The History of Tasmania Volume II Part 32

In delineating the character of an exile population, a broad line must be drawn between the accidental offender and the hereditary robber. To the first no special description will be applicable: they are often not inferior to the ranks from which they sprung. Though a small section of the whole, they present not the least affecting picture among the many sad sights of a penal land. In the folly and recklessness of youth they lost at once their fame, their honor, and their freedom. The statesman may behold only a ma.s.s of outcasts; but among them are many whose names are the burden of a father's prayer, or are traced in deep lines of sorrow on a mother's breaking heart.

Transportation confounds men of entirely distinct character in one common penalty. Thus every variety of disposition, and every grade in life may be discovered. A proportion, certainly not considerable, obtain the respect and influence due to benevolence, integrity, successful toil: a much larger number exhibit only the common faults of uneducated men, and acquire the common confidence suited to their original station.

The character of convicts cannot be safely inferred from their sentence.

Thus highway robbers were not unfrequently the best conducted men: they exhibited a courage and resolution which, directed aright, became useful to society and to themselves. The petty thief, often detected in his least offence, proved incapable of shame or grat.i.tude. To an English reader, preference expressed by masters for persons under heavy sentences, would appear inexplicable; but it was founded, not on length of servitude alone, but a not uncommon superiority of disposition. Those transported for agrarian offences and political crimes, were often honest men. The rustic insurgents of 1832, were considered valuable servants. The Canadian prisoners conducted themselves with exemplary decorum.

Among those who belong to the cla.s.s of habitual offenders, a large proportion are intellectually deficient. These unfortunate beings regularly return to crime on their discharge; incapable of resisting temptation: while prisoners, they are perpetually involved in difficulties. A very bad man will pa.s.s through the different stages of his sentence without reproach, while the weak-minded are involved in endless infractions of discipline and successive punishments. Nothing r.e.t.a.r.ds the release of the artful villain when his time is expired, while the warm and incautious, but better man, acc.u.mulates a catalogue of prison penalties.

The most civil and useless prisoners are the Irish: the most base and clever are the Scotch. They stand in different relations to the law: the Scotchman violates his own judgment, and offends, against knowledge; the Irish peasant unites a species of patriotism with his aggressions.

The modern convict is, in some respects, better than his predecessor; less ruthless, or p.r.o.ne to atrocious violence. Civilisation has extended its mollifying influence, even to the professional robber. On the other hand, in former times, men were transported for very trivial offences: poaching, with its consequences, formed the leading crimes of the English counties; yet many poachers were otherwise first-rate men, both in disposition and physical development. The modern convicts are, more generally, criminals in the popular sense. The abolition of capital punishments, and the erection of penitentiaries at home, left the penalty of transportation chiefly to more serious offences.

The tendency to particular crimes is often curiously displayed.

Prisoners are safe amidst scenes which present no allurements adapted to their former habits: the pickpocket is perfectly trusty as a shepherd; the housebreaker makes a confidential dairy-man. Old temptations are fatal: even the stealing particular goods seems a special propensity. A woman, lately convicted of stealing blankets, who was originally transported for blanket-stealing, had twice stolen the same article in the colony. It is, of course, in the same department that the robber, the coiner, or the receiver of Europe, resumes in Australia his antagonism to the laws. These characteristics are happily often obliterated and overpowered.

The Christian will not doubt that reformation is possible, and that many once neglected and unfortunate, placed under the guidance and encouraged by the countenance of benevolent men, acquire both the principles and habits of ordinary society. The affections of domestic life are all awakened. The parent feels a new interest in the world: his share in the common prosperity excites the sentiment of patriotism. He promotes his children's education with unusual care; but it is at this stage of life that his heart endures a pang which legislators never contemplated.

