FOOTNOTE:

FOOTNOTE:[1]A convict in Australia was always known by his name and the name of the ship in which he had come out.

[1]A convict in Australia was always known by his name and the name of the ship in which he had come out.

Convicts in public hands—How employed—Road parties—Chain gangs and the penal settlements—Life and labour in each—Classes of convicts—The emancipists—Many acquire great wealth—Irritation among the free settlers—Growing party pledged to abolish transportation—Deplorable state of the Colony—Crime prevalent—Drunkenness the besetting sin—Judge Burton's charge: "Transportation must cease"—Arguments against it.

In the latter part of the preceding chapter I have dealt with convicts in assignment. These of course did not comprise the whole number in the colony. Putting on one side the ticket-of-leave men,—who were still really convicts, though for the moment and during good behaviour masters of themselves,—and not including emancipists, who though, to all intents and purposes, men free as air, still carried a class-brand which generations only could efface—there were, in addition to the servants assigned to private individuals, a large body of convicts retained in the hands of the government of the colony. A certain proportion of these were men so chosen on arrival for satisfying certain demands, and therefore kept back from ordinary assignment because the government officials, so to speak, assigned them tothemselves. There were public works to be carried out, and the government was clearly as much entitled to share in the supply of convict labour as the settler. It was said that the condition of these convicts in government employ was always worse than those in private hands. About one fourth of the whole available number were thus appropriated for the colonial works. But over and above these, the government held the entire number of refuse convicts in the colonies. Every man who did not get on with his master; every man who committed himself, and was sentenced to undergo any correction greater than flogging or less than capital punishment, came back to government, and was by it disposed of in one of three ways: First, the road parties; second, the chain-gangs; and third, the penal settlements.

The road parties were employed either in Sydney itself and other towns, or along the many miles of roads wherever their services were required. Those at Sydney were lodged in the Hyde Park barracks, whence they issued forth daily to their work, under the charge of overseers, at the rate of one to every thirty men. These overseers were themselves convicts; chosen for the post as being active, intelligent, and perhaps outwardly more respectable than their fellows. Naturally the control of such overseers was not very vigilant. They were paid no wages, and had no remuneration but certain increased indulgences, such as an allowance of tobacco and otherminor luxuries. Hence they connived at the absence of any men who were disposed to forage in the town and run the risk of capture. If caught thieving, or as missing, the culprits were to take the consequences; but if all went well, they shared whatever they stole during the day with their complaisant overseer. Parties in the country were under similar management, but they were dispersed over such a very wide area that efficient supervision was even more difficult. The surveyor-general of the colony was the responsible head of the whole department; but under him the parties were actually worked by these overseers. The convicts were free to come and go almost as they pleased. Their dwellings were simple huts of bark, which presented no obstacles to egress after hours at night. In the day time they were equally unrestrained. They did odd jobs, if they pleased, for the neighbouring settlers, though under Sir Richard Bourke's assignment rules, which were promulgated in 1835, any settler who gave employment to convicts from the road parties thereupon forfeited all his assigned servants. Any artisan might earn money as blacksmith, carpenter, or cooper. Many others were engaged in the straw hat trade, a very favourite occupation for all the convicts. Great numbers, less industriously disposed, spent their time in stealing. A large proportion of the robberies which were so prevalent in the colony were to be traced to the men of these parties on the roads. They were highwaymen, neithermore nor less; and every settler far and near suffered from their depredations. Sometimes they went off in gangs, and, encamping by the side of the road, laid every passing team under contribution. Increased facilities were given for the commission of these crimes through the carelessness of the settlers themselves, when they were permitted to employ men from the road parties on Sundays or during leisure hours. Wages in cash were paid in return, and the door was thus open to drunkenness and the evils that follow in its train. Worse than this, at harvest time, when the road parties were eagerly drawn upon for the additional hands so urgently required, the settlers were in the habit of giving the men they had thus employed passes to rejoin the stations from which they had come. Of course the convicts did not hurry home, and of course, also, they did no little mischief while on their way.

The work that was done by these parties was certainly irksome in character. Breaking stones under a broiling sun is not an agreeable pastime. But the amount of labour performed was ludicrously small, and has been described by an eyewitness as a disgrace to those in charge. On the whole, therefore, the convicts of this class had no great cause of complaint. They had plenty of congenial society, even outside their own gangs, for they were not prevented from associating with the assigned servants around; their food was ample; and they had abundantopportunities for self-aggrandisement in the manner most agreeable to themselves. It was not strange, then, that idle, worthless servants in assignment greatly preferred service in the parties on the road.

Nevertheless, there were not wanting among the free residents intelligent persons who saw how the labour of these road parties might have been made really productive of great benefit to the colony. There was still plenty of work to be done in developing colonial resources: over and above the construction and repair of roads, they could have been usefully employed in the clearance of township lands, the widening and deepening of river beds, in quarrying, fortifying, and building piers. But to have accomplished these results, a system more complete than any that was even dreamed of then must have been indispensable. Success only could have come from regular effective supervision by a thoroughly trustworthy staff, and by carefully constructed prison accommodation, such as was provided later in carrying out public works by convict labour in Western Australia.

In the chain-gangs there actually was greater restraint, and some semblance of rigorous discipline. The convicts were relegated to this system of punishment as a general rule for colonial crimes, though at times new arrivals of a desperate character were also drafted into them at once. In these gangs the convicts were kept in close custody, and condemned to work which was really hard. There were somefew chain-gangs in Sydney, living on board a hulk, employed at the magazines on the island, and in improving the streets; but as a general rule they were to be found chiefly at out stations, or in the interior. They were guarded always by a detachment of troops, and when most efficiently organised were governed by a military officer, who was also a magistrate. Under him there was also a superintendent in charge of each stockade or barrack, with a staff of constables in the proportion of one to seventy-five convicts. The duties of the constables were analogous to those of warders in permanent prisons at home. The stockades were substantial buildings, in appearance somewhat similar to American log houses, but of greater strength, sufficient to preclude all possibility of escape. These stockades accommodated one hundred or more men each. They were of simple construction: the walls formed of timber, split into strong slabs, which rested in grooves at top and bottom; the roof was of timber also, covered with bark. In most cases the materials were found close to the spot, timber being everywhere plentiful; but it was possible to take down the stockade and remove the pieces to another locality if required. The prisoners were not badly fed, on flour, maize meal, and beef. Their clothing was two suits a year. They had medical attendance, and regular divine worship. Their beds were of plank, but there was no lack of bedding. The great hardships were the unremitting labour—at not less thanten hours daily, and in chains—leg-irons weighing six or seven pounds, which were never for a moment removed. So important were these irons considered, that it was the stockade superintendent's business to examine closely every prisoner's chains daily before the stockade was emptied for labour. In this way chiefly escapes were prevented, as the convict found himself rather too heavily handicapped to run, carrying with him several extra pounds of metal.

