The whole change in the details of the convict department was marked by a spirit eminently opposed to the colonial welfare. With singular acuteness and perspicuity Lord Stanley described the former systems as subject to local influence and subservient to local ends. Every governor, he alleged, was under a strong bias in favor of expense, as the patron of a multitude of officials. He stated that the executive council were equally benefited by the wasteful expenditure, either in their own persons or those of their official brethren, and that every colonist had an interest in the multiplication of bills on the British treasury. To prevent these abuses, the convict estimates were thenceforth to be prepared by the colonial secretary, the comptroller-general, and the commissariat officer, subject to the approval of the secretary of state.
The management of the prisoners being confided to the judgment of the governor, Lord Stanley deemed the chief cause of its many changes, and its subservience to colonial prosperity. The deference of the ministers to this discretion he attributed to the unwillingness of the home office to interfere with a functionary in correspondence with the colonial office, and the reluctance of the secretary for the colonies to guide a penal system designed for interests exclusively imperial. Thus, he stated, the governor was practically independent, and had strong inducements to render the labor of convicts subservient to colonial wealth, and to disregard the great design—the prevention of crime in Great Britain. He declared that all schemes of convict management were of colonial origin, and all contemplated local interests as their main object. To prevent these devices he proposed to retain in the colonial-office the exclusive management of the details of transportation.[239]
Among the items of convict expense was a charge of £164,000 for rations. This Lord Stanley considered an extravagant outlay. He deemed it highly improper that in a country where all the means of subsistence existed in such abundance with an unlimited supply of manual labor, this charge should remain. He however feared that while the convicts were permitted to labor on works of colonial utility the local authorities would always find means to increase the charges for their subsistence (Feb. 28, '43). The treasury concurred in this view, and requested that explicit instructions might be given to Wilmot and the comptroller-general to prevent the employment of labor for the colonial benefit, and to devote their utmost efforts to raise the food on the waste lands of the colony.
The convict department attempted agriculture, and they selected for the experiment cold, damp, and barren soils. Gardens of a few acres occupied a thousand men: the cleared land was utterly worthless. Garden seeds were brought into the colonial market, and potatos sold at twenty shillings which cost the government £10 per ton. Several hundred men idled their time in cultivating land which did not equal in the aggregate a single farm.[240] The estimated value of all the articles produced on two stations, Deloraine and Westbury, in 1846, by four hundred men, was less than £2 per man; while the salaries of their officers were nearly double that sum.[241]
Mr. Montagu, the late colonial secretary, in estimating the cost of the convict department, presented a calculation £100,000 annually less than the estimate of the officers on the spot. This difference Lord Stanley set up as proof of the culpable negligence and profligacy of colonial expense. He considered the body of persons employed in the control of prisoners excessive. A reduction was therefore enforced, and in the end less surveillance was employed than free labor usually requires.
To each party of three hundred seven overseers were attached, without constables or other restraint. The sub-division of these parties in labor left them often to the practical oversight of a single person, and he an expiree. Thus they were able to make excursions for the purposes of robbery and pleasure: their clothing tended rather to disguise than distinguish them. As the terms of their service expired they were discharged in the prison dress, and no one could tell whether they were or not illegally at large. Escaped prisoners have been known to walk through bodies of men on the road without challenge. In several instances robberies were committed on travellers within the precincts of the stations. The enclosures were often merely the common garden fence. The judges avowed that in passing sentence for crimes they could not punish them with severity, considering the strong temptations of the men. Remembering the number virtually and legally at large, the degree of safety, or rather the instances of exemption from pillage, must be considered almost miraculous. A great portion of minor crimes were not prosecuted, and a still larger number were undetected; but eight hundred recorded crimes—a scourge to ten thousand families, and full of terror and danger to all—would not seem extravagant when divided among thirty thousand prisoners.