The occasional prosperity of the transported person has been the opprobrium of the laws. He rises above his former condition; becomes a master where he was a bondman; patronises public amus.e.m.e.nts, and rides in his chariot past the pedestrian who received him in bonds. Great changes in condition are common everywhere: but transportation presents the whole career of the exile, from the bar to the civic hall, as parts of the one drama. A pardoned offender is lost in the population of Great Britain. Were the changes in his fortune noticed, it would occasion no reflection on the laws; but when numbers ascend under the same auspices, their prosperity is flagrant, and stands in ludicrous contrast with the predictions of the magistrate, who opened up a field of successful enterprise when he p.r.o.nounced the sentence of transportation.

The colonial aspect of transportation is, to a British statesman, a secondary question: thus the injury of a distant community is of inconsiderable importance. If the expatriated cla.s.ses carry out with them their ignorance, disorder, and crime, they r.e.t.a.r.d the progress and destroy the reputation of a distant country, but the nation may still be satisfied: she may balance the evil and the good, and find herself the gainer. The colony is injured; but the parent country is saved. Thus transportation not only removes the habitual criminal, it extinguishes the embers of insurrection: it prevents the dreaded war between property and poverty, and silently withdraws a ma.s.s of dangerous discontent.

Of those transported a great proportion, if in England, would be in prisons; or, if at large, preying on the world--following their old calling, as burglars, coiners, and sheep-stealers. They would be active incendiaries and anarchists: they would be out at every riot, and by throwing their numbers into the scale of sedition, overturn all order, and even change the const.i.tution. Such have been the conclusions of English statesmen: perhaps, partly founded on their fears, or stated for effect; but not wholly unsupported by a.n.a.logy.

While some exhibit a convict colony as depraved beyond all examples of depravation, others lower the standard of human virtue, and not only extenuate its evils but magnify its worth. It was a.s.serted by Lord Stanley, that the feeling of caste guarded the habits of the free. A view so flattering to human pride could hardly fail to be confessed; but, in fact, familiarity with crime, although it may not corrupt the judgment, must abate the moral sensibility. No colonist can forget his shudder at the first spectacle of men in chains: none can be unconscious that the lapse of years has deadened the sense of social disorder. It has, indeed, made many doubly circ.u.mspect, and awakened a peculiar interest in the ordinances of religion. Nor is it to be doubted that many expirees, disgusted with the enormities of vice, have, under the same feeling, contributed to set up the indispensable land-marks of honesty and religion.

Never were families guarded with more care, or efforts to educate the population more earnest, than during the inundation of the probation system. The external decorum of the Sabbath, the general attendance of the free inhabitants on wors.h.i.+p, would go far to countenance the idea that the place of peril is the place of caution and prayer.

Ministers of the crown are, or profess to be, astonished that when the freed population increases, and the territory is explored, a country, still needing labor, should object to the prisoner supply; but the slave-holding interest expires, when immense numbers can be held no longer by a few: the common views of mankind re-a.s.sert their ascendancy.

All, save employers, are hostile to degraded labor; employers themselves become less interested as masters than as colonists.

But transportation to one country cannot continue for ever. The causes which suggest the exile of offenders will occasion their rejection: money or labor may bribe the settler to become an overseer for the crown; but from the beginning he will calculate on a n.o.bler vocation. A considerable community cannot be tempted by convict labor: and the numbers who regain liberty are enemies to the social state they have escaped. Fathers, who for themselves dreaded no dangers, tremble for their children: the adventurer becomes a citizen; a merchant, a politician: and the time approaches, when the same causes which induced the parent country to send the first convict vessel, will impel the colony to send back the last.

The late expedient of Earl Grey, is the trial of a scheme long present before his imagination.[280] Its rejection by the Australian continent has limited the experiment to Van Diemen's Land, where resistance is unavailing. It is the last achievement of penal philosophy, and will ascertain how long one small portion of the earth can receive the liberated ma.s.ses, gathered by the penal laws of a mighty empire!

The ticket man lands; the colony is crowded with his predecessors; the colonists consider his arrival a grievance; the government, ignorant or careless of his fate, cast him into new temptations. Under such a plan the emigrant is gradually superseded by the exile population: the emanc.i.p.ated laborer is expelled by a fresh ticket holder. The country-born youth finds himself unable to live in his native land. The tone of public morals follows the prevailing spirit: crime is currently spoken of merely as a fault or a misfortune; the press teams with vicious sentimentalism; the administration of justice becomes more uncertain, perjury more common; the reputation of the colony is formed from the census, and the land becomes a by-word and a hissing.

