In the present condition of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, with so large a proportion of their population in bondage, and such slender means of moral improvement and religious instruction provided for them by the mother country, it would be unreasonable to hope that the convict population can be otherwise than very bad. There may be many exceptions; and at the end of all things here below, it may be found that some of those poor outcasts, and some of the men who have cast them forth to perish, and now despise them, may fill, respectively, the places of the Publican and Pharisee in our Lord’s parable; the convict may leave the throne of judgment justified rather than his master; the poor repentant criminal may be pardoned, while the proud one,—the self-sufficiency of the nation, by which he was transported, and left without further care,—may be condemned. Still, however, the general character of the convicts is undoubtedly bad; and the various modes of deceit and dishonesty practised upon their masters, the love of gambling, of strong liquors, and of every kind of licentiousness prevailing in the penal colonies, would fill a volume of equal size and interest with that which is said to be a favourite book in New South Wales,—the Newgate Calendar. Those that are curious upon these subjects may be referred to the thick volume in blue cover, which contains an account of the labours of the Committee upon Transportation, 1837; but when the evidence therein contained is read, it must be with some grains of allowance; the avowed object of Sir W. Molesworth’s motion for the committee, was enmity against the whole system of transportation; and a large majority of those that sat in the committee were, it is believed, of his opinion; at all events, they belonged to his party in politics. So that, before justice can be done to the real state of the convicts, we want to have evidence of an opposite tendency, like that of Mr. Potter Macqueen, already quoted; and before the question, whether transportation is a desirable mode of punishing, or a likely means of reforming criminals, can be fairly decided, inquiry must be made, not respecting what has been done, but respecting what might have been done, or may even yet be done, in our penal colonies.
Before the subject of the convict population is dismissed, it may be well to notice those called specials; that is, men of education, and of a somewhat higher rank in life than the generality of exiles in New South Wales. These were formerly treated with great consideration; for, after having passed a short period of probation, they were employed as clerks to auctioneers or attornies; nay, the instruction of youth was too often, in default of better teachers, committed into their hands. Nor was this all. In former times, persons of this description have been very much connected with the public press; and the enlightened people of New South Wales have sometimes, it may be feared, been blindly led by an unprincipled convict, when they imagined that they were wisely judging for themselves. The reformation of these specials is said to be more hopeless than that of other prisoners; and very commonly they are confirmed drunkards. Strange materials these from which to form instructors for youth, trustworthy agents of private property, or leaders of public opinion! However, by the progress of emigration, the influence of these men is now superseded; besides which, they have been gradually removed from the government offices, and those that now arrive are employed in hard labour.
conveying cattle over the murray, near lake alexandria.
CHAPTER XIII.
EMANCIPISTS AND FREE POPULATION.
Respecting the next class of which the population consists in our penal colonies,—that of emancipists, or persons formerly in bondage as convicts, they appear to be pretty nearly what might be expected of a body of men under such circumstances. Although there are many honourable exceptions to the general rule, yet it would seem to be a general rule that roguery and industry are usually connected among them; and that where an emancipist is less inclined to be dishonest, he is more inclined to be idle and improvident; while it often occurs that both faults are found together in one person. Of course, it would be vain to hope that all convicts, or even the majority, perhaps, should become completely reformed; but it is sickening to the heart that has any christian feeling, to find descriptions like the following, given by one amply qualified to judge, of the deplorable moral and social state of many of those unhappy men after their time of service has expired. “The newly-arrived convict” (Mr. MacArthur states) “sees examples immediately before him of men, formerly in the same condition with himself, wallowing in licentiousness, and possessed of wealth, amassed generally by dishonest means, which they continue, in many instances, still to augment, by keeping grog-shops and gambling-houses, by receiving stolen goods, and by other nefarious practices. This is the general conduct of the class of emancipated convicts who acquire property, as well as of some unprincipled adventurers in the class of free emigrants. There are, however, among the emancipated convicts of property exceptions from this prevalent depravity; rare, indeed, and on that account the more honourable.”[199] And numberless, in the earlier history of New South Wales, are the evil consequences which are recorded to have arisen from the necessity which then existed of employing either convicts, or else men recently emancipated, in places of the highest trust and importance. One striking example may suffice; and it is believed that no injustice is done to the class of men now alluded to, when it is stated that the guilty parties were persons belonging to that body. Soon after the departure of Governor Hunter, in 1800, it was discovered that the clerks who were admitted to the registers of the terms of the transportation of the convicts, had altered the sentences of nearly 200 prisoners, on receiving from each a sum equal in value to ten or twelve pounds.