that is real in the suffering is placed most effectually out of sight:First, The incommodities of a crowded ship; which however, under the good treatment which the convicts receive, are not so great as those sustained by soldiers when conveyed by sea from one distant country to another :-Secondly, The hardships to which they may be exposed in the country of their destination; where they are so far from being placed under any peculiar hardships, that their lot is far better than that of the labouring portion of their countrymen at home. In all this, nothing can be discovered that has a tendency to work with any peculiar efficacy upon the minds of people at home. So far from that important effect; it would not be easy, if human ingenuity were to be tortured for that purpose, to invent a punishment which, in regard to example, would be more completely useless, expended more entirely in waste. It is not in the nature of things that it should produce any good effect, of so much amount as to be worth mentioning.-Such, in providing for the grand purpose which is to be served by the use of punishment, is the manifestation of wisdom afforded by those who appointed the punishment of transportation to New South Wales. It would be of great importance to illustrate the subject much more fully. But the nature of our undertaking forbids us to enlarge. And we must now proceed to a few remarks on the next head; namely, that of the reformation of the offender.

II. REFORMATION. Never surely was there a more strange device for a punishment, than that of sending offenders to Botany Bay. It is not worse adapted for example, than it is for reformation. The circumstances of the case declared from the beginning that it must be so, had there been any body who took the trouble to consider them, or who had knowledge upon consideration to understand them. What, in the name of wonder, was to be expected from sending a number of men and women, with minds highly depraved, to a distant country, where they must herd solely with one another, and operate upon one another with all those bad passions which lodged in their breasts? What could, in possibility, be the effect of creating (what, without great violence of metaphor, may be called) a hell upon earth, but the formation of characters which accord with that scene of horrors? Men and women, in whose breasts the corruptive principles possessed such strength as to overpower in their native country the influence of a good name, and the restraints of law, are sent to a country for REFORMATION, where a good name is of no importance, and where legal restraint is of necessity less powerful than at home. The case speaks for itself, with a voice

which cannot be mistaken. In such a situation, the motives to good conduct are not increased, but weakened; and that to a prodigious degree. The motives to wickedness, therefore, attain an ascendency which they had not before.―The effects, as they have been really experienced, are still more dreadful than a previous consideration of the causes would have led us to predict.

From the works of Captain Collins and others, who have favoured us with accounts of New South Wales, it would be easy to present a picture of human manners, such as no other spot, upon the face of the earth, we venture to affirm, could ever match. There it is, that human nature appears in colours so detestable, that the heart sickens at the view. To select passages would be endless; and even to give specimens would far exceed the limits to which we are constrained to confine ourselves. Let it suffice to say, in general, that every species of bad disposition appears in that dreadful soil to flourish with ten-fold luxuriance. So far is any feature of amendment from appearing as the general character of those who are transported into the island, that the contrary feature of increasing depravity is glaring beyond any conception which it is easy for words to

convey.

Their aversion to labour, and proneness to sloth, are remarkable.. Nothing can induce them to perform in a day so much as half a day's work, except the prospect of being paid in spirits, with which they may get drunk.

Their passion for the use of intoxicating liquors surpasses any thing that is witnessed even among the worst of their own abandoned class in a civilized nation, and approaches to the madness of American savages. There is nothing which they will not sacrifice, nothing which they will not attempt, for the pleasure of getting drunk.

Improvidence is another feature in which they more resemble the savage, than the man whose mind has been reared under the strengthening discipline of civilized life. They seem to lose the capacity of regarding the future, and of making for it any the slightest provision. The pains or pleasures of a distant day lose all influence upon their minds. They are engrossed by the existing moment: to the appetite of the existing moment they are placed in a state of the most abject slavery; and to it every thing is greedily sacrificed that can render life desirable. Prostitution is the regular habit, The women are less in number than the men, and by far the greater proportion of them in a state of concubinage, or common.

The most atrocious crimes, murder, incendiarism, robbery,

occur daily. Captain Collins, speaking of himself in the character of the analyst of the colony, describes himself as "travelling in a field, where his steps are, at every moment, beset with murderers, robbers, and incendiaries." Having mentioned the great number of recent executions, he remarks that, "notwithstanding these, the number of thieves and robbers was still increasing." And he said, "Can it be wondered at, that so much profligacy prevailed in every part of the settlement?" No, indeed can it not! The only wonder is, that any human beings, or being, should have been capable of supposing that such a tree could produce any other fruit!

One remark is still to be made, not as being in any degree surprising; but because it is, like other facts of importance, in this field, too apt to be overlooked. Captain Collins in his Journal (p. 218, 3d July 1799) says, "The continual complaints which are made of the conduct of the female convicts require (says the governor in his order of this day) the most rigid and determined discipline with such characters, who, to the disgrace of their sex, are far worse than the men, and are generally found at the bottom of -every infamous transaction that is committed in the colony.? This single fact speaks the matter of volumes. Women love to be at the top of the fashion. We may conclude, with an assurance by which we cannot easily be deceived, that if in New South Wales the women are worse than the men, depravity is there the fashion; and high degrees of villainy the most honourable distinction.-Indeed we are not left to this sort of inference for the evidence of so dreadful a fact. There is, we are expressly told, emulation in crime !

