salutary terror, transportation cannot operate as an effectual example on the community at large, and as a proper punishment for those crimes against the commission of which His Majesty's subjects have a right to claim protection, nor as an adequate commutation for the utmost rigour of the law."
There had been a change, Lord Bathurst pointed out, from the time when convicts sought to have the sentence of transportation commuted "even for the utmost rigour of the law," to the present when men convicted of slight offences sought the punishment of transportation which was the penalty of greater crimes. Altogether the conditions of the Colony had altered. The free settlers had increased, many convicts had become settled on the land, population and wealth had become great. The growing number of convicts transported made it more difficult than in earlier years to enforce discipline; the problem of housing them had become formidable. Judging by the information before him in Macquarie's despatches, it appeared to Lord Bathurst that this increase of numbers had made it necessary to distribute greater numbers amongst the settlers, and that under this system it had also been necessary to give the convicts "greater freedom than is consistent with the ends in view in transporting them," an impression curiously at variance with the facts of the case as Bigge afterwards saw them.[1]
While the primary object of his inquiry was to study the convict establishment, Bigge was also required to report "upon a variety of topics, which have more or less reference to the advancement of those settlements as Colonies of the British Empire".[2]
The special subjects were the judicial establishment, the social conditions, educational and religious, the economic conditions, commercial and agricultural.
As to the first, he had to consider whether Van Diemen's Land should have a separate judicature and whether the changes made by the charter of 1814 were still adequate for the judicial needs of the Colony. Finally was there any necessity to
