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Question of the Merits of Transportation.

Having closed this sketch of the history of trans- portation, it may be permissible to offer a few remarks on its merits, and on the question whether its abolition, for all except the gravest offences, was an inevitable measure.

The general arguments in favour of transportation are sufficiently obvious. By removal from his old haunts and associates, and also from a country where the supply of labour is in excess of the demand, and every candidate for employment is therefore closely scrutinized, the criminal himself has a far better chance of reform in the colonies. For the very same reasons the mother-country profits by his trans- portation, and the colonies gain the benefit of his services in a state of society where manual labour is greatly wanted, whilst with good previous discipline, and if the numbers sent be moderate in proportion to the free population, the character of the convict is far more likely to be raised than that of the com- munity to be lowered. The convict, it should always be remembered, must be somewhere. If the general balance of good and evil be looked to, it is almost beyond dispute that his presence in a well- situated colony does less harm and more good than it would do anywhere else.

On the other side it is objected that the colonists are treated unjustly by introducing convicts among them, and also that it is impolitic, and even wicked, to plant in favoured regions of the globe whole com- munities of bad men. The force of the first objec- tion is weakened by reflecting on the history of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. They were founded at a great cost by this country, purely as penal colonies. The first settlers were attracted to them partly by the fineness of the climate and other good qualities of the country, but chiefly perhaps by the abundance of convict labour. At all events, to borrow an illustration from legal phraseology, it was the settlers who came to the nuisance, and not the nuisance which was brought to the settlers.

The other objection has been greatly exaggerated. Much of what has been said and written on this subject appears to have been produced under the delusion that the Penal Colonies are the scenes of

Arguments in favour of

Transportation.

Objections, and the Replies.

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

C.O.

Reference :-

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Practical obstacles in the existing Colonies.

Reasons why a new Colony would not meet the difficulty.

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the blackest crime and wickedness. Nothing can be stronger than the contrast between this notion and the accounts given by impartial observers on the spot, of which some examples have been referred to in the foregoing pages. Travelling by day or by night is generally acknowledged to be remarkably safe in the Convict Colonies, and property has been affirmed to be, in some respects, even more secure on the banks of the Hawksbury or the Derwent than on those of the Thames. It would occupy too much space, however, fully to examine this part of the subject.

But freely admitting that transportation, when the use of suitable Colonies could be commanded, might be an excellent punishment, still it has been shown that, in Van Diemen's Land and the adjacent Colonies, the opposition to it became irresistible, and that, at the same time, the discovery of gold unfitted them for the purpose. "Western Australia, indeed, then became available, but with far too limited resources to absorb the great number of convicts transported under the old system.

It

In this dilemma, the expedient which first offers itself to every mind, is the formation of a new Colony. This is an ever-recurring suggestion, but it does not meet the real difficulty of the case. is easy enough to provide for the men whilst they are still under coercion; and the constant proposals of such places as the Falkland Islands or the Auck- land Islands, or even St. Paul's and Amsterdam, mistake the object to be accomplished. For a mere gaol, Wandsworth Common, or any heath in Surrey, would, probably, be a much better site, affording much more efficient superintendence and cheaper maintenance. The real object is to provide for the convicts becoming ultimately useful members of society, and for this purpose, the essential con- dition of success is, that there should already exist in the Colony a tolerably large free population, both able and willing to afford the emancipated convicts abundant employment. It would be simply impossible to gain any of the benefits of transporta- tion by forcing convicts on an unwilling community. For even if any Government could have thought itself justfied in lighting up the flames of a rebellion in such an attempt, and in binding, for example, all great Australian Colonies into a common league against the mother country, the very fact that

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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