Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/582

 458 EARLY VIRGINIAN PLANTERS. that was brought before them. When small rogues and pilferers were taken and brought there, and upon examination put under the terror of being hanged, in order to which mittimuses were maldng, some of the diligent officers attending instructed them to pray Proying for transportation as the only way to save them ; and for the most part uunsporta- ^j^^y ^-^ ^^^ Then no more was done ; but the next alderman in course took one and another as their turns came, sometimes quarrelling whose the last was, and sent them over and sold them« This trade had now been driven for many years and no notice taken of it." A righteous North then relates how Jeffries pounced upon the Mayor, put P"«° • 1j jjjj i^ ^}jg dock, and made him plead for himself, " as a common rogue or thief must have done"; finally taking security from him and his accomplices to answer informations in the King's Bench. EARLY VIRGINIAN PLANTERS. De Foe, in many of his writings, and especially in his novel — The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, published Historical in 1721 — supplies a good deal of information with respect to the transportation system as it was carried out at the time he wrote. The following extracts show how largely the system prevailed at that time ; the classes of people who were sent out to the planta- tions ; the practice of dealing with convicts ordered for transporta* tion ; and the custom established in America of buying them from the captains of the vessels in which they were transported : — " Among the rest, she often told me how the greatest part of the inhabitants of that colony [Virginia] came thither in very indifferent circumstances from England ; that, generally speaking, Two classes they were of two sorts — either, 1 st, such as were brought over by of colonists, masters of ships to be sold as servants ; or, 2nd, such as were transported after having been found guilty of crimes punishable with death. " VThen they come here we make no difference ; the planters buy Convicts in them, and they work together in the field till their time is out ; tions?*'^**^ when 'tis expired they have encouragement given them to plant for themselves, for they have a certain number of acres of land allotted them by the country, and they go to work to clear and cure the land, and then to plant it with tobacco and com for their Digitized by Google