[200] Of these examples the early history of the colony is full; but, in later years, it may be hoped, that time, and public opinion, and the tide of emigration, have combined to render the conduct of persons belonging to this class less generally objectionable than it formerly was. The greater portion of the shop-keepers, and what may be called the middling classes in Sydney, were emancipists; and their wealth and influence were so great, that, during the years 1834, 1835, and 1836, one-fourth of the jurors who served in the civil and criminal courts belonged to that body. These persons are often very little educated; and young men possessed of from 1000l. to 2000l. a-year in stock, can sometimes neither read nor write. Cock-fighting, driving, and badger-baiting, are pursuits that occupy youths of this class very frequently; and a showy, tawdry style of dress, engages the attention of the young women. Certainly, it is not of materials of this kind, that the English constitution would have juries composed; and it is not surprising that so large a proportion of jurors, who have themselves once stood at the bar of justice, should be the means of carrying undue partiality for the guilty into the jurors’ box, and also of keeping out of that responsible station all those who can in any way escape its duties.[201] Respectable men will not, if they can avoid it, sit in the same box with men who go in with their minds entirely made up to acquit the guilty, whatever may be the tenor of the evidence to which they have just been listening, whatever the sacredness of the oath they have recently taken. If practical experience is of any real value, then it may safely be pronounced that men, who are scarcely fit to enjoy the privilege of sitting upon juries, are certainly at present unprepared for the introduction of a representative form of legislation and government. The civil juries of New South Wales have held the scales of justice uncommonly even, for they have managed to acquit about 50 per cent. of the persons tried; whereas in Great Britain, and even in Ireland, the acquittals are 19 per cent., and the convictions 81 per cent. A strange, but not unaccountable difference, which, so long as it may continue, will furnish a strong argument of the unfitness of the colony for a representative assembly. Men that have not the principle to put good laws into execution, are very ill qualified to make good laws, or to elect good legislators. And when, to suit party purposes, a clamour is raised about the injustice of denying fresh “constitutional rights” to our fellow-subjects in Australia, we may quietly dispose of this (hitherto absurd and mischievous) claim by referring the very parties raising it to the accounts published, under the sanction chiefly of men of their own opinions, respecting the use made of those rights with which the inhabitants of the penal colonies are already invested. When the evils of the system of transportation are to be exposed, the truth may be told respecting the state of the Australian juries;[202] but why should it not be still declared,—why should not truth always be told,—even at the hazard of checking “liberal principles,” and delaying representative houses of assembly for the Australian colonies, until the time when they may know how to use them, so that these may prove a benefit instead of an evil to them?
Respecting the last and highest class of society in our penal colonies, the free population, no great deal need be said in particular, since, except from peculiar circumstances, they are pretty much the same in character with the bulk of the population in any other country. But their peculiar circumstances must, in fairness to the class last mentioned, be briefly noticed. Undoubtedly, without any disrespect to emigrants, it may be laid down as an acknowledged fact, that hitherto this class, though it has comprised many excellent, clever, and good men, has not usually been composed of the flower of the English nation. Supposing that things are now altered for the better, time was—and that not many years ago—when “every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented,” was apt to swell the tide of emigration to our British colonies in Australia. Upon arriving there they found a regular system of caste established; and since as members of the free population they were at once exalted to the highest places, this was a system which in most cases flattered the pride of the settlers. Possibly many of the faults of the emancipist class might be traced to the treatment they have received at the hands of the free, and these faults react again as causes and excuses for keeping them at still greater distance than ever. And however natural, however necessary, a distinction of ranks is and must be in every society of men, yet nothing can be more unnatural or mischievous than a system of dividing men into castes. Unhappily, this division, the fruitful source of all kinds of evil feeling, has to a great extent prevailed in our penal colonies; and nothing, it may be boldly asserted, except religion will ever root it out. Attempt to continue the exclusive privilege of caste to the free population, and you sow the seeds of a servile rebellion. Open your hands to give concessions and privileges to the emancipists, and you scatter good seed upon the stony rock, you vainly endeavour to satisfy the daughters of the horse-leech. But infuse a christian feeling into all classes, get them to meet in the same church, to kneel at the same table, to partake in the same spiritual blessings, and then you may hope that all, whether free or emancipists, will feel themselves to be members of one another, portions of the same body, held in union of heart and soul by means of the same head; “for by One Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink into One Spirit.”[203]