The History of Tasmania Volume II Part 22

The sense of responsibility is a healthy emotion: prompt.i.tude in taking the life of a runaway, however tolerated or authorised by law, could never be remembered by a soldier but as an odious execution.[186]

The piratical seizure of vessels lately, has not been common: escape is easy in other forms. The elopement of individuals has been attended with no great perils, since the establishment of the surrounding colonies.

Craft of small burden have been sometimes taken, and at the close of the voyage dismissed. Prisoners have pa.s.sed as merchandise, or boldly submitting to examination, have been lost in the crowd of emigrants. A contrivance was recently discovered, by the fatal consequences which followed it: a woman was enclosed by her husband in a case, and on arriving at Port Phillip was found dead.

These instances comprehend most of those forms of escape which are found in the colonial annals. They prove how powerful the pa.s.sion for liberty, with which, when united to common intelligence, the threats of legal vengeance, or the vigilance of official guards, cannot cope. The same instinct, however, which induces men to break their bonds, restrains many more from transgression, and is a powerful auxiliary to the laws.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 179: Ikey Solomon.]

[Footnote 180: _Collins's New South Wales._]

[Footnote 181: Ibid.]

[Footnote 182: Clarke, executed at Hobart Town (1835), and who for five years wandered among the natives of New South Wales, a.s.serted he had seen an isolated colony of Malays, or some other nation, the remnant of a shipwreck, which had existed for ages on the borders of a lake in the far interior to the north of Sydney. This he affirmed to the last moment of his life. If reliance can be placed upon his testimony, the village he described is doubtless the same, and is yet to be discovered. "Clarke addressed the people from the scaffold, acknowledging his crimes, and imploring all who heard him to avoid the dissipated course, which had led him to so wretched and ignominious an end." Upon this execution Dr.

Ross adds--"It is a matter of consolation that we have a pastor, possessed of the very peculiar--we had almost said tact--but we should rather say endowments, with which Mr. Bedford is gifted, for leading to repentance, and affording all possible consolation to the miserable beings in their last extremity."--_Courier, August_, 1835.]

[Footnote 183: _Cunningham's New South Wales._]

[Footnote 184: _Gazette_, 1824.]

[Footnote 185: James Hawkins, a celebrated pugilist and pickpocket, was not less remarkable for his escapes. He was transported to Hobart Town, where he found several persons who invited him to become a bushranger: he refused, and devoted all his efforts to escape. In this he succeeded: soon re-transported for life, again he stowed himself on board a vessel, and returned to Weyhill, and was again transported. On his way to the hulks he once more got off his irons, but was secured (1820). In gaol he was orderly and quiet, and refused all enterprises which might have compromised his life.]

[Footnote 186: _Par. Papers_.]

SECTION XV.

The principles of penal government recognised in the times of Governor Arthur, may be best ascertained from his despatches and orders, and from the writings of Dr. Ross, who, if not directly a.s.sisted by Arthur, was inspired by his opinions. Whether those principles were practically applied, will be known by reference to other testimony. The deviations must not, however, be ascribed exclusively, either to the Governor's connivance, or to the intrinsic defect of his system. He could not act alone, and the agents he employed were sometimes incapable, and sometimes corrupt. In his own writings, he repeatedly alludes to the gradual approximation to what he deemed perfection of detail: it cost him the labor of years.

The estimate he formed, philanthropists are slow to entertain: one-third of those who arrived in these colonies, he rated incorrigible; the rest, chiefly affected by the prospect of reward or the dread of punishment, and indifferent to abstract good. In tracing crimes to their causes he largely ascribes them to poverty, and the pressure of cla.s.ses on each other. He enunciated a novel view of the mental character of criminals--that they were subjects of _delirium_; that they saw every object through a false medium; and that no treatment could be successful which did not restrain them by an enlightened rigour. This view, given in a code of rules[187] for the management of road parties, was attributed to the reasonings of a medical member of his government: the notion it embodies, he himself ascribed to long experience in the management of prisoners. His observation supplied the facts; his councillor, perhaps, constructed the system.

