ment shall have freed the colonists from

"The disability," says Mr. Wentworth, | worth in his statement of evils, and in "might be removed by a simple order in the remedies he has proposed for them. council. Whenever his Majesty's govern- Many of the restrictions upon the comthis useless and cruel prohibition, the fol- merce of New South Wales are so lowing branches of commerce would then absurd, that they require only to be be opened to them. First, they would be stated in parliament to be corrected. enabled to transport, in their own vessels, The fertility of the colony so far extheir coals, timber, spars, flour, meat, ceeds its increase of population, and &c. to the Cape of Good Hope, the Isle of the difficulty of finding a market for France, Calcutta, and many other places corn is so great-or rather the imposin the Indian seas; in all of which, markets sibility so clear- that the measure of more or less extensive exist for those various other productions which the colony might encouraging domestic distilleries ought furnish. Secondly, they would be enabled to be had recourse to. The colony, to carry directly to Canton the sandal with a soil fit for every thing, must, as wood, bêche la mer, dried seal-skins, and, Mr. Wentworth proposes, grow other in fact, all the numerous productions which things besides corr, and excite that the surrounding seas and islands afford for market in the interior which it does the China market, and return freighted not enjoy from without. The want of with cargoes of tea, silks, nankeens, &c.; demand, indeed, for the excess of corn, all of which commodities are in great will soon effect this without the interdemand in the colony, and are at present altogether furnished by East India or vention of government. Government, American merchants, to the great detri- we believe, have already given up the ment and dissatisfaction of the colonial. right of taxation, without the sanction And, lastly, they would be enabled, in a of parliament; and there is an end short time, from the great increase of capi- probably, by this time, to that grievance. tal which these important privileges would A council and a colonial secretary they of themselves occasion, as well as attract have also expressed their willingness from other countries, to open the fur-trade with the north-west coast of America, and to concede. Of trial by jury, and a dispose of the cargoes procured in China, colonial assembly, we confess that we a trade which has hitherto been exclusively have great doubts. At some future carried on by the Americans and Russians, time they must come, and ought to although the colonists possess a local supe- come. The only question is, Is the riority for the prosecution of this valuable colony fit for such institutions at prebranch of commerce, which would insure sent? Are there a sufficient number them at least a successful competition with of respectable persons to serve that the subjects of those two nations."-(Went office in the various settlements? If worth, pp. 317, 318.) the English law is to be followed exThe means which Mr. Wentworth actly, to compose a jury of twelve proposes for improving the condition persons, a panel of forty-eight must of Botany Bay, are-trial by jury-be summoned. Could forty-eight incolonial assemblies, with whom the telligent, unconvicted men, be found right of taxation should rest-the esta- in every settlement of New South blishment of distilleries, and the Wales? or must they not be fetched exclusion of foreign spirits-altera- from great distances, at an enormous tion of duties, so as to place New expense and inconvenience ? Is such South Wales upon the same footing as an institution calculated for so very other colonies-removal of the restric-young a colony? A good government tion to navigate the Indian seas in ves-is an excellent thing; but it is not the seis of a small burden-improvements first in the order of human wants. in the courts of justice-encouragement first want is to subsist; the next for the growth of hemp, flax, tobacco, to subsist in freedom and comfort; and wine; and, if a colonial assembly first to live at all, then to live well. cannot be granted, that there should A parliament is still a greater demand be no taxation without the authority of upon the wisdom and intelligence and parliament. opulence of a colony than trial by jury. In general, we agree with Mr. Went-Among the twenty thousand inhabi

