A substitute for transportation—Task entrusted to Colonel Jebb—Initiates Public Works' Prisons in England—Plans to assist in the construction of great breakwater at Portland—Rapid progress—Much useful work executed by the convicts—Old War Prison of Dartmoor prepared for convicts employed in the reclamation of savage moorland—New prison at Chatham for extension of the naval dockyard—Similar undertaking at Portsmouth—New system carried out conscientiously—First results satisfactory—The garroter—Insecurity of London streets—Discipline of penal servitude lax—Royal commission advocates new principles and insists upon greater severity—Strenuous industry enforced under the "mark" system—Favourable results.
A substitute for transportation—Task entrusted to Colonel Jebb—Initiates Public Works' Prisons in England—Plans to assist in the construction of great breakwater at Portland—Rapid progress—Much useful work executed by the convicts—Old War Prison of Dartmoor prepared for convicts employed in the reclamation of savage moorland—New prison at Chatham for extension of the naval dockyard—Similar undertaking at Portsmouth—New system carried out conscientiously—First results satisfactory—The garroter—Insecurity of London streets—Discipline of penal servitude lax—Royal commission advocates new principles and insists upon greater severity—Strenuous industry enforced under the "mark" system—Favourable results.
Transportation beyond the seas ended when the British colonies positively refused to receive the penal exiles. One of them, Queensland, lately founded in Australia, which was supposed to be favourable, repudiated the idea entirely, and its citizens asked impertinently whether they might be permitted in return to transport their own malefactors to the British Isles. Then the geographers began to search for new lands suitable for penal settlements. One suggested the Falkland Islands, and another New Guinea, while Labrador was felt bymany to be exactly the place for convict colonisation. Western Australia, as a matter of fact, did not object; it was a crown colony and could not protest, but it was never very largely utilised.
The excessive costliness of transportation was the principal demerit of this practice. A few figures will show this. As late as 1851, the gross cost for one year was £586,294 for passages out to the antipodes, establishments and staff, including the home depots, Bermuda and Gibraltar. There was a certain set-off in the value of the labour of the convicts, and when this had been credited, the net cost remained at £419,476. To arrive at any general estimate, this annual expenditure must be multiplied by the seventy years the system lasted. It cannot, of course, be denied that the product was Australia, a substantial section, no doubt, for the cash expended, but the evils entailed by the system must be taken into account, and modern feeling revolted from repeating the process even to gain such a large and prosperous dependency, provided additional territory was available. As we have seen, the territory did not exist. Thus the only alternative was to retain the convicts at home, to house and dispose of them as economically as possible, and at the same time utilise them effectively in such works and public undertakings as might reasonably be expected to bring in some adequate return.
The solution of the pressing problem wasentrusted to Colonel, afterward Sir Joshua, Jebb, a distinguished officer of the Royal Engineers, who was already well known in connection with prison building and with penal legislation generally. He had for some years past been associated with the two official inspectors of prisons; after that he had assisted in the superintendence of Millbank, when constituting a convict depot, and he had been in reality the moving spirit of the commissioners who built the model prison at Pentonville. In those early years he gave undoubted earnest of his energetic character and great powers, a promise more than fulfilled. His proposal was to construct a great breakwater at Portland, largely assisted by the labour of convicts which was abundant and running to waste. He meant in the first instance to provide accommodation of some sort on the island of Portland wherein the convicts might be securely lodged immediately adjoining their works. He described, in a memorandum dated 1847, the style of place he proposed to build. Naturally, he said, when the works on which the prisoners were to be employed were likely to be completed within a limited time, something less costly than a substantial prison would suffice. Safe custody and the due enforcement of discipline must of course be secured; but these might be obtained without any very extravagant outlay. He suggested, therefore, buildings on wooden frames, with corrugated iron partitions; the whole so constructed as to be easily takento pieces and removed to another site if required. In these buildings the convicts might be kept safe and separate, at the probable cost of little more than £34 per cell. Similar prisons might be run up anywhere, so that the entire number of convicts for whom accommodation was required might be housed for about two hundred thousand pounds. Colonel Jebb accompanied this proposal with certain figures as an off-set against this outlay. He assumed that the maintenance, including every item, would amount to £158,000, but their earnings would be £180,000. The balance was therefore a gain of £22,000—a sufficient interest on the original cost of the prison buildings. These figures were speculative, of course, nor were they found exactly accurate in practice; the cost of maintenance proved undoubtedly higher than thus estimated, but in return the earnings were also considerably more.
Three years later, in March, 1850, Colonel Jebb reported to the Secretary of State that he had provided room for eight hundred and forty prisoners at Portland. The main buildings consisted of four large open halls, eighty-eight feet long by twenty-one broad, having four tiers of cells on each side. The interiors of the halls were well ventilated and could be warmed; the cells were seven feet by four, and furnished with hammocks, tables and shelves for books. The cells were divided by partitions of corrugated iron, and were sufficient to secure the effectual separation of the men at night, and toadmit of their taking their meals in them, and reading or otherwise occupying themselves after working hours, until they went to bed. In addition to the cell accommodation there was, of course, full provision for officers' quarters, chapel, kitchen, laundries and stores. Moreover, ample space was reserved "within the boundary wall for the erection of additional buildings, so as to increase the number of convicts to twelve or fifteen hundred, if it should be found necessary or desirable." Everything was now in fair working order. The foundation stone of the breakwater had been laid in July, 1849, by Prince Albert, who visited the prison and presented a Bible and prayer-book for use in its chapel; but till then, and during the first year of the occupation of a "bleak and barren rock" the convicts were chiefly employed in setting things straight within the prison walls. They had to level parade grounds, make roads and reservoirs, fit gates and doors, paint and clean up the whole establishment. As soon as practicable they were set to work on the breakwater. "The stone," says Colonel Jebb, "is to be removed from the quarries by means of several lines of railways, which are arranged in a series of inclined planes from the summit to the point where the breakwater joins the shore. The wagons will be raised and lowered by wire ropes, working on 'drums,' placed at the head of each 'incline,' the loaded train in its descent drawing up the empty one from the breakwater."
In the general detail of work, the share that fell upon the convicts was the plate-laying, levelling, forming embankments and excavations, getting out and stacking the stone, filling the wagons, sending them down and bringing them back from the incline. Some five hundred men were so employed during the first year, 1849, and their earnings were estimated at about fifteen thousand pounds.
