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Untitled Article
beforehand . Those who have labour to sell , and those who may wish to buy , might each go to a wrong market : they might overlook the grand consideration of climate in their concern about the length of the voyage : they must have fairly committed themselves before they could ascertain the conditions of the appropri ation of land ; and amidst the pressure of unlooked for difficulties
and hardships , a large proportion might be sacrificed before the remainder could be prosperously established . Such dangers and inconveniences would be effectually guarded against , if so valuable a compilation as that with which Mr . Bischoff has presented us were issued , regarding every region to which emigration is likely to be directed . So many authorities are brought together to bear on all the leading points which concern an emigrant , that no one , we imagine , could find himself deceived in his reasonable calculations , or exposed to much error , if he founded his arrangements under the sanction of the book before us . It appears to have been compiled for the sake of giving to the members of the Van Diemen ' s Land Company an accurate idea of the state and capabilities of the country in which they have invested their property : but it is scarcely less interesting to those whose views are directed thither
for public objects . The work contains a history of the island , dating from fifty years back , when the great southern continent with its islands was discovered by Captain Cook ; an account of its character , surface , climate , natural productions , and late improvements : a report of the present method of inflicting the punishment of transportation ; and finally , an account of the establishment and progress of the Van Diemen ' s Land Company , with a valuable appendix , containing extracts from Parliamentary papers , and information respecting the aborigines of the island .
All these particulars may be said to concern the public ; but the class of facts which is most interesting to those at home is that relating to convict labour and emigration , and the influence > vhich these have on the fortunes of the honest poor settlers . These facts ought to be universally known in order to a speedy (and effectual change of a system which operates injuriously in every way . It appears that when the Australian colonies first
became penal settlements , transportation was attended with severe labour and great suffering . The accounts sent by convicts both of their voyage and their treatment on arrival tended to show that they were really receiving punishment due to their crime ; that whatever situation they might have filled in England , it could not be improved in exile , but that the verdict of a jury and the sen ^
tence of a judge brought upon them disgrace and misery . It was a common saying that the sentence of transportation was very little better than that of death , ' For four or five years after the establishment of the penal colony the contracts for the conveyance of prisoners were made for so many embarked from England , not far so many disembarked in the colony : the consequence was that
Untitled Article
Van Diemen ' s Land . 373
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1832, page 373, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1814/page/13/
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