He believed that to remove the opportunities of crime, was the only successful method of general prevention; that to keep the convicts quiet, to withdraw all external excitement was essential to successful treatment of their mental malady. He compared the ordinary offender to a steed untrained: very impatient of the curb and rein. The discipline of the government, either by its own officers or the master, he likened to a _breaking in_. Under the first application of the bridle, more facile tempers became at once submissive and docile; or if not--if the man threw the master--then came the government with heavier burdens and more painful restraint: he was caught, and resistance was borne down. The milder servitude being unsuccessful, then came magisterial admonition; then the lash; then sequestration on the roads; then irons; then the penal settlement--with its stern aspect, its ponderous labor, and prompt torture; in which mercy wrought through terror and pain, and hope itself was attired in lighter chains.

Arthur alleged that his system was inductive: reared upon a foundation of facts, its cla.s.sification was self-const.i.tuted: every step in the several gradations of a prisoner's punishment was the result of his own will; the first, by his crime against English society, the residue by his misconduct in servitude. It was in his power, when delivered to his master, to work out his own liberty, without knowing again the frown of a magistrate, or the darkness of a dungeon: it was in his choice to delay deliverance until death. Thus the distribution and separation vainly attempted by a direct management of government, was better done by the prisoners themselves: they determined their own merit by their actual position, where they awaited pardon and liberty, or gradual descent to despair.

Arthur watched with great diligence the operation of his system. The character of most masters was known: they were bound to make annual returns of the number and conduct of their men. Their recommendation was required to procure the prisoner's indulgence: his police character was drawn out in form--the parliamentary papers shew into what minute particulars those doc.u.ments entered; even an admonition of the magistrates was noted, and made part of the case. _Black_ and _white_ books were kept, in which meritorious actions and the reverse were recorded. The term of preparatory servitude was four, six, or eight years--as the sentence was for seven, fourteen years, or life; then a ticket-of-leave allowed the prisoner to find his own employ, to enjoy his own earnings; subject to the surveillance of the police, and to a forfeiture for breach of its regulations.

Arthur described the police as the pivot of his system: it comprehended surveillance and detection. The establishment of district courts, in which a paid magistrate resided, was an essential element of its success. The masters had a correctional authority at hand: a few miles, often a few minutes, brought them within the police court, and the punishment ordered followed the offence by a very short interval. The police constables, mostly prisoners of the crown, were selected from each ship to a.s.sist the recognition of their fellow prisoners, and they were rewarded for every runaway they arrested. They often shortened their own sentence by procuring the conviction of others; often, too, they obtained considerable sums, and even instant liberty, by the discovery of an outlaw. They were acute, expert, and, we are told by Arthur, vigilant beyond all men he ever knew. They were objects of fear and detestation.

The strong will of the prisoners thus encountered opposition on every hand. They were hedged round with restrictions; they were at the mercy of the magistrate, and subject to the lash, for offences which language is not sufficiently copious to distinguish with nicety.[188] Their unsupported accusations recoiled on themselves. They were ent.i.tled to complain, but the evidence they could generally command, was heard with natural suspicion. So well did they understand the hopelessness of contest, that they rarely replied, where a defence sometimes aggravated their punishment.

The convict was subject to the caprice of all his master's household: he was liable every moment to be accused, and punished.[189] Unknown, without money, he had no protector or advocate: one magistrate could authorise fifty lashes; one hundred could be inflicted by the concurrence of a second. It was a.s.serted by Arthur, that the statement of their liabilities produced an expression of dismay in the countenances of convicts newly arrived. The indefinite character of these offences; the boundless discretion of the magistrate; the influence of the master; the presumption always against the accused; the dreadful nature of several of the punishments--doubtless created in many the recklessness of defiance and despair. A prisoner's sentence might be extended one or three years; he might be doomed to a penal settlement and chains. Nor could he liberate himself from his servitude: he came back from the triangles or road party, and stood at his master's door.

