The Three Colonies of Australia/Part 1/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
ORIGIN OF TRANSPORTATION.
THE accumulation of criminals in our gaols at the close of the American war became an embarrassing question for the county magistrates and the government. Projects for the renewal of transportation, and its effect on criminals, became a subject of discussion among statesmen and philanthropists.
Banishment, from a very early period, was an ordinary punishment, which permitted the sentenced to proceed to any country he pleased. Thus, in Shakspere's "Richard II.:
"we banish you our territories!
You, cousin Hereford, upon pain of death,
Till twice five summers have enriched our fields,
Shall not regreet our fair domains,
But tread the stranger paths of banishment.
Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom!
*****The hopeless word of never to return
Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.
Even at the present day it is common, in Guernsey and Jersey, to "banish a criminal to England;" that is to say, to land him at Southampton, and then leave him free to go where he will so long as he does not revisit the Channel Islands.
The first legislative trace of the punishment of transportation is to be found in the 39th of Elizabeth, c. 4, authorising the banishment of rogues and vagabonds. This act James the First converted into an instrument of transportation to America, in a letter written in 1619, addressed to the council of the colony of Virginia, commanding them "to send a hundred dissolute persons to Virginia, that the Knight-Marshal would deliver to them for that purpose." These being the very class of persons against whose introduction the celebrated hero of Virginia, Captain John Smith, had specially protested. In the same year, as a kind of counterpoise to these dissolute persons, the Company sent ninety agreeable girls, young and incorrupt; and again, in 1621, sixty more, "maids of virtuous education, young, and handsome." The first lot of females brought 120 lbs. of tobacco each, and the second, 150 lbs. each.
The first distinct notice of transportation is to be found in the 18th of Charles II., c. 3, which gives the judges power, at their discretion, to execute, or transport for life, the moss-troopers of Cumberland or Northumberland. The punishment was inflicted very frequently, in an illegal manner, up to the reign of George the First, when its operation was extended and legalised.
Defoe, who always drew the outlines of his stories from actual life, no doubt gives a true picture of the life led by the convicts in the American plantations in his "History of Moll Flanders."
During the reign of James the Second, transportation, or rather reduction to slavery, was a favourite, and to certain parties a profitable, punishment.
Dr. Lingard quotes a petition setting forth that seventy persons, apprehended on account of the Salisbury rising of Penruddock and Grove, had, after a year's imprisonment, been sold at Barbadoes for 1,550 lbs. of sugar a-piece, more or less, according to their working faculties. Among them were divines, officers, and gentlemen, who were represented as "grinding at the mills, attending at the furnaces, and digging in that scorching island, whipped at whipping-posts, and sleeping in sties worse than hogs in England."[1]
After Argyle's defeat the planters were on the alert to obtain white slaves, and were successful, Some of the common prisoners, and others, who were Highlanders, were by the Privy Council delivered to Mr. George Scott, of Petlockey, and other planters in New Jersey, Jamaica.
After Monmouth's rebellion, Lord Sunderland wrote from "Winser, Sept. 14th, 1685, to Judge Jeffries," to acquaint him from the king that, of such persons as the judge should think qualified for transportation, the following individuals were to be furnished with these numbers:—Sir Philip Howard to have 200 (convicts); Sir Richard White, 200; Sir William Booth, 100; Mr. Kendal, 100; Mr. Nipho, 100; Sir William Stapleton, 100; Sir Christopher Musgrave, 100; a merchant, whose name Lord Sunderland did not know, 100. Thus it was proposed to give away 1,000. The King directed Chief Justice Jeffries to give orders for delivering the said numbers "to the above persons respectively, to be forthwith transported to some of his Majesty's southern plantations, viz., Jamaica, Barbadoes, or any of the Leeward Islands in America, to be kept there for the space of ten years before they have their liberty. In the end, eight hundred and forty-nine of Monmouth's followers, all from the west, were sold."[2] Macaulay's account of the traffic between the maids of honour and the relatives of prisoners will be in the recollection of all our readers, as well as the question of who was the Mr. Penn who acted as broker.
