Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/221

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AND COLONIZATION.
207

pline, and for their due and incessant employment.

It would argue no small degree of presumption on the part of the writer to attempt to lay down rules for the discipline and employment of the convicts, to be employed hereafter at government labour in New South Wales, in the event of the discontinuance of the practice of assignment, and the establishment of an entirely new system of management under officers of experience and ability from England. Neither is it at all necessary to point out the manner in which gradations of punishment could be established in the different modes of employing convict labour above-mentioned, commensurate with the different degrees of criminality in different convicts. These are matters of detail, in regard to which the proper course of procedure would immediately suggest itself to men of understanding and observation; to whom it would consequently be sufficient to lay down for their general guidance Earl Bathurst's maxim, viz, "uniform and strict discipline, regular labour of a severe description, and constant superintendence."

By a uniform and steady adherence to this most judicious maxim, the following results might reasonably be anticipated:—