TRANSPORTATION.—SELECT COMMITTEE MOVED FOR. (Hansard, 1 March 1861)

§ MR. CHILDERS
said, he rose to move for a Select Committee to inquire into the present system of Transportation, its utility, economy, and effect upon colonization, and to report whether any improvements could be effected therein. It was now twenty-five years since the Committee, moved for by the lute Sir William Molesworth, inquired into the subject of Transportation, and since that time the conditions of the question had considerably changed. Between 1788 and 1839 two great penal settlements had been established at the other end of the world, at a cost of no less than £7,980,000; 97,000 convicts in that period having been transported to those colonies. The cost averaged about £82 per convict. The Committee 1234 recommended that transportation should be given up, and that penal servitude should be substituted, and in consequence of that recommendation, the latter was to a considerable extent substituted for the former. The system of assigning the convicts to free settlers who were willing to take their labour, was also given up under the colonial administration of the noble Lord the present Foreign Secretary; but, unfortunately, the system substituted in its place—that of penal discipline—had such injurious effects that the colonists had, he thought, principally from that circumstance, refused any longer to receive convicts. In 1852 transportation to Tasmania and New South Wales was abandoned, but convicts continued to be sent to Western Australia, to Bermuda, and Gibraltar. The present position of the question was that they were spending for purposes of penal discipline no less than £640,000 a-year, of which £400,000 was expended upon establishments at home, and £200,000 upon those abroad. In all the three colonies which he had mentioned, there were now-only 3,200 convicts, and last year but 269 persons were transported. In 1853 the law of transportation was modified by the substitution for transportation of personal service at home, and the institution of a system of ticket-of-leave. Hon. Members must remember the outcry which was raised against ticket-of-leave men, to whom were attributed all the crimes which were committed. In consequence of that outcry Committees of both Houses of Parliament were appointed, and sat in the year 1856. The recommendations of the Committee of the House of Lords, which amounted practically to a restoration of the system of transportation, had not been acted upon; but those of the Committee of this House formed the basis of a measure which soon afterwards passed into law. We were now in this position:—Transportation had been entirely abolished as a sentence, but the Secretary of State had it still in his power to transport any person who is sentenced to penal servitude. The cost of maintaining the convicts in penal establishments had enormously increased. In 1844 they spent, under that head, £450,000; every person sentenced costing, in English prisons, £30, and in colonial prisons, £12. In 1850 they spent £600,000; the cost in English prisons for each person was £20, and in the colonies £21. But in 1860 the change was still more marked. They spent £644,000, 1235 exclusive of military charges, and the average cost was £31 in English prisons, and £53 in the colonies; many times more than it was in the old times of transportation. But while the expenditure on their establishments had increased, the amount of crime had enormously diminished, that result being especially visible in the higher class of sentences. The same result was visible in Scotland, and in Ireland a most remarkable change was exhibited. As it had thus been made clear that the criminal tendencies of the country, instead of being aggravated by the practical abolition of transportation, had sensibly diminished, and as the average number of persons imprisoned in England and Wales for the last three years had fallen from 25,000 to less than 18,000, he thought the time had fairly arrived when we might inquire whether they had lost by the abolition of transportation, and whether they might not go a step further and abolish its cost, which was now, to a great extent, retained. A most encouraging sign was that convict prisons, although built a few years ago on the assumption that a certain proportion of criminals would always be carried off by transportation, since that had practically ceased had still been found sufficient for the reception of the convicts annually sentenced, and at the present moment room could be found in Ireland for 1,500, and in England for 600 convicts more than there actually were to put into them. In the course of former inquiries nothing had been more clearly-shown than that the transportation system, injudicious as it was in a national point of view, was still more objectionable in its effects on the criminals themselves. There was a freemasonry in crime which communicated itself to every one sent out to a distant colony and kept there for years, and from its trammels, even in the course of along life, individuals were rarely able to free themselves. The seed was sown in the convict-ship, where for months it was practically impossible to carry out the principles laid down for observance in penal settlements. It appeared from communications, showing the strong opinions held on this point by the late superintendent of convicts in Western Australia, and by a chief official in one of the larger prisons at home; that in a convict-ship it was impossible to guard against the immorality and wickedness which abounded, and spread through the whole company. On economical grounds the present system required recon- 1236 sideration. On that ground, at least, the transportation of convicts to Bermuda ought to be given up. The annual cost of every convict there was £44, the proportion of sick was very large, and there was no proper supervision of the convict work, the amount of which was utterly incommensurate both with their number and the object for which they were sent thither. Last year the attention of the House was drawn to the expenditure on public works at Gibraltar. One work there was nominally constructed by convicts, but lured labour to the amount of £11,400 had been employed upon it. The inquiry of the Committee might also be fitly directed to the colony of Western Australia. He doubted, with Lord Bacon, whether they had a right to form colonies by the deportation of criminals; he doubted also whether any colony could be satisfactorily supported by convict labour. But the question was, whether the system had succeeded in Western Australia. It had been found that as convicts were sent into the colony the free settlers left it; and it was not so much the labour of the convicts that the colony of Western Australia wanted to obtain as the large Government expenditure—something like £100,000 a year—the convict system brought with it. It had been shown by official reports that this expenditure was really the object for which the colony was still willing to receive convicts; and the convicts they most wanted were long-sentence men, of good character. The colony of Western Australia contained from 14,000 to 16,000 inhabitants, while the other Australian Colonies contained no less than 1,250,000, and the latter colonies had all unanimously protested and declared themselves against the transportation system. They complained of its continuance to Western Australia, because the very theory of the system required the Government to issue conditional pardons to the convicts. These pardons were conditional on the holders never returning to England, but they could pass with them into the neighbouring colonies. Unless such conditional pardons were issued the whole system of transportation would break down. But they were a great evil to the other colonies, which had been driven by the necessity of self-preservation to pass laws that certainly conflicted with the law of England, and could only be justified by that necessity. The Colonies of Victoria, South Australia, and even the more distant colony of the Cape of Good 1237 Hope, had passed laws forbidding convicts, under conditional pardons, to settle in them. Victoria had felt the evils of the system the most severely. In one year three-fourths of all the crime in Victoria was committed by the conditionally-pardoned convicts who had arrived from the neighbouring colonies. The time had come for the whole system to be narrowly investigated, and the Committee might be congratulated if, by its inquiry, it solved a difficult problem, and perhaps enabled the Chancellor of the Exchequer to strike £200,000 off the Budget. The hon. Member concluded by moving the appointment of a Committee to inquire into the system of transportation.

