B
CONFIDENTIAL.
Colonial Office,
March 1856.
Transportation.
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
C.O.
Reference:-
885
2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
Plan of the Paper.
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THE plan of this paper will be, first to advert briefly to the early history of transportation, to the great inquiry into that subject which was made by a Committee of the House of Commons in the years 1837 and 1838, and to the measures which ensued then to recapitulate somewhat more fully the events of the last eight or nine years, which have ended in ceasing to send convicts to any other Colony than Western Australia, and in substituting as to the the great bulk of offences the punishment of penal servitude for that of transportation; and, finally, to offer a few remarks on the causes which seemed to render this change inevitable.
Early History.
For upwards of seventy years transportation has been employed by this country as the principal means of secondary punishment. The convicts have been sent to New South Wales and to Van Diemen's Land, which settlements were formed, it must be borne in mind, at a great cost, expressly for the reception of offenders.
By degrees the emancipated convicts prospered and became possessed of independent means, and free settlers also proceeded to these colonies, as they began to offer a favourable field for enterprise.
The convicts used to be assigned to the colonial proprietors as servants. This system had two great advantages: it dispersed the convicts over the face of the country at a distance from one another, and it gratified the settlers by giving them the benefit of free labour; but it consti-
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tuted a very unequal punishment, and was open also to some very objectionable abuses. In the hands of tyrannical masters it was liable to be made very oppressive; other employers, looking only to their Own
interests, endeavoured to stimulate the industry of the convicts by indul- gences far from consistent with the object of punishment for which they had been transported; and some would encourage the convicts to bad courses by allowing them entire freedom, on con- dition of their, from time to time, bringing home a share of any money they could gain. Another evil of these abuses was, that the deterring effect of transportation as a punishment was impaired or destroyed.
Hence the system was condemned by the Com- mittee of the House of Commons, presided over by Sir William Molesworth, which sat in 1837 and 1838. It was condemned as being-
Unequal;
Without terrors to the criminal class; Corrupting to both convict and colonist :
Extravagant in point of expense.
And the Committee recommended the substitution of punishment in penitentiaries both at home and abroad, some of them in Van Diemen's Land.
There can be buf little doubt that the report of this Committee struck the blow which, within fifteen years, brought the punishment of trans- portation virtually to an end. At first indeed it
Inquiry by Committee of House
of Commons in 1837 and 1838.
was received in the Colonies with dislike and with Resolutions inclosed in Sir George numerous contradictions.
The authorities, both.
Executive and Legislative, declared that the picture of the evils had been partial and overcharged, and that the system had in fact been conducive both to the prosperity of the settlers and the reform of the criminals. But by degrees the presence of convicts came to be regarded as a stigma; the pride of the free inhabitants, as they grew more and more numerous, revolted against their further reception; and when a vast influx of them into Van Diemen's Land was followed by a general spread of unnatural crime, the aversion to them of the people of this and the neighbouring Colonies rose to a height which could not be resisted.
The conclusion of the Government upon the Report of the Committee was to inflict a larger
Gippi despatch No. 199, of 28 December, 1840. Petition
to the House of Commons from the inhabitants of New South Wales, presented 4 May, 1840. -Commons Paper.p.76,1839.
Consequent Changes.