The

tants of New South Wales, are there | convict, from 1791 to 1797, is calenten persons out of the employ of go-lated at 33l. 9s. 5d. per annum, and vernment whose wisdom and prudence the profits of his labour are stated to could reasonably be expected to ad- be 201. The price paid for the transvance the interests of the colony with- port of convicts has been, on an average, out embroiling it with the mother- 371. exclusive of food and clothing. It country? Who has leisure in such a appears, however, says Mr. Bennet, by state of affairs to attend such a parlia- an account laid before parliament, that ment? Where wisdom and conduct in the year 1814, 109,7461, were paid are so rare, every man of character, we for the transport, food, and clothing of will venture to say, has, like strolling 1016 convicts, which will make the players in a barn, six or seven impor- cost amount to about 1087. per man. tant parts to perform. Mr. M'Arthur, In 1812, the expenses of the colony who, from his character and under- were 176,000l.; in 1813, 235,000; standing, would probably be among in 1814, 231,362.; but in 1815, they the first persons elected to the colonial had fallen to 150,000!. legislature, besides being a very spirited agriculturist, is, we have no doubt, justice of the peace, curator, and rector of a thousand plans, charities, and associations, to which his presence is essentially necessary. If he could be cut into as many pieces as a tree is into planks, all his subdivisions would be eminently useful. When a member of parliament, and what is called a really respectable country gentleman, sets off to attend his duty in our parliament, such diminution of intelligence as is produced by his absence, is, God knows, easily supplied; but in a colony of 20,000 persons, it is impossible this should be the case. Some time hence the institution of a colonial assembly will be a very wise and proper measure, and so clearly called for, that the most profligate members of administration will neither be able to ridicule nor refuse it. At present we are afraid that a Botany Bay parliament would give rise to jokes; and jokes at present have a great agency in human affairs.

The cruelty and neglect in the transportation of convicts has been very great--and in this way a punishment inflicted which it never was in the contemplation of law to enact. During the first eight years, according to Mr. Bennet's statements, one tenth of the convicts died on the passage; on the arrival of three of the ships, 200 sick were landed, 281 persons having died on board. These instances, however, of criminal inattention to the health of the convicts no longer take place; and it is mentioned rather as an history of what is past, than a censure upon any existing evil.

In addition to the expense of Botany Bay, Mr. Bennet contends that it wants the very essence of punishment, terror; that the common people do not dread it; that instead of preventing crimes, it rather excites the people to their commission, by the hopes it affords of bettering their condition in a new country.

"All those who have had an opportunity Mr. Bennet concerns himself with of witnessing the effect of this system of the settlement of New Holland, as it is transportation agree in opinion, that it is no longer an object of dread-it has, in a school for criminals; and upon this fact, generally ceased to be a punishment: subject, has written a very humane, en- true it is, to a father of a family, to the lightened, and vigorous pamphlet. The mother who leaves her children, this perobjections made to this settlement by petual separation from those whom they Mr. Bennet, are, in the first place, its love and whom they support, is a cruel blow, enormous expense. The colony of New and, when I consider the merciless character South Wales, from 1788 to 1815 in- of the law which inflicts it, a severe penalty; clusive, has cost this country the enor- who suffer this punishment, regard it in but by far the greater number of persons mous sum of 3,465,9831. In the evi- quite a different light. Mr. Cotton, the dence before the Transportation Com-Ordinary of Newgate, informed the Police mittee, the annual expense of each Committee last year, That the generality

has been passed by the Recorder, return thanks for it, and seem overjoyed at their sentence: the very last party that went off, when they were put into the caravan, shouted and huzzaed, and were very joy ous; several of them called out to the keepers who were there in the yard, The first fine Sunday we will have aglorious Kangaroo

How, as

of those who are transported consider it as | sink of wickedness, in which the great a party of pleasure-as going out to see majority of convicts of both sexes bethe world; they evince no penitence, no come infinitely more depraved than at contrition, but seem to rejoice in the thing, the period of their arrival. -many of them to court it. I have heard them, when the sentence of transportation Mr. Bennet very justly observes, can it be otherwise? The felon transported to the American plantations, became an insulated rogue among honest men. He lived for years in the family of some industrious planter, without seeing a picklock, or indulging in pleasant dialogues on the delicious burglaries of his youth. He imperceptibly glided into honest habits, and lost not only the tact for pockets, but the wish to investigate their contents. But in Botany Bay, the felon, as soon as he gets out of the ship, meets with his ancient trull, with the footpad of his heart, the convict of his affections,-the man whose hand he has often met in the same gentleman's pocket-the being whom he would choose from the whole world to take to the road, or to disentangle the locks of Bramah. It is impossible that vice should not become more intense in such society.

bunt at the Bay,-seeming to anticipate a great deal of pleasure.' He was asked if those persons were married or single, and his answer was, 'By far the greater number of them were unmarried. Some of them are anxious that their wives and children should follow them: others care nothing about either wives or children, and are glad to get rid of them.”—(Bennet, pp. 60, 61). It is a scandalous injustice in this colony, that persons transported for seven years have no power of returning when that period is expired. A strong active man may sometimes work his passage home; but what is an old man or an aged female to do? Suppose a convict were to be confined in prison for seven years, and then told he might get out if he could climb over the walls, or break open the locks, what in general would be his chance of liberation? But no lock nor doors can be so secure a means of detention as the distance book. A more horrid picture of the of Botany Bay. This is a downright trick and fraud in the administration of criminal justice. A poor wretch who is banished from his country for seven years, should be furnished with "I now appeal to your Excellency," he says the means of returning to his country at the conclusion of his letter, "whether, when these seven years are expired. under such circumstances, any man of comIf it is intended he should never return, mon feeling, possessed of the least spark of his sentence should have been banish-humanity or religion, who stood in the same ment for life.