SIR GEORGE LEWIS
In introducing this Motion, to which I offer no objection, I cannot say the hon. Gentleman prefaced it by any exaggerated statements or descriptions of imaginary evils. He admitted that, on the whole, the present system works well, and that great opportunities of reforming are given to convicts in the United Kingdom. All the hon. Gentleman's censure was bestowed on the convict establishments abroad. He has stated that, if the inquiry of the Committee he moves for should end in suggesting any important improvement, that improvement will be confined principally to the expenditure on our penal settlements. I am prepared to subscribe to that view. I believe, considering the great difficulties with which all systems of secondary punishment on an extensive scale are surrounded, that the present system is, on the whole, as little unsatisfactory as the nature of things admits. Some fears have been expressed of the dangers that would arise from the abolition of transportation on a large scale to the Colonies. But those fears have not been realized. I do not think it has been proved that any large number of crimes have been committed by persons who have received conditional pardons. I will only say now that, under the present system, transportation is divided into two parts. One species of transportation differs little from domestic imprisonment in the United Kingdom, for, as respects convicts, Bermuda and Gibraltar may be regarded as foreign prisons. Upon the subject of Bermuda I will not enlarge, after the explanation of my hon. Friend the Under Secretary for the Colonies a few nights since. It is not in a satisfactory state, but it has been maintained in the idea that it was important for the Admiralty and War Departments that cer- 1238 tain public works should be carried out, while it is impossible to execute them by any other than convict labour. As to Western Australia, I will only say I am quite prepared to see a Committee pursuing an inquiry into that subject. I admit that the expense of convicts in Western Australia is large, and that is, as far as I know, the principal objection to the present system. No great evil arises, I believe, to the colony, to the persons transported, or to the neighbouring colonies. I am sanguine that the inquiries of the Committee will be of great use, and therefore I am prepared to accede to the Motion of the hon. Gentleman.

