be found in every settlement of New South Wales? or must they not be fetched from great distances, at an enormous expense and inconvenience? Is such an institution calculated for so very young a colony? A good government is an excellent thing; but it is not the first in the order of human wants. The first want is to subsist; the next to subsist in freedom and comfort; first to live at all, then to live well. A parliament is still a greater demand upon the wisdom and intelligence and opulence of a colony than trial by jury. Among the twenty thousand inhabitants of New South Wales, are there ten persons out of the employ of government whose wisdom and prudence could reasonably be expected to advance the interests of the colony without embroiling it with the mother-country? Who has leisure, in such a state of affairs, to attend such a parliament? Where wisdom and conduct are so rare, every man of character, we will venture to say, has like strolling players in a barn, six or seven important parts to perform. Mr. M'Arthur, who, from his character and understanding, would probably be among the first persons elected to the colonial 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. Mr. Bennet concerns himself with the settlement of New Holland, as it is a school for criminals; and, upon this subject, has written a very humane, enlightened, and vigorous pamphlet. The objections made to this settlement by Mr. Bennet are, in the first place, its enormous expense. The colony of New South Wales, from 1788 to 1815 inclusive, has cost this country the enormous sum of 3,465,9831. In the evidence before the Transportation Committee, the annual expense of each convict, from 1791 to 1797, is calculated at 337. 9s. 5 d. per annum, and the profits of his labour are stated to be 201. The price paid for the transport of convicts has been, on an average, 371. exclusive of food and clothing. It appears, however, says Mr. Bennet, by an account laid before parliament, that in the year 1814, 109,746l. were paid for the transport, food, and clothing of 1016 convicts, which will make the cost amount to about 1087. per man. In 1812, the expenses of the colony were 176,000l.; in 1813, 235,000l.; in 1814, 231,3627.; but in 1815 they had fallen to 150,000. 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 of witnessing the effect of this system of transportation agree in opinion, that it is no longer an object of dread—it has, in fact, generally ceased to be a punishment: true it is, to a father of a family, to the mother who leaves her children, this perpetual separation from those whom they love and whom they support, is a cruel blow, and, when I consider the merciless character of the law which inflicts it, a severe penalty; but by far the greater number of persons who suffer this punishment, regard it in quite a different light. Mr. Cotton, the Ordinary of Newgate, informed the Police Committee last year, "That the generality of those who are transported consider it as a party of pleasure-as going out to see the world; they evince no penitence, no contrition, but seem to rejoice in the thing,--many of them to court it. I have heard them, when the sentence of transportation 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 joyous; several of them called out to the keepers who were there in the yard, the first fine Sunday we will have a glorious Kangaroo hunt 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 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 the means of returning to his country when these seven years are expired. If it is intended he should never return, his sentence should have been banishment for life. The most serious charge against the colony, as a place for transportation, and an experiment in criminal justice, is the extreme profligacy of manners which prevails there, and the total want of reformation among the convicts. Upon this subject, except in the regular letters, officially varnished and filled with fraudulent beatitudes for the public eye, there is, and there can be, but one opinion. New South Wales is a sink of wickedness, in which the great majority of convicts of both sexes become infinitely more depraved than at the period of their arrival. How, as 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. 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 book. A more horrid picture of the state of any settlement was never penned. It carries with it an air of truth and sincerity, and is free from all enthusiastic cant. I now appeal to your Excellency,' (he says at the conclusion of his Letter), 'whether under such circumstances, any man of common feeling, possessed of the least spark of humanity or religion, who stood in the same official relation that I do to these people, as their spiritual pastor and magistrate, could enjoy one happy moment from the beginning to the end of the week? I humbly conceive that it is incompatible with the character and wish of the British nation, that her own exiles should be exposed to such privations and dangerous temptations, when she is daily feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, and receiving into her friendly, and I may add pious bosom, the stranger, whether savage or civilised, of every nation under heaven. There are, in the whole, under the two principal superintendants, Messrs. Rouse and Oakes, one hundred and eight men, and one hundred and fifty women, and several children; and nearly the whole of them 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. 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 insuperable 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 contamination of bad society will be less fatal. This only proves that it may be a good place for reform hereafter, not that it is a good one now. One of the principal reasons for peopling Botany Bay at all, was, that it would be an admirable receptacle, and a school of reform for our convicts. It turns out, that for the first half century, it will make them worse than |