But we must cut short our illustrations, to enable us to adduce a few observations under the next head.

III. PREVENTION OF EVIL, AND EXTRACTION OF GOOD, AT THE HAND OF THE CONVICT. In the primary sense, prevention of evil at the hand of the convict, means the retaining him in a state of incapacitation for the perpetration of further crimes. In another sense, and that, a sense of by no means small importance, it means prevention of his becoming a burthen to the community by expense. Extraction of good at his hand is only possible through the medium of his labour; when measures are taken with so much skill as to make his labour not only support him, but do something more.

In New South Wales, though it is far from true that the convict is placed in a state of incapacitation for the perpetration of crimés, (for it is a scene of all manner of crimes,) it is no doubt true, that so long as he remains in New South

IVales he is in a state of incapacitation for the perpetration of crimes in England. But so would he be under any tolerable system of safe custody in England. And it is well known that it is no uncommon thing for the convicts to find the means of return. The masters of vessels find their account in giving them a passage for the benefit of their services during the voyage. If so many have found the means of return, when the population, hence the traffic, and hence the number of vessels repairing to the island, were very small, the facilities of returning must increase so much, when the business of the country becomes enlarged, that almost every convict who chooses, will find it in his power to return. At present, such of the women as are young, and have any personal attractions, find it easy to return, by prostituting themselves to somebody during the passage. It must therefore be a very insecure place of safe custody at home, that is not equal in its powers of incapacitation to New South Wales.

Prevention of evil from the convict in the shape of expense, is so far from taking place on the New South Wales system, that no other scheme has ever yet been thought of, which creates a quantity of evil in this shape so much as approaching to the monstrous quantity created by New South Wales. Of good extracted, it follows of course that there is none. The order, of things is such, that the fruits of the labour of the convicts not only afford no surplus above their maintenance; but their maintenance, that is, the burthen they create, rises to a cost over and above their labour, greatly exceeding what their whole subsistence in England, independent of their labour, would require.

Thus shortly have we noticed the deplorable want of adaptation to the legitimate ends of punishment in the system of penal infliction created by the laws relating to the hulks and Botany Bay. Short as are the strictures to which we have been constrained to confine ourselves, the ideas, we trust, are tolerably clear, and the evidence tolerably cogent.

Of that system of contrivances, grounded upon the fundamental contrivance of perfect and perpetual inspection, invented by Mr. Bentham, and rendered applicable to all the purposes of penal discipline, our readers have received accounts from us on more than one occasion. It would swell this article far beyond allowable bounds, to repeat the description of these contrivances, or the elucidations which we have already presented of the adaptation of that system of means, to the great end which punishment is destined to serve ;-an adaptation as com

plete and wonderful, as is the want of adaptation in the system which occupies its place.-Not that the subject is not of sufficient importance to bear repetition ;-not but that it enters so far into the vitals of good law, and good government, that is, the vitals of human happiness, as not only to justify but demand repetition, till men in general understand, and are sufficiently affected with, the importance of its results. On the present occasion, however, we have dwelt so long in the exposition of what is bad, that time is wanting to expatiate on that which is good. We have, besides, a wish to offer to the consideration of our readers an authority which possibly may have greater weight with them than ours; we mean the authority of Mr. Abbott's committee in 1798.

"It did not," they say, "escape your committee, that Mr. Colquhoun, in pointing out the errors of the present mode, speaks of an improved system for the employment of convicts, as one of the chief means by which the expenses of the police are to be diminished.

"Your committee were therefore induced to inquire whether that gentleman had any particular system in view in making that observation; and they learnt with considerable satisfaction, that Mr. Colquhoun (who appears himself to have submitted a plan to the secretary of state for this purpose) did allude to a particular system, from which, according to his decided opinion, if adopted and carried into execution, infinite advantages would arise to the public, not only in the diminution of the expense at present incurred, but in the improvement of the morals of the convicts who may be placed under such an establishment: your committee have therefore annexed to this report a sketch of that plan, contained in a printed paper, entitled, 'A proposal for a new and less expensive mode for employing and reforming convicts.*

"Impressed with the advantages, of which the perusal of the heads of the plan appears to justify the expectations, your committee were gratified in finding that it had already attracted the attention, and obtained the encouragement, of his majesty's go

vernment.

"That so long ago as the 11th of June, 1794, the sum of 2,000%. had been actually granted to the proposer, Jeremy Bentham, esq. under warrant from the treasury, to enable him to make the necessary preparations for the custody of the convicts to be confined in the proposed penitentiary houses.'

"That an act of parliament received the royal assent on the 7th July, 1794, 34 Geo. III. c. 84. not only authorizing but requiring the lords commissioners of the treasury, as soon after