§ MR. G. W. HOPE
said, he took a great interest in the question of transportation, and had given it much attention. He thought the subject was one into which an inquiry by a Committee was most desirable, as likely to lead to some good results. But he was of opinion that that inquiry ought not to be entered into with a foregone conclusion against the continuance of transportation in any shape. He, for one, considered it the best secondary punishment yet discovered. He admitted there were evils connected with it, but at the same time he believed there was no system of secondary punishment against which objections of a similar character might not be brought. He regretted that the hon. Member had mixed up the whole question of transportation with that of secondary punishment at home and in the colonies, because, in fact, the establishments at Bermuda and Gibraltar were but prisons removed to the colonies. The hon. Gentleman had expressed doubts whether a colony could be well founded by a system of transportation. He (Mr. Hope) thought that the example of New South Wales might have convinced the hon. Gentleman of the erroneousness of that impression. Even before the discovery of gold in Australia that colony had made greater progress than any other colony within the same period. Although he (Mr. Hope) considered transportation to be the best secondary punishment he did not think that they were justified in imposing it upon a colony that was dissatisfied with it, but there was a great difference between Western Australia and Tasmania and New South Wales, because in the former colony there was a demand for that labour which was rejected by the other colonies. It was, of course, a question deserving of inquiry whether the present system was calculated 1239 to inflict evils upon a colony. He looked with curiosity to the working of the system of transportation to Western Australia. The great object aimed at in the carrying out of the system was the prevention of further crime and the creation of a desire for improvement amongst those who had been convicted. He found in the blue book before him two annual Reports on the convict system in Western Australia, for the years 1858–59 and 1859–60. These Reports stated a number of facts which went to prove the complete success of the system, and that the most beneficial results attended it, both as regarded the improved habits of the convicts and the advantages conferred by it on the colony generally. In fact, as far as Western Australia was concerned, Returns showed that transportation was a success. After their sentences had expired convicts remained in the colony, and were able to earn an honest living, and while still under sentence escapes were exceedingly rare. Out of 5,577 convicts only twenty-seven had escaped. As compared with transportation carried out in this way the home system of penal servitude and tickets of leave was a failure. In the first case the convict, when his sentence expired, commenced a career in a new society with a new world before him, where his antecedents were not known. In the second, when he was discharged from prison he was surrounded by his old associates, and old habits and old connections made it almost impossible for him to reform. When they compared that state of things with the amount of crime existing in Manchester and other large cities, the superiority of the system of transportation to Western Australia was striking and conclusive. It was impossible but to admit that it was infinitely better to remove the convicts to a place where their antecedents were unknown than to leave them in the country of their crimes, surrounded by their old associates, and exposed to every temptation of falling back into their old habits. He hoped, therefore, that the Government in granting the Committee would take care that the question was thoroughly considered, and that the best evidence on all sides would be produced before it. With that qualification he willingly acquiesced in the appointment of the Committee.

§ MR. BLAKE
said, that the convicts in the Irish prisons got very little more than one-half the quantity of food that was served out to the English convicts. They moreover very seldom tasted animal food, 1240 whereas the inmates of the English prisons frequently had roast and boiled meat, and other indulgences, their maintenance costing the public fully one-third more than the Irish convicts. The Irish system worked decidedly better than the English one, the Irish convicts being better conducted, and the number of recommittals much fewer among them than among the English. The disgraceful occurrences in the Chatham and other English prisons were traceable to the misgovernment of these establishments. The prisoners were first fed up to insubordination and then punished for it afterwards.

§ MR. CHILDERS
said, that with reference to the progress of Western Australia in consequence of transportation, the blue book showed that the reason why the system was viewed favourably there was because of the benefit derived from the expenditure on convict establishments.