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2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
Convict Discipline —Van Diemen's Land.
No. 1.
COPY of a DESPATCH from Lieut.-Governor Sir W. DENISON to Earl GREY.
Van Diemen's Land, Government House,
MY LORD,
August 13, 1849. (Received December 4. 1849.)
Is your Lordship's despatch, No. 139,* dated December 6, 1848, I was directed to frame, in concert with the Comptroller-General, such regulations as might appear calcu- lated to give effect to the instructions of Her Majesty's Government with regard to the payment, by the convicts lately sent out from England with tickets-of-leave, of the cost of their passage to this colony.
2. In my despatch, No. 18, dated January 31, 1849, I stated to your Lordship that, until I could be informed of the amount to be debited against each man for his passage, it would be impossible to fix any scale of monthly or quarterly payments by which such amount should be liquidated.
3. Having however, ascertained that your Lordship had directed the sum of 157. to be charged against each of the convicts sent to New South Wales, I have assumed that to be the amount which each convict landed in this colony will have to pay before, he can be allowed to receive the further indulgence of a conditional pardon, and have accordingly issued a notice in the Gazette of the 2nd of July, copy of which I enclose, in which the terms on which the payments are to be made are clearly stated.
4. Your Lordship will perceive that I have not attempted to enforce the payment of the amount in question by any measures of compulsion, such as withdrawal of the ticket-of- leave, removal from a district, &c., but that I have left it altogether to the discretion of the convicts themselves whether or not they would be content to remain with the limited indulgence of a ticket-of-leave, or, when otherwise eligible, fulfil the further condition attached to the issue of the higher indulgence of a conditional pardon. And here think it right to observe that I have assumed that it has not been your Lordship's intention that a ticket-of-leave holder should acquire, on payment of the cost of his passage-money, a conditional pardon without reference to other circumstances; but that, in addition to the other conditions on which the indulgence had hitherto been granted, there was now to be superadded the further condition of the repayment of the cost of his passage-money.
5. The reason which led me to reject the idea of attempting to enforce any fixed pay- ments was principally the difficulty of framing any rule which would admit of universal application. Some of the men who have been sent out have been placed in situations admitting of their making the necessary payments; others, from no fault of their own, have only been able to procure casual employment; others again, not having been hired, have been retained at a Government depôt; while some, having misconducted themselves, although not to an extent calling for the revocation of their indulgence, have become sub- ject to punishment. To make the same rule applicable to all their cases would be obviously impossible, and it would be unfair to enforce upon the honest and industrious a condition to which the idle and ill conducted could not be subjected. In addition, moreover, to the difficulty of framing a rule on the subject was the consideration that a compulsory payment might induce a convict to steal in order to procure the necessary funds.
6. It submitting the arrangement which I have made for carrying out your Lordship's views, I cannot conceal from your Lordship that the advantages which are likely to accrue to the colony from the creation of a fund for emigration by means of the payment from the ticket-of-leave holders will, in my opinion, be very dearly purchased. In a financial point of view, the amount, whatever it may be, will be so much withdrawn from the colony,- the inhabitants will suffer to the extent of their profits on an amount which would, in all probability, be expended in the colony, the revenue will suffer from a diminished con- sumption of duty-paying articles,—while, in a moral point of view, there will be unques- tionably a temptation held out to the convict to revert to dishonest practices for the pur- pose of procuring the amount, without which he cannot attain the higher indulgence. There is also the further objection which must arise from the consideration that those who would, under the present system, receive their conditional pardons, and be enabled to leave the colony and seck a livelihood elsewhere, will be retained beyond the period at which they would probably become free, and the colony will thus be burdened with a class of men of whom it is not too much to say that the idle and dissipated will form the largest portion, and who, under the pressure of our police-system, would have left if they could.
7. It is now necessary that I should bring under your Lordship's notice, as being in im- mediate connection with this subject, the regulation as to the periods for which convicts should he required to hold a ticket-of-leave prior to their being allowed the indulgence of a conditional pardon.
* Page 274 of Papers relative to Convict Discipline, presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command. February, 1849.
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