for the exertions of Mr. Bennet, we believe he would have held to this day. The sick, from Mr. Bigge's Report, appear to have fared as badly as the sinful. Good water was scarce, proper persons to wait upon the patients could not be obtained; and so numerous were the complaints from this quarter, that the Governor makes an order for the exclusion of all hospital grievances and complaints, except on one day in the month-dropsy swelling, however, fever burning, and ague shaking, in the meantime, without waiting for the arrangements of Governor Macquarrie, or consulting the mollia tempora fandi. In permitting individuals to distil their own grain, the Government of Botany Bay appears to us to be quite right. It is impossible, in such a colony, to prevent unlawful distillation to a considerable extent; and it is as well to raise upon spirits (as something must be taxed) that slight duty which renders the contraband trade not worth following. Distillation, too, always insures a magazine against famine, by which New South Wales has more than once been severely visited. It opens a market for grain where markets are very distant, and where redundance and famine seem very often to succeed each other. The cheapness of spirits to such working people as know how to use them with moderation, is a great blessing; and we doubt whether that moderation, after the first burst of ebriety, is not just as likely to be learnt in plenty as in scarcity. We were a little surprised at the scanty limits allowed to convicts for sleeping on board the transports. Mr. Bigge (of whose sense and humanity we really have not the slightest doubt) states eighteen inches to be quite sufficient twice the length of a small sheet of letter paper. The printer's devil, who carries our works to the press, informs us that the allowance to the demons of the type is double foolscap length, or twenty-four inches. The great city upholsterers generally consider six feet as barely sufficient for a person rising in business, and assisting occasionally at official banquets. Mrs. Fry's system is well spoken of by Mr. Bigge; and its useful effect in promoting order and decency among floating convicts fully admitted. In a voyage to Botany Bay by Mr. Read, he states that, while the convict vessel lay at anchor, about to sail, a boat from shore reached the ship, and from it stepped a clerk of the Bank of England. The convicts felicitated themselves upon the acquisition of so gentlemanlike a companion; but it soon turned out that the visitant had no intention of making so long a voyage. Finding that they were not to have the pleasure of his company, the convicts very naturally thought of picking his pockets; the necessity of which professional measure was prevented by a speedy distribution of their contents. Forth from his bill-case this votary of Plutus drew his nitid Newlands; all the forgers and utterers were mustered on deck; and to each of them was well and truly paid into his hand a five pound note; less acceptable, perhaps, than if privately removed from the person, but still joyfully received. This was well intended on the part of the Directors: but the consequences it is scarcely necessary to enumerate; a large stock of rum was immediately laid in from the circumambient slop-boats; and the materials of constant intoxication secured for the rest of the voyage. The following account of pastoral convicts is striking and picturesque: For We are sorry it should have been imagined, from some of our late observations on prison discipline, that we meant to disparage the exertions of Mrs. Fry. prisoners before trial, it is perfect; but where imprisonment is intended for punishment, and not for detention, it requires, as we have endeavoured to show, a very different system. The Prison Society (an excellent, honourable, and most useful institution of some of the best men in Engfallen into the common mistake, of supposland) have certainly, in their first Numbers, ing that the reformation of the culprit, and not the prevention of the crime, was the main object of imprisonment; and have, in consequence, taken some false views of the method of treating prisoners-the exposi tion of which, after the usual manner of But, in objects of so high a nature, what flesh and blood, makes them a little angry. matters who is right?-the only question is, What is right? taking the fugitive convicts. They accompany the soldiers who are sent in pursuit; and, by the extraordinary strength of sight they possess, improved by their daily ex "I observed that a great many of the convicts in Van Diemen's Land wore jackets and trousers of the kangaroo skin, and sometimes caps of the same material, which they obtain from the stock-keepers who are em-ercise of it in pursuit of kangaroos and ployed in the interior of the country. The labour of several of them differs, in this respect, from that of the convicts in New South Wales, and is rather pastoral than agricultural. Permission having been given, for the last five years, to the settlers to avail themselves of the ranges of open plains and valleys that lie on either side of the road leading from Austin's Ferry to Launceston, a distance of 120 miles, their flocks and herds have been committed to the care of convict shepherds and