Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/30

 CHAPTER II.

ORIGIN OF TRANSPORTATION.

HE accumulation of criminals in our gaols at the close of the American war became an embarrassing question for the county magistrates and the government. Projects for the renewal of transportation, and its effect on criminals, became a subject of discussion among statesmen and philanthropists.

Banishment, from a very early period, was an ordinary punishment, which permitted the sentenced to proceed to any country he pleased. Thus, in Shakspere's "Richard II.:

Even at the present day it is common, in Guernsey and Jersey, to "banish a criminal to England;" that is to say, to land him at Southampton, and then leave him free to go where he will so long as he does not revisit the Channel Islands.

The first legislative trace of the punishment of transportation is to be found in the 39th of Elizabeth, c. 4, authorising the banishment of rogues and vagabonds. This act James the First converted into an instrument of transportation to America, in a letter written in 1619, addressed to the council of the colony of Virginia, commanding them "to send a hundred dissolute persons to Virginia, that the Knight-Marshal would deliver to them for that purpose." These being the very class of persons against whose introduction the celebrated hero of Virginia, Captain John Smith, had specially protested. In the same year, as a kind of counterpoise to these dissolute persons, the Company sent ninety agreeable girls, young and incorrupt; and again, in 1621, sixty more, "maids of virtuous education, young, and handsome." The first lot of females brought 120 lbs. of tobacco each, and the second, 150 lbs. each.