FROST, WILLIAMS, AND JONES. (Hansard, 29 January 1841)

§ Lord Wharncliffe

said, he wished to put a question to the noble Marquess opposite, upon a subject which had caused, among the sound part of the population, very great excitement. Their Lordships would remember that, last year, three persons, Frost, Williams, and Jones, were condemned to death for high treason, and that their sentences were afterwards commuted to transportation for life, he could not describe the nature of the crime of which these men were found guilty, in better terms than those employed by the learned Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in passing sentence. That learned Judge used these words— In the case of all ordinary breaches of the law, the mischief of the offence does for the most part terminate with the immediate injury sustained by the individual against whom it is levelled. The man who plunders the property or lifts his hands against the life of his neighbour, does by his guilty act inflict in that particular instance, and to that extent, a loss or injury on the sufferer or his surviving friends. But they who by armed numbers, or violence, or terror, endeavour to put down established institutions, and to introduce in their stead n new order of things, open wide the flood-gates of rapine and bloodshed, destroy all security of property and life, and do their utmost to involve a whole nation in anarchy and ruin. It has been proved in your case that you combined together to lead from the hills, at the dead hour of night, into the town of Newport, many thousands of men, armed in many in- 140 stances with weapons of a dangerous description, in order that they might take possession of the town, and supersede the lawful authority of the Queen therein, as a preliminary step to a more general insurrection throughout the kingdom. It is owing to the interposition of Providence alone that your wicked designs were frustrated: your followers arrive by daylight, and after firing upon the civil power and the Queen's troops, are, by the firmness of the magistrates and the cool and determined bravery of a small band of soldiers, defeated and dispersed. What would have been the fate of the peaceable and unoffending inhabitants, if success had attended your rebellious designs, it is useless to conjecture; the invasion of a foreign foe would in all probability have been less destructive to property and life. It is for the crime of treason committed under these circumstances that you are now called upon yourselves to answer, and by the penalty which you are about to suffer, you hold out a warning to all your fellow-subjects, that the law of your country is strong enough to repress and to punish all attempts to alter the established order of things by insurrection and armed force, and that those who are found guilty of such treasonable attempts must expiate their crime by an ignominious death. It would be remembered that a technical objection had been taken in favour of the prisoners, respecting the delivery of the list of witnesses, and although the objection was overruled by the judges, still, in consequence of what occurred in connexion with that objection, the sentence passed on the prisoners was commuted. He begged to say that he did not find fault with the executive for not carrying the extreme penalty of the law into execution under the circumstances; but what he wished to know was, whether these men were now undergoing the punishment of transportation for life in the same manner as other prisoners sentenced to the same punishment for offences of a less heinous description. He was far from bringing any charge against the Government, he was merely anxious to obtain information, and upon that information it would depend whether he would bring any charge or not. After all that had passed on this subject, he thought that the people of this country had a right to inquire into the circumstances of the case, and to know the actual state of things. He first saw it stated, upon the authority of a newspaper of the country to which these persons were sent, that they had obtained favours, and even offices under the Government, instead of being treated in the usual way in which prisoners were treated. When he saw this statement he must say he disbe- 141 lieved it, and still continued to disbelieve it. A letter, however, had since been received, purporting to be written by Frost himself. This letter had been read by a son of Frost at a Chartist meeting at Bristol, which took place this month, and which was convened for the purpose of presenting a petition in favour of a commutation of the sentence on Frost. The letter, he ought to state, had been received with loud cheers. The first passage that attracted his notice was the following:— I am at Port Arthur, a place to which the very worst of men are sent, and where human misery may be seen to probably its greatest extent. I was not, however, sent here for what is called punishment. The governor told us repeatedly that we were not sent to Port Arthur as a punishment, but to fill certain offices. Now, he would ask, was not this extraordinary language for the governor to hold towards persons in the situation of these prisoners? He should like to know what could have induced Sir John Franklin to use such language. He was far from believing that Frost spoke the truth; but still those circumstances having excited general notice ought to be explained. The letter, after describing the treatment to which the writer had been subjected on his arrival at Van Diemen's Land, and the fact of the three prisoners being immediately sent to Port Arthur, contained these words:— I was intimated, I do no not know how truly, that there were instructions from the highest authority, and that it was intended to favour us. Now, he should like to know whether such instructions were really sent out? The letter slated that the three prisoners were sent to Port Arthur—that there they were not treated like the rest of the prisoners—that they were not required to put on the prison dress—that he (Frost) was employed in the office of the governor, and that another of the prisoners was an overlooker of the colliery. Now, he again said, that he did not place much reliance upon those statements; but the first question he felt inclined to ask was, whether those statements were true, and whether, in point of fact, they had been better treated than other prisoners? Secondly, whether any instructions had, in point of fact, been sent from her Majesty's Government upon the subject; and lastly, whether they had received any despatches 142 from Sir John Franklin? If the answer were that instructions had been sent to, and despatches received from Sir J. Franklin, then he would wish to see them before he formed a judgment upon the matter; but he thought that all their Lordships would agree that the thing ought not to be left in the state it was at present, and that the impression ought not to be allowed to remain that these men had been treated with favour after having had their sentence commuted. The public ought to be assured, the prisoners' guilt having been established, and the enormity of their crime not having been disputed by any body, that they would be treated in a manner that that crime deserved. At present, he made no charge against her Majesty's Government, but he would be most happy to hear any explanation that would be given.

