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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

PETE C.O.

885

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

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2. The Crown assigned the services of the con- victs to the Governor; the Governor again assigned them to the settlers, only retaining a few for the service of the public; and the misconducted or the refractory were returned to the hands of the Govern- ment, by which they were worked in gangs wearing irons, or subjected to such other coercion as their cases were supposed to demand.

3. The well-known Committee of the House of Commons above referred to sat in 1837 and 1838. They ended by condemning the punishment of Transportation as it had hitherto been conducted,

as being

Unequal;

Without terrors to the criminal class; Corrupting to both convict and colonist;

Extravagant in point of expense;

And they recommended the substitution of punish- ment in Penitentiaries both at home and abroad,

some of them in Van Diemen's Land.

4. This report produced a great influence upon

public opinion. Lord John Russell, who was then Lord Jolin Russell to Lord Gle-

nelg, January 1839. at the Home Office, proposed in 1839 that a new penitentiary should be built (Pentonville); that ą larger proportion of convicts should be employed in the dockyards at home and in Bermuda; that the Governors of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land should be apprized of an intention to put an end to the assignment of convicts; and that improved methods of discipline should be introduced in the Penal Colonies. These several propositions were gradually carried into effect.

5, Pentonville was built and was completed in 1842; in New South Wales not only was assign- ment discontinued, but transportation to it was altogether abolished by an Order in Council dated the 20th of May, 1840; and in Van Diemen's Land successive changes in the discipline have been introduced, of which a summary will be

offered in the following paragraphs.

6. Sir J. Franklin had reached Van Diemen's Sir J. Franklin, October 7, 1837,"

Common Paper, No. 309 of Land in 1837, and had from the beginning thought

1838. that Assignment ought to cease, and that every convict, without exception, ought to pass through

■ period of punishment in primary gangs, and after- wards attain tickets of leave conferring different degrees of advantage. Both Lord Glenelg, and

Lord Glenelg, July 6, 1838.

Common Paper, No. 412 of 1840.

Lord John Russell, September 10, afterwards Lord John Russell, did not object to the

1840.

Ibid, page 105.

principle of his suggestions, although, from various causes, it was not till July 1841, that his plan came fully into operation, and that Assignment finally ceased in Van Diemen's Land.

7. Not long afterwards, Lord Stanley embodied the same principles in a more complete and elabo- rate scheme, contained in his Lordship's despatch Parliamentary Paper of April 1843, of the 25th of November, 1842, which may be con-

Part ii, page 1.

sidered as embodying the views of Government at that time on the present important subject. The leading object of this scheme was to establish a fixed and gradually diminishing scale of severity, until the convict should be conducted by progres- sive steps to a state of freedom. For this purpose it was laid down that there should be the following stages:-

I. Norfolk Island, for all the persons convicted of the heaviest offences.

2. Probation gangs in Van Diemen's Land, as the second stage for the above, and the first stage for all other convicts.

3. Probation passes, divided into three classes, conferring different degrees of privilege.

4. Tickets of leave, meaning revocable pardons,

good within the colony.

6. Pardons, either conditional or absolute.

8. But, carefully as this scheme was digested, two elements of failure entirely defeated its success. Whatever had been the evils of Assignment, at any rate it had the salutary effect of speedily dispersing the convicts: by the new plan they were, on the contrary, congregated in great masses. Vice, there- fore, among them was rendered far more intense and universal. This was the first objection which experience brought to light. The other was that so limited a colony could not afford a demand for the services of the vast bodies of convicts who were now poured into the island; and the conse- quence was, that instead of its being a reward to become a passholder, the men who attained that stage would actually have starved if Government had not undertaken to subsist them and find them work. This led to the two-fold evil of great expense, and of striking at the very principle of the new plan of discipline, which was to hold out to the men the benefit of a gradually-improving condition