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scenes of far greater desperation than now, and that the prisoners would not issue from them far more dangerous and reckless characters than they do at present?

67. Serious, however, as are these considerations, they are by no means urged in this paper with any undue confidence in the conclusion towards which they tend. It is very possible that the time may come when there may be no alternative but to give up Transportation. The growing resistance in the colonies has been a symptom which the most blind could not overlook; and it must be remembered that compulsion, even if it should on other grounds be thought advisable, must in this case be out of the question, because the whole scheme of discipline rests upon the convicts being voluntarily employed by colonial masters. All that has been wished in these pages has been to point out the magnitude of the subject, and the vast changes which would be involved in the surrender of Transportation. If, notwithstanding these considerations, it should in- deed become necessary to determine how Great Britain could deal with all her criminals at home, it would be desirable to endeavour to obtain authentic information on the experience of the other countries of Europe which have no other resource than the punishment and the liberation of their offenders on their own soil. In France, the writer of this paper has understood that the prisons which have been sub- stituted for the galleys, are scenes of fearful in- subordination and wickedness; and what sort of members of society the forçats become, was rather strikingly exhibited, he believes, in the last Revolu- tion. The aim of the French Government at this moment has been stated to be, to find a fit place for transportation.

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than in the new and unknown territory of North Australia. In Van Diemen's Land there was plenty of good land on which settlements might have been formed. The labour of the convicts whom the Government was compelled to retain in its own oharge would have been available in preparing houses and land for the convicts to be thus con- verted into settlers, and the existing establishments- of police, &c., together with the large resources of the colony, would have rendered such a measure infinitely easier, and less costly in Van Diemen's Land than in the place proposed for it.

For these reasons the proposed establishment of North Australia was abandoned; and the course resolved upon was to suspend transportation to Van Diemen's Land, and to take measures for car- rying into effect the more severe part of the punish- ment of transportation which consists in subjecting offenders to penal labour either at home, or at Ber- muda, or Gibraltar,, and afterwards removing them, when they might be allowed to earn their own sub- sistence, to Australia as exiles, dispersing them as widely as possible.

This was the plan which was announced in the beginning of 1847, and which has been acted upon since with modifications which are indeed very, im- portant, but do not affect the principle. The prin- ciple of the policy which was announced in the House of Commons by Sir G. Grey, and in the House of Lords by myself early in 1847, was, that the punishment of transportation might be con- sidered as made up of two parts, Exile and the sub- jection to Penal Labour. Exile, though it has the great advantage of placing convicts in circum- stances far more favourable to reform than those in which they are at home on being released from punishment, and though also much dreaded by particular individuals, cannot yet be considered as in itself a sufficient punishment, since it is notorious that the condition of a man who has only his labour to live by is so infinitely improved by removal to Australia, that there are thousands of honest and industrious labourers who regard a free passage to Australia as the greatest boon that can be granted to them. Hence mere removal from this country cannot be made a punishment; and subjection to L

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