Upon the horrid state of morals now prevalent in Botany Bay, we would counsel our readers to cast their eyes upon the account given by Mr. Marsden, in a letter dated July 1815, to Governor Macquarrie. It is given at length in the Appendix to Mr. Bennet's

state of any settlement was never penned. It carries with it an air of truth and sincerity, and is free from all enthusiastic cant.

official relation that I do to these people, could enjoy one happy moment from the as their spiritual pastor and magistrate, beginning to the end of the week?

The most serious charge against the colony, as a place for transportation, and an experiment in criminal justice, "I humbly conceive that it is incompatis the extreme profligacy of manners ible with the character and wish of the which prevails there, and the total want British nation, that her own exiles should of reformation among the convicts. be exposed to such privations and dangerous Upon this subject, except in the regular temptations, when she is daily feeding the letters, officially varnished and filled ceiving into her friendly, and I may add with fraudulent beatitudes for the pub-pious bosom, the stranger, whether savage lic eye, there is, and there can be, but or civilised, of every nation under heaven. one opinion. New South Wales is a There are, in the whole, under the two

hungry and clothing the naked, and re

principal superintendents, Messrs. Rouse merit. Mr. O'Hara's is a bookseller's and Oakes, one hundred and eight men, and compilation, done in a useful and pleas one hundred and fifty women, and several ing manner. Mr. Wentworth is full of children; and nearly the whole of them information on the present state of have to find lodgings for themselves when

they have performed their government

tasks.

"I trust that your Excellency will be fully persuaded, that it is totally impossible for the magistrate to support his necessary authority, and to establish a regular police, under such a weight of accumulated and accumulating evils. I am as sensible as any one can be, that the difficulty of removing these evils will be very great; at the same time, their number and influence may be greatly lessened, if the abandoned male and female convicts are lodged in barracks, and placed under the eye of the police, and the number of licensed houses is reduced. Till something of this kind is done, all attempts of the magistrate, and the public administration of religion, will be attended with little benefit to the general good. I have the honour to be, Your Excellency's most obedient humble servant, SAMUEL MARSDEN."-(Bennet, p. 134.)

Botany Bay. The humanity, the exertions, and the genuine benevolence of Mr. Bennet, are too well known to need our commendation.

All persons who have a few guineas in their pocket, are now running away from Mr. Nicholas Vansittart to settle in every quarter of the globe. Upon the subject of emigration to Botany Bay, Mr. Wentworth observes, 1st, That any respectable person emigrating to that colony, receives as much land gratis as would cost him 400% in the United States; 2dly, He is allowed as many servants as he may require, at one third of the wages paid for labour in America; 3dly, Himself and family are victualled at the expense of Government for six months. He calculates that a man, wife, and two children, with an allowance of five tons for themselves and baggage, could emigrate to Botany Bay for 100, including every expense, provided a whole ship could be freighted; and that a single man could be taken out thither for 301. These points are worthy of serious attention to those who are shedding their country.

CHIMNEY SWEEPERS.

(E. REVIEW, 1819.)

Thus much for Botany Bay. As a mere colony, it is too distant and too expensive; and, in future, will of course involve us in many of those just and necessary wars, which deprive Englishmen so rapidly of their comforts, and make England scarcely worth living in. If considered as a place of reform for criminals, its distance, expense, and the society to which it dooms the objects of the experiment, are insuper able objections to it. It is in vain to say, that the honest people in New South Wales will soon bear a greater proportion to the rogues, and the con- Account of the Proceedings of the Society tamination of bad society will be less for superseding the Necessity of Climbing fatal. This only proves that it may be Boys. Baldwin, &c. London. 1816. a good place for reform hereafter, not AN excellent and well-arranged dinthat it is a good one now. One of the ner is the most pleasing occurrence, principal reasons for peopling Botany and a great triumph of civilised life. Bay at all, was, that it would be an It is not only the descending morsel, admirable receptacle, and a school of and the enveloping sauce- but the reform for our convicts. It turns out, rank, wealth, wit, and beauty which that for the first half century, it will surround the meats the learned make them worse than they were before, management of light and heat-the and that, after that period, they may silent and rapid services of the attendprobably begin to improve. A marsh, ants- the smiling and sedulous host, to be sure, may be drained and culti-proffering gusts and relishes - the vated; but no man who has his choice, exotic bottles-the embossed platewould select it in the mean time for his the pleasant remarks the handsome dwelling-place. dresses-the cunning artifices in fruit The three books are all books of and farina! The hour of dinner, in

