Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/117

 TO AMERICA. 19 from 1784 to 1789, and President of the United States from 1801 to 1809. In a note written for the information of the author of an article on the Etats JJnis in the Encyclopedie Methodique, he stated that " the malefactors sent to America Patriotic . . _ . . statistics. were not sufficient m number to merit enumeration, as one class out of three which peopled America." And he added : '^It was at a late period of their history that this prac- tice began. I have no book by me which enables me to point out the date of its commencement. But I do not think the whole number sent out would amount to 2,000 ; and being principally men eaten up with disease, they married seldom and propagated little. I do not suppose that themselves and their descendants are at present 4,000, which is little more than one-thousandth part of the whole inhabitants."* It is not easy to reconcile this estimate — ^which bears no date, but was written about 1785— with that of the official official . ... statistics. charged with the transportation of convicts to America, whose letter on the subject has been already referred to. Jefferson^s calculation was not based on any statistical or official information, and is evidently at variance with the facts as they appear in the records. Later writers of American history would appear to have adopted the great President's views on this subject. Their pages may be searched in vain for any account of the trans- portation system, although it formed so conspicuous a chapter in the annals of American colonisation. The con- vict element in the composition of early American society niaappear- has long since dropped out of sight ; so much so, indeed, ^SJ^ent that it is difficult now to find even an allusion to it in the literature of the present century.t The explanation is not + Some indication of the difficulty of obtaining authentic information on this subject may be gathered from the fact that a correspondent's letter published in Notes and Queries for November 10, 1869, p. 369, asking for *< trustworthy sources of information respecting the old system of transportation, as it existed prior to the American War of Independence," met with no reply. Another letter, requesting information as to what extent Digitized by Google
 * Jefferson, Works, vol. ix, p. 254.