After the American Revolution we lost this source of revenue, and penal establishments at Bermuda, Gibraltar, and in New South Wales took the place of the plantation in the social scheme. At the same time a change took place in the method of conveying convicts to their destination; they were no longer bought for the sake of the work that could be got out of them, but contractors were paid for carrying them to the penal establishments. The frightful mortality on board the ships continued, however, until the terms of the contract were altered; as soon as the practice of paying a fixed price for every man embarked was discontinued, and the payment of a larger sum for every man landed alive substituted, the convicts were treated more like human beings, and the death-rate on these voyages was no longer excessive.

Transportation signally failed as a deterrent, partly because the punishment was carried out so far from home, and partly on account of the unequal manner in which the penal system was administered. In the Crown Colonies, such as Bermuda, the servitude was of the hardest description, but in Australia the custom arose of assigning convicts as servants to colonists. This gave facilities for all kinds of abuses. A glaring and often-quoted instance of the kind of thing that went on may be cited. A certain bank clerk who had robbed his employers was convicted and sentenced to be transported to Australia, but the stolen property was not recovered. The convict was duly conveyed to New South Wales; soon afterwards his wife arrived in the same colony, and having selected her husband as a servant, the two lived together in security and wealth on the proceeds of the robbery.

Deterrents must be advertised in order to be effectual; the county gaol by the roadside is an ocular reminder of the reality of punishment, but a vague knowledge that felons were serving their time in the Antipodes was a far less potent preventive: indeed transportation came to be regarded as desirable by many, who gladly submitted to expatriation for the sake of getting a fresh start in life in a new land at the public expense. Escott remarks that whilst Australia was at once a penal settlement and a thriving colony, "the strange spectacle was seen of honest artisans emigrating of their own accord to spots where felons also were relegated for their offences."[170]

The second line of defence upon which the country relied for the diminution of crime was an unpaid parochial police, sometimes assisted, and sometimes thwarted, by the various stipendiary establishments already described, and this combination, as we have seen, was almost as untrustworthy as the penal system had proved itself to be.

The constables or headboroughs, and the thief-takers, or as we should now call them, detectives, were more vigorous than the watchmen, but in some respects they were also more dangerous to society; the former lived largely by blackmail and the latter on blood-money. The salary of the headborough for Shoreditch was only ninety shillings a year, the post was not one of honour, and the stipend surely too insignificant to be an attraction; yet there was no lack of applicants, who by the diligent gleaning of perquisites and by the industrious collection of blackmail, saw their way to make a good living out of the office. As much as thirty-six shillings a day could be earned by a headborough by appearing in a prosecution at the Old Baily, and bribes from those employed in the liquor traffic were a still more profitable source of income.

In 1815 alone, eighty thousand pounds was given in blood-money, an expenditure that might almost be considered as a Government subsidy for the encouragement of felony. Forty pounds was the reward offered for the conviction of certain offenders, and it was obviously to the advantage of the thief-taker not to interfere with a promising young criminal until he should commit a forty pounds crime; premature detection was tantamount to killing the goose that should lay the golden egg, and the common cant phrase of the day, when referring to a juvenile offender, was, "he doesn't weigh forty pounds yet." The mischievous tendency of this system of rewards cannot be exaggerated, it vitiated the whole police constitution; nor was there any chance of recovering property until a sufficient reward was advertised to stimulate those who alone were familiar with the haunts and methods of thieves and receivers.

"Officers are dangerous creatures," said Townsend, after more than thirty years' experience as a Bow Street Runner; "they have it frequently in their power (no question about it) to turn the scale, when the beam is level, on the other side: I mean against the poor wretched man at the bar; Why? this thing called nature, says profit is in the scale: and melancholy to relate, but I cannot help being perfectly satisfied that frequently that has been the means of convicting many and many a man.... I am convinced that whenever A is giving evidence against B he should stand perfectly uninterested.... Nothing can be so dangerous as a public officer, where he is liable to be tempted."

The following is a list of the rewards, that could be earned by police and others:—

1.Highway robbery—
From the Sheriff£40 0 0} £50 0 0
From the Hundred10 0 0}
2.Burglary—
From the Sheriff40 0 0} 50 0 0
A Tyburn Ticket worth10 0 0}
3.Housebreaking in the daytime do.50 0 0
4.Counterfeiting gold or silver coin40 0 0
5. Do. copper coin10 0 0
6.Stealing from any shop, warehouse or stable,
to the value of more than five shillings		10 0 0
7.Horse stealing20 0 0
8.Stealing cattle or sheep10 0 0
9.Compounding a felony40 0 0
10.Wounding and killing a Revenue Officer50 0 0
11.Certain Offences under the Black Act50 0 0
12.Persons returning from transportation20 0 0
13.Embezzling the King's Stores20 0 0
14.Apprehending deserters from the Army1 0 0
15.Apprehending rogues and vagabonds0 10 0
16.Apprehending idle and disorderly persons0 5 0