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Untitled Article
the captains of the transports had a direct interest in killing the prisoners ; and , in fact , it was a common thing for one-third ^ or half , or even two-thirds of the prisoners to die on the passage . On their arrival , the convicts were sent to government farms in the first instance , and worked very severely , so that there was much fear of what they had to go through . The accounts sent home by the convicts tended of course to deter from the commission of crime ,
and availed also to procure a relaxation of the system . A change of plan respecting the arrangements for the voyage was absolutely necessary ; but the amelioration extended too far , when it included the treatment of convicts on their arrival . The local government seems to have lost sight of the principle , that the transportation of convicts was to act as a preventive of crime at home , and to have directed its endeavours towards making the
criminals not only as good , but as happy as possible . It was the invariable practice of General Macquarrie , during his long administration , to assure the newly-arrived convict , that his past conduct would be entirely overlooked , and that his treatment would depend on his conduct from that day forward . Under a plan of sequestration in his own country , where the criminal could enjoy no advantages which honest men did not ,, as Honest men , enjoy in
a greater degree , such an assurance might not have been mischievous ; but in a region abounding immeasurably above the mother country in the comforts of life to the labouring classes , the remission of punishment on landing , even though only partial ^ must act as a premium on crime : and so it has proved . Mitigation of punishment became the rule of treatment : the criminal
was allowed the fruits of a certain portion of his weekly labour , and found that he was more likely to grow rich by getting transported , and working five days in the week for government and one for himself , than by six days hard labour at home . With the lapse of time , more privileges are allowed , and their gains go on increasing , till they become free from all restriction but that of fixing their residence in a certain district . Mr . Busby ' s evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons states that c it
has been the tendency of such a system to banish from their own minds the salutary feeling that they were doomed to eat the bitter fruits of bondage , as a satisfaction to the injured laws of their country , and as a beacon to others to avoid a similar course of conduct ; and now that all the hardships inseparable from the first settlement and earlier stages of a colony have been overcome , the situation of a majority has been such as rather to excite the envy than the dread of the poorer classes in England , to whom their condition is understood to be well known . ' Well known
indeed ! The facts are current among their former acquaintances here , that a great number of the persons who keep carriages in Sydney were once convicts ; and that this person and that person , once cronies of their own , are in situations where they are getting
Untitled Article
374 Van Diemen * Land .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1832, page 374, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1814/page/14/
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