.. You may be the person intended, and probably were, but in such a case nothing should certainly left to conjecture.
2nd. The Sentence of the Law' which it directs you to carry into effect is nowhere specified. I apprehend that the usual course is to append to the calendar the words 'Suspendatur per collum,' or an abbre- viation of them, against the prisoner's name, signed by the judge. Neither in the warrant nor in the calendar is there anything of the kind. The latter has, in a column against the name of the prisoners, the word You have undoubtedly no official Death' written, but this is all. document to show what death these men are to suffer, yet I cannot believe that the Governor and Council left this to your discretion.
"Upon the whole, considering the looseness even of the ordinary mode of proceeding, lamented by Blackstone, and certainly not amended in the present instance, I feel that no additional licence ought to be permitted, for in cases affecting the vote of an elector, or the transfer of property to even a small amount, such inacepracies as those contained in the present document would be fatal; without doubt an instrument so vague as this warrant is, ought not to be acted upon as against the life of man.
"I should lament the defeat of the ends of justice which a delay may apparently occasion; but I cannot hesitate to express my firm conviction, that you would not be justified in acting upon this warrant, without further reference. A rigid and inviolate observance of technicalities. apparently unimportant, is demanded elsewhere as a safeguard against the commission of wrong, the same honest adherence to them ought especially to be maintained in a spot so remote and so circumstanced as this.
“Believe me, &c.,
(Signed) **T. BEAGLEY NAYLOR."
* R. G. Lavers, Esq., Deputy Sheriff." >
The Roman Catholic priest who attended the wretched men was. told, with the consent of the Commandant, to communicate to them the fact that they should then be executed, and they were so informed: yet within a few days it was again rumoured that they were to suffer." 1 waited instantly upon the Commandant, and entreated him not to trifle with the feelings of men under such eircumstances—to decide whether or no the sentence should then be carried into effect. He refused to do so, throwing the onus upon the Sheriff. Much discussion and many commu- nications followed, and in the midst of all the men were brought on the scaffold under the conviction that they were not to be executed; and in this delusion they were actually sent into another world. In no other spot in the British dominions could such an outrage have been perpetrated but here. It was out of the way of observation," and it passed as other equally revolting things have done, in silence and without remedy. Nothing else but the complete isolation of the island can account for many
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other things which for years have been quietly allowed to continue. I leave this painful fact, and proceed to inform you that
2. There is no system of Discipline maintained on the Island. A code of regulations founded upon the old island orders and your Lordship's instructions were prepared in Van Diemen's Land, and are professedly acted upon; but indeed they are not carried out. Some slight conception of the nature of a reformatory system of penal discipline ought at least to find a place in the mind of the Commandant of such a station. It is not sufficient that he should be good-humoured or good-natured. He should at least also be tolerably intelligent. With higher thoughts than the mere profits of his appointment, he ought at all events to be so far removed from the charge of evasion himself, as to enable him with decency to secure the honest obedience of his subordinates to the ordinary regulations; and since so great a personal responsibility rests upon him, he ought, without doubt, always to be a man whose authority should be respected. But if, instead of this, interest or patronage should send to such a Government an officer whose profession has kept him out of the way of acquiring information, and whose capacity and natural disposition have unfitted him for study; if instead of a generous philanthropy, narrow and selfish views alone are acted upon; if his indecision should lead him to falter when firmness is peremptorily necessary; if the head of such an establishment should bluster in public, and chuckle at his own evations sub rosa;—who could wonder, my Lord, if the most lamentable results should follow? One might feel amused in a less serious matter, by the gaucheries of such a man; but in a case like this, one's only feeling would be one of sorrowful regret for the mistake under which such an appointment must have been made, and a trembling anxiety about its termination. I repeat it, my Lord, there is really no fixed system of convict discipline, either conscientiously or intelligently carried out, scarcely anything, indeed, beyond the daily Teeding, clothing, and nominal employment of the prisoners, just as the necessities of the station may require. It is not in formal tabular returns or straight lines, closely cut hair, and clothes regularly numbered, that an enlightened process of criminal discipline consists; and yet at Norfolk Island there is little beyond this. There are highly intelligent persons in office who see all this and lament it, who would be considered disaffected if they were to complain, and who have been quietly removed if they have ventured to do 80. I cannot refrain from adding, that the most flagrant violations of even the existing regulations are tolerated. I select a few illustrations in proof.
By the 38th Clause of the Regulations it is declared that "no convict shall be employed as clerk in the Commandant's or any other office, or have access to the records kept therein." At the moment I write, there is no office in the island where convicts are not so employed ; and the greatest unfairness is shown in the selection of these men. I have under my eye at this moment, a case where a doubly-convicted forger of dangerous character is employed in the most important office in the island, while from personal fear or private pique, the most respect able prisoner who has ever been on the island has been brutally refused any such indulgence, and kept unremittingly at the most revolting labour. But I shall have occasion to recur to this again. The clauses 3rd, 4th, 6th and others are also systematically disregarded. All this mischief is, however, insignificant, compared with one other misfortune springing from the extreme insolation of this Gomorrah. Many innocent men are suffering upon it, and must continue to suffer, without the chance or possibility of escape from the horrors inflicted upon them.
I assure you,
my Lord, mest solemnly, that this is the case. You have yourself admitted it in signing the authority for the return of more than one injured man, whose innocence has been established. Years of anguish may have been endured: the eye and every sense may have been out- raged by exhibitions of vice; and notwithstanding the conviction of perfect innocence, the wrong has been irremediable. "I have most pain- fully felt the excessive difficulties which the prisoner in Norfolk Island