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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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ALLY WITHOUT! BE REPRODUCE

COPYRIGHT PHO

XXXV 1

Western Australin lionited and pre.

carious.

A greater embarrassment arises from the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons which sat last session, and from some of the evidence adduced before it. The Committee reported in favour of the renewal of transportation "if possible; " and some witnesses, whose names and offices give weight to their opinions, spoke strongly in its behalf. But an examination of these Blue Books will suggest the explanation of what we must hold to be an irrational conclusion. A general confusion seemed to exist between two things radically distinct-transportation as a deterring infliction, and transportation as a reformatory resource. Only the Judges -who have no personal acquaintance with the criminal class, who are perplexed to allot fitting sentences, who are irritated by finding offenders come before them again and again, and whose ideas of the effect of trans- portation are coloured by the traditions of a wholly different time- regarded transportation as of any value as a punishment. Every witness conversant with criminals gave the most positive testimony to the fact that trausportation is desired and not feared. Indeed, this may be regarded as a notorious and established matter. But all witnesses, without excep- tion. spoke of the inestimable importance of removal to a colony as a means for enabling the well-disposed or reformed convict to enter on a new mode of life, and recover an honest position. In this sense it is impossible to estimate the resource of transportation too highly. The Report of the Committee somewhat strangely and conflictingly blends the two views together, and recommends transportation as at once the severest punishment and the great: st boon.

If our colonies were willing, as they once were, to receive our convicts, the difficulty would be at an end. We should only need to follow out some modification of Lord (irey's plan, and after punishing our criminals here send them out to be redeemed and regenerated there. But unhappily, by pursuing a different system (which, in spite of the warnings of experience, we have repeated since), by sending vast shoals of convicts in the phase needing discipline, instead of moderate and select numbers in the phase needing assistance and encouragement, we have closed all settlements, save one, against us. Our sole resources in the way of trans- portation are now Western Australia-or a new penal colony,

Of the value of Western Australia as a resource for well-disposed convicts who desire to enter on an honest carcer, we are by no means inclined to speak disparagingly. But its means of absorption are limited, and must be husbanded with care. We have hitherto forgotten both these considerations; we must recur to them before it is too late. Western Australia has many advantages. The climate is healthy, the soil reasonably fertile, public works are much wanted, and may perhaps be made really profitable; it is separated from the gold fields by distance and by deserts; and though its progress, owing to untoward circum- stances, has hitherto been slow, yet for very many years after their establishment the progress of our other penal colonies was slower still. But it must be borne in mind that for a settlement to possess the qualifi cations for a real resource in the treasury of penal legislation, for it to offer a field for the absorption of the reformed offender into the category of honest men, the free settlers must outnumber the convicts in the propor- tion probably of at least five to one. Now at the close of 1855, the free males of all ages in Western Australia only numbered 5.000,* while the convicts numbered 3,536—a ratio which cannot be suffered to continue. It must be noted also that by applying to this young colony our old mal-practice of sending out only our worst convicts (the fourteen-years and life class) we have called forth grave complaints and hazarded the loss of this our sole remaining colonial outlet for criminals, as was given in evidence by Mr. Elliot ;† a circumstance the more to be deplored because, apart from all regard to the feelings of the colonists, a settlement will always be able to absorb a far larger number of reformed convicts than of desperate or hardened ones. Probably, however, for some time to come we can scarcely calculate upon Western Australia being able to absorb above 500 annually, and these of the most promising and select class.

• There were 4,800 free females.

†Third Report, Committer 1856.

7

The resource of a new penal Settlement, wherever situated, must New penal Colony be regarded as wholly out of the question. As a refuge it would be inadmissible. ineffective; as a place of punishment, it would be costly and disadvan- tageous; as a Colony, it would be unpermissible. It would not present to the liberated epuvict, as did Australia, a land full of free settlers, anxious to profit by his labour, and therefore willing to forget his ante- cedents. He would find no honest community to absorb him, no prepon. derating majority of respectable citizens among whom he might hide his head, from whom he might conceal his identity, whose prosperity would excite his emulative exertions, and whose character would react upon his own. In a new penal Settlement the only employers of labour would be the Government-late his gaolers; the only labourers, his fellow convicts; the only society, that of men as criminal and tainted as himself. In what mode could the restoration to honesty and respectability of the liberated convict be anticipated from a community exclusively composed of his foes and his fellow-vagabonds, his gaolers and his accomplices?

It

If the new penal settlement be intended as a place of infliction, it would simply be a prison with many disadvantages. A prison—a gaol for the purposes of punishment cannot be too close under our eye. would be better on Wandsworth Common than at the Antipodes. It would be far safer, abuses would be far less likely to creep in, and its cost would be far less. Gaolers, officers, military, police, must be more numerous for an establishment at the Falkland Islands than in England, and must be paid more highly. The ordinary cost of a convict here may be taken at 251. a-year, of which his labour does or ought to repay a consi- derable portion: his merc transport to Western Australia costs that sum.

But suppose this objection got over or ignored. Suppose that by painful efforts, and by slow degrees, some isolated and ungenial spot of earth shall be covered by the farms of these liberated convicts. sort of a community will have been created, and what sort of a future can What be predicted for it? You have sown with poisoned seed: what sort of a harvest is likely to be reaped? You have selected your “ pilgrim fathers” -the founders of a new society-from the worst dregs of your vitiated population, from desperadoes so bad that you dare not keep them at home: is this a deed which, after past experience, England can repeat? But further: either there will be no women in this penal settlement, or these women must be the most abandoned of their sex, for none other will go there. In the former case, we must lay our account for a revival of all the unspeakable horrors and abominations of Tasmania and Norfolk Island. In the latter, what will that community be whose fathers are felons, burglars, and murderers, and whose mothers are prostitutes, or

worse?

We must

and the best.

The only resource, then-since hanging can be available to such a Indefinite incarce- very limited extent; since Western Australia can only absorb so few; ration the only and since a new penal settlement is not only inadmissible, but would not remaining resourer, supply the desideratum-is that of INDEFINITE INCARCERATION. imprison the corrigible offenders till they are corrected, and we must imprison the incorrigible ones for life. Or, to state the proposition in its tersest, nakedest, most startling shape, we must incarcerate them all inde- finitely, liberating such only as we deem to be reclaimed, and only when we judge their reclamation to be genuine and complete ; restoring to them, in a word, their power to war against and prey-upon society only when we have regenerated or subdued their will.

It does not seem easy to suggest any sustainable objection to this (ious justice of practical conclusion. It seems impossible to give any shadow of a reason this. why we should not shut up for ever those habitual malefactors who are for ever unfit to be let loose, or why we should not shut up all others fill they are fit to be let loose;-nay, it seems almost a self-evident proposition that it is not only very silly, but very wrong, to do otherwise. Some offenders, it is well known, are incorrigible: either from bad organization, or from inveterate habits which have become as fixed as organization, it is a matter of moral certainty that, whenever liberated, they will and must recommence their hostility to society, and their depredations on its

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