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ག ། ། ། །
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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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in
trust render them of very great value to the colony. I am far from thinking, that the pecuniary benefit which the colony will thus receive could be put competition with the frightful moral evils which would result from the continuance of transportation as hitherto conducted. But, on the other hand, it must not be overlooked that the severe pecuniary difficulties to which the colony must be exposed if
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it should cease to receive in any form a supply of convict labour, would not be favourable to its moral and social advancement; and also that so far as pre- sent experience affords the means of forming judgment upon the subject, there appear to be reasonable grounds for hoping that sending out con- victs who have previously undergone a reformatory punishment of the kind proposed, to be dispersed over the colony under the contemplated regulations, will not be the cause of the moral evils which have arisen from the system lately in force.
Her Majesty's Government, however, would not consider themselves justified in trusting solely to the effect of any improvement it may be in their power to introduce into the system under which convicts have hitherto been sent to the colony; they consider it absolutely necessary that the addi- tion to be made to its population from the mother country should not consist entirely, or even princi- pally, of those who have been tainted with crime, but that arrangements should be made for sending free emigrants in sufficient numbers to neutralize the evil effects of a continual accession of persons who have incurred by their offences the sentence of transportation.
With this view it is intended that the whole of the money recovered from convicts in repayment of the cost of the conveyance of themselves and their > families to the colony should be devoted to the promotion of free emigration; and also that the claim of the British Treasury to the revenue derived from the sale of land in return for the annual grant by Parliament for police and gaols should be abandoned, so that a part of the produce of these sales may again become available for emigration. But as at first there can be little or no receipts from these sourees, Parliament will be asked this year to
provide the funds necessary for sending out free emigrants in equal numbers with the convicts who may proceed to Van Diemen's Land. After a cer-
tain time, however, it may be hoped that the repay- ments to be made by the convicts, added to the colonial funds specially applicable to emigration, will afford sufficient means for keeping up a con- tinued stream of free emigration.
I confidently trust that this arrangement, with
the energetic and praiseworthy efforts which I am aware that the clergy of all persuasions are making
to promote religious improvement, will guard the colony from any serious danger of moral injury from the measures which are contemplated. I trust also that the colonists will see in these measures evidence of a no less anxious attention on the part of Her Majesty's servants to their interests, than to those of the mother-country.
You will perceive that all I have hitherto said is applicable only to those convicts whose age and health render them capable of useful labour. These form the great majority of convicts, and those as to the disposal of whom the greatest difficulty has hitherto arisen. There are, however, no incon- siderable number of convicts of a different kind, and who are wholly unsuitable for transportation. In a despatch addressed to yourself as Lieu- tenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land, it is not necessary to state in what manner these are to be punished; and I only advert to the existence of such a class in order to observe that it is a circumstance which has not been overlooked, and that such convicts will not be sent to the colony.
With respect to female convicts also, the arrange- ments above describ d will require to be somewhat varied. They cannot be sent to public works, and except in doing a part of the household work of the prisons in which they are confined, there
is a difficulty in finding them any useful employ- ment. On the other hand mere expatriation is in general felt as a much more severe punishment by women than by men ; there would not therefore be the same objection to sending then, after short periods of separate confinement to Van Diemen's Land, to be placed, in ordinary cases, at