CO885(1-2) — Page 613

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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station at this island, that it is recommended after a personal inspection, by an officer of such extensive experience as Dr. Hampton has now had an oppor- tunity of acquiring.”

8. The same decision was finally confirmed in a despatch from Lord Grey to Sir W. Denison, dated December 4, 1849; and its motives are still more fully explained in a correspondence with the Home Department in November and December 1849, of which the following are the principal passages:-

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"Colonial Department, Nov. 5, 1849.

Amongst the large number of criminals In Lord Grey's despatch of Novem- ber 1849. Parliamentary Paper of January 1850. annually convicted in this kingdom, it appears

that some are to be found, although it may be hoped that they form a very small proportion of the whole number,-upon whom all the ordinary appeals to hope and fear are thrown away, and who are quite irreclaimable by such resources as can be brought to bear upon them in the usual However justly they may places of detention. incur punishment for their inisconduct, it is ob- viously impossible to detain such men always in solitary confinement, and yet if instantly upon their release they recur to their previous acts of defiance of all authority, the example of such desperate characters cannot be otherwise than pernicious in every prison, and even dangerous in places where large bodies of convicts are assembled together for carrying on public works.

"3. Representations of the difficulty of dealing with such men have been received almost simul- taneously from Gibraltar, from Van Diemen's Land, and from the officers who are charged with the super- vision of our prisons in this country. All agree in the necessity of providing some ulterior place of punishment for these hardened offenders. Nor is this urged merely in order to remove the indi- viduals themselves from places where their presence may endanger the peace and subordination of the establishments; but it would seem to be no less desirable as a powerful and additional means of maintaining good order among the convicts. Sir W. Denison especially has stated that were it not for the wholesome terror excited by the existence

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of the penal establishment at Norfolk Island, he doubts if it would be possible to maintain order among the vast bodies of convicts who require to be controlled in Van Diemen's Land; and it appears that their removal to a distant and isolated station of that kind is almost-the-only penalty which is still capable of inspiring fear in the minds of the most reckless and daring offenders.

"4. These several considerations it cannot be

denied point strongly to the expediency of still making use of Norfolk Island as a place to be used in the last resort for the punishment of criminals who will not submit to any ordinary system of prison government. In adopting this conclusion Lord Grey does not forget the strong objection which was formerly felt, both by himself and Her Majesty's Government, to the retaining the use of this station. And this objection was mainly founded on the belief that the remoteness of Norfolk Island, and the imperfect means of communicating with it, would alone account for the frightful state of things which, upon inquiry, was disclosed as existing there; and as having been the cause of those tragical events which occurred about four years ago, since, in a penal establishment less removed from the supervision of the Government, the abuses which led to these results would not so long have escaped observation, and a check would have been put to them before they reached so fearful a height. Hence the total abandonment of the settlement was contemplated. But the light which has since been thrown upon

the question, not merely by the remarks of the most experienced and trustworthy observers on the spot, but also by actual experience, has been calculated to modify the views which were at first adopted.

"5. A large part of the evils were found to be traceable, as Lord Grey has formerly had occasion to observe, to mixing together in this island con- victs of very different degrees of depravity, and to overcrowding them, so that the extent of available buildings rendered a proper classification of the prisoners impracticable. At the time when Mr. Stewart made his Report upon Norfolk Island in 1846, no less than 2000 prisoners were assembled there. The numbers latterly in the island have not N