PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
LTC.O.
885
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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON!
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who have qualified themselves to obtain them, so far at least as regards the discharge of their debt to the Government, should have an advantage in this respect over those who are in an earlier stage of their progress to freedom, since the hope of enjoying this advantage will act upon the latter as a stimulus to industry and good conduct.
12. But if this rule of requiring newly-arrived convicts to take up their abode in the more remote districts is to be adhered to, it will, I am aware, be necessary to adopt some means by which employ- ment in these districts may be ensured to the convicts who are required to remain in them; and I will proceed to detail to you the measures which I propose should be adopted with this view, and for the purpose of enforcing the regular payment by convicts holding tickets of leave of the sums charged against them. I have already said that for the latter purpose, no such convict is to be allowed to pass from under the immediate charge of the Government until he shall have entered into a contract to serve for not less than a year some private employer, who will be responsible for pay- ing to the Government the required deduction from his wages; but convicts holding tickets of leave, who have been guilty of no misconduct, and remain under the charge of the Government only because they are unable to obtain private employment, are not to be subject to coercion in the gangs. The system I propose to adopt with regard to them is, that they should be employed by the Government in such useful labour as can be found for them; that credit should be allowed them at the full rate of wages obtainable in private service for the value of the work they may perform (which should invariably be task-work); but that. instead of being paid in money, they should receive such supplies as they might choose to draw for including a reasonal le proportion of tobacco and other articles which may rather be termed luxuries than necessaries), the cost of these supplies being charged against them, and the balance of their earnings being credited to them in reduction of
⚫ their debt to the Government.
13. Assistance should be given to convicts placed
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in this situation to provide themselves with huts in situations convenient for their labour, and, so long
as they should continue to come regularly to their work for the same number of hours as are usually expected from free labourers, and to conduct them- selves with regularity and propriety, no restraint should be placed upon their freedom of action during the remainder of their time. Of course any attempt
to leave the district in which they are placed, or a failure to come regularly to their work, or to exert themselves during the hours of labour with
proper industry, should be immediately met by withdraw- ing their tickets of leave for a longer or a shorter tine, according to the degree of their misconduct, and by placing them in the probation gangs subject to the same discipline as other convicts who are in that situation. In the volume of correspondence Parliamentary Paper, Jan. 1850. on Convict Discipline, to which I have already referred, you will find in a memorandum of Colonel Jebb's on the employment of convicts in Western Australia, a fuller description of the mode of em- ploying convicts, to which I have now adverted, and for the suggestion of which I am indebted to that able officer.
bages 112 and 113.
14. With respect to the works upon which con- victs are to be thus employed, they should be of such a description as to create a demand for labour hereafter. With this view, the construction of roads and bridges by which new districts may be opened for settlement, is the most important purpose to which labour can be applied; works of irrigation to which you have called my attention in some of your despatches, may also, I think, be undertaken with the same object with great advantage; and to these I may add the erection of villages, with glebe houses for clergymen, and schools and churches for the population, and hospitals for the relief of the sick. Every encouragement ought, I think, to be given to convicts to purchase cottages with small allotments of land attached to them in villages of this description; and the formation of such villages, by securing a supply of labour, would be calculated to increase the value of the adjoining lands, and to attract settlers.
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