Such, then, is the scheme which originated in philanthropy; such the practical result of years of laborious inquiry and official debate!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 276: Despatch of Colonel Arthur to Right. Hon. E. G. Stanley, March 10, 1834.]

[Footnote 277: "On the left bank of the Ohio the population is rare.

From time to time one descries a troop of slaves loitering in the half-deserted fields, the primaeval forest recurs at every turn: society seems to be asleep. From the right bank, on the contrary, a confused hum is heard, which proclaims the presence of industry. The elegance of the dwellings announces the taste and activity of the laborer: in the end, the slave has cost more than the free man."--_Tocqueville_, vol. ii. p.

222.]

[Footnote 278: Murdoch's evidence, 1837.]

[Footnote 279: It is a curious fact that, generally, the most severe government officials were reckoned the most indulgent of masters.]

[Footnote 280: The following question, put by Earl Grey (then Lord Howick), and answer, given by James Macarthur, Esq., appears in the evidence taken before a committee of the House of Commons, 1837:--

"Q. Suppose, instead of the present system of transportation, criminals were to be punished in England with a certain number of years'

imprisonment, and after that to be banished to New South Wales, were there to be placed under the surveillance of the police, in the same manner as ticket-of-leave men, what do you think would be the effect of such a system?

"A. I conceive that the effect would be, in a modified shape, the same as that of continuing transportation."--_Report of Commons_, 1837, p.

218.]

HISTORY OF TASMANIA

CONCLUSION.

CONCLUSION.

The history of Tasmania is a type of the Australian world. The events recorded in these volumes represent the policy, modified slightly, which has everywhere prevailed. The author has however rarely attempted generalization, and has represented every fact in its independent colors. Thus an evil pursued to its source might have been avoidable by greater forethought and care, or it may have been the inevitable issue of a system upon the whole beneficial and therefore just.

For many years the government of these colonies was absolute: could it be otherwise? A company of exiles, overawed by dissolute soldiery, interspersed here and there with few persons of a superior cla.s.s, could only be governed by despotism. It might have been legalised instead of tolerated by the parliament, and it might have been less offensive to the spirit of liberty. But to have trusted a few proprietors with legislation or a share of the executive authority, could have only created a tyranny more grievous.

The comparison between the early colonists of America, at least those of the northern states, and the founders of Australia, must quickly run off into a contrast. The primary object of the Pilgrim Fathers, was the enjoyment of opinions in peace. The early denizens of the southern world burned their first church to escape the tedium of attendance. The first pilgrims of New England attempted a community of goods on the plan of the apostles. The first Australians drew their stores from the commissariat, and adopted the traditions of Houndsditch and Wapping. The leaders of the first Americans were their clergy,--the bible was their political and civil standard. The rulers of the first Australians were half marine, half soldiers, whose pay was supplemented by the sale of spirits sold by convict women, their mistresses. Thus for many years the government of these colonies was absolute, and the usual consequences sometimes appeared.

Were a judgment to be formed however of the spirit of colonial government by a severe examination of its early frame-work, erroneous conclusions would be drawn. In the worst times the sentiments and habits of Englishmen tempered the operation of power. Settlers fresh from English society could not discard the opinions and principles cherished in Great Britain; nor could the rulers of the day forget that their conduct would be judged, not by the standard of continental despotisms, but by British systems of government. The establishment of British courts of justice and the protection of English laws have been found with few exceptions an impenetrable s.h.i.+eld. The chief examples of official wrong have been generally connected with the misappropriation of public resources rather than invasions of personal liberty. How different the despotism of a Spanish viceroy and the sternest rule of a British governor! For the last twenty years cases of aggravated oppression have been exceedingly rare. The genius of British freedom has ever overshadowed the British colony, and awed the despotic ruler, while it has encouraged and sheltered the feeblest colonist. The great defect in official men has been their superciliousness and indolence, rather than their tyranny, and the popular governors of this hemisphere have gained the public esteem by their manners rather than their ability. A genial temper and a feeling heart rarely failed to conciliate the mult.i.tude, while distinguished talents have lost their immediate influence when in union with a harsh, contemptuous, and fiery spirit.[281]

