14 TRANSPORTATION A third cause was at work thronghout the same period and in the same direction; and that was the necessity for Over- finding some effectual means for disposing of the convicted gaols. criminals who were always accumulating in the small, ill-constructed, and unwholesome gaols of former times. Transportation under such circumstances naturally became a favourite theory of penal discipline among reformers and philanthropists, the arguments in its favour being mainly Argoments thoso : — 1, It freed the country from large numbers of the portation. Criminal classes, as well as from the dangers attending over- crowded gaols ; 2, It was calculated to promote the pros- perity of the colonies ; 3, It offered a better prospect of reformation to the convicts who were sent abroad than could possibly be afforded them in the gaols ; and 4, It served to mitigate the severity of the old criminal laws, which pre- scribed the penalty of death for many offences now punished with a few months' imprisonment. For these reasons the system held its ground firmly for fully three centuries. itB duration. Its Commencement may be dated from the fifteenth cen- tury, and so far as England is concerned, it may be said to have terminated in 1867. The Portuguese, who are credited with having been the first European nation to employ transportation and penal labour in the colonies as a mode of punishment,^^ * made large use of their Brazilian and other possessions for the reception of convicts. If they were the The English first to introduce this system for penal purposes, England was the first country which systematically used her depen- dencies as places for the reception and punishment of con- victs.^'t The transportation of convicts from England to the North American colonies began in the reign of James I, was largely resorted to in the time of Charles II, and early
- Merivale, Lectures on Colonisation, voL ii, p. 3.
t G. C. Lewis, on the Government of Dependencies, p. 236. The Council of Foreign Plantations, established by Charles U in 1660, were instructed, among other things, '* to inquire touching emigration and how noxious and unprofitable persons may be transplanted to the general advantage of the pubUc and comiliodity of our foreign plantations." — Mills, Colonial Con- stitutions, p. 5. Digitized by Google
