In the reign of Charles II. an act passed (Car. ii. 13, 14. cap. 2. s. 1), "for preventing dangers that may arise from certain persons called quakers," which authorised their transportation beyond the seas. Thus, the practice was not new: after the battle of Worcester, the parliament transported the royalists, and in the mutations of power all parties in their turn transported each other.
It had not been unusual for persons to sell themselves for a term of years. After the dissolution of the army of the commonwealth, many, to escape danger and poverty, sold their liberty to others, who carried them to the plantations.[45]
After the defeat of Monmouth, a letter was addressed by James II. to the governor of Virginia, which after reciting that the royal clemency had been extended to many rebellious subjects by ordering their transportation, required the governor to propose a bill to the assembly to prevent their redemption, by money or otherwise, until the expiration of ten years. The assembly declined to carry out the royal vengeance, and received the exiles with kindness.[46]
In 1717, transportation assumed a prominent place in English jurisprudence. An act of parliament (4 Geo. i.) recited that the customary punishments were inefficient, and that the "labor of criminals in the colonies would benefit the nation;" and mentioned the "frequent failure of those who undertook to transport themselves." Under this law, they were committed to the charge of ship-masters, who gave bonds for their transit; and who were obliged to produce certificates that they had disposed of their cargo according to law. It is said that £40,000 per annum were raised by the contractors, carrying annually two thousand prisoners, whom they sold for £20 each.[47] For a long time these importations were highly acceptable; the demand for labor reconciling the colonists to the attendant evils. The object of the law was to exile offenders from the mother country, and bondage in America was simply intended to indemnify its cost. It was in the power of the captains to set them free, or a friendly agent by appearing as a purchaser might release them.[48] When landed, they were sold by auction to the colonists, for the term of their sentence; and even the royal pardon did not cancel an obligation to serve—except by the repayment of the purchase money to the planter.
This course had many inconveniencies, and led to atrocious crimes. The treatment of the convict depended on the individual who bought his service: the state imposed but slight responsibilities, and the colonial control was regulated by local laws.
Many notices in annals of those times indicate that the practice of kidnapping, especially of youth, was not uncommon. Johnson, in his immortal memoir of the poet, Savage, numbers in the catalogue of his mother's cruelties, an attempt to send him captive to the plantations, and to sell him for a slave.
Goldsmith refers to establishments devoted to this species of slavery:—"I regarded myself as one of those evil things that nature designed should be thrown into her lumber room, there to perish in obscurity. It happened that Mr. Crispe's office seemed invitingly open to give me a welcome reception. In this office Mr. Crispe kindly offers to sell his Majesty's subjects a generous promise of £30 a year; for which promise, all they give in return is their liberty for life, and permission to let him transport them to America as slaves."[49]
Before the era of separation, the American planters had begun to resent the influx of felons. Free labor grew plentiful, and the colonial reputation was compromised: nor were these the sole reasons for opposition; the management of negro slaves became a capital branch of domestic industry; the prestige of color was endangered by the subjection of white men to the discipline of slavery.
The practice of transportation did not terminate until the era of independence. The Canadas remained loyal; but the ministers of the day did not deem it prudent to reward their submission with the stigma of transportation.
Franklin, when the colonists were about to cast off the imperial rule of Great Britain, complained of this system: he compared it to pouring "cargoes of rattlesnakes on the shores of England." He, however, maintained that this description of exiles formed but a small proportion of the American people; that of one million, eighty thousand only had been brought over the ocean, and of these one-eighth only were convicts. In reference to the number transported to America, the accounts of the British and American writers considerably differ. None were sent to the New England colonies. Jefferson, during his diplomatic residence in France, furnished a statement for the Encyclopédie Méthodique, in which he asserted that the convict element of the American population was too small to deserve enumeration. He estimated the total number at 2,000, and their descendants at 4,000, in 1785, or something more than one-thousandth part of the entire people. This calculation has been, perhaps justly, charged with partiality; but it is useless to meet error by conjecture.[50] This obvious topic of sarcasm was early adopted. Party writers poisoned the shafts of political warfare, by references to the convict element of the trans-atlantic population: "their Adam and Eve emigrated from Newgate,"[51]—"their national propensities to fraud, they inherited from their convict ancestors,"—"they are the offspring of convicts, and they have retained the disposition of their felon progenitors." Such were the sayings of critics, lords, and statesmen: it was thus they described a people, who among their forefathers can enumerate heroes and saints; who, flying from the scourge of bigotry and despotism, laid the foundation of an empire. Can we expect more complacency?