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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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TILLC.O.

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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colonies, that the transported offenders should be distributed amongst a large number of them, than that they should be concentrated in one or a few, and acquire a larger and larger proportion to the free and untainted part of the population.

63. Without presuming to pronounce between the opinions for and against the continuance of Transportation, it is only to be remarked here, that if the latter is to prevail, it would appear from some of the preceding figures, that it will be necessary, if transportable offences continue at the same rate as heretofore, to provide prisons, and public works

at home or at stations such as Bermuda and Gibraltar, for 28,000 offenders more than the num- ber for which there is at present any accommoda- tion. It will also be necessary, if the data remain unaltered, to lay our account with having at large in this country nearly 50,000 persons who have been guilty of serious offences, with the deduction of such proportion as may be supposed likely to make their way to the United States or Canada. To Australia scarcely any could be expected to have the means of paying their conveyance.

it

64. It may be said that the punishments would be made sharper and shorter, and therefore that fewer prisoners would be on hand at any one time. This might be done to a limited extent, but in modern days, when the infliction of corporal pain is almost abolished as a punishment, there is little choice of penalties for crime except separate con- finement and imprisonment with hard labour. Now appears to be admitted that the first, from the nature of the case, can never be prolonged beyond eighteen months at the utmost. And as the other cannot be made very intense, duration becomes an indispensable element in punishment; nor would it be possible without a considerable infusion of time into the calculation, to distinguish properly between the retribution for different grades of criminality. For these reasons it appears probable that although the whole number of prisoners at any one time might be somewhat reduced by using sharper punishment, it could not be done to any very great extent. It must also be remembered, that where the original offenders ceased to be removed from this country, might be expected that crimes would be more frequently repeated and that the

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Lord Grey's Remarks.

MR. ELLIOT has given what I believe to be a

very correct summary of the various changes which have taken place in the manner of carrying into effect the punishment of convicts sentenced to transportation. There are a few remarks which I think it necessary to add in explanation of those of the measures he has described, to which I have myself been a party. When I came into office in the year 1846, the state to which Van Diemen's Land had been reduced by the manner in which convicts had been poured into it during the five* preceding years was such that my predecessor, Mr. Gladstone, had come to the conclusion (and it was impossible to doubt that he was right) that it was absolutely necessary to suspend, at least for two years, sending any more convicts to that colony. Without going into details it may be sufficient to

say that there were at that time in the colony above 30,000 convicts, of whom at one period 13,400 were in the hands of the Government, while the buildings available for the purpose of receiving them were utterly insufficient for their proper cus- tody, and the establishment of officers no less so for the enforcement of discipline, not merely from the inadequacy of their numbers, but from the very general want of proper qualifications for such an important duty in the persons who had been selected

for it.

The gangs were consequently in a frightful state of disorder; the annual expense incurred was exceedingly heavy; with so large an amount of available labour comparatively little was done for

* The average number of male convicts who reached Van Diemen's Land in each of the five years from 1836 to 1840, both inclusive, had been only 1588; in each of the succeeding five years it was 3,527.