Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/67

 SKETCH. Ivii the bitter degradation involved in the system, not only in the revolting spectacle of chain-gangs marching through their streets, but in the scornful estimate of American society held by all classes in the mother Country. The long list of offences charged against King George in the Declaration of ludependence did not contain any mention of the wrong he had done in flooding tho colonies with criminals ; but the sense of injury and the deep- seated resentment which had been burning in the hearts of the colonists for a century, may well be reckoned among the causes which led to their rebellion; just as the discontinuance of the system on the outbreak of war was assuredly counted among the greatest gains derived from it. A year before the war broke out, Burke warned the House of Commons against '' the fierce spirit of liberty " that had grown with the growth of the colonists, and increased with the increase of their wealth. It was aptly described as fierce ; and what could be more calculated to make it so than the sight of slaves and convicts landed year after year on their shores from English ships ? But while Banks may not have seen any reason to quarrel with the transportation system in itself, it is surprising that he should have indorsed a proposal to plant a colony of felons — to use the words of the Committee — ^in a distant part of the globe, in the expectation that they would be able to maintain themselves, after the first year, with little or no aid from the mother country. His technical knowledge of plants and his experience as a farmer would, one would suppose, have enabled him to see the danger of such an undertaking. But it does not appear that he gave any attention to that view of the question, either in his evidence before the Committee, or in the advice he subsequently gave the Government when the expedition under Phillip was being put together. In that respect he was not at all singular, for nobody seems to have given the matter any consideration. It was taken for granted that the colony would require nothing more than a year or two's supply of salt provisions to start it on a career of successful agricultural industry. Phillip was placed under peremptory instructions to see to the cultivation of the land Digitized by Google