stock-keepers, who are sent to these cattle ranges, distant *sometimes 30 or 40 miles from their masters' estates. "The boundaries of these tracts are described in the tickets of occupation by which they are held, and which are made renewable every year, on payment of a fee to the Lieutenant-Governor's clerk. One or more convicts are stationed on them, to attend to the flocks and cattle, and are supplied with wheat, tea, and sugar, at the monthly visits of the owner. They are allowed the use of a musket and a few cartridges to defend themselves against the natives; and they have also dogs, with which they hunt the kangaroos, whose flesh they eat, and dispose of their skins to persons passing from Hobart Town to Launceston, in exchange for tea and sugar. They thus obtain a plentiful supply of food, and sometimes succeed in cultivating a few vegetables. Their habitations are made of turf, and thatched; as the bark of the dwarf eucalyptus, or gum-trees of the plains, and the interior, in Van Diemen's Land, is not of sufficient expanse to form covering or shelter."-(Report, pp. 107, 108.) opossums, they can trace to a great distance, with wonderful accuracy, the impressions of the human foot. Nor are they afraid of meeting the fugitive convicts in the woods, when sent in their pursuit, without the soldiers; by their skill in throwing their long and pointed wooden darts, they wound and disable them, strip them of their clothes, and bring them back as prisoners, by unknown.roads and paths, to the Coal River. "They are rewarded for these enterprises by presents of maize and blankets; and, notwithstanding the apprehensions of revenge from the convicts whom they bring back, they continue to live in Newcastle and its neighbouroood; but are observed to prefer the society of the soldiers to that of the convicts."-(Report, p. 117.) Of the convicts in New South Wales, Mr. Bigge found about eight or nine in a hundred to be persons of respectable character and conduct, though the evidence respecting them is not quite satisfactory. But the most striking and consolatory passage in the whole Report is the following: 'The marriages of the native-born youths with female convicts are very rare; a circumstance that is attributable to the general disinclination to early marriage that is observable amongst them, and partly to the abandoned and dissolute habits of the female convicts; but chiefly to a sense of pride in the native-born youths, approaching to contempt for the vices and depravity of the convicts, even when manifested in the persons of their own parents."— (Re A London thief, clothed in kanga-port, p. 105.) roo's skins, lodged under the bark of the Everything is to be expected from dwarf eucalyptus, and keeping sheep, these feelings. They convey to the fourteen thousand miles from Picca-mother-country the first proof that the dilly, with a crook bent into the shape foundations of a mighty empire are of a picklock, is not an uninteresting laid. picture; and an engraving of it might have a very salutary effect-provided no engraving were made of his convict master, to whom the sheep belong. The Maroon Indians were hunted by dogs the fugitive convicts are recovered by the natives. "The native blacks that inhabit the neighbourhood of Port Hunter and Port Stephens have become very active in re We were somewhat surprised to find Governor Macquarrie contending with Mr. Bigge, that it was no part of his, the Governor's duty to select and separate the useless from the useful convicts, or to determine, except in particular cases, to whom they are to be assigned. In other words, he wishes to effect the customary separation of salary and duty- the grand principle which ap pears to pervade all human institutions, | be the first to lament that an unhappy and to be the most invincible of all convict was sentenced to death for killhuman abuses. Not only are Church, ing one of his wild bulls on the other side King, and State, allured by this princi- of the world. The cases of Mr. Moore ple of vicarious labour, but the pot-boy and of William Stewart, as quoted by has a lower pot-boy, who for a small Mr. Bennet, are very strong. If they are portion of the small gains of his prin- answerable, they should be answered. cipal, arranges, with inexhaustible sedu- The concluding letter to Mr. Stewart is, lity, the subdivided portions of drink, to us, the most decisive proof of the unand intensely perspiring, disperses, in fitness of Colonel Macquarrie for the bright pewter, the frothy elements of joy. situation in which he was placed. The There is a very awkward story of a Ministry at home, after the authenticity severe flogging inflicted upon three free- of the letter was proved, should have men by Governor Macquarrie, without seized upon the first decent pretext of recomplaint to, or intervention of, any calling the Governor, of thanking him in magistrate; a fact not denied by the the name of his Sovereign for his valuGovernor, and for which no adequate able services (not omitting his care of apology, nor anything approaching to the wild bulls), and of dismissing him an adequate apology, is offered. These to half-pay and insignificance. Asiatic and satrapical proceedings,how- As to the Trial by Jury, we cannot ever, we have