Page:The Statistics of Crime in Australia (IA jstor-2338612).pdf/7

 both literally and metaphorically, in the protracted warfare. But it has fought and conquered, and, after a quarter of a century, it merges in comparative peace and security.

I say "comparative," for we must not suppose that the old condition is yet ended. The very last mail from Australia arrived but a few days ago, brings accounts of bushranging and highway exploits such as would, in point of coolness, audacity, and ferocity, rival those of Turpin or Wild, or the worst of Italian banditti. The perpetrators are mostly old British convicts or their descendants. Victoria, and especially New South "Wales, have been of late a prey to such atrocities, which indicate that the convict leaven is still present, and is powerful to reappear at intervals in irrepressible outbreaks of this kind, which for a season defy alike the police and the Government.

Experience of this nature enables a colony to speak authoritatively on the merits of the transportation system, and to urge energetically the natural equity that prescribes to every society the duty to retain and control its own criminals. But, returning to the colony's statistics, we shall look at those of 1840. The convictions are I in 155 of the population; the present proportion in England and Wales being 1 in 997. The previous year is still worse, for it gives 1 in only 126, or worse by nearly eight times than the ratio of this country. And yet even these deplorable results do not adequately represent the full measure of colonial crime, as the summary jurisdiction of the magistrates was specially enlarged so as to embrace many of the graver offences. This was the case also in Van Dieman's Land, as it is now the practice in "West Australia, and it is perhaps a custom of indispensable convenience in dealing with unusual proportions of crime. Prom this gloomy picture of the past, we turn with pleasure to the present, to learn that the convictions of New South "Wales are now in the relatively promising proportion of 1 in 715 of population.

2. Retrospect of Van Dieman's Land.

Van Dieman's Land remained, for fourteen years after her sister, the great convict receptacle, and with few results to her social advantage, as may well be supposed. Let us, for example, take the condition arrived at in 1846. Disclosures of a truly awful character were at that time being transmitted from the colony to the Home Government and public as the result of convict settlements. In a total population of 60,000 of all ages in that year, there were 20,870