Arthur described the police as the pivot of his system: it comprehended surveillance and detection. The establishment of district courts, in which a paid magistrate resided, was an essential element of its success. The masters had a correctional authority at hand: a few miles, often a few minutes, brought them within the police court, and the punishment ordered followed the offence by a very short interval. The police constables, mostly prisoners of the crown, were selected from each ship to assist the recognition of their fellow prisoners, and they were rewarded for every runaway they arrested. They often shortened their own sentence by procuring the conviction of others; often, too, they obtained considerable sums, and even instant liberty, by the discovery of an outlaw. They were acute, expert, and, we are told by Arthur, vigilant beyond all men he ever knew. They were objects of fear and detestation.
The strong will of the prisoners thus encountered opposition on every hand. They were hedged round with restrictions; they were at the mercy of the magistrate, and subject to the lash, for offences which language is not sufficiently copious to distinguish with nicety.[188] Their unsupported accusations recoiled on themselves. They were entitled to complain, but the evidence they could generally command, was heard with natural suspicion. So well did they understand the hopelessness of contest, that they rarely replied, where a defence sometimes aggravated their punishment.
The convict was subject to the caprice of all his master's household: he was liable every moment to be accused, and punished.[189] Unknown, without money, he had no protector or advocate: one magistrate could authorise fifty lashes; one hundred could be inflicted by the concurrence of a second. It was asserted by Arthur, that the statement of their liabilities produced an expression of dismay in the countenances of convicts newly arrived. The indefinite character of these offences; the boundless discretion of the magistrate; the influence of the master; the presumption always against the accused; the dreadful nature of several of the punishments—doubtless created in many the recklessness of defiance and despair. A prisoner's sentence might be extended one or three years; he might be doomed to a penal settlement and chains. Nor could he liberate himself from his servitude: he came back from the triangles or road party, and stood at his master's door.
The determined resistance of change, except for punishment; the indissoluble tie of men to masters—was one part of Arthur's plan. The knowledge that submission was the only chance of happiness, caused many to yield to their destiny without a struggle; and where masters were humane, the connection lasted, without murmuring or oppression, until the close; but with many more, it was a period of misery, mental and bodily—the fierce passions breaking into open war, and seeking nothing but revenge or freedom. The rolls of the muster-master exhibit curious instances of this long struggle: there are several now before the writer, in which punishments succeed each other with a frequency so terrible, that the mind is only relieved by the belief that sensibility is destroyed by incurable misery.
Governor Arthur addressed a despatch, on "secondary punishments," to Viscount Goderich, intended to answer the report of the select committee of 1832. He thought the witnesses were not conversant with the state of the prisoners—a fact not surprising, since even the effect of English penitentiaries was debated under their very walls. The gentle system of Governor Macquarie was a tradition among the criminal population of Great Britain; but in this country, colonised at a later date, and by settlers of a higher class, the advantages of the convict were small, and his control more complete. Arthur thus delineated the condition of the assigned servant: deprived of indulgence, living in the interior, employed in clearing and cultivating forest land, allowed no wages; idleness, even looks betraying an insurgent spirit, exposing him to the chain gang or the triangle; deprived of liberty, subject to the caprice of a family, and to the most summary laws. He was a slave, except that his master was not trusted with the lash, and his claim for service terminable. True, he was well fed, while many in England labored hard, and yet were hungry and poor; but nothing reconciled the prisoner to bondage: he compared his condition not with the British pauper, but theirs who, though working in the same field, were masters of their own labor. He asserted that the bravado of persons, who affected indifference when ordered for Macquarie Harbour, was fully answered by the murderers who, to enjoy a momentary escape, ventured their lives; by the desperate efforts of many to conceal themselves in vessels, deprived of food for days, and tortured until their limbs mortified; by the despair of many rioters who arrived in the Eliza, who, dejected and stupified by grief, soon drooped and died. He maintained that transportation, though not absolutely successful, was to be preferred, as frequently most dreaded, reformatory, and final.
He maintained, that the current reports respecting transportation deserved no credence, and were unsafe as foundations of public policy. Often, from the most selfish motives, the most delusive statements had been forwarded by prisoners. He instanced a woman from Liverpool, who arrived with her four children, allured by the representation of her husband, and sent out by the charity of his prosecutors; and who had informed her that, beside £60 per annum, he was lodged and fed for his labor. In this case, however, the man wrote falsely; but at that moment there were many who might have made the statement with truth.
In the despatches of Governor Arthur there is much acute observation and just inference. He had actually lessened abuses, until they became not very common or very flagrant: by collecting men in the employ of government under a more rigid system of superintendence, he had curtailed their indulgence, and made their condition more irksome. But it is well known to every colonist, that throughout his administration some prisoners were favored with greater liberty than others; that they accumulated property, and had at command whatever money could buy. He often, with a discretion both wise and humane, mitigated the severity of a sentence and alleviated the domestic desolation of a wife, by granting some indulgence to her husband. It is told to his credit as a man, although it does not add to the weight of his despatches.
The enunciation of principles was not common in the writings of Governor Arthur; he, however, states his view of the objects contemplated by punishment. He held that the severity of a penalty was to be measured by the operation of the crime on society,—or the views taken by legislators of its effect. Unhappily, this theory overlooks the fact, that penalties are usually for the protection of classes, rather than communities. The severe laws against poaching have never been vindicated on the principles of equity or national right: they are the laws of an aristocracy, for the protection of its pleasures. The unlimited power over life and liberty claimed by this doctrine, would excuse the Spartan method of anticipating crime. It is the old code of the opulent and powerful; but it is essentially unjust, fallacious, and therefore useless and wicked.[190] It is probable, however, that abstract opinions maintained but a slight influence on his actual policy, and that by his strong perception of the interest of society in the reform of the offender, he adopted many practical lessons of philanthropy.
Governor Arthur was directed by the Secretary of State to assign the prisoners employed on public works: such as were unfit for the service of settlers to form into gangs, and employ on stations distant from the towns. Lord Goderich had come to the conclusion that the service of government was rather courted than dreaded by the prisoners. This plan was skilfully resisted by Arthur: he admitted that constables and messengers were favorably situated. So great, however, were the hardships of those employed in public works, that his conscience was troubled, and only relieved by remembering that they were the worst of offenders; or, if better conducted, passed at length into the loan-gang—a condition as preferable to assignment, as was assignment to the service of the crown: thus balancing the advantages of their last against the severity of the first stage. He stated their assignment, so far from increasing the severity of punishment, their faults, and even crimes, would be covered by their masters, to preserve their labor; their earnings would place them beyond the condition of their class in Great Britain; and when their fortune should be known, they would never want for successors. But he appealed to a still more cogent argument. The expense of a convict mechanic to the crown, was one shilling per day; of a free artizan, seven to ten shillings: the difference would go to the workmen, to bribe their industry and gratify their vices. It was not, perhaps, known fully to Arthur, that at the moment he sealed his despatch, forty mechanics lodged in one ward, who earned not much less than £50 per week, by the leisure hours they enjoyed.[191] It was, however, true, that the inducement to pay large sums for occasional labor, arose from the difficulty of obtaining it: few mechanics were transported; so few, as to excite astonishment.[192]