One other unpleasant feature at the stockades was the official "scourger," as he was called—a convict specially appointed to execute corporal punishment. He was not himself an "iron-gang" man, but came from assigned service together with the convicts' cooks and wardsmen required for the interior economy of the stockade. What with work unremitting, weighty chains that were never removed, isolation from the dissipation of the towns, the convict in the iron-gang was on no bed of roses. Nor could he, under the later régime, escape as easily as he had done heretofore. Sentries with loaded muskets guarded every exit, and they gave him only one chance to halt when summoned, before they fired. After two years' trial Sir Richard Bourke reported that his new system was eminently successful. By its assistance he was at length enabled to dispense altogether with the road parties without irons, which I have already described as being so fruitful of evil to the community at large. Another evil to whichI have not referred, and which was attributable to the slackness of control over these road parties and chain-gangs, was the existence of a class of desperadoes sufficiently well known to every reader—I mean the notorious "bushrangers" of the Australian colonies. Certain numbers of these were recruited from among the assigned servants, who absconded when they and their masters could not agree, but by far the greater proportion was furnished by the government gangs, escapes from which were for a long time frequent and generally successful. Whenever a man of courage and ability got away, he collected around him a band of brigands like himself; and then, for periods varying in length according to the nature of the pursuit, these villains subjected the whole neighbourhood to their depredations. They attacked chiefly the outlying huts and houses, but seldom large establishments. One case was known where some sixty men of a chain-gang had plotted to break out simultaneously and make for the bush. Thence they were to march on Macarthur's station, bent on pillage. Nothing came of this plot, because precautions were taken to meet it. But at other times bloody affrays were common enough between the bushrangers and the mounted police. Indeed, it was well known that unless a gang of these highwaymen was entirely exterminated there was no peace for the district in which they were at large. If one survivor escaped he soon became the nucleus of a new gang. Whatbetween attacks on dwelling-houses, and the daily stoppage on the highways of carts and wagons, the country generally was most insecure. People went about in fear of their lives.

The penal settlements contained, as a matter of course, the dregs of convictism. These settlements were the superlative degree of infamy. The convicts in the road parties and chain-gangs were bad enough, Heaven knows, but they were angels of light compared to those in the penal settlements. Offenders were not indeed transferred to these terrible receptacles till all other treatment had failed. When there, "it seemed," to quote Judge Burton's words, "that the heart of a man was taken from him, and that he was given the heart of a beast." It will not beseem me to go fully into all the details of these cesspools of iniquity, but I shall have to refer at some length further on to Norfolk Island, the worst of them all. The settlements used as penal by New South Wales were Moreton Bay and Norfolk Island; whereas Van Diemen's Land used Tasman's Peninsula. This place was cut off altogether from the settled districts, having only one communication—at Forestiers Peninsula—with the main island. On this neck of land, between Pirates' Bay and Norfolk Bay, stood an officer's guard; and besides his sentries, a chain of fierce dogs kept watch and ward from shore to shore. These dogs had been trained to give tongue at the slightest noise day or night. So successful was the guard they kept, thatonly two prisoners ever escaped from Port Arthur. One was recaptured, the other died in the woods. This station on Tasman's Peninsula had the great advantage that it was not, like Norfolk Island, distant several days' sail. Being but six hours from headquarters at Hobart, it was brought directly under the supervision of the governor and other officials.

I have now described the condition and style of life of all convicts, still such; of all, I mean, who were not yet nominally or actually free. The whole of these were comprised in the numbers at assigned service, in the road parties, chain-gangs, or penal settlements.

Next above them, on a sort of debatable land, free for the time being, but liable to degradation anew, stood the convict on ticket-of-leave. This expression and the practice to which it applies has been adopted into home legislation and language, but the term itself was a colonial invention. The first tickets were granted by Governor Phillip with the intention of instituting some stage intermediate between complete freedom and actual restraint. As time passed new orders varied the details; but the meaning of the term remained practically the same. The holder of a ticket-of-leave was a convicted felon, who had permission to be at large before the whole term of his sentence had actually expired.

At the top of the convict ladder were the emancipists, whose term of transportation was at an end,who were free to return to the land from whence they came, and begin life afresh, but who were never actually whitewashed in the colonies, or permitted to rise in the social scale to an equality with the free settler who had never broken the laws. We have seen how successive governors sought to bring the emancipists forward, and the heartburnings it occasioned. Their efforts were doubtless supported by the wealth and importance of many of the emancipist class; but it was on this account that the antagonism exhibited by the free population was the more unvarying and bitter. Many of the respectable inhabitants had been outstripped in the race for fortune by men who had arrived in the colony bearing the felon's brand; and the free settlers felt that in fighting against the pretensions of these ex-convicts they were fighting for very life. The position of the latter was so strong, that with the slightest success they would have swamped the former altogether. No doubt the injudicious tone of the emancipist press, and the flagrant conduct of many of the principal emancipists, drove the free settlers into opposition more strenuous than was absolutely required. A man who had been a convict was not necessarily to be taken by the hand and made much of from pure sentimental philanthropy. But neither, on the other hand, should he have been kept perpetually at a distance, and treated as an outcast forever. It was because the emancipists formed a body so powerful that their opponents were more or lessafraid of them, and stood really at bay, fighting with their backs to the wall. Not a little of this bitter hostility has survived to the present day. Even now, in the towns where transportation had effect, the convict element stands in a class apart; there are caste distinctions stronger than any in the mother country, of which the barriers are rarely, if ever, overpassed.

But beyond question, many of the emancipists throve. The pictures drawn of their wealth and prosperity may be a little exaggerated, but in their main outlines they were undoubtedly true. There was one who made a fortune of £45,000 in a year. Several others had incomes of £20,000. One or two of the largest shops in Sydney were owned by them. They had public-houses, and farms, and ships, and newspapers, and all the outward signs of material wealth. They spared no pains or cost to get gorgeous furniture and costly plate. They had grand carriages and good horses, and were fond of lavish and ostentatious expenditure. But with all this, low tastes prevailed. No one bought pictures or works of art: the only literature they valued was the "Newgate Calendar," and they preferred a prize-fight any day to an opera or a decent play. It was said, indeed, that the principal wealth of the colony was for a long time held in the hands of those emancipists. Honest people less successful in the race for money declared that these others made fortunes because they were quite unscrupulous. No doubtthe accusation held. One case was proved in which a certain shop undersold all others, simply because its owner, an ex-convict, was a receiver of stolen goods, which he naturally was able to retail at remarkably cheap rates. A number made their fortunes by dealing only with their fellow-convicts, whom a sort of freemasonry attracted always to convict shops. The practice, at one time prevalent, and to which I have already referred, of giving small grants of land to ticket-of-leave men, was another opening to convict shopkeepers and general dealers. These farmers came into Sydney to sell their produce. As there were no markets, certain individuals bought all that came, paying for the same in "property,"—in drink, that is to say, and other articles of consumption. The countrymen got drunk always, and stayed a day or two on the same spot: at last the landlord would ask if they knew how much they owed, and name the amount as £50. When they expressed surprise, he would tell them they had been too drunk to know what they were doing. Of course the victim was unable to pay, and had to sign a power of attorney, or paper binding himself to give up all his produce until the debt was cancelled. This fraud was repeated again and again, till all the man's property was pledged. Then he was sold up. One man had been known to drink away his farm of 100 acres in a single night. It was by carrying on this line of action that the emancipist already mentioned as worth £20,000 ayear became a large landed proprietor. But he was also a thrifty, careful man, from the time he had come out when almost a boy with one of the first fleets. He was a sober man, moreover; and when spirits were issued to the convicts employed in building at Parramatta, he saved his and sold it to his fellows. Then, putting by all the time he was a prisoner every shilling he could make, he was able when free to set up a public-house, and buy a horse and gig which he let for hire. One day when his trap was wanted he drove it himself, and had as "fare" an ex-convict woman who owned a little property—some two or three hundred pounds. This woman he married, and thus little by little increased his possessions.

