The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay | Page 9

plantations. Subsequent Acts enforced further regulations.]
The benefits of this regulation were various. The colonies received by it, at an easy rate, an assistance very necessary; and the mother country was relieved from the burthen of subjects, who at home were not only useless but pernicious: besides which, the mercantile returns, on this account alone, are reported to have arisen, in latter times, to a very considerable amount.* The individuals themselves, doubtless, in some instances, proved incorrigible; but it happened also, not very unfrequently, that, during the period of their legal servitude, they became reconciled to a life of honest industry, were altogether reformed in their manners, and rising gradually by laudable efforts, to situations of advantage, independence, and estimation, contributed honourably to the population and prosperity of their new country.**
[* It is said, forty thousand pounds per annum, about two thousand convicts being sold for twenty pounds each.]
[** The Abbe Raynal has given his full testimony to the policy of this species of banishment, in the fourteenth Book of his History, near the beginning.]
By the contest in America, and the subsequent separation of the thirteen Colonies, this traffic was of course destroyed. Other expedients, well known to the public, have since been tried; some of which proved highly objectionable;* and all have been found to want some of the principal advantages experienced from the usual mode of transportation.--The deliberations upon this subject, which more than once employed the attention of Parliament, produced at length the plan of which this volume displays the first result. On December 6, 1786, the proper orders were issued by his Majesty in Council, and an Act establishing a Court of Judicature in the place of settlement, and making such other regulations as the occasion required, received the sanction of the whole legislature early in the year 1787.
[* ? Particularly, the transporting of criminals to the coast of Africa, where what was meant as an alleviation of punishment too frequently ended in death.]
To expatiate upon the principles of penal law is foreign to the purpose of this work, but thus much is evident to the plainest apprehension, that the objects most to be desired in it are the restriction of the number of capital inflictions, as far as is consistent with the security of society; and the employment of every method that can be devised for rendering the guilty persons serviceable to the public, and just to themselves; for correcting their moral depravity, inducing habits of industry, and arming them in future against the temptations by which they have been once ensnared.
For effectuating these beneficial purposes, well regulated penitentiary houses seem, in speculation, to afford the fairest opportunity; and a plan of this kind, formed by the united efforts of Judge Blackstone, Mr. Eden, and Mr. Howard, was adopted by Parliament in the year 1779. Difficulties however occurred which prevented the execution of this design: a circumstance which will be something the less regretted when it shall be considered, that it is perhaps the fate of this theory, in common with many others of a very pleasing nature, to be more attractive in contemplation than efficacious in real practice. A perfect design, carried on by imperfect agents, is liable to lose the chief part of its excellence; and the best digested plan of confinement must in execution be committed, chiefly, to men not much enlightened, very little armed against corruption, and constantly exposed to the danger of it. The vigilance which in the infancy of such institutions effectually watches over the conduct of these public servants, will always in a little time be relaxed; and it will readily be conceived that a large penitentiary house, very corruptly governed, would be, of all associations, one of the most pernicious to those confined, and most dangerous to the peace of society.
In some countries, malefactors not capitally convicted, are sentenced to the gallies or the mines; punishments often more cruel than death, and here, on many accounts, impracticable. In other places they are employed in public works, under the care of overseers. This method has been partially tried in England on the Thames, but has been found by no means to produce the benefits expected from it. There is, therefore, little temptation to pursue it to a further extent. The employment of criminals in works carried on under the public eye, is perhaps too repugnant to the feelings of Englishmen ever to be tolerated. Reason, indeed, acquiesces in the melancholy necessity of punishing, but chains and badges of servitude are unpleasing objects, and compassion will always revolt at the sight of actual infliction. Convicts so employed would either by an ill placed charity be rewarded, or the people, undergoing a change of character far from desirable, would in time grow callous to those impressions which naturally impel them to