reason to think, are ex-agree with Mr. Bennet, that it would be ceedingly disrelished by London juries. The profits of having been unjustly flogged at Botany Bay (Scarlett for the plaintiff) is good property, and would fetch a very considerable sum at the Auction Mart. The Governor, in many instances, appears to have confounded diversity of opinion upon particular measures, with systematic opposition to his Government, and to have treated as disaffected persons those whom, in favourite measures, he could not persuade by his arguments, nor influence by his example, and on points where every man has a right to judge for himself, and where authority has no legitimate right to interfere, much less to dictate. To the charges confirmed by the statement of Mr. Bigge, Mr. Bennet adds, from the evidence collected by the Jail Committee, that the fees in the Governor's Court, collected by the authority of the Governor, are most exorbitant and oppressive; and that illegal taxes are collected under the sole authority of the Governor. It has been made, by colonial regulations, a capital offence to steal the wild cattle; and in 1816, three persons were convicted of stealing a wild bull, the property of our Sovereign Lord the King. Now, our Sovereign Lord the King (whatever be his other merits or demerits) is certainly a very good-natured man, and would right to introduce it at present, for reasons we have given in a previous Article, and which we see no reason for altering. The time of course will come when it would be in the highest degree unjust and absurd, to refuse to that settlement the benefit of popular institutions. But they are too young, too few, and too deficient for such civilised machinery at present. "I cannot come to serve upon the jury - the waters of the Hawksbury are out, and I have a mile to swim-the kangaroos will break into my corn the convicts have robbed me my little boy has been bitten by an ornithorynchus paradoxus I have sent a man fifty miles with a sack of flour to buy a pair of breeches for the assizes, and he is not returned." These are the excuses which, in new colonies, always prevent Trial by Jury; and make it desirable, for the first half century of their existence, that they should live under the simplicity and convenience of despotism-such modified despotism (we mean) as a British House of Commons (always containing men as bold and honest as the member for Shrewsbury) will permit in the governors of their distant colonies. Such are the opinions formed of the conduct of Governor Macquarrie by Mr. Bigge. Not the slightest insinuation is made against the integrity of his character. Though almost every body else has a job, we do not perceive | upon their landing, to be treated with that any is imputed to this gentleman; very different degrees of severity. The but he is negligent, expensive, arbitrary, first might be merely detained in New ignorant, and clearly deficient in abili- South Wales without labour or coerties for the task committed to his charge. cion; the second compelled, at allevents, It is our decided opinion, therefore, to work out two-thirds of his time, that Mr. Bennet has rendered a valu- without the possibility of remission; able service to the public, in, attacking and the third be destined at once for and exposing his conduct. As a gen- the Coal River.* If these consequences tleman and an honest man, there is not steadily followed these gradations of the smallest charge against the Gover- conviction, they would soon be undernor; but a gentleman, and a very honest stood by the felonious world at home. man, may very easily ruin a very fine At present, the prosperity of the best colony. The colony itself, disencum- convicts is considered to be attainable bered of Colonel Lachlan Macquarrie, by all; and transportation to another will probably become a very fine empire; hemisphere is looked upon as the but we can scarcely believe it is of any renovation of fallen fortunes, and the present utility as a place of punishment. passport to wealth and power. The history of emancipated convicts, who have made a great deal of money by their industry and their speculations, necessarily reaches this country, and prevents men who are goaded by want, and hovering between vice and virtue, from looking upon it as a place of suffering-perhaps leads them to consider it as the land of hope and refuge, to them unattainable, except by the commission of crime. And so they lift up their heads at the Bar, hoping to be transported, It is not possible, in the present state of the law, that these enticing histories of convict prosperity should be prevented, by one uniform system of severity exercised in New South Wales, upon all transported persons. Such different degrees of guilt are included under the term of convict, that it would violate every feeling of humanity, and every principle of justice, to deal out one measure of punishment to all. We strongly suspect that this is the root of the evil. We want new gradations of guilt to be established by law -new names for those gradations and a different measure of good and evil treatment attached to those denominations. In this manner, the mere convict, the rogue and convict, and the incorrigible convict, would expect, Another circumstance, which