On the whole it was not strange that there should be fierce warfare between the better classes and the emancipists as a body. Beyond doubt, the emancipists formed a very corrupting element in general society. They looked with leniency on men who had committed serious crimes, and welcomed those whom honest people naturally shunned. One of the sorest points of contention was the admission of these emancipists to serve on juries in criminal and other trials. It was not alone that they leaned to the side of the accused, and could not, even in cases clearly proved, be persuaded to convict; but respectable people objected to be herded with them in the same panel. The question was warmly argued. Petitions were presented for and against; and thisof itself showed the extent to which the convict element arrogated power to itself. One petition praying for the abolition of the practice was signed by the clergy, landowners, merchants, and gentry generally; while the counter petition was prepared and signed mostly by men on ticket-of-leave. Irritated, undoubtedly, by the general state of affairs, a party among the free settlers grew up, and daily gained strength, which was pledged to the abolition of transportation.

Truly the state of New South Wales was at that time terrible. Crime was extraordinarily prevalent. Morals were loose and drunkenness was the besetting sin of the colony. It affected all classes. Drunken people were to be seen in all directions, men and women fighting in the streets, and riotous conduct everywhere. At the Rocks—the Seven Dials of Sydney—scenes of debauchery were repeated and always disgraceful. In the upper classes, at the hotel bars, the same tastes prevailed; and the gentry fuddled themselves with wine, just as the lower orders did with rum. Thispenchantfor drink was curiously contagious. Free emigrants who came out with sober habits were soon as bad as the old hands. Of course among the convict class the drunkenness knew no bounds. The favourite drink was rum—not fine old Jamaica, but East Indian, fiery and hot—which was handed round undiluted in a bucket at all regular "sprees." Often assigned servants were found downstairs hopelessly drunk while host andguests waited upstairs for dinner, the roasts being in the fire and the meat boiled to rags. Even good servants, fairly honest and capable, could not resist the bottle. The hardest drinkers were the "old hands," or convicts who had finished their terms and had become free. These fellows worked hard for a year or two till they had put by some £40 or £50, then posted off to Sydney to squander the whole in one big debauch. They stood treat to all,—rum flowed like water,—and if the money did not go fast enough they called for champagne. "It is, in truth, impossible to conceive," continues the same writer, "the lengths to which drunkenness proceeds and the crime it leads to, not only to obtain the means of gratification, but as a consequence on indulgence." To purvey to the universal thirst there were dram-shops and publics by hundreds everywhere. Licenses were seldom, if ever, refused, even to persons of unknown character. For them it was quite sufficient to get the good word of the chief constable—himself an old convict. He was not above a bribe, and his recommendation always carried the day. "In no city of the world," says Byrne, "are there the same proportion of public-houses, paying high rent, and doing an excellent business.... From high to low—the merchant, mechanic, and labourer, all alike are a thirsty community. The bar-rooms of the hotels and inns are as much crowded as the taps of the dram-shops. Drink, drink, drink, seems to be the universal motto, andthe quantity that is consumed is incredible; from early morning to night it is the same—Bacchus being constantly sacrificed to."

Of the extraordinary prevalence of crime there could be little doubt. One eminent judge spoke of the colony as composed of two classes; one whose main business was the commission of crime and the other, the punishment of it. The whole colony, he said, seemed to be in motion towards the courts of justice. Beyond question the criminal statistics were rather startling. The number of convictions for highway robbery in New South Wales alone was equal to the whole number of convictions for all offences in England. Murders and criminal assaults were as common out there as petty larcenies at home. The ratio was one offender to every twenty-two of population; while in England about the same period it varied from one in seven hundred and forty to one in a thousand. It is but fair, however, to state that nearly the whole mass of crime proceeded from the convicts, or those who had been such. Among the reputable portion of the population the proportion was no greater in New South Wales than elsewhere. Sydney was a perfect den of thieves; and these, being indeed selected from the whole felonry of England, were quite masters of their business, and stood at the head of the profession. The report of the police magistrate of Sydney, printed in October, 1835, gives an awful picture of the state of the town. Of the wholepopulation of twenty thousand a large proportion were prisoners, past or present, "whose passions are violent, and who have not been accustomed to control them, yet for the most part have no lawful means of gratifying them. It includes a great number of incorrigible characters, who, on obtaining their freedom, will not apply themselves to any honest mode of earning their living, but endeavour to support themselves in idleness and debauchery by plunder."

"There is more immorality in Sydney," he continues, "than in any other English town of the same population in His Majesty's dominions." It contained two hundred and nineteen public-houses, and there were besides sly grog-shops innumerable. "There is no town which affords so much facility for eluding the vigilance of the police. The unoccupied bush near and within the town itself will afford shelter to the offender and hide him from pursuit; he may steal or hire a boat, and in a few minutes place an arm of the sea between him and his pursuers.... The drunkenness, idleness, and carelessness of a great portion of the inhabitants afford innumerable opportunities and temptations day and night to live by plunder." Sir Francis Forbes, the Chief Justice of the colony, endorses the foregoing statements. "That this is a true description," he says, "of the actual state of Sydney cannot be denied."

Another powerful voice was raised by JudgeBurton, whose charge to the grand jury of Sydney in November, 1835, attracted universal attention. Not alone were crimes constantly detected and punished, but others, often the most flagrant, stalked undiscovered through the land. And numerous executions exercised no effect in deterring from crime. The example of repeated capital punishments caused no alarm. There was no attempt by the masters to raise the moral tone of their convicts; no religious worship on Sundays, as we have seen; and instead of it, drunkenness and debauchery. Masters, indeed, exercised hardly any control over their men. To this Judge Burton traced nearly all the crime. Many of the most daring robberies were to be attributed to this, and this alone. Convict servants, as many as five and six together, went about openly to plunder, masked, and armed with muskets—a weapon not capable of much concealment. Even in broad daylight, and in the open highway, harmless folk had been stopped by these miscreants and robbed.