Portland, when thus fairly launched, became the starting point for the new arrangements. Other prisons were needed, and they must be built like Portland. But time pressed, and anything actually available at the moment was eagerly pressed into the service. Down at Dartmoor, on the high lands above Tavistock, was a huge building which had been empty for five-and-thirty years. Its last occupants had been the French and American prisoners of war, who were confined there until the peace of 1814. Ten thousand, some said twelve thousand, had been accommodated within the walls—surely there must be room there for several hundred convicts? Colonel Jebb, hearing that Captain Groves, from Millbank, was staying at Plymouth, begged him to run over to inspect Dartmoor. The place was like a howling wilderness; the buildings in places were without roofs; the walls were full of holes, if not in ruins. But a few repairs would soon make the place habitable, said Captain Groves, and accordingly a gang of convicts, under Mr. Morrish, was sent down to begin operations. In a shorttime Dartmoor prison was opened. Then other receptacles were prepared. The hulks had been pressed into the service, and were employed at the various dockyards to house the convicts, but only as a temporary measure, until proper buildings on the new plan could be erected. There were ships at Woolwich, and others at Portsmouth. At the first station the oldWarrior, and theDefence, took the able-bodied, while theUnitéserved as a hospital; at Portsmouth there were theYork,BritonandStirling Castle, until 1852, when the new convict prison was occupied. Soon after this, contracts were entered into for the erection of a large prison at Chatham, which was completed in 1858, and to which all those at the Woolwich hulks were in course of time transferred. The intention at both these stations was to devote a goodly portion of the convict labour to further the dockyard extensions. At Chatham the object in view was to construct, high up the tortuous Medway, a chain of artificial basins capable of containing a fleet. Hither beaten ships might retire to refit; while new ironclads, built in the dock close by, might issue thence to retrieve disaster. From the first the work was of an arduous character. The battle was against the tide and the treacherous mud. But all of St. Mary's Island has been reclaimed, and marsh has given place to solid ground. At Portsmouth a feat has been accomplished, not exactly similar, but wonderful also in its way.
So much for the framework—the bones, so to speak, of the new system; let us see, next, something of the living tissues with which it was filled up. Speaking broadly, it may be laid down that the plan of treatment inaugurated by Colonel Jebb and his colleagues, was based on persuasion rather than coercion. This, indeed, they openly admitted. They were not advocates for a "purely coercive and penal discipline." They conceived that there was sufficient punishment without that; the convicts suffered enough in the "long periods during which they remained under penal restraint," and there was further discomfort in "their eventual deportation to a distant colony, and the somewhat severe restrictions to which they are subjected when they gain the boon of a ticket-of-leave," these regulations being drawn up at a time when transportation was still practised, though only to a limited extent. The directors of convict prisons hoped, therefore, to accomplish their object by reward and encouragement rather than by strictness and terror. They desired to put it plainly before every convict that if he would but continue quiet and obedient, he would be sure to benefit in the long run. It was really worth his while to be good, they said, and they encouraged him by the statement: "It will convince us that you are on the high road to reform, and the sooner we are convinced you are reformed, the sooner you will be set at large." Everything was made to depend on conduct—goodconduct—in other words, the mere formal observance of rules, a submissive demeanour, and a readiness to echo, even with hypocritical hearts, the lessons the chaplains taught. The word "industry" was tacked on to "conduct," but only in a subordinate sense, and so long as the convict was civil he might be as lazy as he liked.
Precise rules provided the machinery by which a due estimate of each man's conduct was to be obtained. Every governor of a prison kept a character-book, in which he was to enter concisely his observations upon the character and conduct of every prisoner, so as thus to be enabled to reward him by classification and good conduct badges, and more especially "to report with confidence whenever he may be called upon in conjunction with the chaplain to assist the authorities in determining the period of detention of the different prisoners." The same rule went on to say, "He (the governor) shall take every opportunity of impressing on the prisoners that the particulars of their conduct are thus noticed and recorded; and that while no effort at good conduct and industry on the part of a prisoner will be disregarded by the authorities of the prison, every act of wilful misconduct and punishment will be equally noted, and will tend to prolong the period of his detention under penal discipline." The governor's opinion was to be endorsed by that of the chaplain, and even the subordinate officers were called upon to record their views of the demeanourof the prisoners they especially controlled. The whole object of this classification and this supervision was to "produce on the minds of the prisoners a practical and habitual conviction of the effect which their own good conduct and industry will have on their welfare and future prospects."
These extracts from Colonel Jebb's earliest reports will be sufficient to indicate the bias of his mind. He too, like others who had gone before, was hopeful of reformation by purely moral means. As he has himself declared in one of his reports, he thought he might more surely gain the great end he had in view by leading than by driving. Upon this principle the whole system of management was based. There can be no question that those who were its authors took their stand upon the highest ground. They were called upon to inaugurate a new order of things, and they did so to the best of their ability, in the most straightforward, conscientious fashion. The glaring evils of transportation, as it had been administered, were then still staring them in the face. "Speaking humanly," says Colonel Jebb, "the demoralisation of every individual sentenced to transportation was certain. No matter what might have been his previous character, what the amount of his constitution, or what the sincerity of his efforts and resolutions to retrace his steps, he was placed within the influence of a moral pestilence, from which, like death itself, there was no escape." The necessity for great and radicalchanges was imperative; and these changes were carried out in the manner I have described. Great results were expected to follow from them.
In the first few years everything appeared rosy. The reports continue: "As a body, the men show a spirit of willing and cheerful obedience. The strictest discipline is maintained with a very small proportion of punishment. The industry of the working parties is remarkable." Again, the same report asserts that "any candid and dispassionate inquiry into the condition and prospects of the convicts who have passed through periods of penal and reformatory discipline at Pentonville and Portland, will prove beyond doubt that, to say the least of it, the majority of those now serving are likely on their release to be respectable in their station of life, and useful to those who engage their services; thus realising the anticipations of the Pentonville commissioners, that a large proportion of our convicts would be qualified on their discharge to occupy an honest position in their own or any other country."
This was in 1852 and for the following ten years the new plans were persevered in with very general satisfaction. The public heard with pleasure of the notable results achieved. All indeed were a little weary of the subject of secondary punishment, and were content to leave the problem in the hands of officials whose duty it was to deal with it. How long this indifference might have continued it is impossible to conjecture, but all at once a panic fellupon people that was long remembered. It is only when touched by the sharp sense of personal insecurity that people are universally roused to take an interest in such affairs. The moment came when—in presence of a real or imaginary danger—England awoke to the fact that her penal system was all a mistake.
It was in the winter of 1862 that robberies with violence—garrote robberies, as they were called—suddenly increased to such an alarming extent, and were accompanied with such hideous details of brutality, that general consternation prevailed. The streets of London were less safe, said the leading journal, than a capital in the throes of revolution and under no government at all. No man could walk abroad, even in crowded thoroughfares, without feeling that he carried both his life and his money in his hand. Both might be wrested from him by an insidious malefactor before the victim was even conscious of his danger. On all sides instances of these treacherous assaults multiplied; and though varying somewhat in their method of execution, each and every one of them belonged unmistakably to the same class of crime. One day it was reported that a young lady of fifteen had been attacked in Westbourne Crescent in the afternoon. She was half throttled, and a pistol held to her head, while they rifled her pockets, and tried to tear off her necklace, and the pendants from her ears. Her head was to have been shorn, too, of its magnificenthair, which, as one of the ruffians cried, would certainly fetch a goodish sum; but just then the sound of approaching wheels frightened these human vultures from their helpless quarry. Next, a poor old woman, a feeble tottering creature advanced in years, was knocked down and wantonly maltreated for the half-dozen coppers she carried in her pocket.
