Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 2.djvu/97

 F£OH. ENGLAND. 77 "but lie hoped shortly to be able to despatcb a number of the ^'^ convicts to the new settlement at Botany Bay. There can be no doubt that Grenville was aware, when he took this hazardous step, that it was in direct opposition to Phillip's recommendation ; but he probably thought it better to let the convicts take their chance of starving in New South Wales in preference to keeping them huddled together in The pestilential dens, where the unwholesome conditions and meagre fare meant misery, disease, and death.* In the despatch of the 20th June, 1789,t in which Gren- influx ville informed Phillip that about 240 female convicts had been shipped on the Lady Juliana, and about 1,000 more of both sexes were shortly to follow, no allusion whatever was made to the reasons which had induced the Government to ignore his recommendations. However mortifying this was to Phillip, it must have been aggravated by the despatches that followed, impressing upon him the necessity of discharg- unneoesBwry ing the very duty that he had said in his own letters he was most anxious to perform. J Writing on the 24th August, 1 789, Grenville enjoined Phillip to carefully attend to the pro- visions sent by the Guardian and Lady Juliana, and "to use every practicable exertion in order to put the colony in such a situation as not to depend on Great Britain for its supply in the article of provisions." He went on to say that a • " Convicts," remar&ed the famous philanthropist and prison reformer, John Howard, " are generally stout robust jouDg men -who nave been accus- tomed to free diet, tolerable lodgings, and vigorous exercise. These are ironed and thrust into close offensive dungeons, and there chained down, some of them without straw or other bedding, in which they continue, in winter, sixteen or seventeen hours out of the twenty-foar in utter inactivity, and immersed in the noxious effluvia of their own bodies. . . . Their food is at the same time low and scanty ; they are generally without firing, and the powers of life soon become incapable of resisting so many causes of sickness and despair." — State of the Prisons in England and Wales, 4th ed., p. 467. The same writer narrates that on a visit to Morpeth Gaol in 1776 ne saw in an ** offensive dungeon^ the window only 18 inches by 9,. . . three transports, who, upon 9uspteion of intending an escape, were chained to the floor. — lb., p. 425. In Durham county gaol he saw *' six prisoners, most of them transports, chained to the floor. In that situation they had been for many weeks, and were very sickly. Their straw on the stone floor was almost worn to dust." — lb., p. 420. t Historical Becords, vol. i, part 2, p. 252. t Post, p. 85.