In a word, Judge Burton intimated clearly that transportation must cease. The colonies could never rise to their proper position; they could not obtain those free institutions for which even then they were agitating; in a word, the whole moral aspect of the colony suffered so terribly by the present system, that the time must come when it must be abandoned altogether.

The reader who has followed me through thisand the preceding chapter will probably admit that the method of transportation, as it had been administered, was indeed a failure. Looking at the actual tangible results, as they appeared at that date, at an early period of the colonial history, and before years of subsequent prosperity and cleanly life had purged the colony of its one constant infectious bane, they were most unsatisfactory. Hardly any one could be said to have profited in all these years but the convicts for whom transportation had been instituted. But it had been instituted as a punishment, not as a boon; and although we cannot actually quarrel with a system which had the undoubted effect of turning large numbers of criminals into wealthy and therefore, to a certain extent, honest men, we may fairly condemn it on principle. Transportation to the antipodes was about the kindest thing we could do for the criminal class. It was, indeed, removing them to a distance from their old haunts and ways of life, but they went to a land flowing with milk and honey. After the earlier years the vague terrors of that unknown country had disappeared. Hardly a family of thieves but had one or more relatives at the other end of "the pond." Those without relatives had numerous friends and pals who had gone before. Besides which there was this distinct anomaly, that convicts were now sent for their crimes to a land which was held out as a land of promise to the free emigrant. "It not unfrequently happens, that whilst ajudge is expatiating on the miseries of exile, at the same time, and perhaps in the same place, some active agent of emigration may be found magnifying the advantages of the new country; lauding the fertility of its soil, and the beauties of its climate; telling of the high wages to be there obtained, the enormous fortunes that have been made; and offering to eager and willing listeners, as a boon and special favour, the means of conveyance to that very place to which the convict in the dock has been sentenced for his crimes."

But all the arguments against transportation are now as clear as noonday. It failed to reform, except in a curiously liberal, unintentional fashion; it was no punishment; it was terribly costly; and as it was carried out was, at least for a time, distinctly injurious to the best interests of the colonies in which it took effect. Archbishop Whateley summed up the situation in forcible language in his "Thoughts on Secondary Punishment."

"In any of the leading requisites of any system of secondary punishment transportation was defective. Thus, it was neither formidable—in other words, the apprehension of it did not operate as much as possible to deter men from crime, and thus prevent the necessity of its actual infliction—nor was it corrective, or at least not corrupting—tending to produce in the criminal himself, if his life be spared, and in others, either a moral improvement, or at least as little as possible of moral debasement.Nor, lastly, was it cheap, so as to make the punishment of the criminal either absolutely profitable to the community, or at least not excessively costly. In all these requisites transportation had been found deficient, but chiefly in the most important, viz. in the power of exercising a salutary terror in offenders."

Reform in system of secondary punishment—Convicts still to be sent to the antipodes but after passing through various stages of improvement—Van Diemen's Land, or Tasmania, chosen as sole future receptacle of convicts who are to pass through probationary treatment—Real imprisonment—Removal to Government gangs—Conditionally at large—Ticket-of-leave—Absolute pardon—Development of Norfolk Island—Its degeneration—Domination of the "Ring"—Port Arthur—Convicts in excess of the resources of the colony—Ominous prospect.

We now arrive at a new stage in the history of penal legislation. The time had come when transportation was to be distinctly discountenanced and its approaching abolition openly discussed. Many concurrent causes contributed to this. Sir William Molesworth's committee, in 1837, had spoken against transportation in the plainest terms. It was condemned because it was unequal yet without terrors to offenders. It was extravagantly expensive, and most corrupting to convict, colonist, and all concerned. Last, but not least, the protest of the colonists themselves, now for the first time formulated and put forward with all the insistance that accompanies the display of a virtuous determination,could not be entirely ignored. Important changes therefore were inevitable, nor could they be much longer delayed.

In point of fact, in the matter of secondary punishments it was a return to the position of fifty years before. At one and the same moment the three latest devised outlets through which the graver criminals had been disposed of were practically closed: the antipodes, by agitation and the strident voice of public opinion; the hulks, by the faultiness of their internal management; and the great reforming penitentiary, by the absolute barrenness of results. If deportation beyond the seas were to come to an end, then the convicts must remain in the mother country. But where? Not in the hulks; that was out of the question. Sir William Molesworth had recommended more penitentiaries, as the Nabob ordered more curricles. But the country grudged another half million: there had been little or no return for that spent years before on Millbank. Then it was suggested that large prisons should be constructed on the principle of Pentonville, for ordinary offenders, while the more desperate characters were to be drafted to Lundy Island and other rocks that might hold them. A third scheme was to construct convict barracks in the neighbourhood of the dockyards, to replace the hulks; but this, which contained in itself the germ of the present British prison system, was far too radical a change to be tolerated at that time or formany years to come. All action being thus impeded and beset with difficulty, the British Government steered a middle course. It was thought that by grafting certain important so-called improvements upon the old system it might be retained. Doubtless, judged by later experience, the plan appears shifty and incomplete; but in theory and as seen at the time it was excellent. It was deduced by sound logical arguments from given premises, and had those premises remained unchanged the system might perhaps have existed longer without collapse. But reasoning on paper is not the same as in real life: one small accident will upset the profoundest calculations. The plan of "probation" which I am about to describe was admirably devised; but it failed because the conditions of the colonies varied, and because small obstacles, that were at the time of conception overlooked or ignored, grew in course of time sufficiently powerful to upset the whole scheme as originally devised.

Beyond question the task was not a light one. The Government did not shirk its duty, but it was fully alive to the difficulties that lay in the way. Speaking some years later, a member of that administration thus deprecates adverse criticism. "We could hardly hope," says Earl Grey, "to succeed at once in devising a system of secondary punishments effectual for its purpose and free from objections, thereby solving a problem which has for many years engaged the attention of legislators andstatesmen of most civilised countries, and has hitherto proved most difficult for them all." But they met the question manfully, and this is what they devised.

Transportation was to continue in force, but it was to be governed by certain checks and safeguards which had been altogether absent before, through all the long years that convicts had been sent out to the antipodes. And now the whole stream was to be directed on Van Diemen's Land alone. This Van Diemen's Land, which was thenceforth to be only a colonial prison, had been settled some years later than Botany Bay, by a party under Colonel Collins from the parent settlement. It had struggled for life amid the same vicissitudes of famine and privation as New South Wales, and similarly some years had elapsed before its home products were sufficient for its own support. Up to the year 1821 it was solely a penal settlement for the transportation of convicts from Sydney; but after that date a few free settlers planted themselves in it, and by-and-by ships landed their living cargoes at Hobart Town direct from England, just as they did at Sydney in New South Wales. The system of assignment was practised precisely as in the senior settlement, with this difference, that the discipline was more perfect, and the machine worked with greater ease. Two thirds of the whole number there were thus in assigned service, the balance being employed as in New South Wales in chain-gangs, at penal settlements, or on the roads.