These attacks were made at all hours and in all neighbourhoods. Daylight was no protection, nor were the crowds in a thoroughfare. One gentleman was felled to the ground in the afternoon near Paternoster Row, another in Holborn, a third in Cockspur Street. Later on, at night, the dangers, of course, multiplied a hundredfold. Poor musicians, tramping home after performing in some theatrical orchestra, were knocked down and robbed of their instruments as well as their cash. It was a service of danger to take the money at the door of any entertainment. A gang of garroters, for instance, had their eye on Michael Murray in the early part of the night as he stood at the door of the Teetotal Hall in Chelsea, and as soon as he left for home, they followed with stealthy step till they overtook him in Sloane Square, and knocked him down, having first throttled and rifled him. If you stood still in the street, and refused to give a drink to any man who accosted you, he would probably then and there give you a hug. Those who took a delight in attending public executions did so at their own peril. A Mr. Bush, who was standing in frontof the Old Bailey when Cooper was hanged, was hustled by several men, who first forced his hands up over his head, then unbuttoned his coat and stole his watch.
In every case, whether the victim resisted or surrendered, he was nearly certain to be shamefully ill-used. Now and then the biter was bitten, as when three men fell upon a certain foreign gentleman who carried a sword, and was a master of the art of self-defence; or when another, who knew how to hit out, was attacked by two ruffians, both of whom he knocked down. But as a general rule the victim suffered tortures. When down on the ground, as often as not he was kicked about the face and head, usually with savage violence; his teeth were knocked down his throat, his eyes closed, and he was left insensible, streaming with blood.
In most cases, there was every appearance that the outrage was deliberately planned beforehand. There were accomplices—women sometimes; and all were banded together like Hindoos sworn to the practice of "Thuggee." For months these crimes continued to be prevalent. Every morning's news chronicled "more outrages in the streets;" until, as the fogs of November settled down on the devoted heads of the honest inhabitants of London, men's hearts failed them for fear, and life in sequestered streets or retired suburban villas seemed hardly worth an hour's purchase. Every journal teemed with complaints;Punchtook up the question withgrim humour; at the theatres audiences roared at some amusing actor, then shuddered to think they had still to get home after the play was over.
At length the horrors of garroting culminated in the arraignment of a crowd of such offenders in one batch at the central criminal court. There were twenty-seven of them. The cases of all bore a certain family likeness: though differing somewhat in detail, there was in each the same insidious method of attack, followed by the same brutality and wanton violence. Speaking to the most hardened, the judge, Baron Bramwell, said, as he passed sentence, that it was his belief that they were "utterly destitute of morality, shame, religion, or pity, and that if they were let loose they would do what any savage animal would do, namely, prey upon their fellows." Therefore he was resolved to keep them out of mischief as long as he possibly could. All got heavy sentences, ranging from "life" downward, and all were consigned to prison, where they are still well remembered—strong, able-bodied, determined looking scoundrels; top-sawyers in the trade of thieving, ready for any kind of daring work, treating their incarceration with the utmost contempt, as indeed they might, for it was nothing new to them. One or two had graduated in crime during the days of the Penitentiary; but neither Mr. Nihil, then the chaplain-governor, nor any one else had succeeded in reforming them. One of them, Leats, had actually at one time been a prisonofficer, a warder. Formerly a soldier in the marines, his career had been checkered. He had been present at the siege of St. Jean d'Acre, and was at that time servant to the admiral, through whom he obtained a situation at Millbank, from which he was soon dismissed for drunkenness. After this he went rapidly to the bad; was caught, and sentenced for obtaining goods under false pretences, next for robbing a lady at Richmond Park, and now for the third time he entered prison as a garroter. Although they maintained throughout, from the moment of their capture, in the dock and after sentence, an insolent and defiant demeanour, yet in the prison these murderous rogues conducted themselves fairly well; only two of them got into serious trouble. These were Dixon and another, Needham, who together made a vigorous attempt to escape. Dixon cut out, by means of a sharpened nail, the panel in his cell door, unbolted it, got out, and then set Needham also free. Their idea was to surprise the night patrol, and seize his keys. With this object they concealed themselves behind a passage door, and as he appeared struck him behind the ear. Fortunately the blow fell light, and the officer turned to grapple with the prisoners.
Such were the men, and such the work they did. Was it strange that the public should complain of a system of penal repression which left them to the tender mercies of ruffians like these? Transportation had been abandoned and what had been giventhem in exchange? A system which, as administered, had completely failed. It may have been a necessity, but it clearly had not been a success. They might perhaps be compelled to retain, or even to extend it; but its administration must be altered. As it was it had no terrors whatever for the evil-doer, while it gave but little protection to society. So said theTimes; and it spared no pains to support its views with tangible evidence. Its columns teemed with letters on the subject, and special correspondents visited the chief convict establishments to spy out their nakedness and report their inefficacy as places for the punishment of criminals. Convicts, it was agreed on all sides, quite scoffed at the terrors of penal servitude. Barring the loss of actual liberty, which is doubtless the dearer to a man the closer he approaches to a lower species of animal, the convict prison was made so comfortable to the convict that he was loth to leave it, and hardly dreaded to return. Well-housed, well-fed, with labour just sufficient to insure good digestion and a healthy circulation; debarred only by a fiction of the luxuries he chiefly loved; let free from prison as soon as he chose to evince signs of amendment, a convict was altogether master of the situation. So said the critics. Penal servitude was like going down into the country after "the season." A little slow, perhaps; but very healthy and re-invigorating after a racket in town—just the discipline, in fact, to which men careful of themselves are readyto submit for a time, so as to issue forth afterwards braced and strengthened for a fresh campaign of pleasure. In these retired residences there was rest for the tired thief, for the burglar whose nerves had suffered, and for the playful miscreant who had been able only to half kill his victim, and who wished to recruit his strength. Here they found congenial society, such as a man meets at his club: others of his own set, with whom he could chat about the past, or concoct new plans for the future. His creature comforts were well looked after; he never worked as free labourers did, in the rain; and if, by mischance, he wet his feet, there were dry stockings for him on his return to his cosy well-warmed cell. If he had any special "whims" which called for gratification, an attentive official almost forestalled his wish. The leading feature of the whole system was to keep the convict comfortable and contented.
All this, and more, the panic-stricken public, speaking through the press, found fault with. Reform was called for, and immediate reform. The usual panacea was prescribed, a royal commission, which was that of 1863, long famous in British records as paving the way for the system of secondary punishment which, with various modifications, has existed to the present day. It was admitted on undoubted evidence that the régime established by Sir Joshua Jebb erred on the side of overmuch tenderness to the criminal. Far-seeing and able aswas Sir Joshua Jebb, however skilful and capable as an administrator, on one point he was weak. It was an amiable weakness, but it did both himself and his system incalculable harm. He had formed too high an opinion of the criminal class; he was too hopeful, too ready to accept the shadow for the substance, to be satisfied with promise rather than performance, and to view the outward whitewashed semblance of purity for the radical transformation of the inner man. This was the key-note of his system, and this, as time passed, grew and gained strength, till at least there was some semblance of truth in the allegations so freely made by his opponents. It became known, beyond contradiction, that the diet in those days was far too generous; that the care taken of the convicts was tender to the extent of ridiculous coddling; that the labour exacted was far below the amount that each might be expected reasonably to perform. These facts are fully borne out by the traditions of the department itself. Old officers have told me that in all the prisons discipline was almost a dead letter. The convicts themselves ruled the roost. They did not break away, because there were troops at hand who would shoot them down; but otherwise they did just what they pleased. Their warders, taking their cue from the supreme power, sought to humour them into obedience by civil speeches rather than by firmness and resolution. The officers were afraid to enforce their orders, and the convicts saw that they were afraid.Men who are over-fed, if they are also idle, are sure to prove untamable and run riot. Some of the scenes at the convict prisons were disgraceful, almost rivalling, at times, the anarchy and disorder of Norfolk Island. That the convicts were thus insolent and insubordinate was undoubtedly due to the petting and pampering they received. But another cause was the unsettled, dissatisfied spirit evoked by several successive alterations in the law—alterations which it was absolutely necessary to make, but which none the less produced unevenness of treatment between various classes of prisoners.
