“Uncle,” I said, “I can stand this no longer. I will run up to Paris, and set the lynx-eyes of the police there on the lookout for us. Perhaps it will be of no use; but anything is better than waiting here doing nothing.”
My uncle fell in with the idea at once. I set off to Paris, and left him at Dieppe, where, in truth, it seemed more likely that information of some sort must transpire sooner or later.
To Be Continued.
The Colonization Of New South Wales By Great Britain. Concluded.
It is obvious, then, that, if the remarkable prosperity which has befallen the English Colonies in Australia is to be ascribed, in any degree, to the sagacity of the government that sent out the first expedition, or of those who then and subsequently presided over it, we must look for it in the perfection of the reformatory system, with a view to which the original constitution of the colony was exclusively framed. The idea of making the colonization of a newly discovered territory of prodigious resources subservient to the reformation of as many as possible of the criminals of an over-populated country is a conception of the noblest philanthropy; as the attempt to use a new and promising colony for the mere purpose of getting rid anyhow of the dangerous classes would be an act of guilty folly, the result of an indolent and heartless selfishness, such as even the most heartless and the most selfish of oligarchies should blush to have perpetrated. For the prosecution of the former object more care and pains should have been expended than under ordinary circumstances in sending out to the new settlement a colony fully equipped with all that the mother-country had to give it. The reformed, as they stepped forth from their cells and shackles, once more masters of their own actions, free agents, reinvested with reason's noblest prerogative—the liberty of choosing good and rejecting evil—should have found a sound and healthy society with which to mingle. They should have found themselves at once amidst a society based on those principles of religion, law, and justice which characterize even the feeblest form of Christian civilization. Such a society they should have found immediately outside their prison-walls, into which they might glide, as it were, unperceived, and from which they should gradually and insensibly take their tone. What man in his sober senses could have anticipated any thorough and permanent reformation of criminals in a society consisting exclusively, after making exception of the officials and the military guard, of the very criminals themselves? In reading the inaugural address of the first governor, we naturally conclude that the government which organized the expedition was deeply impressed with the necessity of an opposite course. But the illusion is soon dispelled. We discover to our astonishment that the infant colony took out with it no one condition of a civilized society. Of law there was simply none. Even the formalities of martial law, when, soon after the settlement of the penal colony, it was thought expedient to have recourse to them, were found to be impracticable, because of some technical difficulty which there had not been the sagacity to foresee and provide against. Whatever there was of justice was wholly dependent on the caprice and dispositions of individuals. Incredible as it may appear, it is nevertheless the fact that, after the retirement of the first governor, [pg 760] the administration of the colony was entrusted for three years to the hands of the officers of the 102d Regiment. Unfit for such a responsibility as were the sea-captains from amongst whom the first four governors were selected, officers of the army were yet more so. The previous habits and training of English regimental officers are such as to disqualify them, generally speaking, for judicial functions. But the unfitness of military men in England for this office was much greater at that period than at the present day, as they were more illiterate. The government of a colony transferred to a regimental mess-room forms indeed a humiliating contrast to the glowing periods of Commander Phillip. Mr. Therry tells us (p. 69):
“The first four governors of New South Wales, Phillip, Hunter, King, and Bligh, exercised a rule (and this includes the mess-room interregnum) which partook much of the character of the government of a large jail or penitentiary.”
Two years and a half after the disembarkation of the first batch of convicts fresh instructions arrived from the home government respecting the allotment of land. By these instructions, the advantages already enjoyed by the emancipists were extended to the privates and non-commissioned officers of the military guard on the spot, but no provision whatsoever was made for free emigrants from the mother-country. So that, when the sixth governor, Macquarie, “considered that the colony was selected as a depot for convicts; that the land properly belonged to them, as they emerged from their condition of servitude, and that emigrants were intruders on the soil,” we can only conclude that he interpreted the policy of the government at home more correctly than the more enthusiastic sailor who first presided over it. In spite of the singular incapacity displayed in the first organization of the settlement at Sydney, the following illustration of the state of law and society therein twenty years after its establishment, would be incredible if we had it on less trustworthy authority than that of Mr. Therry. He tells us (p. 74) that, during the rule of one Capt. Bligh, 1806-8, “the judge-advocate, Atkins, was a person of no professional mark, and was, besides, of a very disreputable character.” The governor reported of him to the Secretary of State that “he had been known to pronounce sentence of death when intoxicated”! With Atkins was associated a convict named Crossley, who had been transported for forging a will, and for perjury, and who had been convicted of swindling in the colony.
The result of such a state of things was as unavoidable as it was fatal. If the reformatory system in the penal colony had been as wise and efficacious as it was lamentably, nay, wickedly, the reverse, such of the convicts as yielded to the nobler motives of civil life and the claims of conscience should have been able to mix unnoticed with the sounder part of the community. Bygones should have been really bygones. The past should have been simply ignored. No allusion to it should have been tolerated. The expiated crime should have been buried out of sight and recollection, so long as there was no relapse. There should have been no such class as an emancipist class. The reformatory institution should have remained as a thing apart, sending from time to time its contingent of convalescents to be incorporated with the healthy body politic.