For many years the press has exercised a powerful influence on the affairs of government, and left no avenue of escape to official ignorance and corruption. Even when jurors were selected by governors, the most unmeasured denunciations were poured forth without fear of prosecution. a.s.sociations for the redress of grievances have carried their organizations to the very verge of const.i.tutional order. A democratic state certainly would never have tolerated the discussion of its principles and authority in feeble dependencies. But the British government, secure in its power and serenely conscious of its ability to check an intrusion on its just authority, has encouraged rather than repressed the freedom of public discussion and combination. The local rulers, instructed by their superiors, have long permitted even the licentiousness of the press. The strength of the empire justified and accounted for its tolerance. There is no tyranny so watchful as that of fear, and no cruelty so relentless as that of factions who struggle for existence.

The non-dependence of the government on the people has united the colonists in one body. It has been the colony against England, and not tories against whigs. In America the powers of self-government were too often seized by a faction, and a political opposition, even in a most moderate form, was stigmatised as felony and punished as treason. But in the Australias the colonists have expended their rage on a distant office, and in their real or imaginary sufferings have felt a sympathy for each other. The ascendancy of a faction in a small community is the reign of terror, and might soon lead those who value their personal freedom to regret the most sensitive and unscrupulous vice-regal despotism.

The spirit of colonial government, however, has been sensibly affected by the policy of Great Britain. The enlargement of popular freedom at home has relaxed the severity of colonial rule. For every considerable amelioration the colony has been indebted to the whigs. They gave trial by jury: they stopped white slavery in the Australian colonies, and thus in the end transportation. They placed religious denominations on an equal footing: they introduced the sale of land, for the purposes of immigration: they granted first to New South Wales, and since to all the colonies, the legislative a.s.semblies which now watch over their rising liberties. In the days of a Castlereagh or a Bathurst, England possessed far less practical freedom than her colonies now enjoy. It is impossible to prevent the contagion of opinions, and the colonies may see in the growing intelligence and spirit of the United Kingdom the a.s.surance of their own gradual advancement in the ranks of freedom. In this respect Australia is more happily conditioned than was once her American sister.

The colonies of that continent were in advance of the parent country.

The royal government not only detested their inst.i.tutions as democratic, but as a standing reproach to the maxims of domestic policy. Thus, the appearance of a royal governor was ominous to their liberties. He came to entrap, to report, and to betray them. They had to hide their charters, to preserve them from violent abduction; and to threaten insurrection as the alternative of liberty. Whatever Australasia gains she will attain with the approbation of English statesmen. She will look to the spirit of the times as the guardian of her rights. While privileged exclusiveness is in Great Britain crumbling to the dust, it cannot be that the middle cla.s.ses will impose upon the necks of infant colonies the burdens they themselves abhor.

In seeking the improvement of colonial government, a prudent colonist will guard against the extravagance of theory. It is true that the people are the best judges of their own interests, but not that the interests of all colonists are uniform, or that they are capable of impartially disposing of all the incipient interests of the colonial state. Their covetousness as landholders might absorb the inheritance of the nation--their ambition as citizens contract the franchises of the humbler cla.s.ses. The most strenuous opponents of Downing-street have denounced most fiercely the extension of the popular power. Mr.

Wentworth, whose services in the cause of Australian freedom have immortalized his name, is yet a lictor when he turns towards the mult.i.tude, and a tribune only when he faces the seat of authority. His defiance of Earl Grey was p.r.o.nounced nearly the same time that he imprecated vengeance on the Sydney democracy. The most strenuous educated advocates of self-government are not yet prepared to carry out their principles to their utmost limits. If the people have reason to dislike the autocracy of Downing-street, they would find no amelioration in the ascendency of an oligarchy which would divide the universe into sheep walks for the benefit of flockmasters, and convert the residue of mankind into shepherds. True liberty is a compromise, and if a small community would prevent faction from establis.h.i.+ng a tyranny, it must exchange some advantages for a control which defends while it restrains.