The net result was stated in the report, to the effect that the system was clearly not sufficiently dreaded by those who had undergone it, or by the criminal classes in general. The number of re-convictions, they thought, proved this; moreover, the report continues, "the accounts given of penal servitude by discharged convicts, and the fact that they generally come back so soon to their original haunts, tends to prevent its being regarded with fear by their associates. Indeed, in some (though doubtless exceptional) cases, crimes have been committed for the sole purpose of obtaining the advantages which the offenders have supposed a sentence of penal servitude to confer." The system therefore stood condemned, and the commissioners attributed its shortcomings in a minor degree to defects in the discipline maintained, but thought theblame lay really in the shortness of the terms of imprisonment awarded in the courts of law.
To speak first of the latter point: the commissioners reported that there had been a notable reduction for some years previous in the length of sentences, and to make them still lighter a remission of time was granted under the new rules. It was a curious fact that the recent increase of crime had corresponded in point of date with the discharge of prisoners who were first sentenced for short terms under the Act of 1857, and was probably mainly attributable to their release from custody. They had come out unchastened. "The discipline to which convicts are subjected," declared the commission, "does not produce its proper effect in short periods of punishment."
Next as to the discipline. It was clearly a mistake to lay so much stress on conduct only. It was wrong, too, that the convicts should be allowed to earn enormous "gratuities," the cash presents handed over to them upon discharge. Many left prison with £30, £40, sometimes £80, in their pockets. The effect of this was to make a sentence of penal servitude an object of desire, rather than of apprehension. Besides, the longer a man's sentence—presumably, therefore, the greater his crime—the larger the sum he was entitled to take away with him. Again, the measures to keep the prisoners in submission were far too mild. Punishment did not follow fast enough on acts of violenceand aggravated misconduct. The infliction of corporal punishment was too restricted, and the "cat" used was too light. There should be more power to use it and greater promptitude in its infliction. Then came the question of work and diet; but on these points the committee spoke with less confidence. Last of all, there was an entire absence of supervision of those who were at large on ticket-of-leave.
Having enunciated these propositions, the commissioners recommended certain important changes in the manner of carrying out penal servitude, chief among which were:
That in future no sentence should be passed of less than seven years.
That re-convicted criminals should be treated more severely than others.
That convicts, after enduring separate imprisonment for nine months, should pass on to public works, where they might be permitted to earn by industry and good conduct an abridgment of a part of their imprisonment.
That all males, if possible, should be sent to Western Australia during the latter part of their sentences, "it being highly desirable to send convicts, under proper regulations and without disguise, to a thinly peopled colony, where they may be removed from their former temptations, where they will be sure of having the means of maintaining themselves by their industry if inclined to doso, and where facilities exist for keeping them under more effective control than is practicable in this country with its great cities and large population."
That all who were unfit to go, and, gaining a remission of sentence, were discharged at home, should while on license be subjected to close supervision by the police.
Such was the substance of the report. But it is right to mention here that the commissioners were not quite unanimous in the conclusions arrived at. Two of them, Mr. Henley and the Lord Chief Justice, would not sign the report. Mr. Childers put his name to it, but under protest. He could not agree to the proposals as to transportation. His view was that of Australia, and he was of opinion that "the measures recommended—while costly to the country and odious to her colonies—would at best afford only a brief delay in the solution of a question daily becoming more difficult."
By far the most important of the dissentient voices was that of Sir Alexander Cockburn, the Lord Chief Justice, who appended to the report a long memorandum giving his reasons for not concurring in it. After a careful perusal of this memorandum any one would, I think, be ready to concede that the Lord Chief Justice was nearer the mark than his colleagues. They hesitated to admit that the penal system was entirely defective. Sir Alexander Cockburn had no doubt of it, andmaintained that the same impression was pretty generally abroad. But if there were faults in it, said the commissioners, then the administration of the law was to blame; it was too lenient. To this the Lord Chief Justice would by no means agree. The leniency of the judges, as it had shown itself of late, was nothing. "The spirit in which the law is administered," he observed, "is not the growth of yesterday. It has arisen gradually out of the more humane and merciful disposition of men's minds in modern times, whereby punishments inflicted without scruple in former days would now be regarded as cruel and inhuman." No; the inefficacy of penal servitude did not lie in the shortness or inequality of sentences, but in the manner in which the punishment was inflicted. "Moderate labour, ample diet, substantial gratuities," he maintained, "are hardly calculated to produce on the mind of the criminal that salutary dread of the recurrence of the punishment which may be the means of deterring him, and, through his example, others from the commission of crime."
And then the Lord Chief Justice proceeded to put forth the following pregnant sentences, which I quote in full. In taking up the question of punishment, he says, "It is necessary to bear in mind what are the purposes for which the punishment of offenders takes place. These purposes are twofold: the first, that of deterring others exposed to similar temptations from the commission of crime; thesecond, the reformation of the criminal himself. The first is the primary and more important object: for though society has, doubtless, a strong interest in the reformation of the criminal, and his consequent indisposition to crime, yet the result is here confined to the individual offender; while the effect of punishment as deterring from crime, extends, not only to the party suffering the punishment, but to all who may be in the habit of committing crime, or who may be tempted to fall into it. Moreover, the reformation of the offender is in the highest degree speculative and uncertain, and its permanency in the face of renewed temptation exceedingly precarious. On the other hand, the impression produced by suffering inflicted as the punishment of crime, and the fear of its repetition, are far more likely to be lasting, and much more likely to counteract the tendency to the renewal of criminal habits. It is on the assumption that punishment will have the effect of deterring from crime, that its infliction can alone be justified; its proper and legitimate purpose being not to avenge crime but to prevent it.
"The experience of mankind has shown that though crime will always exist to a certain extent, it may be kept within given bounds by the example of punishment. This result it is the business of the lawgiver to accomplish by annexing to each offence the degree of punishment calculated to repress it. More than this would be a waste of somuch human suffering; but to apply less, out of consideration for the criminal, is to sacrifice the interests of society to a misplaced tenderness towards those who offend against its laws. Wisdom and humanity no doubt alike suggest that, if, consistently with this primary purpose, the reformation of the criminal can be brought about, no means should be omitted by which so desirable an end can be achieved. But this, the subsidiary purpose of penal discipline, should be kept in due subordination to its primary and principal one. And it may well be doubted whether, in recent times, the humane and praiseworthy desire to reform and restore the fallen criminal may not have produced too great a tendency to forget that the protection of society should be the first consideration of the lawgiver."
