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accidentally discovered, for such is the terror inspired in these dens of infamy, that a penalty worse than death awaits him who should peach' his companions. If the system continues, he must be a courageous man, even among the free, who will venture to deprecate the crime. Dante's Hell is being realised in this island."

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A few days later, Mr. Stephen recorded in the following terms, a communication made to him orally by a gentleman who had recently returned from Van Diemen's Land: I cannot reconcile it to my con- science to postpone for a single day, the communication of some Van Diemen's Land intelligence, which has just reached me. The author of it is a gentleman with whose family I have been intimate all my life, and who in his boyhood was for some months an inmate of my house; think him a person to be fully relied on. He lived for nine years in Van Diemen's Land, in public offices of low degree, being I think, clerk in the office of the registrar of convicts; but he is a gentleman by birth, **manners, and education.

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His statement is, that as lately as August last, he was visiting the physician at one of the probation gangs; that at different times he had passed some days at four or five of those stations; and that he had in his own service an old man who had once been a convict. My infor- "mant told me that the state of vice and moral debasement at the gangs which he visited, was something so shocking that (1 believe 1 quote him "exactly) it made his blood curdle to think of it.' He told me that he had no doubt that more than two-thirds of the members of these gangs were living in the systematic and habitual practice of unnatural crimes, that people were actually paired together, and understood as having that revolting relation to each other; that his own host, the physician, came "to a knowledge of these things, by the loathsome diseases resulting from them; that the language of these places was such as one might imagine to flow from such contamination; that the crime was punished, some- times by whipping, and sometimes not at all; that the violence and fury of these unhappy people was sometimes excessive; and that the whole **scene was such as not to be fitly described in words.”

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In June a despatch was received from Sir E. Wilmot, inclosing a letter from Mr. Pitcairn, a respectable solicitor in Hobart Town, to Lord Stanley, describing, in the following powerful language, the effect of the probation system :—

By your despatch of November 1812, your Lordship established the present transportation system. The basis of that system is the regulation that convicts shall, for a length of time, be associated together in large masses in gangs. It is needless to inquire how such a fatal and obvious error could have arisen. To keep a man from bad com- panions is the first rule of moral discipline; your rule is that each man shall have the worst companions that can be collected, and that it shall be impossible for him to have any others.

Mark the result. On 4th December last two men, from a gang at Port Arthur, were tried for an unheard-of crime, a rape on a convict boy, They were found guilty and were hanged. From the witnesses on the trial it was discovered that unnatural crime at Port Arthur is of constant, "almost universal occurrence. Every conviet knows of it, if he does not “participate in it.'

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Your first impulse will be to believe that this cannot be true. I wish it were possible even to doubt it. But if you doubt it there are the jury *(from whom I had the information), there is the Attorney-General, who -prosecuted, and the Judge who tried the case. From all or any of these Sir Eardley Wilmot can obtain a contradiction of what I have asserted, if it can be contradicted.

But more than this; I am informed by those whose testimony cannot ** be doubted, that a surgeon who has recently left Port Arthur (Dr. Mother- well), has stated that a particular disease has been caused by this crime, and that he has had 300 under his charge for this disease. În December last (perhaps in consequence of the trial I have mentioned), a return was called for by the late Comptroller-General, Captain Forster, of the men then under treatment for the disease. Dr. Motherwell's number was

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"twenty at the time he signed the return. Another gentleman has stated "that the convicts go into the bush in parties, and that the overseers dare "not follow them. It is further stated that men sent to Port Arthur dare not "refuse. Their lives are threatened by the others. Norfolk Island is said "to be as bad, or if possible, worse than Port Arthur. "this crime is found in the probation gangs.

It is also said that

In the name of Heaven where is this to end? How long is humanity "to be thus outraged? Are human beings to be still herded together like "beasts, and while those appetites which nature has given them are stimu- "lated by the climates to which you send them, are they to be forced to "become like those who were destroyed by fire from above? Can any one look for the reformation of such men? What is to become of them? What is to be done with the beings whom your system has made what "they are? The present plan is to diffuse their vices, to spread them among the Australian colonies after they have been corrupted,—to do "the work of Hell efficiently and completely.

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"But, without looking at the consequences to others, look at the con- "vict himself. He is sentenced in England for a crime against English law. "He is then put in a gang at Norfolk Island, Port Arthur, or Van Die- "men's Land, where he is taught vices that he never before heard of. Is "there not, under the law of God, a heavier crime thus committed against

the convict, than he himself has committed?

"The punishment of death is now rarely inflicted in England. Bodily “torture has long been abolished. But the present system is worse than "bodily torture-worse than death. The English law now punishes, not by "destroying the body, but by polluting and destroying the soul.

"The mind is lost in perplexity when it endeavours to conjecture the purpose for which the Almighty has permitted this dreadful system to come into existence. The oppression of the settlers, the destruction of "their property, the state of terror in which they live, in all this we may perceive a wise purpose, In the end they may, though poorer, be better men, even by their sufferings. But for the convicts, what can be said? "What ultimate benefit to them can be looked for, here or hereafter?

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“My Lord, there can be no improvement on the present system of transportation. Until the principle upon which that system is founded, that of compelling each convict to be exposed to the contamination of other convicts,—until that is abolished, no improvement can be made.

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your Lordship may see this. If your son were convicted of theft, would you place him in à gang at Norfolk Island or Port Arthur,-- - "give him 200 other criminals as his constant and only companions? And if you would shrink with horror from this-if you would rather see him in "his grave, how can you, or any other man or number of men, whether

called Parliament or the Colonial Office, doom others to such a fate?

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"I repeat, my Lord, there can be no improvement in the transportation system, so long as you disregard the maxim that evil communication corrupts even the good. In altering the system-in disposing of its "unhappy victims, there will be labour, anxiety, and expense. But all "these must be encountered. The object is too important for such consi- "derations. Apart from all the higher and holier duty which is to be dis- "charged, neither expense, labour, nor anxiety can be regarded in freeing England from this system of national crime, which has no parallel in the history of human beings."

Finally, Dr. Motherwell, who is alluded to by Mr. Pitcairn, and who is now in this country, has borne testimony, from his professional experience, to the prevalence of unnatural crime at Tasman's Peninsula, and the diseases resulting from it.

The only communications from Sir E. Wilmot, bearing directly upon these points, are, first, a despatch received in the month of April last, inclosing the report of Dr. Bowden, who in the year 1843 was sent out with his wife to superintend a female penitentiary on board Her Majesty's ship" Anson ;" and, second, two despatches received within the last fortnight, controverting the reports generally current in the colony in regard to unnatural crimes among the men.

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

C.O.

Reference :-

885

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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