PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
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TLC.O.
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mot attempting to pass, by means of the official members and his own casting vote, the estimates, including the charges for police and gaols, the whole of the unofficial members resigned in a body,—thus leaving the Council without the necessary quorum. The places of the retiring mem. bers have been filled up, but the new Council has not met, and conse- quently the supplies for 1816 have never been voted.
But while in an economical point of view the effects of the new system were thus embarrassing, its moral effects, according to the reports which reached this Office from various quarters, were still more momentous and alarming. Attached to the Comptroller-General's later reports had been tables purporting to show the moral state of the convicts, and these tables, if they could have been accepted as accurate, would have been sufficiently satisfactory. But they proved too much to be relied on. They went to show that scarcely any moral offences whatever were committed by the convicts; that their conduct and deportment was correct to a degree It was clear that never known to exist in any society of free men*. returns leading to such results could not be trusted; their silence proved either that there must be a want of vigilance on the part of the Executive Authorities in detecting crime, or a peculiar dexterity on the part of the convicts in escaping detection. Nor was there wanting direct testimony to this fact.
Previously to quitting Van Diemen's Land Sir J. Franklin had addressed to Lord Stanley a confidential despatch describing, in very strong language, the deplorable effects produced on the female convicts by their confinement in the factories, their moral degradation and their addic- tion to unnatural practices; and shortly after Sir E. Wilmot's arrival in the colony he had corroborated Sir J. Franklin's statement in regard to November 2, 1843. the female convicts, adding that the male convicts were also generally addicted to unnatural crime, which had produced among them ophthalmia and other revolting diseases, to a great extent. The reports from the local officers which accompanied Sir E. Wilmot's despatch went to show that the prevalence of these filthy practices was to be attributed very much to the construction of the sleeping wards, and that, so long as the men were crowded together in those wards, in the manner which then prevailed, there was no hope that the vice would be extirpated.
Nothing more was heard from Sir E. Wilmot on the subject, but in the course of last year the Archdeacon of Van Diemen's Land, Mr. Marriott, who was in this country on business connected with the diocese of Tasmania, repeatedly denounced, in very strong language, the new system of trans- portation, and described it as tending to corrupt and brutalize the con- victs; as debasing them below the level of human nature, and as engender- ing an almost inconceivable state of vice and depravity. His denunciations were couched in language so general, and apparently so little weighed, that they attracted less attention than, perhaps, they merited; but soon after his departure similar accounts reached this Office from other quarters.
Early in February a petition to the Crown and the two Houses of Parliament, signed by 1750 persons, was received from Van Diemen's Land, protesting in the following terms against the continuance of the "That we are in a state of continual existing system of transportation:
**dread and anxiety for ourselves and our families, owing to the numbers "of convicts by whom we are surrounded; that we feel we have no security for life or property; that the moral condition of the colony is daily becoming worse and worse; that no regulations, however well intended, ** no Government, however able, no improvement in detail, can counteract the evils of the enormous mass of criminals that are poured upon our shores; and that, if the present system of transportation continues, we must, at whatever sacrifice, abandon a colony which will become unfit "for any man to inhabit who regards the highest interest of himself or of
his children.
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• In illustration of what is here stated, I have taken at random one of the pages of the Return to March 1844, and the result is, that among 611 convicts, who on an average were in the probation gangs 204 months each, only three moral offences were during the whole of the time committed.
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"That in the violent commercial convulsions which have been felt during the last two years in all the Australian colonies, our colonial property has fallen more than one-half in value, and that much distress has been thus occasioned; but this distress is aggravated tenfold by the "state to which the transportation system has reduced us, and by the
gloomy prospect of the future.
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"That the large Government expenditure under the present system is
" of some pecuniary benefit to us in the depressed condition of our affairs; "but we cannot put it in competition with interests of a higher nature, or "allow it for a moment to weigh against the moral evils which that system
produces.
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"That under the circumstances we have thus detailed to your Majesty, "the prosperity of this colony is at an end; that its commerce must decay, and its lands become almost valueless; that no new capital is now "invested in it; and no new emigrants now come to it, and that we look for none, for we ourselves would never have emigrated to Van Diemen's "Land, had we foreseen its present state.
"That there is yet a more fearful evil produced by the present "system of transportation; that it is reported and believed that the unhappy men sent to Norfolk Island have sunk into deeper pollution "and depravity; and that if such men are added to the unbounded number of criminals already in Van Diemen's Land, this island and the "neighbouring colonies, among which they must ultimately be diffused, will exhibit a spectacle of vice and infamy such as the history of the "work cannot parallel.
"That we are confident that to bring under your Majesty's notice "this frightful result of the present convict system, which thus plunges "our erring fellow-creatures deeper in sin and misery, and dismisses "them to contaminate others, is to insure its immediate abolition."
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The petitioners conclude by praying that the number of convicts in this island may as speedily as possible be reduced to that which existed in 1840; that transportation to the colony may cease until this
· object is effected; that meanwhile adequate protection may be afforded "to the colonists, and better means adopted for the moral and social improvement of the convicts, that the colony may be relieved from every expense occasioned by convicts not in the employment of settlers; “and that arrangements may be made for the gradual and total abolition “of transportation to Van Diemen's Land,”
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In the month of March, a Mr. MˇKillop, who had been for several years resident in Van Diemen's Land, but had finally left it, published a fetter, in which he described the injury caused to the settlers by the proximity of the probation gangs, and quoted a charge of the Chief Justice, condemning the laxity of the discipline observed in those gangs. He then proceeded as follows: “Such is the injury that has been done to Van Diemen's Land in the course of the last five or six years, that it can-
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not recover the prosperity it enjoyed from 1824 to 1810 for a series of years. The very name of the place is damned for the present, and no free settlers will therefore think of going near it "Government, or any one else, bring back the free colonists who have left Nor can Her Majesty's it since 1841. The non-importation of convicts must be a great **loss to the colony, in a pecuniary point of view; but I take it for granted "that that consideration must be thrown into the shade, when it is con- *sidered that, so long as the present convict system lasts, the free colonists "will continue to leave the island, and their places to be supplied by convicts. thereby rendering the colony a hell upon earth to the free "people of property, who are obliged by that property to remain there."
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On the 28th April, Mr. James Smith, a merchant in the City. but whose father was resident in Van Diemen's Land, transmitted to this office the following extract of a letter which he had received from his father: "At all the gangs, particularly at Port Arthur, sodomy is committed “continually, and cases are numerous of venereal in the rectum. "execution took place last week in Hobart Town for this crime, which was
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