By far the most important improvement that followed this report was the adoption of the "mark system;" in other words, of a method by which remission was to be regulated, not by conduct as heretofore, but solely by labour actually performed. For it must be understood that the commissioners unhesitatingly accepted the principle of remissions. In this they were at issue with the Lord Chief Justice, who thought that no prisoner should escape one particle of the whole sentence laid upon him by the judge. "It was most material," he said, "to the full efficiency of punishment that its infliction should be certain." The door was opened to doubtand uncertainty the moment the precise term of the sentence was interfered with.
The objection was cogent if the remissions were to be granted in a haphazard, capricious fashion and not by regular rule. But surely, if the scale were drawn up on a regular plan and worked without deviation, a sentence with remission might be just as certain as one without. The former might, perhaps, be shorter than the latter—the judges, being perfectly aware of the possible remission, would regulate their sentences in proportion to this abridgment. And, on the other hand, there was a clear and distinct gain to be expected from the practice of remitting sentences. This was fully recognised by the commissioners, who considered the hope of earning some remission the most powerful incentive to industry and good conduct which could be brought to act upon the minds of prisoners.
The commissioners perhaps laid more stress on good conduct than was absolutely imperative, although they pointed out, very pertinently, that "good conduct in a prison (apart from industry) can consist only in abstaining from misconduct, which gives no just claim for reward." But this harping upon good conduct was a weak point in their armour which the Lord Chief Justice quickly discovered. He would not admit the necessity for thus coaxing convicts into obedience by promising them an earlier release if they behaved well. That was no argument, he said, for remissions.Discipline ought to be strong enough to be independent of such questionable support. "I can see no reason to think," he continues,—"considering the powers of coercion, discipline, and reduction of diet, possessed by the prison authorities—that, by the application of firmness and determination with a sufficient force of officers, convicts, especially if not massed in too great numbers, but judiciously distributed, may not be kept under perfect control and discipline."
No doubt the commissioners over-estimated the necessity of remission as a means of insuring good conduct; but they were clearly in the right in recommending the principle as a certain incentive to industry. The experience, both of this and of other countries, has demonstrated that it is impossible to compel convicts to work hard by mere coercion, the attempt to do so having invariably failed, while it has produced a brutalising effect on their minds and increased their previous aversion to labour. On this ground the late Captain Maconochie many years ago recommended that the punishment to be inflicted on criminals should be measured, not by time, but by the amount of labour they should be compelled to perform before regaining their freedom; and he devised an ingenious mode of recording their daily industry by marks, for the purpose of determining when they should have a right to their discharge.
Captain Maconochie himself experimented on hisown suggestions in Norfolk Island, but not with any great success. The state of Norfolk Island, indeed, was never such as to encourage experiments of any kind. It was really reserved for the officials who superintended the working of transportation in Western Australia to give the system its first practically successful trial. There a convict was allowed to earn by each day's labour a number of marks, and as soon as they amounted to a total previously calculated according to his sentence, he was granted a ticket-of-leave. Industry became the test, and not good conduct; the latter was only recognised by making misconduct carry with it a forfeiture of some of the marks already earned by industry.
The convict's early release was no longer a matter of certainty provided only that he avoided certain acts of rebellion, but it was made contingent on something he had to earn. His fate rested in his own hands; it was not to depend upon an opinion of his character formed by others. The success which was shown to have attended the adoption of this principle in Western Australia has been equally apparent in Great Britain. The mark system is the keystone, the mainspring of the latest British method of dealing with convicts, and the valuable results which have grown out of it, as now clearly apparent, will be set forth presently in the final chapter of this volume.
Penal exile in favour with other nations—Systems of France, Italy, Spain and Portugal—Earliest French ventures—Guiana a fiasco—High sounding names—Renewed attempt—Settlement made in New Caledonia in 1864—Capital at Noumea—Convict population increases—Noumea in 1888—Results of convict labour meagre—Loose discipline and low moral tone—Agricultural settlements—Life at the smaller stations—Arab convicts—Enforced labour unremunerative—Delay in development—The emancipists—Same warfare with free settlers as in Australia—A later view—Visited by Mr. George Griffith in 1900—Free immigrants refuse to remain—Present condition proof of failure of penal exile.
Penal exile in favour with other nations—Systems of France, Italy, Spain and Portugal—Earliest French ventures—Guiana a fiasco—High sounding names—Renewed attempt—Settlement made in New Caledonia in 1864—Capital at Noumea—Convict population increases—Noumea in 1888—Results of convict labour meagre—Loose discipline and low moral tone—Agricultural settlements—Life at the smaller stations—Arab convicts—Enforced labour unremunerative—Delay in development—The emancipists—Same warfare with free settlers as in Australia—A later view—Visited by Mr. George Griffith in 1900—Free immigrants refuse to remain—Present condition proof of failure of penal exile.
The vast and costly efforts of Great Britain to make use of exile as the penalty for crime, and the strange, unlooked for results achieved, have been set forth. These efforts were undoubtedly successful, although not in the manner expected. To add a great colony to the British Empire was no small feat, even though the sources were impure and the foundations laid by the dregs of society. But the gain was some compensation for the means adopted. In any case, the convict stigma has long since been washed out by honest industry and reputable development. A vast territory, richly endowed,offered special advantages to an enterprising people with the genius of colonisation. Other nations, who overlooked the difficulties faced and overcome by England, have endeavoured to follow in her footsteps, and have made but little progress. France, as we shall see, has gone to great lengths in the practice of deportation, but to no purpose. Portugal still transports her criminals to the African colony of Angola, where the system is established on a small scale and has exhibited no glaring defects. Italy has long favoured the formation of criminal colonies on the many islands that surround her coast, and has removed numbers of prisoners to agricultural stations at Sardinia, to Pianosa and Gorgona in the Tuscan Archipelago, as well as to Monte Cristo and Capraja. Spain had a penal settlement at Ceuta on the north African shore as far back as the fifteenth century, and has more recently added large stations at Melilla and Alhucemas. Spanish experience in convict colonies is said to be satisfactory, but the conditions are much the same as in Australia,—no better, if no worse.
The efforts of France to found penal colonies range far back into history. They date from a period long antecedent to the latest craze for colonial aggrandisement. The very first attempt to sow the seeds of a prosperous community with the failures of society was in 1763, when the colonisation of French Guiana, already often attempted without success, was again tried on an ambitiousscale. The project failed miserably. An expedition fourteen thousand strong, recruited mainly from the scum and sweepings of the streets of Paris, melted away within a year, and starvation carried off all whom the deadly climate spared. A second similar experiment was tried in 1766, with a like disastrous result. No serious importance could be attached to the colonising efforts of the victims exiled to Guiana by the revolutionary tribunals. Barely half the number survived the voyage, and the balance were in no condition to act as pioneers. The records of French Guiana are full of such fiascos, the most unsuccessful of which was the philanthropic attempt of the Baron Milius, in 1823, to establish a penal colony on the banks of the Mana, by the marriage and expatriation of habitual criminals,recidivistes, and degraded women,—a most ill-judged undertaking, speedily productive of ghastly horrors.