short, includes every thing of sensual and intellectual gratification which a great nation glories in producing.

In the midst of all this, who knows that the kitchen chimney caught fire half an hour before dinner!- and that a poor little wretch of six or seven years old, was sent up in the midst of the flames to put it out? We could not, previous to reading this evidence, have formed a conception of the miseries of these poor wretches, or that there should exist, in a civilised country, a class of human beings destined to such extreme and varied distress. We will give a short epitome of what is developed in the evidence before the two Houses of Parliament.

chimneys? Yes.-What did you feel upon the first attempt to climb a chimney? The first chimney I went up, they told me there was some plum-pudding and money up at ticed me up; and when I got up I would the top of it, and that is the way they ennot let the other boy get from under me to get at it, I thought he would get it; I could not get up, and shoved the pot and half the chimney down into the yard.-Did you experience any inconvenience to your knees, or your elbows? Yes, the skin was off my knees and elbows too, in climbing up t the new they force you up? When I got up, I cried chimneys they forced me up.- How did out about my sore knees.-Were you beat or compelled to go up by any violent means? Yes, when I went to a narrow chimney, if I could not do it, I durst not go home; when I used to come down, my master would well beat me with the brush; and not only my master, but when we used to go with the Little boys for small flues, is a common to hit us three or four times with the brush." journeymen, if we could not do it, they used phrase in the cards left at the door by-(Lords' Minutes, No. 1. p. 5.) itinerant chimney sweepers. Flues made to ovens and coppers are often less than nine inches square; and it may be easily conceived, how slender the frame of that human body must be, which can force itself through such an aperture.

Boys are made chimney sweepers at the early age of five or six.

What is the age of the youngest boys who have been employed in this trade, to your knowledge? About five years of age: I know one now between five and six years old; it is the man's own son in the Strand: now there is another at Somers Town, I think, said he was between four and five, or about five; Jack Hall, a little lad, takes him about.-Did you ever know any female children employed? Yes, I know one now. About two years ago there was a woman told me she had climbed scores of times, and there is one at Paddington now, whose father taught her to climb; but I have often heard talk of them when I was apprentice, in different places.-What is the Smallest-sized flue you have ever met with in the course of your experience? About eight inches by nine; these they are always chiged to climb in this posture (describing ), keeping the arms up straight; if they slip their arms down, they get jammed in; unless they get their arms close over their head, they cannot climb." - (Lords Minutes, No. 1, p. 8.)

The following is a specimen of the manner in which they are taught this art of climbing chimneys.

Do you remember being taught to climb
VOL. L

In practising the art of climbing, they are often crippled.

"You talked of the pargetting of chimneys; are many chimneys pargetted? There have to go and sit all a-twist to parge them, used to be more than are now; we used to according to the floors, to keep the smoke from coming out; then I could not straighten my legs; and that is the reason that many are cripples,-from parging and stopping the holes.”—(Lords' Minutes, No. 1. p. 17.)

They are often stuck fast in a chimney, and, after remaining there many hours, are cut out.

"Have you known, in the course of your practice, boys stick in chimneys at all? Yes, frequently.--Did you ever know an instance of a boy being suffocated to death? No; I do not recollect any one at present, but I have assisted in taking boys out when they have been nearly exhausted. - Did you ever know an instance of its being necessary to break open a chimney to take the boy out? O yes.-Frequently? Monthly I might say; it is done with a cloak, if possible, that it should not be discovered: a master in general wishes it not to be known, and therefore speaks to the people belonging to the house not to mention it, for it was merely the boy's neglect; they often say it was the boy's neglect.

Why do they say that? The boy's climbing shirt is often very bad; the boy coming down, if the chimney be very narrow, and numbers of them are only nine inches, gets his shirt rumpled underneath him, and he

T