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    Untitled Article

    Never , indeed , was there a more humiliating failure of art aim , —never a more complete reverse of all anticipated results . Never were high expectations of public benefit met by a more blank disappointment . Transportation must , it was thought , be the best of all possible

    secondary punishments , because it removes the offender as effectually as the rope and scaffold . It further secures society against aggression by the warning afforded of the horrors of banishment accompanied with restraint and hard labour . It tends to the reformation of the offender by opening to him a way of return to character and comfort by good conduct . It will be the best boon that can be conferred on Australia , where labour is the one

    thing needed . Finally , it will be an economical way of disposing of our criminals , since their labour will go far towards repaying their expenses . Instead , however , of the criminal being effectually removed , he remains as great a pest to society as if he had continued at large .

    Some return to their old haunts—the men by working their way on ship-board , the women by prostitution . Others form a part of Australian society ; during their term of punishment , as servants ; after it , as settlers . In both positions they can drink , game , rob , and spread the infection of every kind of vice as potentially as in England .

    Instead of the contemplated warning , a very enticing example is held out by this punishment . Some , —it matters not how many , —convicts have found their sentence of exile a passport to prosperity . Since it is known in England that one thief has built himself a mansion near Sydney ; that another keeps his carriage ; that a third sends over money to the mistress she

    robbed , and with it an offer of patronage in case of the said mistress being persuaded to come over and settle ; that others are prosperous farmers and wood-growers , and many more living a wild life of hunting and debauchery in the woods and plains , — since it is a fact that persons here have committed crimes ,, in order to get a free passage to New South Wales , all hope of making transportation formidable is over .

    As to the reformation of the offender , what mode of treatment can be less likely to effect it than an alternation of tyranny and impunity ? To be scouted and flogged by a tyrannical settler in the morning , and paid high for extra labour at night , is not the best way of being disciplined into virtue . To be hankering between escaping into the bush , to seize black wives and knock

    their husbands on the head , and remaining with the hope of growing rich and cutting a dash in the colony , is to be very illdisposed for repentance . It matters not how few run away , and How few cut a dash—some have done both ; and while there is a possibility of doing the same , either is thought preferable to the dull work of reformation ; and whatever impediments arise ;

    Untitled Article

    668 ^ Secondary Punishments .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page 668, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/20/