Page:The Statistics of Crime in Australia (IA jstor-2338612).pdf/9

 welcome. It is only fair towards West Australia to recall that similar views pervaded New South Wales and Tasmania in their earlier years, at a time when colonial interests were represented mainly by a handful of employers, who regarded the colonies as a field for gain rather than a home. West Australia has not yet emerged from a parallel condition. In the eastern colonies, so soon as a society was consolidated by free immigration, and a public opinion brought into action, the system was condemned. Australia had then become "home" to its increasing settlers, and even the children of the convicts were, in many instances, leagued with the other colonists against transportation.

What West Australia now actually is, and what it is likely to be at a further period, should the convict system be persisted in, is a subject of general interest—an interest not confined to Australia. The latest and most complete, and apparently the most authentic account of the colony, is from the correspondent of one of the Victoria newspapers, the Melbourne "Argus." The writer was sent specially from Victoria on this errand of inquiry, at a time when the colony was in strong agitation upon the convict question, and when its press and public condemned the system alike in Eastern and Western Australia. But while it is only proper to allude thus to a possible cause of bias on this account, the correspondent's communications, which were received and published at Melbourne so recently as June last, bear all the marks of fair and temperate representation, authenticated by ample official and other statistical data.

The result presents to us a darker picture than had been usually imagined of a settlement so remote and so little before our public, even by those opposed to the system. Indeed it might be well for the future interests of the south, if the French Government could be induced to give attention to the report in question, and thus learn some of the inevitable results of convict colonies, before proceeding further with their project of New Caledonia. Many doors are kept unlocked, but it is the security of a poor colony that presents little to tempt the thief, and no opportunity to dispose of any plunder. The official regulations are favourably alluded to. There is a strict surveillance and firm grasp of the convicts while undergoing sentence; but all this is at an end after they are freed by conditional pardon or servitude. They then instinctively turn their eyes to more prosperous and attractive spheres, and shoal off by hundreds annually to the eastern settlements.

Of this fact there was no room for doubt, and hence the fresh outbreak of crime and obstructed path of social progress in these settlements. Take, for instance, the state of the question at the date of 1st January, 1860; by that time 2,583 convicts had become free by pardon or servitude, and of these there were 1,410, or more than