complete obscurity, from which it gradually emerged through the agency of Sir Samuel Romilly. His work in the reform of Criminal Law naturally led him to inquire into the concerns of New South Wales, and the little he could learn left him extremely dissatisfied as to its condition and the probable effect of transportation upon the convicts.
On the 9th of May, 1810, he moved in the House of Commons that an address be presented to the King praying that the Penitentiary Acts of 19 Geo. III. and 34 Geo. III. should be put into force.[1]
The motion was withdrawn at the request of Ryder, the Under-Secretary for Home Affairs, who stated his sympathy but asked for delay. On the 5th of June Romilly renewed the motion, but found Ryder "as little prepared now as he had been before"[2] and he again asked for delay and suggested a committee. The matter, however, was pressed to a division, and Romilly made a long speech during the debate, basing his remarks chiefly on Collins.[3]
"In whatever light we consider it," he said … "we shall find it extremely inefficacious. As an example the effect of the punishment is removed to a distance from those on whom it is to operate. It is involved in the greatest uncertainty, and is considered very differently according to the sanguine or desponding disposition of those who reflect on it, or according to the more accurate or erroneous accounts of the Colony which may happen to have reached then."
He spoke of Collins as "the panegyrist of the Colony," and yet, he said, "his history is little more than a disgusting narrative of atrocious crimes and most severe and cruel punishments.[4] It is indeed a subject of very melancholy, and to this House of very reproachful reflection, that such an experiment in criminal jurisprudence and colonial policy as that of transportation to New South Wales should have been tried, and we should have suffered now twenty-four years to elapse without examining or even inquiring into its success or its failure."
