Western Australia after the gold discoveries had been made known. It is true that previously a large proportion of them left the colony.
Such, substantially, was the convict system. The brotherhood had to tread a difficult path, and the yoke was galling. No system was more grotesque, yet it might be said to be presentment of other human systems. A sin was committed—each man had to work out his own redemption. G. W. Rusden observes of the convict system in Australia:—"To the present generation it is a stumbling-block. To the past it was a horror. To the future antiquarian it will be a study into which men will enter with the curiosity which now attends the disquisitions of Niebuhr on primitive Romans."
We have described the system in its broad and general aspect. That it was based more or less on sound and philosophic principles is evident even from our general summary of it. Comptroller-General Henderson, who had the experience of other countries to work on, and was at first assisted by a Secretary for the Colonies who took strong interest in convict life, organised the Establishment with extraordinary success. He encountered in Western Australia a totally unprepared field for the dispersion of so dangerous a class of immigrants, but by tact, perseverance, and a constant judicial consideration of the rights of settlers and bondmen, he instituted a system which worked with amazing simplicity and comparative absence of friction and injurious effects. Our subsequent narrative will show from time to time subjective and objective difficulties. Were it possible to organise any system among men which worked with absolute impartiality of favour or animus less difficulties would arise in administration. If the officers of a State or system governed with the regularity and immutability of the laws of Nature, then would discipline be absolute, friction diminished, complaint indefensible—every member of the system would bend to a supreme and determinate power.
The system necessarily depended on the officers—there was the chief difficulty. In dozens of ways errors could be and were committed. One object of the system was to obtain a just understanding of the felon's character; upon that his rewards or punishments were awarded. Chaplains, medical men, and warders were each supposed to study the subject's character—the most remarkable escapes were made by those convicts in whom the officials placed implicit trust. It was often found difficult to get good officials; some were in every way incompetent; some not sufficiently dignified; some too individually strict, and some not strict enough; some favoured particular convicts and were biased against others. Perhaps until officials are specially trained to unswerving equitable discipline it could not be otherwise. Many stories of bias are told where convicts suffered or enjoyed unduly.
The marks system was excellent in itself; it symbolised character and industry, and enabled the convict (and the official) to understand how his account stood. Here the official had his greatest power; where he entertained dislike he could easily award a lesser number of marks than was merited. The Comptroller-General sought to obviate this by strictly ordering that each man's work must be measured daily, and by other observances. Her Majesty's Committee in 1863 suggested improvements in the class of officers engaged. Governor Kennedy testified that the convict system entirely depended on the character and manner of the officers. The Committee advised that the marks system be continued. More recently convict disciplinarians have abolished the system because of the power of officers.
Compared with other penal settlements, however, the system in Western Australia was on the whole good. The convict enjoyed more consideration; his government was more humane. He was not deliberately placed under a brutal master, as was occasionally done in New South Wales; punishment was not so vindictive as in Norfolk Island. Cases are chronicled where a ticket-of-leave man laboured under a hard inhuman taskmaster. Sometimes he left this employer without authority and was severely punished.
Beyond the necessarily strict discipline in the Convict Establishment and the restrictions on ticket-of-leave men the system was hardly penal. Compulsory detention and obedience and limitations were the chief punishments to the well-behaved; to the refined in mind—and there were a few of them—the companionship with ruffianism and vulgarity was a heavy punishment. The malcontents were surely and rigidly punished. But let the ticket-of-leave men be obedient, industrious, and circumspect, and they found scope for pleasure and for obtaining wealth. Indeed, as it sometimes resulted with this class, no more fortunate circumstance could ever have happened to them, from a material point of view, than transportation to Western Australia. At home they may have pursued a career in bitter indigence; here some of them attained great wealth. On arrival in the colony their past was buried; to taunt convicts with their previous offences was punishable. They went through a moral college, and began anew. Mr. G. F. Moore stated before the Committee of the House of Lords, in 1856, that the life of convicts in the depots was perhaps better than that of free labourers.
Convict officials, literary critics, and Royal Commissions agreed that transportation to Western Australia was courted by criminals. Early in the century Commissions and Reports decided that prison life was courted by certain "submerged" classes; in prison they were better housed, clothed, and fed than out in the cold streets or when vainly seeking for employment in the rural districts. Except for the man branded with crime, yet anxious to obtain an honest standing, he would be a peculiarly ambitious person who desired to get into the clutches of the Western Australian Convict System.
The system was not reformatory. Deep-rooted habits, passions that dominate the whole nature, moral inability to discriminate for themselves, were growths which an ordinary system could not eradicate. Rules and regulations ordered the official to always hold an example of probity, truthfulness, and industry before the convict's mind. They demanded two sermons on Sundays and holidays, and prayers and communion on other days. It was as difficult to convert him as to winnow corn in a hurricane. A system might inculcate a certain amount of artificial restraint.
The Dean of Perth, the Rev. G. Pownall, said in his evidence before the Committee of 1863, that for reformation among convicts, three causes were necessary:—(1) Absence of temptation; (2) wide dispersion of the men so that they do not abet and corrupt one another; (3) climate, to take the fierceness and pugnacity out of savage men. It was more or less impossible to prevent communion while convicts were engaged on public works, on road parties, or out on ticket of leave. Free people shrank so sternly from the tainted colonist that he was compelled to seek for companionship among his own class. He met his "ancient trull," the one after his heart, and so the men of the lower classes were likely to fall back again on evil habits. The conditional pardon men were too often sunk in drunkenness and vice. The frantic revels of the worst of them in Western Australia did justice to the traditions of the London pot-house. The sight of it was repulsive. In some dark places vice festered.
Comparatively speaking, serious crimes were not numerous. In Western Australia opportunities and circumstances were not present. A man might thieve, but he had nowhere to dispose of his gains; he might murder, but he was almost certain to be found