But the following Bristol legend of an incident in the life of Jeffries proves that he did not permit aldermen to follow the example of the maids of honour:—"On his return from Taunton, where his mornings were passed in sentencing to hanging and burning, and his evenings with a congenial soul, Colonel Kirk, in drinking, he stopped at Bristol. Now, the mayor, aldermen, and justices of Bristol had been used to transport convicted criminals to the American plantations, and sell them by way of trade; and finding the commodity turn to good account, they contrived a way to make it more plentiful. Their legal convicts were but few, and the exportation inconsiderable: when, therefore, any petty rogues and pilferers were brought before them in a judicial capacity, they were sure to be terribly threatened with hanging, and they had some diligent officers attending, who could advise the ignorant, intimidated creatures to pray for transportation, as the only way to save their lives; and in general, by some means or other, the advice was followed: then, without any more form, each alderman in turn took one, and sold him for his own benefit; sometimes there even arose warm disputes among them about the next turn. This trade had been carried on unnoticed many years, when it came to the knowledge of the Lord Chief Justice, who, finding upon inquiry that the mayor was equally involved with the rest of his brethren in this outrageous practice, made him descend from the bench where he was sitting, and stand at the bar in his scarlet and furs, and plead like any common criminal."
This system, and the demand for labour, led to frequent cases of kidnapping of the poor and friendless, and of parties who had made themselves obnoxious to powerful and unscrupulous individuals. Thus debtors disencumbered themselves of their creditors, wives of their husbands, and guardians of their wards. Even in vengeance the commercial spirit of Britain was displayed: while the Italian stabbed or poisoned his enemy, the Englishman sold him for a soldier, a sailor, or a slave.
Before the commencement of the American war of independence, the introduction of the more docile and laborious negro had rendered the American planters hostile to the importation of white convicts. The war put a stop to the traffic in white flesh, and crowded our gaols. At the same period the prison labours of Howard commenced. In his vocation he personally examined every place of imprisonment. He found the convicted prisoner, money in his purse, revelling in debauchery, while the untried poor man was half starved, lodged on damp stones, exposed, from unglazed windows, to every blast, and crowded promiscuously with the vilest of mankind in deep dungeons, where fever and foul pestilence ever smouldered. Sometimes a black assize swept away prisoners, gaolers, and even judges. The barbarity of the system may be appreciated from the circumstance that Howard considered he had achieved a great triumph, when he at length obtained an order for a daily allowance of a penny loaf and small piece of cheese for each untried prisoner.
Howard was anxious to establish reformatory prisons or penitentiaries, but his humane schemes met with little favour. With the experience we have since had, we cannot imagine that he could have had any success, except in establishing a clean and wholesome system of management.
The country was no more prepared then than it is at present, to permit desperate ruffians to be unloosed to renew their crimes on the expiration of their terms of imprisonment. But no one then contemplated the construction of prisons like Reading, as costly and comfortable palaces, in which the hard-labour test would consist in composing moral essays, and collating texts of Scripture.[3]
The annual accumulation of roguery was to be got rid of!—That was the problem; and, so long as it was solved, few cared how. Hanging had been stretched to its utmost limits; transportation had been checked by the revolt of a country which decided to employ no slaves who had not at least 25 per cent. of black blood in their veins, and to receive no rogues except those who had escaped unconvicted.
Under these difficult circumstances, a proposition for "shovelling" out our criminals on the shores of the antipodes, recently re-discovered by Cook, was eagerly entertained. There it was presumed, on very insufficient grounds, the place of punishment could be rendered self-supporting; at any rate, the prisoners would cease to be a nuisance to the life and property of this country. Howard opposed the project, but his opposition was fortunately unheeded, although founded on very sufficient grounds.
When we now examine the population, the wealth, the commerce, the sources of annually increasing power and prosperity of the Australian colonies, and the undeniable elements of empire which they enjoy, it is scarcely possible to believe that the first settlement was formed with the overflowings of our gaols and the sweepings of our streets; that, for a long series of years, its very existence was dependent on supplies of food, which the famine resulting from a month's delay of a store-ship would have rendered useless, and on grants of money, voted at a time when votes, except on the grand field-days of contending parties, were passed undiscussed in Parliament and unreported in newspapers.
At this day, when care for the health, education, and religious instruction of criminals is carried to an extent which shows, in painful relief, the neglect our peasantry endure, it is with amazement and horror that we look back on the cool, careless indifference with which the ministers of George the Third, in 1797, set about founding a penal settlement at the opposite side of the world.
