Page:Monthly scrap book, for September.pdf/23

Rh Comforts of Transportation.—As little is known in this country on the subject, we give an extract explanatory of the "comforts" enjoyed by convicts in Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales:—

Comfort 1st—As soon as he lands he is packed off 60, or 70, or 100 miles in the interior, or he is placed in the prisoner's barracks—of which it would be only necessary for any Hon. Member to see the inside to convince him it was no joke—in either of which cases, if he has brought any trifles with him, he is sure to be relieved of them before the following day. If he does not lose his Government clothing, he may consider himself fortunate; should he, however, do so, the following morning he may safely calculate upon—

Comfort 2nd.—In the shape of fifty lashes, or ten day's work on the tread-mill, or in the chain-gang.

Comfort 3rd.—If he be assigned to a master in the town, and happens to take a glass of grog after his long voyage, it is a great chance if he lodge not in the watch-house for the night, and take 'fitty' before breakfast in the morning by way of 'comfort.'

Comfort 4th.—Travelling through a wild forest without knowing his way, and surrounded perhaps by the hostile aborigines, who, so sure as they meet would kill him.

Comfort 5th.—Should he lose his way, and escape starvation in the bush, probably a sound flogging for not having arrived sooner at his master's house.

Comfort 6th.—Perpetual work and no pay; in many cases hard labour, hard living, hard words, and hard usage.

We have hitherto spoken only of the reception met with by a well-disposed prisoner—one who wishes to reform. If he be in any way refractory, let the good people of England thoroughly understand that he is sure of a most adequate reward. A short answer, when spoken to by his master or overseer, or a common soldier, or even a convict constable, is a crime punishable by flogging; getting tipsey places him in the stocks; missing muster may get him flogged, or into the chain gang, where be works in irons on the roads. Should he commit any second offence, Macquarie Harbour, Port Macquarie, Norfolk Island, or Moreton Bay is his fate; where every rigidity of discipline nay, sometimes even cruelty—is exercised. The hardest of labour, and but one meal a-day, of the coarsest feed, is the lot of a man who goes to a penal settlement. To these places it does not take felony to send a prisoner; many have been removed there for very trivial offences. The gallant colonel, who wishes for places of horror and terror as receptacles for criminals, need not go far a-field; we can supply him with such places as would satisfy the most insatiate appetite for torturing and punishing. When men commit murder on purpose to be hanged, in preference to bearing the terrors of these places of secondary exile, it cannot be expected that they are in the enjoyment of much 'comfort.'

This is no opposition tirade; nor is the statement made for our colonial readers: the facts are too well known here to require description. It is a true picture, intended for the eye of our numerous English readers." [sic]