Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/630

 Transportation was a compromise on the part of the English judges with the more humane feelings of their nature. As long as the felon was in England, unless he was pardoned outright, he had to be made subject to the extreme penalty. The law prescribed the punishment of death, and the law had to be enforced. The judges may not have thought all the circumstances of a crime such as to justify them in recommending the criminal to royal mercy; at the same time, there may have been extenuating incidents among these circumstances which rendered them reluctant to apply the extreme punishment permitted by statute. It is doubtful whether a single convict was imported into Virginia, previous at least to 1650, whose case when tried in the English courts was not marked by circumstances in mitigation of its criminality. In 1661, a special committee was appointed by the Privy Council to consider, among other things, &#8220;how felons condemned to death for small offences&#8221; might be disposed of for the use of the English Plantations, and they recommended that the justices of the peace should be granted the power to distribute among these Plantations &#8220;all people of a loose and disorderly habit of life&#8221; who were a charge upon the parishes in which they were found. During the first years following the Restoration,