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convey a long and careful explanation of the views of Government on the future treatment of convicts which fully showed that there was no idea of relinquishing transportation.
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Some important occurrences had taken place since the views of Government had in like manner been imparted to Sir William Denison at the outset of the previous year. A Committee of the House of Lords, after examining several of the judges and other witnesses of high authority, had reported decidedly in favour of the deterring effects of the punishment of the removal from this country, and strongly deprecated its discontinuance. This was a representation which the Governinent considered that it could not with propriety disregard. Satis- factory accounts had been received of the working of the new course of discipline in the English prisons, as far as it had yet been tried. Both at Bermuda and Gibraltar the conduct of the prisoners was well spoken of, and gratifying accounts were received of the conduct of the large numbers of exiles who had been sent to Port Phillip.
Sir W. Denison conveyed this opinion in a despatch of July 10, 1847; Parl. Paper, May 1848, p. 88. It would also appear from allu- sions in a despatch of Lord Grey's to Sir C. Fitzroy, dated September 3, 1847 (Parl. Paper, May 1848, p. 7), to have been expressed by Hampton, the Comptroller-General. It was likewise signified in the report of a Committee of Legislative Council, New South Wales, dated October 31, 1846 (Parl. Paper, April 1847, p. 11).
Some officers, however, of experience and other authorities intimated opinions in favour of sending out the convicts rather as holders of tickets-of-leave than actually in possession of conditional pardons.
It may be convenient briefly to state the difference between these two positions. The holder of a con- ditional pardou is released absolutely from the effects Lieutenant-Governor Latrobe and by Mr. of his sentence, subject to the single condition that he should not return to the United Kingdom or to the place (if he were convicted abroad) in which he had received his sentence. These men constituted the class called Exiles. With the one exception just mentioned, they were at liberty to go whithersoever The they pleased, and were to all intents free men. holder of a ticket-of-leave, on the contrary, remains subject to control. He is indeed able to hold pro- perty and to sue and be sued, and he has always hitherto been at liberty to choose his own employer and make his own terms for wages; but he must continue in the colony to which he is transported, and dwell in the district assigned to him; he is liable to police regulations and superintendence, and in case of misconduct he may be remanded to a state of coercion. This condition of the convict, it has been argued, secures the principal advantages which
Parl. Paper, May 1848, p. 132.
Vide despatch to Sir Charles Fitz
roy, December 12, 1848. p. 57. of Paper on Convict Discipline, by command, February 1849,
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attached to the old system of assignment, without being open to the same objections. It conduces to the dispersion of the convicts and to giving the settlers the benefit of their services, without binding the men in a kind of slavery to any one employer or impairing their self-reliance and motives to industry, and at the same time the power of remanding them to the common convict state imposes a salutary check on misconduct.
Such having been the principal events and repre- sentations which had occurred in the interval since the correspondence between the Home Secretary and the Secretary for the Colonies in the beginning of 1847, Lord Grey in the despatch above-mentioned of 26th April, 1848, intimated the conclusion of the Government, that no convicts should be at large in the United Kingdom during the period of their sen- tences, but that after one term of separate imprison- ment (such as that at Pentonville), and another of employment on public works (such as those at Portland, the Dockyards, Bermuda, or Gibraltar), they should be forwarded to Van Diemen's Land with tickets-of-leave. Lord Grey added that each convict was to repay the cost of his conveyance, which has since been assumed for this purpose, although much under the real cost, at 15., and that the proceeds should be applied, not to diminish- ing the cost of transportation, but to supplying the colony with free labourers as a counterpoise to any evil apprehended from the introduction of men who had been found guilty of offences against the law. No conditional pardon was to be granted to a ticket- of-leave man until he had repaid the cost of his in- troduction; but it was proposed that such a pardon should be granted immediately afterwards to men under seven years' sentence, if their behaviour had been otherwise satisfactory, and that in the case of men under longer sentences, those repayments should be accepted as strong evidence of industry and good conduct.
It was stated that there was no objection to send- ing female convicts, after a short probation, to Van Diemen's Land.
Whilst these measures were believed to afford the means of treating the convict in the best manner, ic was marked that the colony would gain the advan tage of not losing altogether a gratuitous supply
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