492 BURKE 1785 in the mode of punishing bj transportation no distinction betweea trivial crimes and those of greater enormity ; all indiscriminately suffered the same miserable fate, however unequal their trana g r o s sions or different their circumstances. Besides these considerations, some regard should, in these timeB of difficulty and distress, be paid to frugality and economy. The business of transporting convicts, among other oonvenienoeBy was attended with a very considerable expense. Instances of profase expenditure were sometimes justifiable, when they had humaiii^ and clemency for their object ; but could never derive any sanction from cruelty and humanity. He wished to know what was to be done with these unhappy wretches ; and to what part of the world it was intended by the Minister they should be sent. He hoped Tmuport- it was not to Gambia, which, though represented as a wholesome ^^^ place, was the capital seat of plague, pestilence, and famine. The gates of Hell were there open night and day to receive the victima of the law ; but not those victims which either the letter or the spirit of the law had doomed to a punishment attended with certain death. This demanded the attention of the Legislature. They should in their punishments remember that the consequences of transportation were not meant to be deprivation of life ; and yet in Gambia it might truly be said, that there '^ all life dies, and all death lives." He would wish, as a preliminary to something being state of the done on the subject, that the state of the prisons, so far as respected prisons. persons under sentence of transportation, were laid before the House ; and this he thought would come best by several motions, which, if agreeable to the House, he should propose. Before he did this, he wished to know whether any contract had yet been entered into for sending these convicts to the coast of Africa. (He was answered, no.) The Speaker remarked, that this motion came at somewhat too short a notice ; whereupon Mr. Burke withdrew it for the presents This discussion, which took place on the 11th March, was fol- lowed by another on the 18th April in the same year : — Lord Beauchamp begged leave to remind the House of an order that had been made at an early part of the present session, and of which he was sorry to find no notice whatever had been taken. Oovemment The Order to which he alluded was, that a report should be made policy. to the House relative to the manner in which Government intended to dispose of felons under sentence of transportation. He pre- sumed the right hon. gentleman would inform him when he con- ceived a return might be expected to the ordinary question, as he intended to ground upon that return a motion which he would submit to the House on a future day. Mr. Pitt admitted the importance of the subject, and stated as an excuse for the neglect of the order a very great huiry of Digitized by Google
