Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/35

 and hot climate—the felling of hard timber, the blasting of immense rocks, the filling up of deep cavities with stones and earth, to be carried often from a considerable distance—such labour is unquestionably hard, irksome, and formidable in the extreme. That transportation should imply such labour in every instance, without exception, is, I apprehend, the intention of the legislature. That it has not implied any thing of the kind, however, in the past practice of the Australian colonies, is to be imputed entirely to the Executive, both at home and abroad. And, if under such practice transportation has ceased in a great measure to be formidable in England, and consequently to be efficient as a means of preventing crime, the fault is not to be ascribed to the transportation system, but to a system of colonial mismanagement, which no person but the inmate of a lunatic asylum would attempt to defend. Let that system, therefore, be immediately discontinued, and a system of management pursued for the future, in accordance with the principles of right reason, and transportation will, I am confident, become as formidable as Archbishop Whately could desire.

For a considerable period after the penal colony of New South Wales was originally established, the idea prevalent among all classes in England was, that transportation was a measure of great severity