Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/58

xlviii AN INTRODUCTORY The evidence given by Banks before the Committee did not pro- duce any immediate result ; but he had sown an acorn which was destined to come up and flourish in its appointed time. The question of the felons and what should be done with them vexed the souls of successive Parliaments and Ministries ; it was dis- cussed by philanthropists from one point of view and by poli- ticians from another ; but nothing came of their discussions but accumulations of pamphlets and parliamentary papers, with a great work on the State of the Prisons from John Howard and a very little one from Jeremy Bentham, fantastically called a Panopticon, in which the philosopher developed '^a new prin- ciple^' of constructing and managing prisons. While the American war lasted. Lord North and his colleagues had no time to spare for matters of that kind; and the Governments which immediately succeeded his were too short-lived to accom- plish any substantial legislation — the real cause of their in- efficiency being the blank indifference to questions of social reform which characterised all the politics and politicians of the time. Better prospects dawned upon the country with the advent of Pitt's administration in 178-3. It lasted for eighteen years, and the first ten of them being years of peace, the Ministry had leisure enough to frame any scheme of reform they might please, as well as the power to carry it into effect. Soon after peace had been declared with the United States, the colonists who had remained loyal pressed their claims on Parliament for compensa- tion for the losses they had sustained in the war. They had been driven out of their homes, outlawed and ruined men, and were consequently forced to seek a refuge from the tempest wherever they could find one. Most of them went to the British North American provinces and settled there. Among the pro- Digitized by Google