Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/682

558 AN AMERICAN COLONIST ON TRANSPORTATION. 1756 Settlement checked by transport* ation. Labourers at fourpence a day. Bepenlof the Trans- portation Acti. Employ- ment of convicts in the docks proliibited ; apply that prmciple to the colonies. of his property. The delight of such company is a noble induce- ment, indeed, to the honest poor to convey themselves into a strange country. "In reality, sir, these very laws, though otherwise designed, have turned out in the end the most effectual expedients that the art of man could have contrived, to prevent the settlement of these remote parts of the King's dominions. They have actually taken away almost every encouragement to so laudable a design. I appeal to facts. The body of the English are struck with terror at the thought of coming over to us, not because they have a vast ocean to cross, or to leave behind them their friends, or that the country is new and uncultivated ; but from the shocking ideas the mind must necessarily form of the company of inhuman savages, and the more terrible herd of exiled malefactors. There are thousands of honest men, labouring in Europe at fourpence a day, starving in spite of all their efforts, a dead weight to the respective parishes to which they belong ; who, without any other qualifications than common sense, health, and strength, might accumulate estates among us, as many have done already. These, and not the others, are the men that should be sent over, for the better peopling the plantations. Great Britain and Ireland, in their present circumstances, are overstocked with them; and he who would immortalise himself for a lover of mankind should concert a scheme for the transportation of the industriously honest abroad, and the immediate punishment of rogues and plunderers at home. The pale-faced, half-clad, meagre, and starved skeletons that are seen in every village of those king- doms, call loudly for the patriot's generous aid. The plantations, too, would thank him for his assistance in obtaining the repeal of those laws w^hich, though otherwise intended by the Legisla- ture, have so unhappily proved injurious to his own country and ruinous to us. " It is not long since a bill passed the Commons for the employ- ment of such criminals in his Majesty's docks as should merit the gallows. The design was good. It is consistent with sound policy that all those who have forfeited their liberty and lives to their country should be compelled to labour the residue of their days in its service. But the scheme was bad, and wisely was the bill rejected by the Lords, for this only reason — that it had a natural tendency to discredit the King's yards, the consequences of which must have been prejudicial to the whole nation. Just so ought we to reason in the present case ; and we should then soon be brought to conclude, that though peopling the colonies, which was the laudable motive of the Legislature, be expedient to the publick ; abrogating the transportation laws must be equally necessary." — Smith, History of the Province of New York, pp. 266-9. Digitized by Google