CHAPTER XI FRENCH PENAL COLONIES
Penal exile in favour with other nations—Systems of France, Italy, Spain and Portugal—Earliest French ventures—Guiana a fiasco—High sounding names—Renewed attempt—Settlement made in New Caledonia in 1864—Capital at Noumea—Convict population increases—Noumea in 1888—Results of convict labour meagre—Loose discipline and low moral tone—Agricultural settlements—Life at the smaller stations—Arab convicts—Enforced labour unremunerative—Delay in development—The emancipists—Same warfare with free settlers as in Australia—A later view—Visited by Mr. George Griffith in 1900—Free immigrants refuse to remain—Present condition proof of failure of penal exile.
The vast and costly efforts of Great Britain to make use of exile as the penalty for crime, and the strange, unlooked for results achieved, have been set forth. These efforts were undoubtedly successful, although not in the manner expected. To add a great colony to the British Empire was no small feat, even though the sources were impure and the foundations laid by the dregs of society. But the gain was some compensation for the means adopted. In any case, the convict stigma has long since been washed out by honest industry and reputable development. A vast territory, richly endowed, offered special advantages to an enterprising people with the genius of colonisation. Other nations, who overlooked the difficulties faced and overcome by England, have endeavoured to follow in her footsteps, and have made but little progress. France, as we shall see, has gone to great lengths in the practice of deportation, but to no purpose. Portugal still transports her criminals to the African colony of Angola, where the system is established on a small scale and has exhibited no glaring defects. Italy has long favoured the formation of criminal colonies on the many islands that surround her coast, and has removed numbers of prisoners to agricultural stations at Sardinia, to Pianosa and Gorgona in the Tuscan Archipelago, as well as to Monte Cristo and Capraja. Spain had a penal settlement at Ceuta on the north African shore as far back as the fifteenth century, and has more recently added large stations at Melilla and Alhucemas. Spanish experience in convict colonies is said to be satisfactory, but the conditions are much the same as in Australia,—no better, if no worse.
The efforts of France to found penal colonies range far back into history. They date from a period long antecedent to the latest craze for colonial aggrandisement. The very first attempt to sow the seeds of a prosperous community with the failures of society was in 1763, when the colonisation of French Guiana, already often attempted without success, was again tried on an ambitious scale. The project failed miserably. An expedition fourteen thousand strong, recruited mainly from the scum and sweepings of the streets of Paris, melted away within a year, and starvation carried off all whom the deadly climate spared. A second similar experiment was tried in 1766, with a like disastrous result. No serious importance could be attached to the colonising efforts of the victims exiled to Guiana by the revolutionary tribunals. Barely half the number survived the voyage, and the balance were in no condition to act as pioneers. The records of French Guiana are full of such fiascos, the most unsuccessful of which was the philanthropic attempt of the Baron Milius, in 1823, to establish a penal colony on the banks of the Mana, by the marriage and expatriation of habitual criminals, recidivistes, and degraded women,—a most ill-judged undertaking, speedily productive of ghastly horrors.
After this, penal colonisation seems to have fallen into disfavour with France. Not only was it not renewed, but the principle of criminal deportation, of exile as a penalty, was formally condemned in 1847, both by such eminent publicists as MM. Lucas, De Beaumont and De Tocqueville, and by the government of the hour. Yet within a few years the practice was suddenly restored. To the new men in power there was probably something attractive in the theory of transportation, as may be seen from the high-sounding phrases that accompanied their decrees. The idea was not merely to banish the dangerous social elements to a distant soil: the young republic wished to prove that "humanity presided over all its actions." Deportation, with the disciplinary processes that surrounded it, was expected to bring about the moral regeneration of those subjected to it; the criminal would be transformed into a useful citizen; no longer a terror in his old home, he would aid the development of and become a positive benefactor to the new. The government was, indeed, so fascinated by the prospective advantages of transportation to the convicts themselves, that it expected them to accept it as a boon. Registers were opened at all the bagnes, or seaport convict-stations, on which prisoners might inscribe their names as volunteers for the high favour of removal to the promised land beyond the seas. The philanthropic wish to benefit the exile was not, however, the sole object of the government, as may be seen in various articles in the decrees. The hope of founding substantial colonial possessions was not disguised. The convict might benefit by expatriation, but so would his new country, and to a greater degree. He went out, in a measure, for his own good; he remained, perforce, for that of the community. It was ruled that even when emancipated he was to be kept in the colony; those sentenced for eight years and less must spend there a second period as long as the original sentence; those sentenced for more than eight years must remain in the colony for life. Their labour and their best energies were thus impounded for the general good, in the sanguine expectation that they were being utilised in the progress and development of French colonisation.