The determined resistance of change, except for punishment; the indissoluble tie of men to masters--was one part of Arthur's plan. The knowledge that submission was the only chance of happiness, caused many to yield to their destiny without a struggle; and where masters were humane, the connection lasted, without murmuring or oppression, until the close; but with many more, it was a period of misery, mental and bodily--the fierce pa.s.sions breaking into open war, and seeking nothing but revenge or freedom. The rolls of the muster-master exhibit curious instances of this long struggle: there are several now before the writer, in which punishments succeed each other with a frequency so terrible, that the mind is only relieved by the belief that sensibility is destroyed by incurable misery.

Governor Arthur addressed a despatch, on "secondary punishments," to Viscount G.o.derich, intended to answer the report of the select committee of 1832. He thought the witnesses were not conversant with the state of the prisoners--a fact not surprising, since even the effect of English penitentiaries was debated under their very walls. The gentle system of Governor Macquarie was a tradition among the criminal population of Great Britain; but in this country, colonised at a later date, and by settlers of a higher cla.s.s, the advantages of the convict were small, and his control more complete. Arthur thus delineated the condition of the a.s.signed servant: deprived of indulgence, living in the interior, employed in clearing and cultivating forest land, allowed no wages; idleness, even looks betraying an insurgent spirit, exposing him to the chain gang or the triangle; deprived of liberty, subject to the caprice of a family, and to the most summary laws. He was a slave, except that his master was not trusted with the lash, and his claim for service terminable. True, he was well fed, while many in England labored hard, and yet were hungry and poor; but nothing reconciled the prisoner to bondage: he compared his condition not with the British pauper, but theirs who, though working in the same field, were masters of their own labor. He a.s.serted that the bravado of persons, who affected indifference when ordered for Macquarie Harbour, was fully answered by the murderers who, to enjoy a momentary escape, ventured their lives; by the desperate efforts of many to conceal themselves in vessels, deprived of food for days, and tortured until their limbs mortified; by the despair of many rioters who arrived in the _Eliza_, who, dejected and stupified by grief, soon drooped and died. He maintained that transportation, though not absolutely successful, was to be preferred, as frequently most dreaded, reformatory, and final.

He maintained, that the current reports respecting transportation deserved no credence, and were unsafe as foundations of public policy.

Often, from the most selfish motives, the most delusive statements had been forwarded by prisoners. He instanced a woman from Liverpool, who arrived with her four children, allured by the representation of her husband, and sent out by the charity of his prosecutors; and who had informed her that, beside 60 per annum, he was lodged and fed for his labor. In this case, however, the man wrote falsely; but at that moment there were many who might have made the statement with truth.

In the despatches of Governor Arthur there is much acute observation and just inference. He had actually lessened abuses, until they became not very common or very flagrant: by collecting men in the employ of government under a more rigid system of superintendence, he had curtailed their indulgence, and made their condition more irksome. But it is well known to every colonist, that throughout his administration some prisoners were favored with greater liberty than others; that they acc.u.mulated property, and had at command whatever money could buy. He often, with a discretion both wise and humane, mitigated the severity of a sentence and alleviated the domestic desolation of a wife, by granting some indulgence to her husband. It is told to his credit as a man, although it does not add to the weight of his despatches.

The enunciation of principles was not common in the writings of Governor Arthur; he, however, states his view of the objects contemplated by punishment. He held that the severity of a penalty was to be measured by the operation of the crime on society,--or the views taken by legislators of its effect. Unhappily, this theory overlooks the fact, that penalties are usually for the protection of cla.s.ses, rather than communities. The severe laws against poaching have never been vindicated on the principles of equity or national right: they are the laws of an aristocracy, for the protection of its pleasures. The unlimited power over life and liberty claimed by this doctrine, would excuse the Spartan method of antic.i.p.ating crime. It is the old code of the opulent and powerful; but it is essentially unjust, fallacious, and therefore useless and wicked.[190] It is probable, however, that abstract opinions maintained but a slight influence on his actual policy, and that by his strong perception of the interest of society in the reform of the offender, he adopted many practical lessons of philanthropy.

