The History of Tasmania Volume II Part 25

The partisans of General Darling, many of whom were eminent, both for their opulence and social worth, resented the constructive censure of his policy. They a.s.serted that discipline was relaxed; that, under the t.i.tle of the "prisoners' friend," Bourke was an incendiary, stirring up the laborers to rebellion.[216] They predicted that the diminished severity of transportation as a penalty, would suggest new arguments against it in parliament, ultimately lead to its abolition, and thus inflict a fatal injury on the colony. The press, supported by emancipists, lauded the lenient temper of the governor, and exasperated the advocates of the past system by allusions to their tyrannical rule, and exultation at their defeat. The old quarrel revived: the dissatisfied magistrates and settlers dwelt on the characteristic depravity of the emancipists; and the necessity for their permanent disqualification as jurors and electors. While they a.s.serted the lasting civil and moral distinctions between the voluntary and expiree settlers, the patrons of the latter avenged them by maintaining that the convict was only less _fortunate_ than his free employer, and that the moral disparity a.s.sumed and vaunted, was rather fanciful than real.

The treatment of a.s.signed servants in New South Wales had always been more open to objection than Van Diemen's Land.[217] The transportation of 30,000, during ten years ending in 1836, produced the moral evils inseparable from such vast acc.u.mulations. Several of the settlers employed from one to two hundred men, and it was a capital object to reduce them to the feeling, while they were subject to the economy of penal slavery. There were, indeed, many mitigations and many exceptions; but the settlers at large realised less the healthy sympathy between the master and servant than was common in this country.

A cla.s.s of settlers, whose management was not less exceptionable, chiefly expirees, surrounded the large estates; thus, while some convicts were considered both as criminals and slaves, others sat at the table and enjoyed the company of their masters. The results of these extremes have been already described, and are always uniform.

Among those who resented the policy of Bourke, Major Mudie was the most bitter and persevering. In his "_Felonry of New South Wales_," he employed every epithet of horror and contempt in condemning the conduct of this governor. The character of Mudie, as delineated by his friends, is not repulsive: they have described him as a good master and a just magistrate; but the style of his work awakens a suspicion that his temper was not fitted for the control of his fallen countrymen. They were sent to New South Wales to be punished: such was his theory.

Macarthur, who partic.i.p.ated in many of his sentiments, yet describes his own plan as the reverse. He knew that a severe gaoler could not be esteemed as a good master: "he endeavoured to make his farm servants forget that they were convicts."[218] Mudie spoke of those he employed in the tone of an executioner--nothing could wash away their guilt, or obliterate its brand. His descriptions of the "felonry"--a cutting term devised by himself, are grotesque and amusing. He deserves the fame of a satirist, but on historical questions his vehement language impairs the force of his testimony, and lessens the weight of his opinions.

This gentleman was the proprietor of Castle Forbes, an estate of large extent, where many convicts were employed. Their immediate superintendence he intrusted to his nephew, of whom their complaints were bitter and mutinous. Their remonstrances were punished: one man set out for Sydney, and carried a pet.i.tion to Governor Bourke; he was sent back with a note to his master, written by the private secretary, who interceded in his behalf; but his application was irregular, and his absence unauthorised, and Mudie delivered him to the magistrate, by whom he was flogged and condemned to chains. On this, several men rose in rebellion: they attacked the house of their master, robbed him of some race horses, and attempted the life of the overseer. At their trial, and just before their death, they implored the governor to stop the cruelties which had driven them to desperation and the scaffold.

Deferring to the strong feeling excited by their appeal, Bourke appointed an enquiry. The evidence collected did not sustain the charges of the men, who probably mistook their position, and exaggerated their grievances; but their accusations made a deep impression on a certain cla.s.s, and the tyranny of the settler magistrates, of whom thirty were dismissed from the commission, was denounced with increasing boldness and asperity.