destroys all idea of punishment in transportation to New South Wales, is the enormous expense which that settlement would occasion if it really were made a place of punishment. A little wicked tailor arrives, of no use to the architectural projects of the Governor. He is turned over to a settler, who leases this sartorial Borgia his liberty for five shillings per week, and allows him to steal and snip, what, when, and where he can. The excuse for all this mockery of law and justice is, that the expense of his maintenance is saved to the Government at home. But the expense is not saved to the country at large. The nefarious needleman writes home, that he is as comfortable as a finger in a thimble! that though a fraction only of humanity, he has several wives, and is filled every day with rum and kangaroo. This, of course, is not lost upon the shopboard; and, for the saving of fifteen pence per day, the foundation of many criminal tailors is laid. What is true of tailors, is true of tinkers and all other trades. The chances of escape from labour, and of manumission in the Bay, we may depend upon it, are accurately reported, and perfectly understood, in the flashhouses of St. Giles; and while Earl Bathurst is full of jokes and joy, public morals are thus sapped to their foundation. * This practice is now resorted to. GAME LAWS. A Letter to the Chairman of the Committee dealers and the mail-guards, and coachmen, to produce a quantity; and I should send to my own connections in one or two manors where I have the privilege of selling for those gentlemen; and should send to Scotland to say, that every week the largest quantity they could produce was to be sent. Being but a petty salesman, I sell a very small quantity; but I have had about 4000 head direct from one man.-Can you state the quantity of game which has been sent to you during the year? No: I may say, perhaps, 10,000 head; mine is a limited others; I only supply private families.”— trade; I speak comparatively to that of (Report, p. 20.) Poachers who go out at night cannot, of course, like regular tradesmen, proportion the supply to the demand, but having once made a contract, they kill all they can; and hence it happens that the game market is sometimes very much overstocked, and great quantities of game either thrown away, or disposed of by Irish hawkers to the common people at very inferior prices. ABOUT the time of the publication of this little pamphlet of Mr. Herbert, a Committee of the House of Commons published a Report on the Game Laws, containing a great deal of very curious information respecting the sale of game, an epitome of which we shall now lay before our readers. The country higglers who collect poultry, gather up the game from the depôts of the poachers, and transmit it in the same manner as poultry, and in the same packages, to the London poulterers, by whom it is distributed to the public; and this traffic is carried on (as far as game is concerned) even from the distance of Scotland. The same business is carried on by the porters of stage coaches; and a great deal of game is "Does it ever happen to you to be obliged sold clandestinely by lords of manors, to dispose of poultry at the same low prices or by gamekeepers, without the know-you are obliged to dispose of game? It ledge of lords of manors; and principally, as the evidence states, from Norfolk and Suffolk, the great schools of steel traps and spring guns. The supply of game, too, is proved to be quite as regular as the supply of poultry; the number of hares and partridges supplied rather exceeds that of pheasants; but any description of game may be had to any amount. Here is a part of the evidence. "Can you at any time procure any quantity of game? I have no doubt of it.If you were to receive almost an unlimited order, could you execute it? Yes; I would supply the whole city of London, any fixed day once a week, all the year through, so that every individual inhabitant should have game for his table.-Do you think you could procure a thousand pheasants? Yes; I would be bound to produce ten thousand a week.-You would be bound to provide every family in London with a dish of game? Yes; a partridge, or a pheasant, or a hare, or a grouse, or something or other. -How would you set about doing it? I should, of course, request the persons with whom I am in the habit of dealing, to use their influence to bring me what they could by a certain day; -I should speak to the depends upon the weather; often when there is a considerable quantity on hand, and, owing to the weather, it will not keep till the following day, I am obliged to take any price that is offered; but we can always turn either poultry or game in to some price or other; and if it was not for the Irish hawkers, hundreds and hundreds of heads of game would be spoiled and thrown away. It is out of the power of any person to conceive for one moment the quantity of game that is hawked in the streets. I have had opportunity more than other persons of knowing this; for I have sold, I may say, more game than any other person in the city; and we serve hawkers indiscriminately, persons who come and purchase probably six fowls or turkeys and geese, and they will buy heads of game with them."(Report, p. 22.) |