Governor Arthur was directed by the Secretary of State to a.s.sign the prisoners employed on public works: such as were unfit for the service of settlers to form into gangs, and employ on stations distant from the towns. Lord G.o.derich had come to the conclusion that the service of government was rather courted than dreaded by the prisoners. This plan was skilfully resisted by Arthur: he admitted that constables and messengers were favorably situated. So great, however, were the hardships of those employed in public works, that his conscience was troubled, and only relieved by remembering that they were the worst of offenders; or, if better conducted, pa.s.sed at length into the loan-gang--a condition as preferable to a.s.signment, as was a.s.signment to the service of the crown: thus balancing the advantages of their last against the severity of the first stage. He stated their a.s.signment, so far from increasing the severity of punishment, their faults, and even crimes, would be covered by their masters, to preserve their labor; their earnings would place them beyond the condition of their cla.s.s in Great Britain; and when their fortune should be known, they would never want for successors. But he appealed to a still more cogent argument.

The expense of a convict mechanic to the crown, was one shilling per day; of a free artizan, seven to ten shillings: the difference would go to the workmen, to bribe their industry and gratify their vices. It was not, perhaps, known fully to Arthur, that at the moment he sealed his despatch, forty mechanics lodged in one ward, who earned not much less than 50 per week, by the leisure hours they enjoyed.[191] It was, however, true, that the inducement to pay large sums for occasional labor, arose from the difficulty of obtaining it: few mechanics were transported; so few, as to excite astonishment.[192]

But however exact and successful transportation, in Governor Arthur's opinion, a variety of causes contributed to excite in England a powerful prejudice against it, and to lead the ministers to interfere with some of its details of great practical consequence. The gradual amelioration of the criminal code--a restriction of capital punishments, demanded by the humanity of the British public--was allowed by the ruling cla.s.ses with doubt and grudging. Some conspicuous cases confirmed their predilection in favor of the scaffold. What punishment, they asked, would transportation have proved to Fontleroy, who from the spoil of his extensive forgeries, might have reserved an ample fortune? It was reported, and not untruly, that many had carried to the penal colonies the profit of their crime; that the wife had been a.s.signed to the nominal service of her husband; or, still more preposterous, the husband committed to the control of the wife--and were enabled at once to invest their capital in whatever form might promise success.

Several volumes issued in succession from the British press, full of highly colored sketches of colonial life; in which the advantages possessed by many emancipists, the splendour of their equipage, and the luxurious profligacy of their lives, were exhibited as the larger prizes of a fruitful lottery. Among these works, the most popular, that of Cunningham, professed to delineate the sentiments of the prisoners, from which it might be inferred that few conditions of human life offered so many chances of gaiety and prosperity.[193]

About the same period, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, of a talented family, and afterwards distinguished by his connection with colonisation, was imprisoned in Newgate for the abduction of Miss Turner. During three years' residence he professes to have devoted great attention to the subject of transportation. Few sessions pa.s.sed but some prisoner, formerly transported, appeared under a second charge. In conversing upon their prospects, they described the country of their former exile in terms of high eulogy. It was the opinion of Wakefield that, as a punishment, it had no influence in preventing crime. The evidence of several settlers from New South Wales was of the same character; and M'Queen, a member of parliament, long resident in that country, stated that he had been often asked what offence would be sufficient to ensure transportation.[194] The letters received from the prisoners, recorded their good fortune, and were read by their former acquaintances. They were filled with exaggerations, dictated by vanity or affection; and seemed to convey an impression that, of their families, they only were fortunate.

A colonist is certainly not ent.i.tled to deny, that many strong cases of perversion occurred; but, except the superiority of diet, and the high value of labor common to new countries when they prosper at all, the descriptions given were mostly illusive and mistaken. The extreme misery and degradation endured by many, and to which all were liable, rendered the ordinary condition of prisoners one which could not have been desired, except by the most wretched of the people.

New South Wales was regarded, by the laughing portion of the British public, as a perpetual beggar's opera. One eminent writer said, that the people of these colonies attracted attention only from the curiosity they excited: mankind were amused to know what form would be a.s.sumed by a community, composed of men who narrowly escaped the executioner. By another they were compared to an old fashioned infant, which had all the vices and deformity of a corrupt const.i.tution and precocious pa.s.sions.