After this, penal colonisation seems to have fallen into disfavour with France. Not only was it not renewed, but the principle of criminal deportation, of exile as a penalty, was formally condemned in 1847, both by such eminent publicists as MM. Lucas, De Beaumont and De Tocqueville, and by the government of the hour. Yet within a few years the practice was suddenly restored. To the new men in power there was probably something attractive in the theory of transportation, as may be seen from the high-sounding phrases thataccompanied their decrees. The idea was not merely to banish the dangerous social elements to a distant soil: the young republic wished to prove that "humanity presided over all its actions." Deportation, with the disciplinary processes that surrounded it, was expected to bring about the moral regeneration of those subjected to it; the criminal would be transformed into a useful citizen; no longer a terror in his old home, he would aid the development of and become a positive benefactor to the new. The government was, indeed, so fascinated by the prospective advantages of transportation to the convicts themselves, that it expected them to accept it as a boon. Registers were opened at all thebagnes, or seaport convict-stations, on which prisoners might inscribe their names as volunteers for the high favour of removal to the promised land beyond the seas. The philanthropic wish to benefit the exile was not, however, the sole object of the government, as may be seen in various articles in the decrees. The hope of founding substantial colonial possessions was not disguised. The convict might benefit by expatriation, but so would his new country, and to a greater degree. He went out, in a measure, for his own good; he remained, perforce, for that of the community. It was ruled that even when emancipated he was to be kept in the colony; those sentenced for eight years and less must spend there a second period as long as the original sentence; those sentencedfor more than eight years must remain in the colony for life. Their labour and their best energies were thus impounded for the general good, in the sanguine expectation that they were being utilised in the progress and development of French colonisation.
The revival of transportation was formally promulgated by the law of May, 1854, which declared that thereafter the punishment oftravaux forcésshould be undergone in establishments created in a French colonial possession other than Algeria. As the only available outlet at this time was French Guiana, this tropical colony alone was adopted as a convict receptacle. In doing so, the very first principles of penal legislation were ignored. To consign even convicts to a pestilential climate, and expand the lesser penalty into capital punishment, was a monstrous and illegal misuse of power. Exile to French Guiana meant nearly certain death. For three years every attempt to colonise the country had ended in disaster. Yet the government of Napoleon III accepted deportation with a light heart and on the most extended scale.
The French government, slow to accept the evidence of facts, has never abandoned deportation to Guiana. But it is no longer sanguine of success, and the attempt to colonise is continued with other than native-born Frenchmen. The total convict population of Guiana, as shown in recent French official returns, had dwindled down to 3,441, andof these barely a thousand were Europeans; the rest were Arabs from Algeria, and Annamites, Asiatic blacks from the new French possessions in Cochin-China and Tonquin. The Europeans were made up, in nearly equal proportions, of convicts still undergoing sentence, and emancipists compelled to reside in the colony. Large numbers of both classes are now retained in the penitentiaries on the seacoast, where they can be constantly employed at industrial labour under cover; as at Cayenne, the capital, where vast administrative establishments exist, built at great outlay in more prosperous times.
The French government has sought by every means to encourage the young settlement of Saint Laurent, but its progress has always been disappointing. It has been dependent for some years past upon the Arab recruits, and the French officials already sorrowfully confess that members of the Arab race transplanted to French Guiana are not of the stuff to make good colonists. They are idle, discontented, and a prey to unceasing homesickness. A great effort has been made by the administration to attach the Arab emigrant to the land of exile by transporting thither—I use the words of a late report—"the image of the Arab family, its customs, habits and religion." Marriages are encouraged with Arab women according to the Mussulman law. But little success has attended these well-meant efforts. The Arab soon developsnomadic instincts; he will not stick to one spot, but wanders abroad in search of work which will give him the means of a speedy return to Algeria. Not seldom he shows a clean pair of heels. Escapes in French Guiana have been a source of trouble and annoyance to the authorities. The total number of convicts who had escaped or disappeared from French Guiana between 1852 and 1883 was 3,146; and since Arabs have been sent there, they have supplied the largest proportion of fugitives. They went off in bands; nothing could check them; no surveillance was effective. The Government cutters cruising along the mouth of the river were easily evaded, and the country boats once gained, they were soon out of the colony. A report from the governor-general of Algeria in 1890 states that a great cause of the insecurity of Algeria is the presence in the colony of large numbers of Arab convicts who have escaped from Guiana and returned home. Hence transportation has little terrors for the Arab population, knowing how easily exile may be avoided.
A more remarkable case of escape was that of a French convict sent to Guiana, who was anxious to see the Paris Exposition of 1889. He became possessed of some eight hundred francs through successful gambling, and spent six hundred in taking passage to Amsterdam; he embarked without let or hindrance and went direct to Paris on arrival. He was present at the opening of theexposition, where he stood not far from the president of the republic. Later on he was captured for a fresh offence, and taken to one of the large Paris prisons, where he was at once recognised as a convict exiled not long before to Cayenne. He admitted the charge; he had gratified his wish, had enjoyedquelques bons moments, and was satisfied to go back to Guiana, as he would not have to pay his own passage out. It was, in fact, established beyond question that it was easier to escape from Cayenne, and even New Caledonia, than from amaison centralein the department of the Seine.
It must be sufficiently plain from the foregoing facts that the attempts to colonise French Guiana with convicts have ended in more or less disheartening failure. Even in sections where the climate was not fatal to Europeans, the conditions of life were opposed to the growth of a prosperous community. There was little increase of population possible. The ill-assorted marriages of convicts with degraded women of their own class proved generally unproductive. Infant mortality was excessive; children born in the colony could never be reared. The substitution of Arabs for Europeans has been accompanied, as I have shown, with little more success. Now, according to a late report of the French Colonial Office, Annamite convicts, hitherto retained in their own country for the completion of various important colonial works, are sent to French Guiana. "The Annamite," saysthe report hopefully, "is a good agriculturist; he can face the climate of Guiana without danger, and the convicts of this race will doubtless largely contribute to the development and cultivation of the colony."
The melancholy miscarriage of deportation to French Guiana did not suffice to condemn it. The locality was only at fault, it was thought; the system deserved a fuller and fairer trial. France now possessed a better site for experiment, a territory in those same southern seas where English transportation had so greatly prospered. New Caledonia was annexed to France in 1853, but its colonisation had proceeded slowly, and there was only a handful of white population when the first shipload of convicts disembarked in 1864. A town, at this time little better than a standing camp, was planted at Noumea, a spot chosen for its capabilities for defence rather than its physical advantages. It had no natural water supply, and the land around was barren. Exactly opposite lay the little island of Nou, a natural breakwater to the Bay of Noumea, well-watered, fertile, and commanded by the guns of the mainland, and here the first convict depot was established. The earliest work of these convict pioneers was to build a prison-house and to prepare for the reception of new drafts. The labour was not severe, the discipline by no means irksome, and some progress was made. Prison buildings rose upon the island of Nou; a portionof the surrounding land was brought under cultivation, and outwardly all went well. As years passed, the prison population gradually increased. In 1867 the average total was six hundred; in the following year it had increased to 1,554, after which the yearly gain was continuous. Various causes contributed to this, among them the gradual abolition of thebagnesor convict stations at the French arsenals, and the wholesale condemnation of Communists, many of whom were deported to New Caledonia. In 1874 the convict population exceeded five thousand. In 1880 it had risen to eight thousand; and according to recent published official returns, the effective population, taking convicts and emancipists together, numbered nearly ten thousand. From May, 1864, to December 31, 1883, a total of 15,209 convicts had been transported to New Caledonia.
