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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 time, 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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15. I should wish you, as far as it may be prac- ticable to do so, to carry on these works by contract: the contractors for their execution would naturally employ the convicts ordered to reside in the dis- trict, and as they would for their own interest take care to require a full amount of labour in return for the wages they agreed to pay, they would exercise probably a closer and at the same time a more eco- nomical superintendence over the men they em- ployed than it would be practicable to maintain by means of officers in the service of the Government. At the same time it is very probable that for some of the works it would be most expedient to under- take, it may be impossible to enter into contracts on reasonable terms; and if so, they would pro- perly be carried on under the immediate direction of the Colonial Government.
16. Next has to be considered the question of the sufficiency of the funds at your command
for providing employment in this manner for the convicts who may be thrown upon your hands. The source from which this expense must mainly be provided for, is the territorial revenue of the colony, a fund which, for reasons which I have fully explained in another despatch of this date, I conceive to be specially and peculiarly applicable to the execution of precisely that class of works on which it is most desirable that convicts should be employed. This mode of employing them has also this to recommend it, that money which is thus expended is certain, if laid out judiciously, to be returned to the Government by increased receipts from the sale and leasing of land, so that the means at your command would probably increase in the same proportion with the demands which would be made upon them. An additional source from which funds are to be looked for towards meeting this expense, will be the payments to be required from convicts. You have already been informed that these payments are to be consi- dered applicable to the encouragement of emigra- tion, or to other objects calculated to counteract any injurious tendency which the sending of con- victs to the colony might be supposed to exercise upon its moral condition. In Van Diemen's Land, 1r reasons which have often been adverted to in
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former despatches, the funds in question ought to be so applied as to encourage the settlement
in it of a class of emigrants who will increase the demand for labour, and also to promote more directly the moral improvement of the convicts.
17. With the latter object I would particularly direct your attention to the importance of erecting in the districts in which convicts will be placed, churches and schools, with houses for ministers of religion, to which should be attached glebes, cleared and fenced so as to be ready for occupation. These structures should, of course, be of the plainest and simplest kind, and should be erected with the most studious regard to economy: but a comparatively small sum of money laid out in this manner would do much towards increasing the amount of advan tage which would be derived from the funds which may be available from other sources for the moral and religious instruction of the population. It is obvious that when the use of a house and land ready for immediate occupation can be given to a clergyman or schoolmaster, a smaller stipend will suffice than would be necessary for one to whom these advantages could not be extended, while, by means of convict labour and with materials on the spot, this accommodation might frequently be pro- vided at a very inconsiderable cost. I need hardly observe that this advantage ought to be extended with impartiality to the different denominations of Christians in proportion to the number of their respective followers.
18. The statements contained in your recent de- spatches of the progressive improvement of the considerable territorial revenue (from which a balance was already available), and of the large extent of land of a very eligible description for settlers (more particularly for those following pas- toral pursuits), which has been discovered, and which you were already taking measures to render more easily accessible, together with your report of the rise of new branches of industry, and of the improvement of the demand for labour which had taken place, lead me to entertain a confident expectation that you will have no difficulty in providing for the employment of convicts upon