Among the most effective writers of the time, was William Angus Watt, who held up the angry magistrates to derision, and their partisans, "as a faction dwindled to a shadow--

A mumping phantom of incarnate spite; Loathed, but not feared, for rage that cannot bite."[219]

The career of this man is a curiosity of Australasian literature. Both Dr. Lang and Major Mudie have spread his fame by their works and their parliamentary evidence. He committed a crime in Scotland, for which he was outlawed; for a second, in London, he was transported. At Wellington Valley he won the favor of his superintendent employed in an office at Sydney, he conciliated the good-will of Bishop Broughton and several other clergymen, who interceded for his pardon. This was refused, but he obtained a ticket-of-leave, and engaged in the service of the editor of the _Gazette_, the reputed organ of the government. The profligacy of his habits, and the insolence of his writings, exposed him to observation. He lived with a female illegally at large, whose child, born in the factory, was baptised in his name. To involve the editors of the _Herald_ in a prosecution for libel, Watt procured, by the agency of a printer in their office, a slip proof of a letter they had resolved to suppress. This he transmitted through the post to the person calumniated, to give him the necessary evidence of publication. For his share in this scandalous trick he was tried, but the paper stolen was of so little value that he was acquitted. In addressing the jury, he pointed out Major Mudie as his unrelenting persecutor, and as an oppressor of unfortunate prisoners. Mudie, to punish the alleged insolence of his defence, accused him of immorality and habitual lying, and demanded the revocation of his ticket-of-leave. The investigation lasted several weeks, and ended in the dismissal of the charge, which was not unfairly attributed to the animosities kindled by newspaper warfare, in which Mudie was more than a spectator. Judge Burton represented that the residence of Watt in Sydney was pernicious, and Governor Bourke ordered him to the district of Port Macquarie; whither he was followed by the proprietress of the _Gazette_, with whom he married, by the governor's permission. There he was again concerned in an official dispute: his ticket was withdrawn; he absconded, was retaken and flogged--and thus dropped down to the degraded condition which his enemies desired, and which was certainly not undeserved.

The attempt to identify Bourke with this man was an artifice of faction.

The license he received was not unusual, and his previous character had been free from colonial offence. His influence resulted from his ability: his principles were the current notions of the emancipists; nor is it easy to discern how talents, such as he was supposed to possess, could be prevented from finding their level.

About this time Dr. Lang established the _Observer_. Its object was to write down the emancipist partisans, and the journals subject to their power. The good service performed by this earnest censor was not without alloy: and in his attacks on their moral reputation, he seemed sometimes to write what they themselves might have written. The emancipists were drawn together by common sympathies: they charged the free settlers with attempting to exact from the sufferings and failings of their brethren, a consideration in the colony, to which they were ent.i.tled neither by their rank nor their reputation. Nor was this reflection always without reason: in strange forgetfulness of the natural operation of self-love, the upper cla.s.ses of New South Wales expected mult.i.tudes, often of greater wealth than themselves, to walk humbly in their presence. Such claims the emancipists met with defiance. The false morality of their journals will be largely ascribed by a calm enquirer to retaliation and hatred, rather than to a judgment corrupted--in reference to the real nature of crime.[220]

Nothing so powerfully contributed to rouse the attention of the empire, as the charge of Judge Burton, delivered to the petty jurors, at the close of the criminal court, 1835. Perhaps a more awful picture was never drawn, or a more serious impeachment p.r.o.nounced against a people.

This celebrated speech furnished the text of examination, when parliament once more enquired on the subject. Judge Burton a.s.serted that the whole community seemed engaged in the commission or the punishment of crimes. Crimes, including 442 capital convictions in three years: crimes of violence, murders, manslaughters in drunken revels--deliberate perjuries, from motives of revenge or reward, were brought to light. He complained of the deficiency of religious principle: of the neglect and profanation of the sabbath: on which day the worst actions were planned and perpetrated. The convict stations he compared to "bee-hives, diligently pouring in and out; but with this difference--the one worked by day, the other by night: the one goes forth to industry, the other to plunder." These evils he traced to "squatting;" the congregation of prisoner servants in Sydney; the license of improper persons to public houses; and, more than all, the total neglect of superintendence by employers of convicts, who, armed for marauding expeditions, sometimes left their masters' premises by night, and even by day. He closed, by declaring his love to free inst.i.tutions--the pride, indeed, and boast of England; but which, if conferred on such a populace, he believed would end in the corruption of all.

That this address gave a true description of a part of the population, cannot be doubted; but inferences were liable to error, even on the spot, much more when drawn at a distance. A ma.s.s of thieves under any system, if in contact with property, must produce a ma.s.s of crime; yet even in the worst days of transportation, the relapses were proportionately less than under any other system of prison discipline.

In England, 30,000 such persons at large, would yield annually at least an equal number of felonies.

