Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/34

punishment, viz. that it should be formidable, Archbishop Whately proposes to substitute for transportation solitary confinement in penitentiaries, and hard labour under efficient superintendence in England. But there is surely nothing more formidable in solitary confinement and hard labour in England, than there is in solitary confinement and hard labour at a penal settlement on the coast of New Holland. Solitary confinement by night may be impracticable in the case of convicts employed at hard labour of certain descriptions at a penal settlement; as, for instance, in road-making, the place of encampment in such cases requiring to be frequently changed: but even in these cases, the difficulty, I conceive, might be easily got over in a country abounding in forest-timber. That there should be any difficulty, however, in subjecting a convict under sentence of transportation to as hard and incessant labour at a penal settlement in New Holland as it is possible to subject him to in England, I cannot conceive: on the contrary, the facilities of apportioning the comparative severity of the labour to the comparative criminality of the convict, are much greater in a new country than in one in a high state of improvement. The labour, for instance, required in the various operations implied in road-making, in a country of broken surface