The History of Tasmania Volume II Part 9

TRANSPORTATION.

TRANSPORTATION.

SECTION I.

Transportation, considered not as a question of national policy but as a fact, demands a place in this record. It will be our object to ascertain those incidents which ill.u.s.trate its local operation--to trace events that have attended the repeated changes in its colonial spirit. It belongs to the British statesman to scan its effects on the population of the empire; but fairly to exhibit its Australasian aspect, will not be without utility to the colonies themselves.

Although a separate relation will derange the thread of Tasmanian history, the reader may be compensated by a view more perspicuous and useful.

Thousands of British offenders, who by their exile and sufferings have expiated their crimes, trod almost alone the first stages of Austral colonisation, and amidst toils and privations, initiated a progress now beheld by nations with curiosity and admiration. Economists still weigh in uncertain balances the loss and the gain, and the legislator longs for facts which may decide the perpetual conflict between them who denounce and those who approve this expedient of penal legislation. It is not the intention of this narrative to antic.i.p.ate conclusions: its design will be accomplished when the story of the past is truly told.

Exile, the penalty denounced by the Almighty against the first homicide, was among the earliest affixed by man to lesser crimes, or whenever the presence of the offender endangered the public repose. The Roman law permitted the accused to withdraw from impending judgment by a voluntary exile. Such was the practice in the time of Cicero. When men sought to avoid bondage or death, adjudged by the laws, they had recourse to exile as to an altar; nor did they forfeit their civic standing, except with their lives.[37]

At a later period, under the imperial government, the islands of the Mediterranean became places of exile: several thousand Jews were banished from Rome to the Island of Sardinia.[38]

Transportation was unknown to the common law of England, but abjuration of the realm, which resembled the Roman practice, was not infrequent: "it was permitted," said Sir Edward c.o.ke, "when the felon chose rather to _perdere patriam quam vitam_,"--to lose his country rather than his life. The culprit having found sanctuary within the precincts of a church, took oath to abjure the realm: a.s.suming the character of a pilgrim, he received a cross to protect him on his journey. By the Act of James I. the privilege of sanctuary was taken away,[39] and thus the abjuration, founded upon it, virtually abolished.

The Spanish was the first Christian nation which to banishment united penal labor. Columbus found it difficult to allure adventurers: to work the mines, was necessary to gratify his patrons, and he prevailed on Ferdinand to furnish colonists by clearing the galleys. These recruits attended the great discoverer on his third expedition (1498): they largely contributed to the disorders which vexed the infant settlement, and aroused the resentment of the unfortunate Indians.[40]

Banishment was first formally recognised by English law in the reign of Elizabeth (39 Eliz. cap. 4).[41] It was enacted, that "dangerous rogues, and such as will not be reformed of their roguish course of life, may lawfully by the justices in their quarter sessions be banished out of the realm, and all the dominions thereof, and to such parts beyond the seas as shall for that purpose be a.s.signed by the privy council." Return was made felony without benefit of clergy. A brand was affixed upon the shoulder, of the breadth of an English s.h.i.+lling, with a great Roman R upon the iron: "for a perpetual mark upon such rogue, during his or her life."[42]

Until commerce had extended the knowledge of distant parts, and the constant publication of correspondence with colonies made their affairs familiar, imagination depicted them as desolate and frightful. The London apprentice and the plough boy, thought of exile as a severe calamity. The love of home was rendered more intense, by the universal wilderness imagined beyond it: thus, loss of country was deemed a penalty fully equal to ordinary offences, and more severe than any domestic form of punishment short of the scaffold.

"_Duri est non desiderare patriam. Cari sunt parentes; cari liberi, propinqui, familiares; sed omnes omnium caritates patria una complexa est: pro qua quis bonus dubitet mortem oppetere?_"

It is to James I. that the British nation and the colonists owe the policy, whether salutary or baneful, of sending convicts to the plantations: "the good sense of those days justly considered that their labor would be more beneficial to an infant settlement, than their vices could be pernicious."[43] James directed the sheriff to deliver, and the governor and court of Virginia to receive one hundred prisoners, included in the definition of rogues and dangerous persons, and compelled the proprietors of that colony to become agents in their deportation.

