"The punishment of transportation has indeed been sometimes considered as one of no great severity, and I have been very sorry to hear it so represented by those on whom the inflicting it depends …; it is sometimes inflicted on boys at a very early age merely as a means of separating them effectually from the bad companions they may have formed at home. It were much to be wished that those who consider transportation in this light would impose upon themselves the duty of reading Mr. Collins' history of the settlement that they might acquire a just notion of all the complicated hardships and sufferings to which transported convicts are exposed."
The motion was lost, but not by a great majority, the number being fifty-two to sixty-nine.[1]
During the vacation Romilly prepared a pamphlet on New South Wales which was, however, never published, perhaps never completed.[2] Early in 1811, a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed on Ryder's motion "to inquire into the expediency of erecting penitentiary houses".[3] Romilly moved an instruction for the Committee "to inquire into the effects which have been produced by the punishment of transportation to New South Wales and of imprisonment on board the hulks, and the motion was accepted".[4]
The Committee reported in June, but without having made any inquiry at all into the affairs of New South Wales. Their report was incomplete in other respects also, and Ryder moved for its reappointment, "to consider of the expediency of erecting penitentiary houses, and that it be an instruction to the said Committee to inquire into the effects produced by transportation to New South Wales."[5]
To this Romilly objected. He hoped "the latter subject, which had originated with himself, would not be thus thrown into the background". The Committee, with so much work to do, would not be able to report to the House that session, and New South Wales affairs called for immediate inquiry. He used one argument which was comically beyond the facts
