A system which, despite the many serious deficiencies caused by individual selfish short-sightedness, has produced such results, cannot be considered by any unprejudiced inquirer as altogether objectionable or aimless;--on the contrary, it seems to us it has proved its utility in founding new oversea colonies in portions of the earth as yet little visited, the first colonization of which is attended with local difficulties. We have but to avail ourselves of the experience acquired at Botany Bay, avoiding the canker under which the system has hitherto been worked in the British colonies (with the exception perhaps of that pattern convict settlement at Singapore, which we have already described), and draw up such regulations, keeping in view the sole object of transportation, viz. PUNISHMENT BY EXILE, AND REFORMATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL THROUGH LABOUR, as shall facilitate its being carried out in an efficient manner, and suffer ourselves neither to be diverted from our course by the selfish warnings of interested administrators, nor by the objections of ill-advised philanthropists.
With respect to the carrying out of a system of transportation, such as formerly existed in the British colonies, especially Australia and Van Diemen's Land, the following modifications seem to be advisable:--
1. The abandonment of the convict to the employer, i. e. the "assignment system," must be entirely given up, as the prisoner by such an arrangement degenerates into an article for speculation, out of which it must be the task-master's interest to get as much as he can, so as to be able to return him upon the hands of the State so soon as his capacity for labour begins to fail. The convicts who were thus "assigned" in New South Wales, stood to their employers in the same position as negro slaves in the Southern States of North America, or the island of Cuba. They were fed like beasts of burden, without the slightest remuneration for the heaviest work. The State had, it is true, a right to punish the criminal, but it seems to us unjust in the extreme to make him the slave of his fellow-man. Accordingly this practice was the source of unutterable mischief, and was followed by most deplorable results as regards the moral development of the colony.