The abuses which were brought to light, were certainly flagrant: the most memorable was the instance of Nash, who took to Sydney the rich spoil of a robbery, and set up a large drapery warehouse; and of Gough, an a.s.signed servant of the chief justice, who lived at large, and carried on a quiet business as a receiver of stolen goods. Cases so conspicuous strongly ill.u.s.trated the evils of a.s.signment. The miserable fate of Mudie's men, compared with the condition of such persons, naturally suggested the idea, that some new change was essential, to protect from reproach or derision the public justice of the nation.

The appointment of a committee to promote emigration from Ireland, of which Archbishop Whately was chairman, called attention to the subject of transportation. It was the opinion of the committee (1836), that to send the peasantry of Ireland to a community so polluted, was base, cruel, and impolitic. The right reverend prelate a.s.serted that statesmen were tolerating a social organisation, destined one day to involve the empire in deep disgrace, and exhibit the awful spectacle of a nation of criminals!

The desire to possess free inst.i.tutions, brought the question of transportation to a crisis. The patriotic a.s.sociation advocated an unrestricted concession of political rights; the anti-emancipists a limitation of the franchise to such as were always free. This division of opinion was characterised by the usual warmth of political faction, aggravated by personal anger. The pet.i.tion of the exclusionists called the attention of parliament to the state of the convict question, and solicited enquiry.[221] Macarthur, whose work is a commentary on the pet.i.tion, full of valuable information, suggested the abolition of a.s.signment, the separation of the convict department and colonial government, and the establishment of large gangs, in which labor might be exacted, without partiality.

Such was the state of this important question during the last years of Arthur's administration. When he deemed the details of his penal system nearest perfection, the main principles on which it rested were undermined. The severity enjoined by Lord Stanley, and the lenity exercised by General Bourke, raised an outcry against transportation; and once more propagated the idea that in its lenity it was corrupt, and its severity cruel. A running fire was kept up by the press, which returned to the question of secondary punishments with new vigour, and repeated all the problems on this perplexing subject--perhaps, destined to confound the wise, and furnish a theme for dogmatism through all time.

In 1837, the House of Commons appointed the committee, of which Sir William Molesworth was chairman.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 216: _Mudie's Felonry._]

[Footnote 217: "I thought them a villanous shabby set, compared with convicts in Van Diemen's Land." "There appeared a great deal of flogging." "My men did twice as much work." "I told my brother, if he used his men as we did, he would get more work: he said _it would be ill-received through the country_. They had very inferior clothing, and got very little meat. These remarks were applicable to the estates in general."--_Mr. P. Murdoch's Evidence_--questions 1397 to 1403.]

[Footnote 218: _Par. Pap._]

[Footnote 219: _Sydney Gazette, April 1835._]

[Footnote 220: "It was the uniform tendency or design of the writings of these individuals, as it has been also that of all other public writers of convict origin in the Australian colonies, to reduce the reputable portion of the community to the same level as themselves; to abolish all the salutary distinctions which the laws of G.o.d and man have erected between right and wrong; and if possible to dispossess the whole convict population of all sense of criminality and degradation."--_Lang's Transportation and Colonisation_, 1837. p. 109. And yet the disappearance of emancipist disqualifications has almost banished a cla.s.s of writers who were accepted as champions, but who could not seriously affect the ultimate views of public and private morality--they were mere actors.]

SECTION XIX.

While these questions were agitated in England, Sir John Franklin received the government of Tasmania. Captain Maconochie, already known to scientific men, and who had enjoyed long the friends.h.i.+p of the Governor, accepted the office of private secretary--a situation of not much emolument, but highly confidential. When his destination became public, the society for the improvement of prison discipline requested him to examine closely the results of transportation, as exhibited in Van Diemen's Land. To a.s.sist his inquiries, they prepared sixty-seven questions, comprehending the details of convict management, on which they desired a minute exposition of his views; and added, "_make such general remarks as occur on the whole convict system of the colony, and its effects on the moral and social state of the community: also remark on the effect of the latter, and enter on the subject largely, making any observation which may be useful in regard thereto_."

Captain Maconochie referred the application to Sir George Grey, who consented, conditionally:--that all papers on the subject should pa.s.s through the usual channel to the colonial-office, and be first placed at his absolute disposal. The effects of this commission were momentous.

