Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/163

 their sentence, yet all conduct themselves well and become excellent citizens. Women, the disgrace and refuse of their sex in the metropolis, women already mothers, but covering with opprobrium all that pertained to them, are now, with new connexions, models of sobriety and chastity. There is another alignment to be adduced in support of this system, which has importance. The labour of the convicts in England, competing with that of a number of regular and free workmen, has a mischievous tendency in leaving the latter without work, and consequently increase the numbers thrown on the parish for support; thus, instead of being productive, their labour is injurious. In New South Wales, on the contrary, far from rivalling the English workman, the transport consumes his productions, since only English manufactures are admitted there. The importation amounts to three hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling, and the exportation of indigenous productions is calculated at a third of this sum; a decided argument in favour of colonization, and we may ask what prevents France from participating in so advantageous a system?"

This is doubtlessly very grand, but will it be permanent? Can we draw the inference that it will be equally applicable to France? To the first question, I will say that, in England, they are scarcely more unanimous on the subject than we are as to the advantages of colonizing convicts in general, and as to the results of the colonies of New South Wales, in particular. Independently of every other consideration, however, they afford to British commerce most valuable stations between India, China, the isles of Junda, and all the oriental Archipelago. Such advantages, which might perhaps have been obtained without having recourse to colonization, do not appear however to compensate for the enormous expenses which have at first occurred, and which continue still, to the detriment of the nation; the government having,