make England scarcely worth living in. … One of the principal reasons for peopling Botany Bay at all, was, that it would be an admirable receptacle and a school of reform for our convicts. It turns out that for the first half century it will make them worse than they were before. …"[1]
Bennet was active in Parliament as well as without. On the 18th February, 1819, he moved the appointment of another Committee to inquire into the effects of Transportation to New South Wales. His speech was the most comprehensive and important which had as yet been delivered in England upon the affairs of the Colony, and showed both in its weakness and its strength the difficulties under which any unofficial inquirer then laboured in gaining a knowledge of so remote a country.[2]
Having dealt first with the condition of the hulks and the effects of imprisonment upon them (matters which he understood from personal observation) and the mode of transporting the convicts to New South Wales, he turned to a description of the colonial Government.
"The Governor of this Colony," he said, "assumed to settle the price of all labour and also of all provisions; and the orders upon this subject were issued by the Governor himself without referring to the opinion of any council; an extraordinary stretch of power. …"
He proceeded: "the Governor had the power of opening and shutting the public stores and the ports of the island[3] at his own pleasure". The consequences of this and of the sudden reduction in the price of meat he described much as Riley described them later in his Evidence before the Committee on Gaols.
Turning to the Colonial Judiciary he said, "The Committee of 1812 had recommended the introduction of trial by jury into this Colony. … He would not say at present that juries ought to be introduced into New South Wales; but he thought it most inexpedient that the question should be determined in consequence of any sort of communication made at the office of the Secretary of State. He wished to hear the opinion of