Maconochie, when he left Great Britain, professed a freedom from decided bias, and to favor the general system of Arthur, rather than that propounded by Archbishop Whately. The opinions he ultimately adopted, he ascribed to his own observation, and disclaimed all prejudice against those forms of prison discipline he was destined to subvert.

The discussions thus originated are of a deeply interesting character, and their influence will long survive the animosity they occasioned. The completion of Maconochie's report was exceedingly rapid, or it was very early commenced. He had resided but three months, when he felt authorised to p.r.o.nounce the existing system of management defective, far less in application than in principle. The course ascribed to Maconochie was that of a prejudiced spy, seeking evidence for a case pre-judged: that which he claimed, was the task of a philosopher, scanning facts patent to every eye--even more striking when first seen. His conclusions he attributed to the inevitable process by which facts are generalised, and demonstrate systems. His style, when deliberate, is terse and explicit: his ideas he expressed with the utmost freedom; or, as it then seemed, audacity. The colonists he treated as an operator, who indeed pities the sufferings of his patient, but disregards a natural outcry, while expounding in the language of science both the symptoms and the cure. Without circ.u.mlocution or reserve, he spoke of the officers concerned in convict management as blinded by habit--as empirics who could patch and cauterise a wound, but were involved in the hopeless prejudices of a topical practice, and much too far gone to comprehend improvements founded on scientific principles. His deviations from the tone of philosophical discussion were not numerous, but they were marked. The chief police magistrate he compared to the lamplighter, by whom gas is detested. In praising that officer's administrative talent, he observed that he belonged to the martinet school, and that his estimate of human nature depressed it below its worth.

The representations of Maconochie, with reference to the condition of the convicts and the character of the settlers, awakened a storm of indignation. Transportation, he said, at a distance appeared a trivial penalty; but when surveyed more nearly, it was found to be inhuman. The servant was a.s.signed to a master without his consent; his employment was alien to his habits; he labored without wages; he was met with suspicion, and ruled with insult or contempt. The servant became sullen, the settler vindictive: slight offences were visited with punishments "severe, to excessive cruelty,"--offences, often the ebullitions of wounded feeling, and the tokens of a hopeless wretchedness.

Notwithstanding, this condition--unknown to the population at home--afforded no warning. The victims were uncompensated--the great majority unreformed. Thus, employers preferred new hands to those pa.s.sed through this discipline of suffering. Such as rose in society, were seldom really respectable; they neither regretted their crimes, nor offered atonement. But if the prisoner was injured, the colonist was not less so. Social virtues were discouraged; all cla.s.ses were contentious and overbearing: the police, ever prying into the business of life, thus intermixed with penal systems, filled the colony with exasperation, from which not even the mildest spirits could escape. He did not propose to abolish transportation, but that the government by its own officers should both punish and reform; that the prisoners, when restored to society, should stand in the relations of free men to all except the crown, receiving wages at the current rate; and if restrained in their expenditure, not for punishment, but for safety--"the chains of paternal authority" thrown over them, "to protect them against themselves."

Maconochie sent to Sir G. Grey a Summary of his Report, containing his opinions of existing systems: at his request it was at once handed to Lord John Russell, who again, conveyed it to the committee then sitting upon the subject of transportation. Although substantially agreeing with his report, _the summary_ condensed, and therefore rendered more flagrant, the charges against the colonists, and his description of the condition of the prisoners still more revolting.

This _Summary_ appeared in an English newspaper. Hitherto the discussion had been confined to official circles or to select correspondence: it was now open to the world; and the colonists found, with astonishment, that the reform proposed was radical, and that the opinions of the reformer were wholly adverse to the existing systems.