Colonel Arthur, who was for many years governor of the colony, and who was well known as a strenuous supporter of transportation, claimed, and with some show of right, that the management and treatment of convicts had been attended with a greater measure of success in Van Diemen's Land than elsewhere. This may have had some weight with the government; for the existence of a good system of administration was essential to the execution of the new project: but it is probable that Van Diemen's Land was chosen as the sole future receptacle of convicts because as yet it had had no thought of refusing to receive them. New South Wales had rebelled, but Van Diemen's Land was still obedient; and no time was lost in turning its willingness to good account.

Although for years it had been more or less a penal settlement, as now constituted it became essentially a colonial prison. Vast masses of convicts were to be congregated in its chief towns; its out-stations were to be overrun with convicts in various stages of emancipation; free convicts were to be the pioneers and settlers of its back lands: in a word, the whole colony was to be permeated, inundated, swamped with the criminal class. That I am using no figure of speech, and to give some idea of the amount of evil with which the small colony had now to deal, I will mention here that in four years no less than sixteen thousand convicts were sent out to Van Diemen's Land, and that the average annualnumber of transported convicts in the colony was nearly thirty thousand.

The new method came into force on the 20th May, 1840. It was christened the "Probation" system, because the progressive improvement of the convicts was intended to depend on their progress through certain periods of "probation." Every convict was to be subjected to certain punishments and restrictions peculiar to the stage in which he found himself; but these rigours were to diminish, step by step, till he had passed by many gradations from actual imprisonment to the delights of unshackled, unconditional freedom. The plan of procedure is fully detailed in a despatch addressed by Lord Stanley, on the 15th of November, 1842, to Sir John Franklin, then lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen's Land. All convicts, with certain exceptions, were to be subjected to the new process. By it, as I have said, the convict was compelled to pass through certain stages, five in number; and his progress was to be regulated altogether by his good conduct in each stage. The rules were the same for boys and females, but their stations were, of course, different.

Stated briefly these five stages were: 1. Detention at a purely penal station in a state of real imprisonment; 2. Removal to gangs working in various parts of the colony for government, but still under restraint; 3. The first step towards freedom, in which the convict was granted a pass to be at largeunder certain conditions, and to seek work for himself; 4. The second step to freedom, when the convict gained his ticket-of-leave, and was free to come and go much as he pleased; 5. Absolute pardon.

Only the worst criminals entered the first stage, and for them (a) Norfolk Island and (b) Tasman's Peninsula were set apart. These were the colonial convicts, and men who had been sentenced at home to "life," or fifteen years for heinous offences. The term at Norfolk Island was to be not less than two years, and not more than four; but misconduct consigned an offender to an indefinite term within his sentence.

(a) First as to Norfolk Island.

Situated in semi-tropical latitudes, richly gifted by nature, picturesque, fertile, of fairly equable climate, this small spot seemed to contain within itself all the elements of a terrestrial paradise. It was finely timbered, chiefly with the graceful tree known as the Norfolk Island pine; limes, lemons, and guavas were indigenous; all manner of fruits—oranges, grapes, figs, loquats, bananas, peaches, pomegranates, pineapples, and melons—grew there in rare profusion. Flowers, wild or cultivated, throve everywhere. On all sides the eye rested on long fields of oats, or barley, or Indian maize. And yet the social condition of the island, as compared with its external aspect, was as the inner diseased core of an apple to its smooth and rosy skin. From the earliest days of the Australian colonies thisbountifully gifted island had been made the sink of all the lees and dregs of mankind. Occupied in the first instance on account of its fertile aspect, it was soon afterwards abandoned for no sound or substantial reasons. By and by it was again re-occupied, but then only as a penal settlement. And as such it served New South Wales during all the years that transportation was in full swing. It was a prison, and nothing more; convicts and their keepers were its only population. The former at times varied in numbers: one year there were five hundred, another seven; but their lot and condition was always much the same. The worst wore chains. All worked, but not enough to hurt themselves; and the well-conducted were allowed, as their time dragged along, certain immunities from labour and a modicum of tobacco. Occasionally the gaol-gangs, the most depraved of this gathering of wickedness, broke loose, and attacked their guards with brutal desperation. Numbers were always shot down then and there, and of the balance, when overpowered, a fair proportion were forthwith hanged. Stated broadly, life in Norfolk Island was so bitter to the convict that many for choice sought death.

Thus was Norfolk Island constituted, and such the condition of its residents, when the home government, in working out its new penal scheme, resolved to increase the numbers on the island, by drafting to it the most flagrant offenders from home. We have come by this time to accept it asan axiom in prison affairs, that it is unwise to concentrate in one spot the pith and essence of rascality; preferring rather to subdivide and distribute the most dangerous elements at several points. But the statesmen who were then legislating on penal matters ignored this principle; they forgot that they were about to recruit the old gangs at Norfolk Island by the very men most predisposed to become as bad as those they found there. If the administration had been really anxious to perpetuate the leaven of wickedness already existent in the penal settlement, they could not have devised a plan more likely to attain that result.

Under the new rules Norfolk Island was intended to contain—and thereafter usually did contain—some 2,000 convicts. Of these about two-thirds came from England direct. The rest were sentenced in the colonies. There were three stations: the headquarters settlement or "King's Town," Longridge, and Cascades. The first, situated on the south side of the island and facing the sea, was the most important. Here was the principal landing-place; but a coral reef prevented the near approach of shipping, and the anchorage outside it was insecure. Hence all loading and unloading was done by boats; and this, in itself a tedious operation, was rendered more difficult and dangerous by the heavy surf that rolled perpetually across the bar. But except those that came on the public service no vessels visited the island. There was another landing-placeat Cascade station, on the north side of the island, which was used when the state of the bar at King's Town rendered it absolutely impracticable for boats. At King's Town the bulk of the convicts were retained. Here were their barracks, in which some 800 convicts slept; here the lumber-yard, where the same numbers messed; here too the hospitals, and the gaols for the retention of those again about to be tried for fresh offences in the island. The barracks, built of substantial limestone and surrounded by a high wall, stood some eighty yards from the beach; the lumber-yard close at hand was simply a high enclosure, two sides of which were roofed in and provided with rough chairs and tables, the whole area within no more than half an acre. Next to the lumber-yard, through which was the only entrance, stood the slaughter-houses and cooks' houses, all filthy in the extreme. There was no supervision over the issue of rations: meat was sold openly at a penny per pound, and the convicts went to and fro from this and the bakehouse just as they pleased. The gaol was close to the landing-place, and right in front of its chief entrance stood the gallows—so placed that to pass the doorway one came almost in contact with the gruesome engine of death. The hospital accommodation for the whole settlement was here at "King's Town," and it amounted to twenty beds, with a detached convalescent ward, cold and cheerless; and this for a population of 2,000, in an island where epidemicdysentery of a malignant type, especially during the summer, was by no means uncommon. In matters of supply the settlement was equal to its own requirements, except after seasons unusually bad. There was an abundance of water in the neighbouring creeks, and, although this was rendered impure by flowing past gardens and stock-yards, it was easily filtered: and there were springs too in abundance. Stock was raised and grain grown chiefly at Longridge, a mile and a half from headquarters. The soil was fertile but light, and required good management.