The exhibition of a panorama of Sydney in the metropolis of England, attracted large crowds. It was hardly possible to exaggerate the charms of its scenery, when clothed in the radiant verdure of the spring; but the dwellings were drawn, not only in their just proportions, but with all the grace of the pencil--cabins looked like bowers. The poet, Campbell, struck with the glowing harmony, exclaimed, how delightful to the London thief--beneath the clear sky and amidst the magnificent forests of Australia,

"Where Sydney Cove its lucid bosom swells"--

to shake the hand he once encountered in the same pocket at Covent Garden theatre! It is thus, too often, that substantial interests are sacrificed to humour. No one, acquainted with the minds of prisoners, can imagine that the purest atmosphere, or most exhilarating prospect, would be half so attractive to a veteran robber, as the murky cellars of the "London Shades."

The writings of Archbishop Whately tended to the same result. Against the principles of transportation he entered an earnest protest, not only as defeating the primary objects of a penalty, but as const.i.tuting a community charged with the elements of future mischief. He reasoned in his closet, and formed his conclusions from a process of investigation which was not complete: he overlooked some facts which tended largely to neutralise the evil, and that suppress or defeat propensities which thrive in Europe. He made many senatorial converts, and those he did not convince, in reference to his main proposition, were anxious to obviate his objections.

To meet, however, the views which prevailed, and which were strongly recommended by the parliamentary committee of 1832, the government determined to increase the rigour of transportation. The effects of the French revolution, and the pressure of commercial distress, had produced a strong tendency to crime. In the agricultural districts of England riot and arson were prevalent: the utmost exertion of the laborer did not preserve his family from want. Depredations upon game, and other species of rural property, exasperated the legislative cla.s.s. The hulks were crowded: it was proposed to establish a penitentiary at Dartmoor, long the site of a French prison, and employ the convicts in cutting granite for sale; but the discussions in parliament manifested the strong preference of the agricultural interests for a system of absolute banishment. It was observed by Peel, that the detention of prisoners exposed the government to endless annoyance, and before half their time was expired the solicitation of their friends often procured a remission.

Pending these enquiries, a rumour reached the colony that transportation was abolished. The papers broke out in the language of wailing and woe: the _Courier_, especially, gave utterance to the most pa.s.sionate grief.

The editor described the melancholy visage of the settlers, and the different expressions of vexation and disappointment which he heard around him. One declaiming against the perfidy of government, and another delineating the ruin involved in the fatal resolution. Some threatening to leave the country ruled by covenant breakers, who, in the spirit of reckless experiment, were not only demolishing the finest imaginable system of penal discipline, but sacrificing the fortunes of colonists, who had emigrated in the confidence that convicts would follow them in an uninterrupted stream.[195] These apprehensions were but temporary. The strong representations of Governor Arthur, and the extreme difficulty of change, secured a further trial under new conditions.

Lord Melbourne held a consultation with Mr. Stanley. He suggested that the increase of crime had arisen partly from ignorance of the actual consequences of transportation. He requested him to reflect upon this topic, and to determine whether it might not be proper to send transgressors through a more rigorous discipline on their landing, and to stop the comparative ease and comfort it was customary to enjoy.[196]

Mr. Stanley undertook to contrive a scheme, which should terminate the indifference with which banishment was regarded. He had said that he would render the punishment of transportation more dreaded than death itself. At his suggestion Lord Melbourne addressed a letter to the judges, and requested them, when on their circuits, to explain the extent of torment which banishment included; to select such as they might deem it proper to separate to a more terrific form of punishment; and to declare, in a public manner, the degree of severity which would follow a particular sentence.