The development of the young colony was slow. Efforts were chiefly concentrated upon the penitentiary island, and the convict labour was but little utilised on the mainland. Those public works so indispensable to the growth and prosperity of the settlement were neglected. The construction of highroads was never attempted on any comprehensive scale, and, notwithstanding the force of workmen available, Noumea, the capital, was not enriched with useful buildings or rendered independent of its physical defects. Henri Rochefort, who saw it in 1872, ridicules its pretensions to becalled a town. It might have been built of old biscuit-boxes, he said; imposing streets named from some book of battles—the Rue Magenta and the Rue Sebastopol, the Rue Inkerman and the Avenue de l'Alma—were mere tracks sparsely dotted with huts, single-storied and unpretending. The town lay at the bottom of a basin surrounded by small hills. "It was like a cistern in wet weather, and in the hot season it might be the crater of a volcano." A great mound, the Butte Conneau, blocked up the mouth of the port and inconveniently impeded traffic. Water was still scarce, and, according to Rochefort, a barrel of it would be the most acceptable present to any inhabitant of "Elephantiasopolis," as he christened Noumea from the endemic skin affections. It took ten or a dozen years to improve Noumea. But by 1877 the Butte Conneau had been removed and levelled. About the same time an aqueduct 8000 metres long was completed, which brought water to the capital from Port de France and Yahoué. A number of more or less ambitious residences had also been erected: a governor's house, bishop's palace, administrative offices, hospitals, and barracks for the troops.
A later account of Noumea is given by M. Verschuur, who visited the Antipodes in 1888-9, and spent some time in New Caledonia. On arrival he was at first much struck by the appearance of Noumea. He was agreeably impressed by thebrightness and gaiety of its aspect as compared with "the monotonous appearance of the little English towns" of Australia. Cafés and taverns were numerous; crowds of lively folk filled the streets through which he drove; and the well-built Government House, surrounded by pretty grounds, looked homelike. A closer inspection much modified his opinion. He remembered the large cities of the neighbouring island continent with their imposing architecture, their fine public gardens, and the prosperous home-like atmosphere pervading every part. "But now I found myself in a small town somewhat resembling those of the Antilles; the houses, which were all alike, were low and roughly built, often of wood. Some of them were no better than the huts of the backwoodsmen I had seen in the Australian bush. The shops were small, and the wares displayed were inferior in quality and of a mixed description. Toys hung side by side with saucepans and boots; calicoes and hats were framed by jams and spirit-bottles. The streets were badly kept and filthy; the roads outside the town had not been properly levelled and the numerous bogs made travelling after dark very dangerous. The only promenade was a public square planted with cocoanut palms, which gave little shade. The harbour was meagre, the quays small and inconvenient; but few ships can load or unload at the same time. If there is one colony more than another where public buildingmight be carried on at the least expense, it is certainly New Caledonia, with its hosts of convicts sentenced to 'hard labour.' In many of the places I had visited, the numerous fine public works had been executed at great cost; but here was a colony where labour would cost nothing and yet it is never utilised. It is a strange anomaly, and a singular waste of means, which might well be used for the advantage and progress of the colony."
According to M. Verschuur, the amount of work gotten out of the convicts was not very great. In his opinion France is maintaining in New Caledonia an "army of drones who find means of evading the labour to which they have been condemned. Many an honest, hard-working French peasant might envy the fate which the government reserves for that part of the population which is steeped in vice and crime. The law passed in 1854 prescribes that the convicts shall be kept to the most laborious works of the colony." As soon as he landed, M. Verschuur heard an excellent band playing in the public square. The bandsmen were all convicts, who played three times a week and practised the rest of the time. Men whose crimes had been the talk of all Paris were employed as gardeners, or in the easiest kind of work, smoking and chatting with their companions. The convicts work, nominally, eight hours a day; they sleep another eight; and then there still remains another eight in which they are absolutely idle. They doless than a quarter of the daily work of an ordinary labourer. In the stone yard they simply work when they see the warder is observing them. "I noticed a gang one day just outside Noumea; out of the sixteen men, twelve were calmly seated on the heap of stones they were supposed to be breaking, rolling cigarettes, and talking; the remaining four made a stroke now and then, when the warder chanced to glance that way. Several times, when travelling in the interior of the country, I have come upon well-known murderers, living in service with the unsuspecting inhabitants." A certain number were regularly employed within the prison of Nou, where M. Verschuur saw them engaged as shoemakers, carpenters, and at the blacksmith's forge. All were busily at work, yet he was certain that before he entered with the prison director, not a soul was doing anything. Great laxity, however, prevailed in these shops. A convict carpenter was permitted to have access to the stores of turpentine and spirits in the workshop, with which abominable mixture he managed to get horribly drunk. Extraordinary license was allowed in another direction. A convict quarrelled with and murdered a comrade; they had been partners in a store kept inside the prison for the sale of coffee, tobacco and spirits. The deeds of partnership had been legally drawn up, and were actually engrossed upon the official paper of the prison. It may be mentioned that this murderer had been twice guilty of murderbefore and was yet allowed to keep a knife in his possession, which he was seen to sharpen quite unrestrained on the very morning of the last crime.
The influx of convicts produced many projects for their employment over and above the development of Noumea. Following the practice that had prevailed in Guiana, agricultural settlements, half farm, half prison, were established at various points on the mainland. One of the first of these was at Bourail, about a hundred miles from the capital. Another was founded nearer home at Ourail, on the mouth of the Foa. A third was at Canala, on the opposite and northern shore of the island. A fourth was at its eastern end, in the Bay of Prony. Besides these a number of smaller stations were distributed at various points through the colony. The works undertaken were everywhere much of the same kind. At Bourail the sugar cane was cultivated, and various vegetables; at Canala, rice, maize and coffee; at Ourail the land was poor, and the settlement was moved further up the river to Fonway, where the raising of tobacco, and the cultivation of fruit trees and the quinine bush were attempted; at the Bay of Prony the convicts became woodcutters to supply fuel for the rest of the colony.