The day's work began at the several settlements at daylight, when all the men were roused by a bell. Any, and they were not few, who felt idle and indisposed to work, remained behind in bed. But presently—let us stand and look on—six or seven hundred men have collected in the barrack yard, and are to be seen walking leisurely about, waiting for the chaplain to say morning prayers, or if he failed to appear—and this was not unusual—waiting for the commencement of muster. Should the chaplain show himself, some ten or twenty prisoners go with him to the chapel which is close at hand; the rest remain outside, and no effort is made by the overseers to compel their attendance. The overseers are indeed powerless then, as at other times, and exercise no authority whatever.

Prayers over, muster follows; but the performance is as unlike the strict parade it should be asanything it is possible to conceive. There is no attempt at formation by classes, messes, or wards; no silence, no order. The convicts lounge to and fro, hands in pockets, and talking to one another while their names are read out by convict clerks from the superintendent's office—the assistant superintendent, whose duty this would be, being generally unable to read or write. As each convict hears his name he answers or not, as it suits him, and then saunters over to join the working gang for which he has been detailed. As soon as the muster is concluded the men disperse, leaving the yard in groups or one by one, and proceed to breakfast. Here the whole force breakfast on hominy—or paste made from maize meal—seated under cover or in the open areas, preserving no appearance of order, talking and laughing just as they please among themselves. Breakfast over, some go to work, but a great many do not. They have their bread to bake; and this each man does for himself, spending half the day in sifting meal, kneading dough, and loitering leisurely to the bakehouse and back. The only men told off to regular labour are the two gangs who work the crank-mill, and the labour there was so regulated that half usually were idle half the day; while those at work were riotous and disorderly, shrieking, yelling, hooting and assailing every passer-by, whether subordinate official, magistrate, or the commandant himself, with the vilest personal abuse. The great mass of the convicts wereengaged in quarrying or in agricultural pursuits. They were superintended by convict sub-overseers, and not by free persons; and the work done was naturally not large, more particularly as these convict overseers went in daily terror of their lives. Indeed, at the time of which I am writing—after the introduction of "probation," that is to say, and probably before it too—there was practically little or no discipline whatever maintained among the convicts. But for the bayonets and bullets of the military guard by which they were more or less awed—though even against them they rose at times, to their own disadvantage—they would have become the real masters of the island; and if they were thus restrained by fear from overt rebellion, they did not hesitate to display as much sullen disobedience and active insubordination as they dared without bringing on themselves retaliatory and coercive measures.

Flagrant outrages, like the seizure of boats which carried stores, were not uncommon, on which occasions the men of the military escort were usually thrown overboard. But perhaps the following occurrence, which took place before the eyes of Mr. R. P. Stewart, a special commissioner sent from Hobart Town, will prove most forcibly the anarchy that prevailed. I cannot do better than use his own words.

"On the first of my morning visits to the lumber-yard," says he, "accompanied by the superintendentof English convicts, I observed, on our entry, a man very deliberately smoking, standing among a crowd round the fire, inside the cook-house." An officer advanced to make the man give up his pipe; but he was received with a look of the most ineffable disdain, and the smoker, getting up with his hands in his pockets, moved to a part of the mess known as the "Ring," where all the worst characters collected. On this an order was issued to have the man taken to gaol; but no one stepped forward to execute it, until at length the acting chief constable, "who had been standing in the rear, advanced with admirable coolness and determination to the spot. The whole yard was now like a disturbed hive, and the superintendent expressed his conviction that there would be a riot, as the men would never suffer the culprit to be taken into custody. However, after a short time had elapsed, the culprit was seen emerging from the dense crowd by which he had been surrounded, with hands in pocket, attended by, rather than in custody of, the chief constable of the island. He (the convict) deliberately advanced to the superintendent, who was standing by my side, and in the most insolent manner said, 'What have you ordered me to gaol for?' The superintendent very coolly expostulated with him and advised him to go quietly, when he deliberately struck him two blows in the face, and using some very opprobrious expressions, fiercely rushed upon and nearly threw him upon the ground." He was seized by aconstable, who asked if he should shoot him. But both convict and constable were borne away to another part of the shed by a dense crowd. The men got out their knives, and matters looked desperate, when the acting chief constable again went forward and persuaded the offender to give himself up. Had it not been for the presence of Mr. Stewart, an officer accredited from His Excellency the governor of Van Diemen's Land, a very serious disturbance might have been expected. As it was, the most foul and abusive language was used by the convicts to all the officials present.

This "Ring" which has just been mentioned was in itself a power on the island. All the worst men were leagued together in it, and exercised a species of terrorism over the rest. This was especially noticeable on the arrival and debarkation of a batch of new convicts from England, when every effort for their protection made by the proper authorities proved always ineffectual. If the new hands were lodged under lock and key, the men of the Ring contrived generally to break into the ward and rifle them of all they possessed. If they were marched under an escort of constables to bathe, the old stagers attacked them en route, or while they were in the water plundered them of their clothes. Thus banded together and utterly reckless, the more depraved exercised a power almost absolute over their fellows, so that of these even the well disposed were compelled to submit, in mortal terror of thedeadly threats of this vicious, tyrannical confederacy. A convict whose conduct was good could not be protected from violence if there was even a suspicion, with or without reason, that he had borne witness against any member of the Ring, or was otherwise distasteful to it. Speaking in general terms of Norfolk Island, Mr. Stewart states that he was satisfied, from his inquiry, that a confirmed insubordinate spirit existed among the convicts, "constantly exhibiting itself in threats of personal violence towards subordinate officers, towards the constabulary if they resolutely do their duty, and towards their fellow-prisoners if they should be suspected of giving information or assistance to their officers; which threats are rendered more serious and alarming from the general practice of carrying knives, and from their having been fulfilled in instances of stabbing, of assaulting by beating to a cruel, nearly mortal extent, and of personal injury in attempted disfiguration by biting off the nose, and in other overt acts of such a character as to produce a most serious effect in deterring all holding subordinate authority from the vigorous and prompt performance of their duty."

I have lingered thus long over Norfolk Island because it was the starting-point and centre of the new scheme of penal legislation. In actual truth the picture I have drawn is painted with colours far less sombre than the subject deserves. I have shown how, beyond the absolute isolation and exile, thepunishment was not severe, the work light, food plentiful, and discipline a mere farce. I have shown how the most criminal were banded together to defy authority and exercise a species of awful tyranny over the timid and weak; I have shown how these malefactors who were supposed to be expiating their crimes swaggered about, armed, and with knives in their hands, insulting their keepers with vile abuse, lording it over their weaker fellows, using violence whenever the spirit moved them to murder a constable, beat a comrade to death, or make a mouthful of his nose. I have said that when matters went too far firearms and the halter were called into play, and for a time worked a certain cure; but from this, the relapse was worse than the original disease. On other points I have not touched, because I do not care to sully my pages with reference to other atrocities perpetrated in that loathsome den—atrocities the existence of which was not and never could be denied, and for which those who inaugurated the system can hardly be held blameless. Regarding these, it must suffice that I refer to them thus vaguely and pass on.

