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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
ག ། ། ། །
C.O.
Reference :-
885
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Diemen's Land or some other colony. It is in- tended that this removal to a condition of compa rative freedom should, as a general rule, take place at the expiration of half their original sentences, in the case of convicts whose conduct shall not have been such as to occasion an extension of the time, during which they will be subjected to the severe discipline of the two first stages of punishment. Those who behave less well will be subjected for longer periods to penal labour, and the period may be abridged as a reward for good conduct,
With regard to those who are thus removed to Van Diemen's Land, it is further proposed that the cost of their passage should be charged to them as a debt, which they shall be bound to repay out of their wages, and that the wives and families of those who are married should be enabled to join them in the colony, the cost of their passages being added to the amount of debt so charged against the convicts. These men having only tickets of leave the Lieu- tenant-Governor will have the power of assigning to each the district in which he is to live, and in doing so care should be taken to disperse them as much as possible in different parts of the colony, according to the demand for their labour, and at a distance from the temptatious of the towns. It will be the duty of the authorities to determine what proportion of his weekly, monthly, or annual wages each con- vict should pay in liquidation of his debt, according to the amount of his earnings, and the wants of the man and of his family, if he has one. A failure without just cause, to make the payments required from him, would subject him to the punishment now applicable to the holders of tickets of leave for misconduct, including, in extreme cases, the with drawal of his ticket; and, on the other hand, a punctual discharge of his debt would be regarded as one of the strongest proofs of the good conduct which is the ground upon which convicts of this class are recommended for conditional pardons. To the men so sent out to enter into engage- encourage ments to give their service for some considerable time to employers, in consideration of the latter undertaking the regular discharge of the instalments of their debt to the public, a liberal allowance should be made to those who might contract such engage-
ments.
As to the terms upon which engagements
of this kind should be made, and the manner of enforcing them, I will address you more fully in a future despatch; it is sufficient for the present to observe that I anticipate the practicability of ren- dering it the interest both of respectable settlers to offer such employment to the ticket of leave holders, and of the latter to accept it.
The following advantages may be expected to arise from this arrangement. In the first place the convict would not be exposed to all the temptation to which he would be liable if he were suddenly relieved from the strict discipline to which he had been subject and made entirely his own master in a colony where his labour would earn far higher wages than he could have obtained at home. Your observations upon the tendency of an excessive demand for labour, to exercise a pernicious influence on the character and conduct of the labourers, are no less just than important, and apply with peculiar force to those who have been convicts. The effect of requir- fhg the convict, when raised to the condition of the holder of a ticket of leave in Van Diemen's Land, to repay the full cost of his removal to that colony, would be to guard him against the corrupting in- fluence of a sudden increase of his wealth. The regular deductions to which his wages would be liable until the debt was liquidated would reduce his earnings to what might be required for his main- tenance in reasonable comfort, and if the contracts for service, which I have contemplated, should be entered into by these men, as I trust would very generally be the case, the advantages of the old system of assignment would be obtained without the serious objections to which that system was liable.
Another important recommendation of the method of carrying into effect the sentence of transportation which I have described is, that it will relieve Van Diemen's Land from the difficulties which you justly anticipate, as the necessary consequence of suddenly withdrawing from it the large supply of labour it has hitherto had in the convicts who have been sent there.
Those who will in future be sent there will have received an industrial tra ing, which will I
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2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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