This unhappy turn of affairs has been attended with a double disadvantage. In the first place, the vast increase in the number of convicts sent to Sydney, compared with the small number of free settlers, has for a long time past rendered the continuance of the assignment system impossible; and the gang system, to take off and embody the surplus numbers, became in a manner a matter of necessity. The manners of the colony, its habits, its prospects, its morality, have been seriously damaged by this change. The emancipated convicts who have made money, known by the name of "canary birds," have pressed upon the heels, and come to excite the jealousy, of the free settlers. The accumulation of convicts in the lower walks of life has checked the immigration of free labour, perpetuated the frightful inequality of the sexes, and led to the most lamentable disorders. The gang system, of necessity introduced, because free settlers did not exist to take the convicts off under the assignment system, perpetuated in the colony the vices of the hulks, the depravity of the galleys. The whole benefits of transportation to the convicts, their whole chances of amendment, are lost, when, instead of being sent to rural labour in the solitude of the woods and the prairies, they are huddled together, in gangs of four or five hundred, without hope to counterbalance evil propensities, or inducement to resist the seduction of mutual bad example. These evils were so sensibly felt, and led to such energetic representations to the government at home, that at length the colony was pacified, but at the same time its progress checked, by an order in council in 1837, that no more convicts, for a limited time, should be sent to Sydney or its dependencies.
But this only shifted the seat of the evil, and augmented its intensity. The convicts, now swelled to above four thousand a-year, could not be kept at home; they required to be sent somewhere, and where was that place to be? Van Diemen's Land was selected, being the most southernly portion of New Holland, and of course the farthest removed from this country; and thither nearly the whole convicts of Great Britain and Ireland, soon above thirty-five hundred annually in number, were sent for several years. The consequence of this prodigious influx of criminals into an infant colony, so far removed from the parent state that it cost £20 a-head to send a common labourer there – and of course no free emigration in proportionate numbers could be expected without public aid – might easily have been anticipated. Government did nothing to encourage the simultaneous settlement of free settlers in that distant land, thus flooded with convicts, or so little as amounted to nothing. The consequence was, that, ere long, three-fifths of the inhabitants of the colony were convicts. Every one knows, none could have failed to anticipate the consequences. The morals of the settlement, thus having a majority of its inhabitants convicts, were essentially injured. Crimes unutterable were committed; the hideous inequality of the sexes induced its usual and frightful disorders; the police, how severe and vigilant soever, became unable to coerce the rapidly-increasing multitude of criminals; the most daring fled to the woods, where they became bush-rangers; life became insecure; property sank to half its former value. So powerful, and evidently well-founded, were the representations made on the subject to the legislature, that it became evident that a remedy must be applied; and this was done by an order in council in 1844, which suspended entirely for two years the transportation of male convicts to the colonies. That of females was still and most properly continued, in the hope that, by doing so, the inequality of the sexes in Australia might in some degree be corrected.
But this measure, like all the rest, not being founded on the right principle, has entirely failed. The accumulation of offenders in the British islands, from the stoppage of the usual vent by which they were formerly carried off, soon became insupportable. The jails were crowded to suffocation; it was ere long found to be necessary to liberate many persons, transported seven years, at the expiration of two, to make way for new inmates. The liberated convicts were soon back in their old haunts, and at their old practices; and the great increase of serious crimes, such as robberies, burglaries, and murders, demonstrated that the public morals in the great towns were rapidly giving way, under the influence of that worst species of criminals – returned convicts. The judges both of Great Britain and Ireland, in common with every person practically acquainted with the subject, and who had daily proofs, in the discharge of their important official duties, of the total failure of the imprisonment system, were unanimous in recommending a return to transportation. All the temporary expedients adopted, such as Gibraltar, Bermuda, &c., soon failed from the rapid increase of convicts, who greatly exceeded all the means left of taking them off. Government became convinced that they had made a step in the wrong direction; and they most wisely took counsel from experience, and determined to resume the practice of sending convicts abroad. But, on the threshold of the renewed attempt, they were met by the refusal of the colonies to take them. The Cape is almost in rebellion on the subject; and in despair of finding a willing colony, it is said they have in contemplation to send them to be roasted under the White Cliffs, and increase the already redundant population of Malta.
It is not necessary to do any such thing. The solution of the transportation question is easy, the method to be followed perfectly efficacious. Government have only to commence the discharge of one of their most important social duties to get rid of all their difficulties, and render the immigration of criminals, as it was in time past, as great a blessing to the colonies, and as ardently desired, as of late years it has been a curse, and earnestly deprecated.
Transportation is a blessing to a colony when the convicts are kept in a minority, perhaps in a fourth or a fifth of the community to which they are sent, and when they are not hardened in crime, and all instructed in some useful trade. In such circumstances, they are the greatest possible addition to its strength, riches, and progress, and will always be gladly received.
Transportation is a curse when the convicts sent out are so numerous, and the free settlers so few, that the former forms a large proportion of the community compared to the latter, and when their habits are those of hardened irreclaimable criminals, instead of youthful novices in crime. If they become a majority, certain ruin may be anticipated to the colony thus flooded with crime.
The difficulties which now beset the transportation question have all arisen from our having pursued a course, of late years, which rendered the settlement of convicts a curse instead of a blessing, as it was at first, when the system was directly the reverse. To render it a blessing again, we have only to restore the circumstances which made it so formerly – sending out the convicts when not completely hardened in depravity, and in such a proportion to the free settlers as to keep them a small minority to the free and untainted part of the community. The immigration of convicts to our colonies is like that of the Irish into western Britain: everything depends on the proportion they bear to the remainder of the population. They are very useful if a fourth; they can be borne if they are a third; but let them become a majority, and they will soon land the country in the condition of Skibbereen or Connemara.
We cannot diminish the numbers of convicts transported; on the contrary, woful results have made us aware that it should be materially increased. Experience has taught us, also, that voluntary unaided emigration cannot enable the free settlers in Australia to keep pace with the rapid increase of crime in the British islands. What, then, is to be done? The answer is simple: Discharge in part the vast duty, so long neglected by government, of providing, at the public expense, for the emigration of a certain portion of the most indigent part of the community, who cannot get abroad on their own resources, and SETTLE THEM IN THE SAME COLONY WITH THE CONVICTS. Do this, and the labour market is lightened at home; the convicts are kept in a small minority abroad; the colony, thus aided by the combined virtue and penal labour of the mother country, is secured of prosperity and rapid progress; and its rate of increase will soon induce the other colonies to petition