FOOTNOTES:
[275] Report of Hanwell Institution, 1842.
SECTION XXVII
Whatever details are omitted from the foregoing pages, nothing has been withheld necessary to complete a colonial view of transportation. Errors may doubtless be detected; but as they have not resulted from carelessness or haste, it is hoped they will be found both unimportant and rare.
The views expressed by various parties on the subject of transportation are modified, or even wholly suggested by their interests. The English peer rejoices that sixteen thousand miles of ocean divide him from the "wretch" who entered on his preserves, or dragged his rivers, and is at rest; the citizen is glad that one burglar less lives in his neighbourhood, and considers that transportation is indispensible to the safety of plate. The colonist farmer regards convictism as a labor power; the working emigrant as a rival labor market; while the officers in charge naturally cloak its evils and exalt its efficacy.
It is nearly impossible for a stranger to estimate the weight of testimony, so prejudiced throughout, and nearly as impossible for a writer, interested in the issue of its discussion, to preserve the unclouded judgment required to arrive at truth. But little reliance can be placed on official statistics: they give imperfect views of moral or industrial results. They have often been compiled by government for specific purposes, or by agents unworthy of confidence.
It may be proper to point out the chief difficulties which beset this branch of penal jurisprudence. Some of these have been long noticed by authorities on political philosophy. From Paley, to the latest speculators on transportation, all have noticed its inequality. They have dwelt on the uncertainty of its details—from the differing habits and original condition of those subject to its infliction; and from the absence of supervision, only to be expected where those who direct the sentence secure its observance. The convict is condemned to a penalty which may subject him to predial slavery, to capricious punishments; to brutal taskmasters, and to the antipathies of a caste; or he may be regarded with compassion, good-will, and even preference: the sting of the law may be taken away, and what was a penalty may constitute a brotherhood.
Thus it happens that no uniform description is a true one. What may correctly delineate the aspect of transportation on one class, may be false in reference to another; what may be facts one year, may be an exaggeration in the year following. This inequality has been partly the result of the law. The relation of the convict to the free has been constantly changing. He was a bond servant; he was permitted to compound his servitude by a daily payment; he was allowed to work partly for himself and partly for the crown, at the same moment. He has been restrained in government gangs; he has lodged in barracks, and worn the coarsest dress, or he has lived in his own hired house. Sometimes treated as a public enemy, chained, flogged, and over-worked; at others, petted as a favorite or soothed like a child.
The public policy has depended on causes which have had little relation to the individual character of convicts. A mild or severe governor, or secretary of state; a great increase or decrease of numbers; the book of some literary idler, or of an angry colonist; instances of extraordinary good fortune, or an insurrection against tyranny; the fluctuations of feeling at home, sometimes wrath against crime, sometimes compassion for the criminal. Such are the causes, traced in the incessant agitation of penal transportation.
Two incompatible objects have been always professedly embraced—intimidation and reform; but while they have both animated the scheme, they have struggled for the ascendancy, and the one or the other has seemed to be the chief, if not sole, motive of government. The Australian seal expressed the design of mercy: it was to oxen ploughing—to bales of merchandise, and the various attributes of industry, that Hope pointed the landing convict, when she broke off his bonds. Fifty years after, Lord Stanley deemed many years spent in chains, a just punishment for crimes against property, or others of no deep dye.