The disclosures of the Commissioner terminated the indulgences given to expirees, with such "unsatisfactory results." The small portion of land granted them, without great industry, was incapable of supplying their wants, and they were the pests of their neighbours; or, when they settled on allotments in town, they obtained materials from the royal stores by the assistance of their fellows.[138] Land was still granted, but not as the indispensable consequence of transportation.
The plan of recompense to officers in kind, he also condemned: rations of food and rum, double and triple; and the assignment of men to earn wages, as the salaries of their masters, were gradually substituted by payments in money. The small sums formerly allowed, were rather the wages of servants who live on their fees: by a casuistry, never long wanting to those who earnestly seek it, even men beyond the rank of overseers, persuaded themselves that the recognised stipends were never intended to be reckoned as payment.[139] The tender of these supplies was a source of profit to the officers; like the butlers of noblemen, persons of the highest trust were not insensible to presents; and merchandise was accepted only when the "regulars" were duly paid. The waste of public property, occasioned by the system, was great. The loss and sacrifice of clothing and tools; the spoiling of food, and the wilful destruction of implements, proved how large may be the outlay of the crown, without much advantage to a colony. Years were required to reduce these evils; some of which are yet not unknown.
These were, however, small changes, compared with the total revolution in the spirit and details of convict management, suggested by the Commissioner. All those signs of advancement which he saw in the material state of the colonies, in connection with the objects of transportation, were anomalies in his eyes. He observed, that the prisoners were always anxious to reside in the towns, where they obtained, by casual labor, the price and opportunities of dissipation. By a peremptory exercise of his authority, Mr. Bigge stopped some of the public works, and promoted the dispersion of those multitudes who were employed in the improvement of the capital.
The Commissioner, strongly impressed with the mischief incident to the congregation of prisoners in the presence of a free community, proposed several remedies. Among the most important was the establishment of settlements, purely penal, at Port Curtis, Moreton Bay, and Port Bowen. These places were explored by Mr. Oxley, the surveyor-general of the colonies. Moreton Bay is situated 480 miles from Port Jackson: this region, watered by the Brisbane, unequalled for climate and soil in any part of the globe of the same latitude; adorned with trees of magnificent growth,[140] had nothing in its natural features to repel. Though the days are warm in summer (80° to 100°), the nights are cool, and for several months fires are agreeable. Bananas, plantains, and pines—cotton, tobacco, maize, the sugar cane, and all the ordinary productions of a tropical climate, are cultivated with success. The atmosphere is soft and salubrious: of 1,200 persons, afterwards stationed there, sometimes not more than ten were sick at once; and during seven years, one soldier only died.[141]
Such was the site chosen by Mr. Bigge; but he endeavoured to render it suitable, by suggesting a code of regulations, in which may be discovered the outline of several schemes, since claiming originality. It was intended for those convicted of serious crimes, or such as committed offences in the colonies. The prisoners, two together, were to build their own huts; their sole implement the hatchet, and their material wood and nails: their only furniture, stools and bedding. Their labor graduated; from removing heavy weights, and sawing the hardest timber, to the easy occupation of the gardener, according to their behaviour or their crimes. They were to raise their own provisions, and the produce of their tillage for the crown, was to be sold in the colonies, and carried to the public account; except a sixteenth part, the moiety of which was to be paid to the commandant, and the rest proportionately to the overseers. No vessel, unauthorised, was to touch at the port: every precaution was projected to prevent escape, and the natives were expected to bring back, for rewards, such as might venture to stray. Every crime, short of murder, was to be punished on the spot. No spirits were to be sold; no money circulated; no private speculations in produce permitted. The wives of prisoners, when suffered to join them, were to sacrifice all but the necessaries of life. From the chief settlement others were to branch off; fifteen miles distant from each other. A church, a school, a library, were to promote the reformation of the prisoners—an object to be considered paramount to every other. Such were the plans for a City of Penitence, projected by Bigge; and by which he expected, in several directions, to dispose of 4,000 prisoners.
It was his hope, that their labor would discharge the chief cost of their control, and end the mockery, and the inequalities of punishment.
Before the arrival of the Commissioner, penal establishments existed, and prisoners were sequestered for violations of local regulations; or on extensive farms, where grain was grown for the royal stores. At Newcastle, on the Hunter River, were coal mines (1818), where those under colonial sentences, or those guilty of experience in mining, were subjected to a more rigorous servitude. By an onward progress of the settlers, this station was less adapted for its purpose, and (1821) a second was provided at Port Macquarie, 175 miles north of Port Jackson. The increase of population soon rendered a further movement requisite: it was not, however, until 1824, that Surveyor-general Oxley completed his report of Moreton Bay: pioneers were forwarded, and at length 1,000 prisoners were employed in that remote region. The plan thus narrowed, only partially succeeded, and the numbers at last dwindled to 300 men: the Commissioner's idea, therefore, was never fairly tested. An organisation of several thousands in a city of penitence; under a discipline, which, while excluding the worst temptations of regular society, might preserve many of its elementary forms; managed by permanent officers, in number and gradation, sufficient to form and preserve the tone of a profession—is unfortunately still a speculation: nor is it yet safe to assume, that the failure of stations, exhibiting several features of the Commissioner's scheme, but excluding others not less important, is a conclusive argument against the original design.[142]
In this colony, a penal station was projected during the residence of Bigge. While he approved the object, he did not cordially concur in the selected locality: he remarked several of those obstacles to access, which were not compensated by the difficulties of escape. The punishment of colonial offences, when persons were already in bonds, was attended with some difficulty; the law not authorising additions to a sentence, except by a court of criminal jurisdiction, regulated by the forms, and bounded by the limitations of English statutes. To punish a misdemeanour, and sometimes even capital offences, the culprit was brought before a justice of the peace, and sent to a penal settlement for the remainder of his sentence. Thus a widely different penalty attended the different parties to the same crime: one would scarcely touch the place of his second exile, before the termination of his British sentence restored him to full freedom; another, perhaps a prisoner for life, would linger out his wretched existence in the place of his seclusion, forgotten.[143]
The name of Macquarie Harbour is associated exclusively with remembrance of inexpressible depravity, degradation, and woe. Sacred to the genius of torture, nature concurred with the objects of its separation from the rest of the world; to exhibit some notion of a perfect misery. There, man lost the aspect, and the heart of man!