The revival of transportation was formally promulgated by the law of May, 1854, which declared that thereafter the punishment of travaux forcés should be undergone in establishments created in a French colonial possession other than Algeria. As the only available outlet at this time was French Guiana, this tropical colony alone was adopted as a convict receptacle. In doing so, the very first principles of penal legislation were ignored. To consign even convicts to a pestilential climate, and expand the lesser penalty into capital punishment, was a monstrous and illegal misuse of power. Exile to French Guiana meant nearly certain death. For three years every attempt to colonise the country had ended in disaster. Yet the government of Napoleon III accepted deportation with a light heart and on the most extended scale.
The French government, slow to accept the evidence of facts, has never abandoned deportation to Guiana. But it is no longer sanguine of success, and the attempt to colonise is continued with other than native-born Frenchmen. The total convict population of Guiana, as shown in recent French official returns, had dwindled down to 3,441, and of these barely a thousand were Europeans; the rest were Arabs from Algeria, and Annamites, Asiatic blacks from the new French possessions in Cochin-China and Tonquin. The Europeans were made up, in nearly equal proportions, of convicts still undergoing sentence, and emancipists compelled to reside in the colony. Large numbers of both classes are now retained in the penitentiaries on the seacoast, where they can be constantly employed at industrial labour under cover; as at Cayenne, the capital, where vast administrative establishments exist, built at great outlay in more prosperous times.
The French government has sought by every means to encourage the young settlement of Saint Laurent, but its progress has always been disappointing. It has been dependent for some years past upon the Arab recruits, and the French officials already sorrowfully confess that members of the Arab race transplanted to French Guiana are not of the stuff to make good colonists. They are idle, discontented, and a prey to unceasing homesickness. A great effort has been made by the administration to attach the Arab emigrant to the land of exile by transporting thither—I use the words of a late report—"the image of the Arab family, its customs, habits and religion." Marriages are encouraged with Arab women according to the Mussulman law. But little success has attended these well-meant efforts. The Arab soon develops nomadic instincts; he will not stick to one spot, but wanders abroad in search of work which will give him the means of a speedy return to Algeria. Not seldom he shows a clean pair of heels. Escapes in French Guiana have been a source of trouble and annoyance to the authorities. The total number of convicts who had escaped or disappeared from French Guiana between 1852 and 1883 was 3,146; and since Arabs have been sent there, they have supplied the largest proportion of fugitives. They went off in bands; nothing could check them; no surveillance was effective. The Government cutters cruising along the mouth of the river were easily evaded, and the country boats once gained, they were soon out of the colony. A report from the governor-general of Algeria in 1890 states that a great cause of the insecurity of Algeria is the presence in the colony of large numbers of Arab convicts who have escaped from Guiana and returned home. Hence transportation has little terrors for the Arab population, knowing how easily exile may be avoided.
A more remarkable case of escape was that of a French convict sent to Guiana, who was anxious to see the Paris Exposition of 1889. He became possessed of some eight hundred francs through successful gambling, and spent six hundred in taking passage to Amsterdam; he embarked without let or hindrance and went direct to Paris on arrival. He was present at the opening of the exposition, where he stood not far from the president of the republic. Later on he was captured for a fresh offence, and taken to one of the large Paris prisons, where he was at once recognised as a convict exiled not long before to Cayenne. He admitted the charge; he had gratified his wish, had enjoyed quelques bons moments, and was satisfied to go back to Guiana, as he would not have to pay his own passage out. It was, in fact, established beyond question that it was easier to escape from Cayenne, and even New Caledonia, than from a maison centrale in the department of the Seine.
It must be sufficiently plain from the foregoing facts that the attempts to colonise French Guiana with convicts have ended in more or less disheartening failure. Even in sections where the climate was not fatal to Europeans, the conditions of life were opposed to the growth of a prosperous community. There was little increase of population possible. The ill-assorted marriages of convicts with degraded women of their own class proved generally unproductive. Infant mortality was excessive; children born in the colony could never be reared. The substitution of Arabs for Europeans has been accompanied, as I have shown, with little more success. Now, according to a late report of the French Colonial Office, Annamite convicts, hitherto retained in their own country for the completion of various important colonial works, are sent to French Guiana. "The Annamite," says the report hopefully, "is a good agriculturist; he can face the climate of Guiana without danger, and the convicts of this race will doubtless largely contribute to the development and cultivation of the colony."