The inner life of one of the smaller stations, the labour camp of Saint Louis, has been graphically described by M. Mayer, a political transport, whopublished the "Souvenirs d'un Deporté," relating his personal experiences, on his return to France. This camp consisted of 124 convicts, a heterogeneous collection, herded together indiscriminately in the wretchedcases, or straw-thatched huts, the prevailing prison architecture of New Caledonia. Among these, of whom forty were political and non-criminal convicts, there were twenty-six Arabs, four Chinamen and two negroes. Several notorious desperadoes, Frenchmen born, were associated with the rest. One had been at the head of a band of poisoners of Marseilles; another, who had murdered a girl in Paris, had been arrested and sentenced during the Commune by a Communist commissary, who, by a strange fate, was now his comrade convict in this same camp of Saint Louis. Except for the scantiness of diet and the enforced association with the worst criminals, M. Mayer did not find the work hard. The hours of labour varied; the daily minimum was eight, the maximum from ten to twelve. But the work performed was desultory and generally unproductive. The principal aim was to clear the land by removing the rocks, which were afterward broken up for road-making material. The supervision was lax and ineffective; the few warders were most active in misappropriating rations. The chief warder himself, who had a fine garden and poultry yard, stole the wine and soft bread issued for the sick. Many convicts eked out their meagre fare by cookingroots and wild fruits,pommes de lianesand Caledonian saffron.
The lot of the Arabs was most enviable; they monopolised all situations of trust. One was the quartermaster, another the chief cook, and others worked as carpenters, bootmakers, and blacksmiths. The baleful practice of putting one convict in authority over another, long condemned by enlightened prison legislators, was always in full force in New Caledonia. Strange to say, too, the French authorities preferred to choose their felon overseers from an alien race. The Arabs seem to have found most favour with their masters, although, if Mayer is to be believed, these Arab officials were all fierce, untamed ruffians. Yet they were entrusted with great authority over their less fortunate comrades, and were especially esteemed for the vigour with which they administered corporal punishment. Mayer has preserved the picture of one Algerian savage, six feet high, who went about seeking quarrels and striking his fellow convicts on the smallest excuse. This man was considered an artist with themartinet, or French cat-o'-nine-tails, and was said to be able to draw blood at the first stroke.
It is an admitted axiom in penal science that enforced labour is not easily made productive. Unless peculiar incentives to work, such as provided by the English mark system, are employed under a strict yet enlightened discipline, the results havealways been meagre and disappointing. As these conditions were absent from New Caledonia, the consequences are what might have been foreseen. Notwithstanding the very considerable efforts made and the vast quantity of convict labour always available, the colony still owns no great public works; while large and sustained efforts to develop its agricultural resources by the same means have also failed. No doubt the nature of the soil has been unfavourable.
New Caledonia, while not without its natural advantages, such as a nearly perfect climate, freedom from reptiles and animal life inimical to man, is not very richly endowed except in unprospected and undeveloped mineral wealth. The island consists of a rugged backbone of mountains clothed with dense forests and grooved with rushing torrents, along whose banks lie the only cultivable ground. A thin and sandy soil covers a substratum of hard rock, which makes but scanty return for the labour bestowed and serves best for pasturage. Hence the convict farms already referred to have never been profitably worked. Those especially of Bourail and Koe, the largest and most ambitious, show a positive loss. At the former only three and a half tons of sugar were turned out in one year by four hundred men, and ten years of toil had brought only fifty hectares of land into cultivation. At Koe, five years' receipts were valued at 50,000 francs, and the expenses for the same period justtrebled that sum. In 1883 the minister of marine approved the suppression of the penitentiary farms on the island of Nou and at Canala, and the limitation of the sugar cane cultivation at Bourail, on the ground that the returns were altogether inadequate to the outlay.
It was only too evident, as the outcome of early years, that efforts had been misdirected, and that the labour had been wasted and frittered away instead of being more usefully employed for the benefit of the whole colony. One signal instance of the shortcomings of the colonial administrators is shown by their neglect to develop the means of internal communication. It was not until 1883, that is to say, after nearly twenty years of colonial life, that road-making, that indispensable preliminary to development, was undertaken on any extensive scale. New Caledonia, an island 230 miles long and 50 miles broad, owned only 57 kilometres of road before the year 1882. It was Captain Pallu de la Barriere, a governor whose administration was severely criticised on account of his excessive humanitarianism, but whose views as regards the utilisation of convict labour were far-seeing, who removed this reproach. His idea was to substitute what he called movable camps for thebagnes sedentairesor permanent penitentiaries. He thought that the severest toil should be the lot of all convicts, at least at first; and this, he conceived, could be best compassed by employing them inroad-making, thus benefiting the colony while effectively punishing the convict. His whole scheme of organisation reads like a page from the despatches of British colonial governors some thirty years previous. The measures he proposed, his plans for housing the convicts and providing for their safe custody, were almost identical with those in force with the road-gangs of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. He was very hopeful; he had no fear of escapes or of aggravated misconduct scattered over the wide area which he now proposed to people with convict gangs. His intentions were no doubt excellent, but in the twenty years following the initiation of his scheme they have borne no very substantial fruit.
The colonial administration has found even less satisfaction in the emancipists than in the convicts still under restraint. The former are a great and increasing body, for whom work cannot easily be found. The hope that the labour markets of the colony would absorb a great proportion soon proved illusory. For some time past the free colonists, by no means a numerous class, have declined to employ emancipists, declaring that while they claimed the free man's wages they would not give the free man's work. The settlers preferred to import native labour from the neighbouring islands, especially the New Hebrides, thus coming into direct conflict with the authorities, who soon put their veto on such importation. The settlers were toldthat if they wanted hands they must seek them among the emancipists, and all protests were silenced by reminding the colonists that New Caledonia was a penal settlement and that if they lived there they must abide by its constitution. At this time there were some four or five thousand emancipists living as free charges, lodged, fed and clothed at the cost of the state, yet making absolutely no return. The greater number of these were kept in a military camp under some semblance of discipline, but undergoing little restraint beyond the prohibition to wander abroad, and within the limits of the camp the occupants could do as they pleased.
Later and more specific information is now at hand in the accounts brought back by an enterprising traveller, Mr. George Griffith, who visited New Caledonia in 1900. The penal colonisation undertaken by France with such philanthropic motives, and so sedulously carried out, has resulted in failure. The experience is the same as that of New South Wales and Tasmania; the penalty of banishment and penal exile inflicted upon the majority of convicts has been accomplished, but not the regeneration, to any appreciable extent, of the criminal classes. Their conversion into a prosperous community, self-reliant, self-supporting and able to stand alone, is still a vague, unrealised dream. All the conditions that favoured the growth of its great neighbour have been absent in New Caledonia, and it was hampered also by special disadvantages.There has been none of the steady influx of free settlers such as immigrated to Australia when first difficulties were removed, nor yet the amazing stimulus of the discovery of gold as on the near-by continent. Peculiar racial disadvantages have further impeded development.
The present state of New Caledonia affords abundant proof of the truth of this position. It will doubtless never advance to the rank of a first-class colony. It is still and must always be a prison house beyond sea peopled mainly by convicts past or present, by those in various stages of ameliorating change, but who cannot shake off the original taint, and the general low level is maintained by constant reinforcement of those who have it full upon them. To-day the larger part of the population of the colony is based upon the criminal element, which is divided into three principal classes: First, theforçats, or convicted prisoners still in a state of servitude; second, thelibérésor emancipists in semi-freedom, who emerge in due course from the first class, and, third, thereléguesor those sent from France to serve a sentence of perpetual exile. There is hope in the future for the first, partially attained freedom and approaching comfortable assurance for the second, but for the last named there is nothing but black despair. Life alone remains theirs, but with not the faintest prospect of remission or release.