The Marquess of Normanby

said, that before he proceeded to answer the precise question put to him, he must say, that he felt sincerely obliged to the noble Baron for having read again the opinion of the learned Judge who passed sentence upon Messrs, Frost, Williams and Jones, upon the nature of their offence, and the enormity of their acts, he thought, however, that course was less necessary in the present instance, because, from the peculiar circumstances attending the conviction, the matter was discussed in that House last year, at the period when a determination was come to, on account of the nature of the conviction, not to carry into execution the extreme sentence, but to commute it to that next in severity. Upon that occasion he had had an opportunity of repeating, in the language of the learned Chief Justice, his own opinion of the extreme enormity of the offence of the parties—an offence not merely partaking in its worst form of the atrocious crime of high treason, but attended by many circumstances that gave it the character of deliberate murder on a large scale. Having said thus much with reference to the opinion he had then expressed, he now begged to state, that all he had heard since, all that he had seen and observed of the conduct of the people of this country, some portion of whom had been misguided by these individuals and others, tended to convince him of the justice of their punishment, and of the delusion that had been occasioned by the selfishness, the insane selfishness, of these individuals who had put themselves forward as leaders. His noble Friend asked him as he understood these questions 143 and first, as to the actual State of information upon the subject, whether the report was true of these persons being employed by the governor, and no longer treated as convicts; secondly, whether any special instructions had been sent out on the subject of the treatment of these persons; and lastly, what communications had been received from the governor Respecting the present state of information, he must recur to what took place subsequent to the condemnation of these persons. No time had been lost by her Majesty's Government in showing their determination to carry into effect that secondary punishment, which had been recommended as a substitute for the capital one. The circumstances were so recently in the recollection of the public, that it was almost unnecessary to recur to them. In February the Mandarin sailed from Portsmouth, and no special instructions of any kind were given as to the treatment. This he stated most positively. The usual code of instruction was rigidly adhered to; this had been definitively fixed in the year 1838, and narrowed the discretion of the governor; and, on the arrival of the prisoners at Van Diamen's land, it was utterly out of the question that the governor could give a ticket of leave, which amounted to the first step to a conditional pardon, until a certain time had expired. With regard to their having been allowed their own clothes, he really was not aware what the rule upon that subject was in the colony; but they had a letter from Frost himself to a friend in this country complaining that he and his companions were compelled to wear the ordinary convicts' dress upon the voyage, but which shewed that the Government at home had made no special relaxtion on this subject. With regard to the treatment in the colony, he had a letter from Sir John Franklin, dated the 3rd of July, in which he acknowledged the arrival of 212 male convicts by the ship Mandarin, and that they had been placed in the penal gangs on the roads, with the exception of Frost, Williams, and Jones, who had been sent to Tasman's Peninsula. He believed it was usual for the governor personally to inspect all convicts on their arrival, and he was not aware that Sir John Franklin did more than was customary in the case of these prisoners. From the intelligence that had been received from Sir J. Franklin, it would appear that he made no distinction between these three convicts and the others, except sending them to a different place, and that place one that was looked to as the most severe 144 of the penal settlements. It was a common thing to send persons, who had on the voyage misconducted themselves, to Port Arthur, and therefore it was possible, when the governor conceived it right and prudent to separate these three convicts from the rest, that he might have said to them, that they were not sent to Port Arthur from any intention to inflict extra punishment. No special favour was shown, and neither were there any instructions to treat these convicts in a particularly harsh or unusual manner. As to the occupation of these persons, he had received no very distinct information on the subject; but he rather believed it was customary in some remote districts, where there was no possibility of furnishing an adequate number of clerks, to employ persons of a better style of education so act as clerks, and this person (Frost) being more accustomed to write than to dig, it was very possible that he had been so employed, still known as a convict, and without any emolument or reward. If such turned out to be the case, no doubt it was done by Sir J. Franklin, according to the usual and common course, and was not intended in the way of a favour, If it were intended as a favour, Sir John Franklin had certainly misconceived the intentions of the Government at home; and if it were out of the ordinary course, he would have reported it at once, among other things, in the despatch which he had forwarded to the head of the Colonial Department. That despatch he was prepared to lay on the Table of the House. He was glad that his noble Friend had given him an opportunity of correcting the misrepresentations that existed upon that subject in the public mind; and he could assure his noble Friend, that the Government was actuated by the same feelings as himself, and were most anxious to uphold the laws of the country, and to punish in the most severe manner a crime which had occasioned great loss of life, which endangered the tranquillity of the country, and which was a disgrace to that part of the kingdom in which it occurred.