In this summary, the condition of the convicts was depicted with all the coloring of misery: they were slaves, subject to coercion; strangers to moral impulses, save only the distant hope of liberty. They were lodged in huts with stable roofs, damp floors, and rude furniture.[222] They slept on truckle bedsteads, often undressed; their food was cooked in the roughest manner; without wages, they robbed; miserable, they were drunken. Their better qualities were unregistered: the artful escaped, while the "careless fellow," otherwise good, was involved in a long train of penalties. A ticket obtained, the holder could acquire no property, and was worried by police interference; and in one night his indulgence might be forfeited. Though some masters, generous or weak, softened its rigour, a.s.signment as a punishment, generally exceeded the desert of minor offences: and its degradation, unfelt by old offenders, was agony to men of minds more sensitive. The bad were little punished, the good demoralised; self respect was destroyed; and men born to better things, sacrificed by political inst.i.tutions, rather than by their personal depravity or their crimes. This state was worse than negro slavery: the interests of the masters were less permanent; who, though they did not fear their servants, disliked, coerced, and inveighed against them. This slavery tainted colonial life: the colonists were harsh and overbearing at home; they were quarrelsome neighbours, given to reckless a.s.sertion; rapacious, envious, and disaffected. Government was unpopular, and all governors so in succession. The police, if not corrupt, was irksome and intrusive. Labor was wasted, emigration discouraged. Crime and drunkenness multiplied, and what a hundred and fifty is to one thousand, or thirteen hundred, such was the crime of Van Diemen's Land to that of England and Scotland. Drunkenness had risen, in ten years, from three per cent. to fourteen per cent.: in London, such was the difference of tendencies between those meridians, it was reduced to an imperceptible fraction.

To remedy these evils, he demanded the abolition of domestic slavery: a separation, distinct as their natures, between punishment and moral training; punishment, certain and appropriate--inflicted upon system, and in seclusion; and training, not less systematic, but social and probationary--coercion being banished, moral influence alone applied.

For punishment, Maconochie deemed the system of Port Arthur, administered by Booth, an admirable model. For training, he suggested stations within reach of the free community, where the convicts should be prepared for society in parties of six, joined in a common fate, by mutual agreement. They were to work out their redemption together: their vigilance would detect, their interests depress disorders in the clubs; the virtues of sobriety, diligence, decency, and industry, achieved by each, would be rewarded for the common benefit of all; but for the fault of one, the whole would pay the penalty; or should the partners.h.i.+p be dissolved by the intolerable injustice of any, its disbanded members would return to their starting point, and in new combinations pursue again, and perhaps again, the first steps, until all should reach abreast one common goal.

Such was the system of moral training and mutual responsibility, which he deemed only a new accommodation of established principles. In his view, it was a moral field the greatest statesman might enter with success, and thus crown himself with immortal renown. Such in substance was the summary, afterwards amplified by details and ill.u.s.trated by facts. In subsequent papers the more offensive pa.s.sages were explained and qualified; but at best, they appear not only an indictment of opinions and systems, but of cla.s.ses and communities.

Sir John Franklin promptly referred the queries of the _Society_ to an official board, which consisted of the chief police magistrate of the territory (Captain Forster), the director-general of public works (Captain Cheyne), and the superintendent of convicts (Mr. Spode). In reply to sixty-six of these questions they had only to refer to undisputed facts; but the last contemplated both the theory and practice of transportation. In the statement of facts they united; but the proper remedies to apply to acknowledged evils, admitted of difference--and they all differed.

The memorandum of the chief police magistrate, beside briefly describing the practice of former times, recommended important changes for the future. Instead of a.s.signment from the s.h.i.+ps, he suggested that all prisoners should be placed on the public works, for a period to be fixed by the judges. He proposed a new distribution of time penalties: thus instead of seven, fourteen years, and life, to recognise by law a more minute and proportionate sub-division. In a.s.signment, he recommended wages, rateable at the discretion of government; afterwards a _first cla.s.s_ ticket-of-leave, with a permission to choose employers; and a _second cla.s.s_, to include most of the privileges of freedom, voidable only by a court of quarter sessions for specified offences. The conditional pardon he deemed it necessary to defer a longer time than usual; since, when released from surveillance and responsibility, ticket-holders often relapsed into the vices from which they had previously emerged.

Mr. Spode concurred with the chief police magistrate, though with serious reservations: especially, he deprecated any delay of a.s.signment--a state he deemed most conducive to reform, and highly useful to the colony. Mr. Forster had declared that female prisoners "_were not available subjects for prison discipline_." Mr. Spode recommended solitary confinement, or marriage. In the meantime, Maconochie having drawn up his report, submitted it to Captain Cheyne, and made a proselyte.

