Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/199

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AND COLONIZATION.
185

formly plunges; and by a sort of necessity arising out of his peculiar circumstances, rather than from personal inclination, he would eventually be led to attach himself to one or other of the parishes in his district, either as a tenant or a proprietor of land. He would thus be brought within the direct and salutary influence of correct moral example and sound religious instruction; the result of which on his whole character and conduct, would, I am confident, be, in the great majority of instances, gratifying in the extreme. In short, the convict would be the greatest gainer of all, under the proposed new system of management; in being preserved, on the one hand, from numberless and strong temptations, and in being strongly stimulated, on the other, to industry and virtue. Transportation would thus be a punishment in reality, and would be found sufficiently formidable to deter many from crime; while it would prove subservient in the highest degree to extensive colonization, and to the establishment of a moral influence of incalculable value for promoting the ultimate reformation of transported criminals. It is scarcely necessary to add, that in a community constituted in this way, there would be little danger of the emancipated convict, who had eventually become a landholder, insinuating him-