It was determined that the more hardened should be confined at Norfolk Island or Macquarie Harbour; and that no prisoner for life should be withdrawn from a penal settlement, until seven years of his sentence was pa.s.sed, or until one-third of a shorter period was completed. Then drafted to the roads: after wearing chains a further five years, he might be a.s.signed to a master, and commence his probation. The less guilty were to join the road party at once, and in seven years be liberated from their chains. Mr. Stanley forwarded sixteen persons in the _Southwell_, whom he directed should be kept in chains for the first seven years of their bondage. He thus established the system, distinguished as the "certain and severe" in the orders of government; and for several years described by the journals, as the "worse than death" system of Mr. Secretary Stanley.[197]

The object of Stanley was to invest transportation with novel terrors, and to give a more tragic aspect to the law. He did not, however, reflect, that he who has destroyed hope has also made the despairing worthless; that the victim will have recourse to violence or insensibility--that when he cannot rupture he will hug his bonds. He did not perceive that no Englishman would accept the service of a felon, who for twelve years had experienced the misery of chains--that it was not as prisoners, but as husbandmen, that the poachers and rioters of England were acceptable to the Australian farmer; who was reconciled to penal slavery, only when disguised under semi-patriarchal forms.

The change proposed by Stanley was greatly disliked by Arthur. It was the reverse of his system. Whatever influences were brought into action by agricultural service, would be lost in a gang. He foresaw the despondency, the oppression of the prisoners, and the gradual alienation of the colonists. Arthur referred Stanley's despatch to the executive council, with his own rejoinder. His system of twelve years bondage and chains was unanimously reprobated: the council concurred in the opinion of the Governor, that it would break up the gradations of punishment; and unless sustained by a large reinforcement of military, endanger the public safety and produce habits of outrage and revenge.[198] Whatever influence these representations possessed, the plan was abandoned of necessity. The chief justice of New South Wales advised the Governor that the law had not authorised the arbitrary addition of chains to a sentence of transportation--to increase the misery, not to add to the safe keeping of the prisoners. Such, on reference, was the opinion of the English legal authorities, and the men in irons were released.[199]

Whatever the motives of Lord Stanley, the transmission of such an order, without ascertaining the authority under which it was issued, was a serious official error. It is probable, that the persons injured had no means of appeal, and deserved no redress; but when it is remembered, that the law does not profess to determine the moral enormity of an offence by the extent of punishment, to aggravate a penalty which the legislators deemed equal to the crime--avowedly to make it more terrible than death itself--was a stretch of official power, which can scarcely be explained.

St. Paul denounced the judge who smote contrary to the law. Mr.

Stanley's encroachment on the functions of legislation was only more defensible because less corrupt. To repress colonial disorders, the local government had, indeed, grafted the penalties he prescribed on the colonial statute book; but the despotic interference of a secretary of state was specially objectionable. Persons sentenced to transportation for political or agrarian crimes, were not unlikely to provoke the personal hatred of ministers, and therefore to suffer a vengeance beyond the intention of the judges, or the spirit of the laws.

To render corruption more difficult, the power of the governors was limited by statute. They had granted tickets-of-leave for the discovery of outlaws, the detection of serious crimes, and any service of great public utility. They had been often swayed by feelings of humanity in hastening the liberation of men, whose families required their care; but an Act "for abolishing the punishment of death in certain cases,"[200]

not only fixed the time when prisoners should be capable of tickets-of-leave, but abstracted the chief advantages a ticket conferred. They were excluded from the protection of civil laws, and thus thrown on the mercy of any who might employ them. These clauses were introduced by Lord Wynford (Sergeant Best), and were intended to equalise the punishment of offenders, and to prevent an early enjoyment of plunder. This restriction was, however, practically unjust. The grant of a ticket-of-leave was to enable a man to procure a livelihood: to deprive him of legal resource, was to invite the swindler and the cheat to make his earnings and acquisitions their prey. The local courts had hitherto resisted the injustice by evasion: a record of conviction being required to stay a civil action; although in the criminal courts it was sufficient to prove that the person accused had been dealt with as a transported offender.

Lord Wynford's Act made no such distinction. Its provision, probably the result of inadvertence, was so palpably a contradiction, that it was never acted upon in Van Diemen's Land, and was earnestly deprecated by all cla.s.ses. To grant a prisoner liberty to seek subsistence, and yet suffer any fraudulent person to deprive him of his just wages, could arise only from that confusion of ideas, too common in legislation on the subject.