Captain Cook and his companions had passed a few days on the intended site of the proposed penal colony, and had found a small river, a profusion of curious plants, and an indifferent harbour. They had not seen any plains of pasture fit to feed live stock; they had found no large edible animals, such as deer, or buffaloes, or pigs. They had no means of ascertaining whether the soil was capable of carrying crops for the support of a considerable population; and the nearest land at which live stock and dry stores could be procured was the Cape of Good Hope, a colony in the possession of the Dutch.
As little judgment, as little forethought, as little common humanity, was displayed in selecting the colonists as the colony. The first detachment consisted of the first governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, R.N., with a guard of marines, viz., a major-commandant, twelve subalterns, and twenty-four non-commissioned officers, one hundred and sixty-eight rank and file, with forty women, their wives. These were the unconvicted section of the intended colony. The prisoners were six hundred men, and two hundred and fifty women, the latter being not only the most abandoned of their sex, but many of them aged, infirm, and even idiotic. This fearful disproportion of sexes was maintained, and even increased, until the proportion of men to women was as six to one, and the results became too horrible to be here recorded.
This "goodly company" was embarked in a frigate, the Sirius, an armed tender, three store-ships, and six transports, under the command of Captain Hunter. At the last moment, by an afterthought, one chaplain was sent on board. There was no schoolmaster, no superintendent, or gaolers, or overseers, except marines with muskets loaded in case of revolt. No agriculturist was sent to teach the highwaymen and pickpockets to plough, and delve, and sow. No system of discipline was planned, nothing beyond mere coercion was attempted. Even the supply of mechanics required for erecting the needful houses and stores was left a matter of chance, dependent on the trades of the six hundred felons; and, as it turned out, there were not half a dozen carpenters, only one bricklayer, and not one mechanic in the whole settlement capable of erecting a corn-mill.
The "first fleet" sailed on the 13th May, 1787, and, after a voyage of eight months, during which they touched at the Cape de Verd Islands, Rio de Janeiro, and the Cape of Good Hope, being everywhere received with the greatest attention and courtesy, anchored in Botany Bay on the 20th January, 1788.
Within four-and-twenty hours after landing, Governor Phillip ascertained that Botany Bay was quite unsuitable for the site of a colony, that a sufficient quantity of cultivable agricultural land, and of fresh water, were wanting; and that the harbour was unsafe for ships of burden. Without disembarking his charge, he set out with a party of three boats, to explore the coast to the northward, and particularly Broken Bay, an inlet favourably mentioned by Captain Cook, distant about eighteen miles from Botany Bay; but, as he sailed along the barrier of cliffs which line the shore, he decided to examine the narrow cleft which Cook had named Port Jackson.
The day was mild and serene. The expedition sailed along the coast near enough to see, and hear the wild cries of, the astonished natives, who followed them as far as the rugged nature of the land would permit. As they approached Port Jackson, the coast wore such an appearance that Captain Phillip fully expected to find Captain Cook's unfavourable impressions realised; but he was destined to be most agreeably disappointed.
The first tack carried the expedition out of the long heavy swell of the Pacific Ocean into the smooth water of a canal protected by two projecting "heads;" and soon they came within sight of a vast landlocked lake, stretching as far as the eye could reach, dotted with small islands, whose shores sloped, forest-covered, down to the water's edge. Black swans and other rare water-birds fluttered up as the white strangers sailed on, charmed with a scene in which every feature was beautiful, yet strange. They had discovered one of the finest harbours in the world. Coasting round the shores of this great natural basin, Governor Phillip determined to plant his colony on a promontory where a small clear stream trickled into the salt water. After three days spent in exploration, he returned to Botany Bay.
On the morning of the 25th January, as they were working out, the English fleet were astonished by seeing two strange ships of war sailing into the bay. These were the Boussole and Astrolabe, the French expedition of discovery under the command of M. de la Pérouse, which had left France in 1785. La Pérouse "had sailed into Botany Bay by Captain Cook's chart, which lay before him on the binnacle. Having heard at Kamtschatka of the intended settlement, he had expected to have found a town built and market established." Thus it was probably but by a few days that the honour of discovering Port Jackson fell to England. The French squadron remained until the 10th March to refresh and refit, and, then departing, were never heard of more, until, in 1826, Mr. Dillon discovered at the Manicola Islands traces of arms and ornaments which proved their mournful fate—shipwrecked, and murdered by savages.
A monument has been erected to the memory of La Pérouse and his crew in Botany Bay.
Monument to la Perouse.