The despatches of Wilmot to Lord Stanley described with accurate minuteness the social effects of the probation system. Those who remember his apparent apathy when those evils were the topics of colonial complaint will deplore the strange fidelity to his political chief which induced him to conceal his own sentiments from the colonists. He stated that the territory was inundated with unemployed prisoners; that no labor being in demand, they must either starve or steal; that a yearly increasing pauper population, without adding one atom to colonial wealth, would swell the catalogue of crime and increase the public expense in every form; that the number out of employment was fearfully great; and that land—cleared, fenced, in complete cultivation, with houses and buildings—might be bought at the upset price of waste land. To remedy these evils he proposed the extension of conditional pardons to the Australian colonies, the remission of the price of crown lands to emigrants, and the letting of allotments at a nominal rental for seven years to conditionally pardoned men, with a contingent right of purchase.[242]
To all these remonstrances, so far as they affected the colonist, Lord Stanley had a ready reply. The colony was originally penal, and could claim neither compensation nor relief. He considered that in emigrating the colonists surrendered at discretion; that they were not entitled to object to the trebling of their police burdens and to the importation of all instead of a small part of the convicts of the empire, as was the case up to 1840. His rejoinder was felt with that bitterness which none can realise who have not known the tyranny of irresistible despotism. Happily for mankind there is no power above the steady and determined operations of truth and right. The cruel desertion of the people in the hour of their distress—the scornful defiance of their complaints, has involved the cabinet of England in difficulties for which nothing but great sacrifices will fully obviate. No people in this hemisphere will entirely trust a British minister until the history of Van Diemen's Land is forgotten.
The anticipated relief not having arrived, the governor again assembled the council on the 21st of October. He now proposed several expedients to meet the exigencies of the moment. He had, unauthorised by the council, borrowed money of a bank. He proposed to stop the forage allowance of the clergy, and to retain 12½ per cent. of the salaries of the officials. Both these measures were withstood—the last effectively. The chief justice denied the power of the council to interfere with his income. When a new set of estimates was offered they were found to be unintelligible, and an adjournment, to enable the colonial secretary to afford the necessary information, was proposed by Mr. Dry. This reasonable request was lost by the governor's casting vote, and several motions with a similar object were defeated in the same manner. Mr. O'Connor, the non-official member who supported the executive, was absent, and thus the votes of the official and country party were equal, and the balance was in the governor's hands.[243] At the next sitting of the council Wilmot proposed to pass the estimates. Ineffectual efforts to postpone their consideration exhausted all means of evasion, and Mr. Dry moved that the Appropriation Act should be read that day six months. He expatiated on the injustice of the system which condemned the colony to the cost of an imperial scheme, and insisted on the solemn obligation of the council to resist an accumulation of debt which must involve the colony in ruin. Mr. Gregson followed, and referred to the unavailing representations of Sir G. Arthur, Sir John Franklin, and Sir E. Wilmot himself, in reference to police expenses, and dwelling on the evils of the convict system. An adjournment of the debate being moved the governor opposed it with his deliberative and casting vote, and added that he resisted the motion because it was only intended to embarrass. The Appropriation Act would then have gone to the third reading, but the non-official members at once quitted the chamber, and reduced the number below the legal quorum. On the day following Mr. Gregson appeared at the table and apologised for the absence of his honorable brethren, who were preparing a protest to present on the morrow. Wilmot complained of discourtesy, and denounced the opposition as disloyal and unconstitutional. They asserted that quitting the council chamber was not unusual, and was not a concerted movement, and resented in decided language the charge of disloyalty,—amounting in sworn councillors to perjury, if rigorously construed. The governor afterwards explained that he had reference only to the particular instance, and not to their general intentions.
It had been publicly rumored that rather than allow the Appropriation Act to pass, several members had resolved to resign. Captain Swanston, less prominent in opposition, waited on the governor, and earnestly advised him to forward another set of estimates, prepared by Captain Swanston, for the approval of the secretary of state. He warned him that should he persevere a rupture would inevitably follow. In this interview the governor expressed his determination to proceed. He forgot, it would seem, some of those forms of civility which no man can safely neglect, and Captain Swanston left him with a sense of personal affront,—an immedicable wound.[244]