BURKE ON TRANSPORTATION. 491 prevent any connection between tbe marines and ship's company with the convicts. Centinels are placed at the different hatch- ways, and a guard always under arms on the quarter-deck of each transport, in order to prevent any improper behaviour of convicts, as well as to guard against any surprize. Each transport has on board a certain quantity of each kind of utensils proper for agriculture, as well as a distribution of other storw and stores for the colony, so distributed .that an accident happening to ^'^^ °°*" one ship would not have those disagreeable consequences, which must be the case if the whole of one species of stores was on board each ship. The victuallers are loaded with two years' provisions of all species for the marines, convicts, <kc., for two years from the time of their landing in New South Wales. It was not till ye 11th of May that the Governor joined us, he having been detained in town until the Ministry had arranged and fixed the different orders settling a number of things incident to ye great voyage we are about to undertake. On ye 12th the ship's Ye great company was paid their two months' advance, and on the same day ^**^*^' we were joined by his Majesty's ship Hyeena, Captain J)e Courcy, who was ordered to proceed with us as far as Captain Phillip might judge proper. BURKE ON TRANSPORTATION TO AFRICA. The Parliamentary History for 1785 contains the following reports of speeches on this subject : — Mr. Burke called the attention of the House to the melancholy situation under which those unfortunate people laboured who were sentenced with transportation. In a country which prided itself on the mild and indulgent principles of its laws, it should not be sufiered that the situation of particular delinquents, instead of being meliorated by provisions dictated by clemency, should become infinitely more severe than could be inflicted in the utmost Convicts rigour and severity of the laws. The number of convicts under transport- this description was at present estimated at not less than 100,000. »^*on- Every principle of justice and humanity required that punish- ments should not be inflicted beyond those prescribed and defined for particular kinds of delinquency. But that principle received additional force when it was considered that these extraordinary severities were exercised under the appearance of mercy ; that is to say, they were remitted certain punishments by the mild spirit and principle of the English laws ; and received in commutation others, infinitely more severe than the most rigid construction of the laws had in the worst of cases designed for them. There was Digitized by Google