Thus the claim of responsible government, and the appointment of officers chosen from the colonial ranks, though favorite projects, and certain finally to prevail, require a considerable growth before they could be useful. Our functionaries hold their office at the pleasure of the crown and thus survive the confidence of the a.s.semblies; but evils of another cla.s.s would issue from an opposite system. Official men, always fearful of defeat, would strengthen their position by the most desperate use of their power, and a dozen voices would decide. Thus family compacts would be formed, and cliques and cabals would finally determine the distribution of office. For this the Americans have found a remedy in the meagre pay of those who occupy their highest situations.

Ambition is moderated by its unrequited toils, and the public business chiefly carried on by paid servants of humble designations. But were thousands a year the prize of a successful opposition, not better men, but worse than the nominees of the crown might be expected to climb or creep into the seat of government.

In looking down the lists of colonists who have most largely benefited their adopted country many would be found who were appointed from home to fill offices they have long since quitted. Nor would it be just to deny that they have largely contributed to whatever has elevated the taste and improved the social condition of these countries. For some time to come the appointment of well-educated Englishmen, though not to the exclusion of Australians, would be desirable, unless the recent discovery of gold should rapidly augment the population, and thus extend the basis of government and the number from which its officers may be chosen. The feelings of the colonists have, indeed, been too often violated by the scandalous multiplication of offices and the utter incompetence of those who have filled them. But a community little more than half a century old cannot be ent.i.tled to denounce Englishmen as foreigners, or to complain that strangers usurp the rights of the country-born. A wise administration of local patronage, without distinctions which are unnatural and absurd, would strengthen the hands of the executive and satisfy the reason of the people.

The future independence of the Australian colonies is written in the book of fate; but the inevitable change may be long postponed with advantage to themselves. A superior power is desirable to regulate their development, and to preserve at once their order and their freedom. The reins of government, if s.n.a.t.c.hed from vice-regal hands, would not immediately fall into those more worthy. The love of order is too strong in the English breast to tolerate anarchy, and whatever changes transpire the public voice would p.r.o.nounce in favor of a strong and regular administration. But since life is short, no wise man would wish to waste a considerable portion in pa.s.sing through the disorders of a revolution to gain the mere name of a State. The royal government may redress every grievance, and the colonist may turn with confidence to the seat of empire for the accomplishment of every munic.i.p.al change requisite to advance the country of his adoption. But were independence desirable in itself, the colonists would, notwithstanding, calculate its cost. Those who have pretended that England does not prize her colonies, know little of her temper: her colonies are her pride, her ornament, and her strength. One day she will lose them; but that day will be a day of mourning and humiliation.

The discussion of this question by the metropolitan press, and the predictions of parliamentary statesmen, have induced many ardent minds to antic.i.p.ate an early realization. These prophecies are but the weapons of party which would disappear in the presence of real danger; one voice would be heard proclaiming the rights of Great Britain. To her power what could Australia at present oppose? The American revolutionists had an army: they had thrust out the Indians and beaten the French, and their national character was deepened by the political and religious sentiments in which they had been cradled. But Australia has not a soldier or a gun. Her population may quickly reach the three millions numbered by the Americans at the era of independence; but she has not the habits of Americans--she has not their country, their forests, their frozen rivers, their terrible snows. England, when America resisted, hired a few German troops to a.s.sist her own feeble army. Since then she has conquered Napoleon, subdued India, and established her military power in every region of the world. Whether the mutual interests of Great Britain and her colonies are sufficient to bind them together may be a question at issue. Independence may be desired; but it is well to remember that those who will attain it must fight for it, and that in this war they will not only contend with the most benign and just, but with the most powerful government on the earth. England will not permit her ministers to oppress the colonies; but would hazard the last regiment rather than lose the colonial empire.