The Lord Chief Justice Kelyng stated, that about the time of the restoration it became customary for a prisoner within benefit of clergy to procure from the king "a conditional pardon," and to send him beyond the seas to serve five years in some of the king's plantations; there _to have land a.s.signed him, according to the usage_ of those plantations for servants after their time expired.[44] A needless delay of departure, or a return within the period appointed, made the instrument of pardon void.

In the reign of Charles II. an act pa.s.sed (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 a.s.sembly to prevent their redemption, by money or otherwise, until the expiration of ten years. The a.s.sembly declined to carry out the royal vengeance, and received the exiles with kindness.[46]

In 1717, transportation a.s.sumed 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 s.h.i.+p-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 sh.o.r.es 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 _Encyclopedie Methodique_, in which he a.s.serted 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?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 37: _Oration, pro A. Coesin._]

[Footnote 38: _Tacitus_, ann. 285.]

[Footnote 39: _Discourse, by the Right Hon. Wm. Eden, on Banishment._]

[Footnote 40: _Robertson's History of America._]

[Footnote 41: See _Blackstone's Commentaries_, vol. iv. c. 31.]

[Footnote 42: _Rastall's Statutes_, p. 419.]

[Footnote 43: Chalmers.]

[Footnote 44: _Eden's Discourse._]

[Footnote 45: _Sir Joshua Child's Discourses on Trade_, 1670.]

[Footnote 46: _Letter from James II._, in the colonial-office: quoted by Chalmers.]

[Footnote 47: Introduction to _Phillip's Voyages_.]

[Footnote 48: See _Bentham's Letter to Lord Pelham_.]

[Footnote 49: _Vicar of Wakefield._]

[Footnote 50: Dr. Lang, on whose quotation (from the _Memoirs of Jefferson_, vol. i. p. 406) the above is given, would make the total number to be 50,000--a vast difference!]

SECTION II.

During and subsequent to the American war, the prisons of Great Britain were crowded. A distemper, generated in the damp and foetid atmosphere of gaols, carried off thousands: to be charged with an offence, was to be exposed to the risk of a malady generally fatal. Sometimes, it pa.s.sed beyond the precincts of prisons: at Taunton, the judges and other officers of the court, and hundreds of the inhabitants, perished.

Howard, after spending a large portion of his life in retirement and devotion, was chosen sheriff of Bedfords.h.i.+re. He exposed the sufferings which he witnessed; and accelerated transportation, by revealing the secrets of the prison house. It is needless to describe his labors--they belong to all nations: he reproved kings, and received the blessings of thousands ready to perish; and he lost his life in the service of mankind.[52]

The attention awakened by Howard, the philanthropist, led to the general improvement of prisons (1779). A variety of projects were suggested for the disposal of prisoners: some it was proposed to confine in dock-yards, salt works, mines, or where concentrated labour might be possible. Mr. Eden, at first, suggested that enormous offenders should be sent to the Mahomedan ports, and sold for the redemption of Christian slaves, or be employed on the coasts of Africa, on small islands, for the benefit of navigation.[53] It was recommended by a committee of the House of Commons to transport criminals to the coast of Africa and the East Indies. These plans were effectually resisted, or failed of their design.

Judge Blackstone and Mr. Eden contrived a scheme, in concert with Howard, which they embodied in the "Hard Labor Bill." Its object was twofold: to establish labor houses all over England, and to regulate the employment of convicts on board the hulks. This measure was published preparatory to its being submitted to parliament, and fell into the hands of Bentham. Hailing the movement as fraught with important improvements, he produced his Panopticon, which he described as applicable to all houses of industry, and wherever inspection is constantly required. The plan exhibits remarkable ingenuity: the separation being made consistent with continual oversight, and an economy of s.p.a.ce with health and exercise. The design of the building itself is circular: the external area cut up into angles, and separated by walls running to a common centre. The interior is formed of a succession of circles, not inaptly compared by the satirical opponents of the scheme to a spider's web.[54] He afterwards accompanied his plans with minute definitions of the objects and methods of penal coercion.