Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/233

 moral feeling generally prevalent, and the vices that uniformly distinguish a population of exclusively convict origin universally discouraged. They would see honest industry rewarded with comfortable circumstances and the prospect of independence; and they would be incited and encouraged to follow the good example held out to them on all hands, by being placed under the direct and salutary influence of pastoral superintendence. And surely a prospect of this kind, which, I am confident, from more than thirteen years' observation and experience in the colony of New South Wales, would be realized in ten thousand instances, under a judicious and well-regulated system of free emigration, is much more attractive to the eye of enlightened philanthropy, than the one which invariably presents itself in the writings of those, who, with comparatively little knowledge of the subject, affect to decry transportation as a species of punishment altogether—I mean, the penitentiary and the gibbet.

I have said that there are ten thousand localities along the coasts of New Holland, in which flourishing free settlements might be formed, by employing convict labour in the way I have recommended. Little as we know of the capabilities and resources of that continent, this at least can be affirmed with safety. And with a coast line