[226] Despatch lo Lord Glenelg, October, 1837.
SECTION XXI
But Sir W. Molesworth had roused opposition to the prevailing system. The Commons' committee examined twenty-three gentlemen, whose testimony would be without novelty to the reader of these volumes. The greater part concurred in the inexpediency of assignment, and in the usefulness and importance of transportation. These witnesses were charged by Maconochie with a general indifference to the moral welfare and personal improvement of the prisoners. A colonist would, however, easily distinguish substantial benevolence from sentimental opinions; and they knew, by the trials of experience, how toilsome are the most generous efforts to correct habits not to be softened by the tears of compassion, and which do not yield to the wand of the magician.
The committee recommended that transportation to New South Wales, and the settled districts of Van Diemen's Land, should be discontinued: that establishments abroad should be limited to places where no free settlers were allowed to enter; that the abridgment of a sentence should be determined by fixed rules; that at its close, encouragement should be offered, to such as might merit the favor, to go to some country where support could be more easily obtained, and character recovered; and, finally, that no convict should be permitted to remain at the place of his punishment after its termination.
Such were the recommendations of this famous committee, which were carried into effect only so far as suited the convenience of the ministers; who, however, stopped transportation to New South Wales, and revoked the order in council by which that country was constituted a penal settlement. "On the 1st of August, 1840," said Lord John Russell, "transportation to New South Wales will cease for ever."
In van Diemen's Land, assignment was abolished: first in domestic service, then in the towns; and the opinion was intimated by Lord John Russell, that he inclined to the views of Archbishop Whately, with limitations and exceptions.[227]
Among writers upon the subject, who most strenuously maintained the policy of transportation, may be enumerated Bishop Broughton, Dr. Lang, Dr. Ross, of Hobart Town, Sir George Arthur, Sir John Franklin, Messrs. Macarthur, David Burns, and Captain Wood. They united in vindicating the colonists from the imputation of profligacy and cruelty. Governor Bourke was alone, among influential persons, a secret advocate of total abolition. In writing to the secretary of state, he intimated his conviction that, however strong the prejudice of the colonists in favor of penal labor, they were losers by the bargain; and that the social mischief gathering around them would soon demand a total cessation.[228]
In the voluminous productions, which for more than twenty years teemed from the colonial press, the idea of total abolition was scarcely suggested; except, indeed, in the year 1826, a colonist, under a fictitious signature, hinted in modest language that free labor might prove the cheapest in the end. The notion was tolerated, while the country was ravaged by bushrangers, but it was only treated as a curiosity and a dream.[229]
Towards the close of 1839, a meeting was held in the Mansion-house at Dublin, to promote emigration to New Zealand. A resolution was passed, on the motion of Dr. Dickenson, the chaplain of the Archbishop of Dublin, which exhibited a frightful portraiture of the Australian colonies.[230] Dr. Dickenson dwelt upon the social corruption, and declared that it was in vain to imagine a colony, so composed, could ever become respectable. The natural conclusion from the proportions of the census, the amount of crime, and the character of the expirees, was unfavorable to the colonies; but the imputation of general vice and juvenile depravity, were made most frequently by projectors of rival settlements, and were tinged with selfishness. The object of the arch-bishop and his chaplain warped their judgment, and their lofty tone induced the public to believe that they were right; yet when they described the colonies as vast brothels—as the dwelling of banditti, rank with the crimes and ripening to the ruin of Gomorrah—they were guilty of injustice. Many, who labored to civilise the brutish, and to reform the vicious, read with just indignation the statements of persons, whose station gave weight to their accusations, when they told the world that the children of the settlers surpassed, by the precosity of their depravation, the dreams of misanthropy. Against these sweeping opinions, Major Macarthur, then on the spot, earnestly protested. Dr. Broughton, on this side the globe, made an energetic remonstrance, and asserted that the report of the transportation committee could be taken only as the collection of facts, which were spread over a long period of time, and were descriptive only of a base and dishonored fraction. He asserted that a series of the Times newspaper contained a succession of atrocities which, if combined, would exhibit Great Britain as the most worthless of nations.
Inspirited by Captain Wood, of Snake Banks, the settlers of Tasmania had endeavoured to check the calumnies which assailed them. A public meeting, held when the report of the committee arrived, requested the Governor to do them justice. Sir John Franklin warmly denied the corruption imputed to the settlers, and the chief facts alleged against transportation; and the clergy united in general commendations of the liberality, decorum, and religious habits they had witnessed. This appeal was not received with much favor in England, and the London Times pertinaciously maintained that they were mere assertions of individuals—who represented that Van Diemen's Land, far from being a den of vice, was the place to look for virtue.[231]