Captain Cheyne took the colony by surprise. Not only did he denounce a.s.signment, but spoke of the settlers with still less tenderness: he a.s.serted that a great proportion of those entrusted with convicts "were dissolute in their habits, and depraved in their principles." That there "existed a fearful degree of depravity, unparalleled in any age;" that a.s.signment was the great source of crime and caste: for the convict "no man cared;" few were exempt from contemptuous and brutal treatment--few escaped punishment. Such opinions could only usher in a system radically new. Thus Captain Cheyne proposed to divide the prisoners into gangs of two hundred each, and the adoption of task work proportioned to physical strength. He proposed wages to be paid to the road parties, to be expended in the purchase of comforts, or reserved for a future day. On introducing the prisoners into society, he recommended a graduated scale of indulgence, not greatly dissimilar from the propositions stated already.

The papers of Maconochie and Cheyne were referred to the members of the executive council, and were generally condemned. Captain Montagu urged the great danger to the public peace, from the propagation of an opinion that the laws were unjust, the masters oppressive, and the government cruel. Were it intended to test Maconochie's theory, he demanded a large increase of military force. He, however, complained that gentlemen, who possessed such slight practical knowledge, should venture to a.s.sail established systems. His remarks chiefly related to the colonial influence of their ideas, and he exaggerated the danger to the public safety. The most dispa.s.sionate examination of this report was given by Archdeacon Hutchins. It was far more copious in its admissions in reference to the existing system. Little work was done; the prisoners were very slightly reformed, and the agents often unfit. But by what means labor could be exacted, or a "millennial age of righteousness"

supersede the past, he declared himself uncertain. He was sceptical that it was possible to obtain men of science, prudence, and equity, to administer a system so complexed, and requiring such discretion.

Mr. Gregory, the colonial treasurer, adopted a less grave form of criticism. He soothed, by his humour, the colonial wrath, and among the lesser G.o.ds excited unextinguishable laughter. The charges of Maconochie and Cheyne against the colonists, he described as loose and random shots, fired by inexperienced hands. In reducing the plan of clubs to practical details, he insisted they were unequal, and even impossible.

The minute apprais.e.m.e.nt, both of good and evil; reckoning up the diurnal merits of the men--the balance of which was to furnish their capital stock, to discharge their fines, to find them food and clothing, and liberty--he described as a gigantic scheme of finance.[223] He amused himself by supposing the number of chances which might intervene before, of ninety-six men, the whole should be divided into clubs of six, and by the separate agreement of all combine their fortunes, and risk joint forfeitures: each man settling into partners.h.i.+p with five others whom he could trust, and by whom he could be trusted. He figured also the embarra.s.sment of the protectors, who every evening, ledger in hand, must make up their debtor and creditor account for the three hundred probationers.

The summary, Capt. Maconochie had enclosed, under seal of the Governor, to Sir George Grey, without however fully explaining its contents to Sir John Franklin, or intimating its serious and formal nature. When the journal containing it was placed in his hands, he uttered an exclamation of astonishment, and instantly dismissed its author, but did not withdraw his friends.h.i.+p. Maconochie represented that it was a private doc.u.ment, intended for private use--its sudden appearance not less unexpected than embarra.s.sing. That he had not submitted this paper to the Governor, he ascribed to the irritation caused by the difference of their opinions; and that he did not delay its transmission, he imputed to its overwhelming importance and its pressure on his mind. How the spirit of the Governor was extolled by the colonists need not be formally stated, or how his discarded secretary was accused of rashness, perfidy, and falsehood. Maconochie did not himself disdain to acknowledge, that in error of judgment he had forwarded too early, and in a manner seemingly clandestine, a report so decided. The imputation of duplicity was unjust: Franklin was not wholly ignorant of the contents of the packet. Although not, perhaps, aware that he was franking a system, yet by the same vessel he wrote to the minister that he had not read, and could not answer for the _summary_. It was, however, strange for the ministers of the crown to rely on a private report; and especially upon the truthfulness of an a.n.a.lysis, which gave opinions, but deferred the evidence on which they were said to rest.

The resemblance which may be traced between the system propounded by Maconochie, and the suggestions which have been offered at various times by writers on this subject, will not deprive him of the credit of originality. Hazarded by their authors without much reflection, the boldness of a reformer was required to adapt them. It may, however, be interesting to trace the details which he combined, or the sources of those ideas which he comprehended in his scheme.

Sidney Smith suggested "new gradations of guilt to be established by law, and new names to those gradations; a different measure of good and evil treatment attached to those denominations--as rogues, incorrigible rogues," and so forth.

Mr. Potter M'Queen recommended a division of offenders, some of whom should be punished in gangs, and others subject to a process simply reformatory.