(b) But Norfolk Island was not the only penal settlement: that at Port Arthur, on Tasman's Peninsula, was also included by the new scheme as one of the first-stage depots. Being within easy reach of Hobart Town, and not like Norfolk Island, hundreds of miles away, Port Arthur was under themore searching supervision of the supreme authority. The peninsula was separated from the mainland by a narrow isthmus, across which, as I have said, sentries and fierce dogs forever kept watch and ward, and escape thence was next to impossible. At the southern extreme of the peninsula lay Port Arthur, having an excellent harbour, of difficult entrance but wide within, and with plenty of deep water. To Port Arthur were sent all convicts in the classes little less criminal than those of Norfolk Island, their number being some 1,200, their work chiefly what is called in the Western Hemisphere "lumbering," or procuring wood for the sawyers and shipbuilders, who were also convicts. Every now and then a ship of decent tonnage was launched, and much coal and timber were also exported. There was a trade-wheel and a corn-mill, and the settlement was to a certain extent self-supporting. The convicts were lodged in hut barracks, in association with each other, but not in great numbers. On the whole, the establishment at Port Arthur was as well managed and the discipline as good as could be expected with such insufficient prison buildings. The conduct of the convicts was generally good, and punishments few and far between.

And now for the second stage, and the system of "Probation."

Norfolk Island and Port Arthur, the purely penal settlements, I have described. At one or other of them, subject to such restraints as they found there,the nature of which I have already detailed, the convict of the worst class remained till he earned by good conduct his removal to the second stage, or that of the probation gang. To this second stage those convicts whose crimes were less serious had been inducted on first arrival from England. They might therefore be supposed to avoid a certain amount of contamination. But if they escaped the island, they could not escape from those who had been at it; and around these seemingly purified spirits hung something of the reeking atmosphere of the foul den through which they had passed. In this way the contagion spread; for wherever there were convicts there were those who had been at Norfolk Island, and their influence, if not the most dominant, was always more or less felt. But even without the presence of this pernicious virus wherewith the whole mass might be permeated, the probation gangs as constituted were bad enough to originate wickedness of their own. Having, therefore, errors inherent, without counting the super-added vice that came from the first-stage men, they served admirably to perpetuate the grand mistake of the whole new scheme. Soon after the development of this new order of things there grew to be sixteen of these stations. Four of them were on Tasman's Peninsula, and of these, one was for invalids, and three solely for those who had misconducted themselves in other gangs. The men worked in coal mines, or raised agricultural produce. Thenthere were five stations on the coast, in the neighbourhood of D'Entrecasteaux Channel, placed where the land was heavily timbered, all of which, when cleared, was to be devoted to crops; others, also, more inland, and three at which the convicts laboured exclusively at making and repairing roads. In principle, then, probation stations were intended to give convicts, from the first, a certain habit of industry and subordination, and if they had come from the penal settlements, to continue the process. The probation stations were abundantly furnished with religious instructors, and a minute system of notation was introduced to record exactly the conduct of the prisoners from day to day. It was according to his attitude while thus in probation that the next step in the relaxation of his condition was to be regulated. No doubt in many places the work accomplished by these probation parties was not inconsiderable. Naturally the first aim was that they should raise crops enough to suffice for their own support; but after that, their labour was directed into many channels that brought direct advantage to the colony. So far, too, as there were means available, the administration was conducted intelligently. But the entire number poured into Van Diemen's Land was so far in excess of the resources of the colony that adequate lodgment could not be provided. From this, and the difficulty of obtaining respectable supervisors in anything like due proportion, there resulted such a state of things that incourse of time the probation gangs were not less a reproach than the penal settlements.

The third stage was reached as soon as the convict had given, as it were, an earnest of his improvement. The comptroller-general of convicts was constituted the judge, and it rested with that functionary whether the convict, after a certain period, should receive the boon of a "probation pass." The holder of this was privileged to hire himself out: to enter private service, and make his own terms with his future master. But there were certain distinctions among pass-holders. Those in the lowest class had to ask the governor's sanction to the employment they chose; they had to be contented with half their wages, while the other half was paid into a savings bank. Other classes could engage themselves without sanction, and got certain larger proportions—half, two-thirds, or in the last class, all their wages. These passes were liable to forfeiture for misconduct, and the holder was then sent back to the gangs. The chief distinction between these pass-holders and the men on ticket-of-leave, to whom I shall come directly, was, that the latter were free to roam where they pleased within certain districts, while the pass-holders were retained at hiring depots till they had found employment for themselves; and even when in service they were under the direct control of a local magistrate, by whom they were inspected every month. These hiring depots were at the chief towns—HobartTown, Launceston, and elsewhere. The numbers thus on pass came to be considerable; and, later on, when work was slack and labour scarce, they grew to be the most serious difficulty which colonial legislators were called upon to face.

The last two stages, of ticket-of-leave and pardon, were not peculiar to the new system, and differed in no respect to the same named condition of existence under other rules, except that both were to be gained less easily now, and in no case as a matter of right.

I have given now an outline of the system introduced by Lord Stanley's despatch of 1842, and, advancing a year or two where it was necessary, have shown how it was carried out. Extraordinary and deplorable results followed and will be duly set forth in a future chapter.

Conveyance of convicts beyond seas—Early abuses—Neglect and starvation on board—Large mortality—Question of command—Weak discipline maintained—Constant dread of outbreak—Military guard—Notable conspiracies—Barrington's conduct—Fears of mutiny groundless—Epidemic of scurvy on board theWaterloo—Loss of theWaterloo—Amphitritecast away at Boulogne—Arrangements for embarking convicts—Millbank stairs—Reforms introduced—Horrors of convict ships beyond description—Dr. Browning—His labours and influence over his charges.

No account of deportation beyond the seas would be complete without some reference to the passage out to the antipodes, which naturally was an integral part of the whole scheme. From first to last many hundreds of ships were employed on this service. Those that composed the "first fleet" under Captain Phillip, R. N., in 1788, head the list; last of all comes the steamerLondon, which went to Gibraltar in November, 1871. TheLondonwas the last prison ship that has left our shores. In the long interval between these dates the conditions under which deportation was carried out have varied not a little. Abuses in the earliest days were manyand flagrant. As time passed there came all that was possible in the way of reform, and those charged with the execution of the system did their utmost to reduce the evils inseparable from it. But even to the last they were hardly obviated altogether; and this difficulty of carrying out under proper restrictions the removal of convicts by sea-passage to a distant land, is one—and by no means the weakest—of the many arguments against transportation.

At the close of the eighteenth century, and during the early years of the nineteenth, when the whole system was still somewhat new and untried, the arrangements were about as bad as it was possible for them to be. Great horrors were perpetrated in one particular convoy: the neglect and starvation produced epidemic sickness and terrible mortality. These shameful proceedings were due entirely to the rapacity and dishonesty of the ship-captains, who sought to increase their profits by improper means. Happily when their misconduct was brought to light, repetition was prevented by new and salutary regulations. The ships were no longer victualled by the contractors, but by the commissioners of the navy, and certain checks and safeguards were introduced to insure the issue to every man of his proper allowance. Nevertheless, the mortality continued at times to be disproportionately large. Especially was this the case in the shipsGeneral Hewitt,Surrey, andThree Bees; and, aroused thereby to thenecessity of further reform, Governor Macquarie instituted at Sydney, in 1814, a full inquiry into the conduct of convict ships in general. Great alterations were recommended by Dr. Redfern, at that time assistant surgeon of the colony. His suggestions embraced principally the points on which he was specially competent to speak—the necessity, that is to say, for the proper issue of clothing, sufficient diet and air space, with proper medical assistance if required. Most of his recommendations were adopted, and they were all amply justified by the diminished mortality in subsequent voyages. Previous to this period the owners usually provided a surgeon, who was paid by them, receiving only a reward from government, after the completion of his duty; but this reward was dependent on the production by him of a certificate from the governor of New South Wales, to the effect that the latter was perfectly satisfied. The surgeon's letter of service stated that, on the production of this certificate, he would be recompensed for his "assiduity and humanity by a present at the discretion of His Majesty's Secretary of State. On the other hand, any neglect of essential duties will not fail to be properly noticed."

Full instructions were issued for the guidance of the surgeon. He was to inspect the "people"—this term seems to have been adopted from the earliest times to describe the convict passengers—daily; the sick twice a day, those in health once.The former he was to treat according to his judgment; the latter were to be examined closely for signs of fever, flux, or scurvy, in order that "early and effectual means may be taken to stop the progress of these diseases." He was moreover to keep a diary for the entry of everything connected with the sick, noting also the "daily number of convicts admitted upon deck, the times when the decks were scraped, the ship fumigated, the berths cleaned and ventilated, and all other circumstances which may, immediately or remotely, affect the health of the crew or convicts." How closely he performed his duties may be judged by the fact that Mr. Commissioner Bigge advances as one reason for keeping the hospital in the fore part of the ship, that "any arrangement by which the personal inspection of the surgeons is frequently directed to the whole of the prison (which must be the case if they have to traverse it on their visits to the hospital), ought not to be exchanged for another and more commodious position of that apartment, unless the advantages of such a change are clear and decisive." This does not look as if these surgeons were over zealous, at least in the duty of frequently visiting and inspecting the prison decks.

Similarly, precise rules governed the conduct of the master of the ship. He also was promised a reward if his conduct gave satisfaction. He was especially desired to see to the preservation of health, by keeping his ship constantly sweet andclean, and by taking on board before departure everything necessary for the purpose. The master was especially charged with the care of provisions, and in this respect his conduct was to be closely watched. The fear was not so much lest the convicts should receive short allowance, although this happened too, in spite of all precautions, but that there should be a substitution of inferior stores for those of government, which were always supposed to be good of their kind. The former fraud was to some extent guarded against, chiefly by publishing plainly, in several parts of the prison, the scale of diet to which every convict was entitled; but even this was sometimes upset by the captain giving money compensation at the end of the voyage for food not issued. Another precaution lay in making every man of each convict "mess" attend in rotation to receive the rations, instead of having one standing delegate for the whole voyage as heretofore. It was found that imposition and corruption were less frequently tried with many than with few. As to the other kind of dishonesty, it was provided for by requiring the surgeon's attendance at the opening of each new cask of provision—a sufficient check, no doubt, so long as the interests of captain and surgeon were not identical. It was just possible, however, that they might play into each other's hands.

But one of the wisest steps taken after 1814, was when the government itself appointed the medicalofficers, giving the preference, as far as possible, to surgeons of the Royal Navy. On this point Bigge says, "A great improvement has undoubtedly arisen in the transportation of convicts from the appointment of naval surgeons to the superintendence of the ships taken up for this service. Much attention has been paid by them to the instructions of the navy board, that enjoin an attention to the performance of religious duties; and their efforts in preserving health have been no less conspicuous and successful." There was every reason to expect that the government would be better served by an officer of its own, than by some one taken indiscriminately from outside. But equally probable was it that there would be a conflict of authority between the master, who had been hitherto practically supreme, and the new style of official, who might be said to possess, to some extent, the confidence of the crown. This came to pass; and the difficulty was not smoothed away by the tenor of the early acts regulating transportation in which had been incorporated the provisions of the 4 Geo. I, cap. II, whereby a property in the services of the convict was vested (or assigned) to the persons who contracted to transport them.

The master of the ship, as representing the contractors, had this property with all its responsibilities; but he was bound also to obey all orders from the commissioners of the navy and attend all requisitions from the surgeon-superintendent. Thisapparent contradiction led to frequent altercations between these two modern Kings of Brentford. Where one looked only to the preservation of health, the other thought chiefly of safe custody. If the doctor wished to fumigate the prison, or send the "people" all on deck, the captain demurred, and talked of the danger he ran of losing his ship and his cargo, too, by one and the same blow. Being thus personally concerned in the security of all they had on board, the masters of convict ships for a long time maintained that they must be the fittest persons to hold the supreme power. On the other hand, many of the higher authorities leaned toward entrusting the real command to the surgeon. This, which was clearly the proper decision, did in time become the rule. The reasons for it yearly became more apparent. In the first place, the naval surgeon, as a commissioned officer, was more under the control of the crown; besides which, by degrees these surgeon-superintendents could fairly claim that they had gained experience, and had proved their aptitude for the service in which they were employed. As ship after ship was chartered the captains came and went. There was no certainty that the same vessel with the same master would be taken up twice over for the conveyance of convicts. But the surgeons remained, and sailed voyage after voyage to the penal colonies. Ere long, the power which had been at first contested rested altogether in their hands.

All contemporary authorities give but a sorry account of the condition of the convicts during the passage. Even when everything possible had been done to reduce the death-rate, by insuring a sufficient supply of food and proper medical attendance, the plain fact remained that here were a couple of hundred felons (or more) boxed up together for months, with no other employment or object in life than that of contaminating one another. As a rule all of the convict passengers remained idle throughout the voyage. A few might assist in the navigation of the ship so far as was possible without going aloft. Others who were mechanics found it to their interest to make themselves useful in their particular trades, gaining in return greater freedom as to coming up on deck, and perhaps some additional articles of food. "But the greater proportion of the convicts," says Bigge, "are sunk in indolence, to which the ordinary duties of washing and cleansing the prisons, though highly salutary in themselves and performed with great regularity, afford but slight interruption."

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