Thomas Reid - Two Voyages to New South Wales and Van Diemens Land

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He who thinks he sees many around him, whom he esteems and loves, labouring under a fatal error, must have a cold heart, or a most confined notion of benevolence, if he could withhold his endeavours to set them right, from an apprehension of incurring the imputation of officiousness.- Wilberforce.

MADAM,

The general state and condition of those unfortunate persons whose crimes had brought them under the severe cognisance and judgement of the laws, and whose lives only had been spared by the late happily increasing liberality of modern opinion and feeling, have for a long series of years occupied little public attention. Those, indeed, who bestowed any thought at all upon the final treatment of convicts, viewing the provision made for safely securing them on board of Hulks, or within the walls of Houses of Correction, or having them afterwards removed altogether to remote countries, thus restrained apart from general society for a certain time, and so long withheld at least from depredation, seem to have indulged with a degree of selfishness in the idea of personal security only as affecting themselves, or at most as extending to the other branches of the community. It seems to have appeared to the minds of such people, quite generous enough that the offenders absolute wants were provided for, and that all was effected when he was put out of the way of doing further harm: beyond that, the condition of the convict was without consideration.

Who can fail to observe without pleasurable emotion and interest, that a far different spirit is now stirring in the minds of mankind, and that the times have become happily enlightened, not by the dissemination of irreligious, under pretended philosophical principles, but in the diffusion of Christian truth and knowledge? The present age will ever be distinguished by the temperate, disinterested, and steady efforts made to communicate to the great mass of the population the blessings of Gospel instruction; and in the forcible example of persons in elevated life, on every public occasion, attended with important advantages; and under the auspices of some members of the present Administration, who have lent the aid of power to this great undertaking, the all-interesting cause of morality is firmly and rapidly advancing. It is not for the writer of this, perhaps, to indulge in eulogium, though, in the present instance, the cause would strongly invite to grateful and liberal expression.

The same benevolence which shed a ray of celestial light over the poor Africans horizon, has also held up the Gospel beacon to the benighted sinner of its own climes, and forbidden despair. Mercy, commuting capital punishment for transportation, had snatched the criminals from the vengeance of the statute law; and it then became matter of inquiry, whether imprisonment in Hulks, or Houses of Correction, or mere transmission to distant colonies, was not the ultimate and only good, which, in due regard to the permanent security of society, could be fitly provided for those degraded and unhappy persons. But that wakeful care which ever attends the proceedings of the truly good, sought out with anxiety a further means of relieving their miserable condition; and thus that useful employment on board the Hulks, and, latterly, a better regulated management in the Houses of Correction, have originated and tended to produce the present visible beneficial effects.

The societies for the propagation of the Scriptures, and of moral and religious tracts, have opened the ready means of putting useful publications into the hands of the prisoners, which have also so much tended to soften down their obduracy, and generally to meliorate their disposition and manners. The lot of the convicts meanwhile under sentence of transportation was not quite so happy.

Cooped up in prison, waiting for the period at which they were to be shipped off, these hapless creatures of either sex remained immersed in all the turpid influence of that guilt which had brought them to such a state, and still wholly occupied their minds. The listlessness of mind resulting from their escape of capital punishment, the dreadful suspense of death removed, and their poignant oscillations of hope and fear subsided, produced a calm and satisfaction bordering on pleasure; and to the unrestrained indulgence of this they freely gave way. But their thoughts long inured in the ways of wickedness, and too willingly withdrawn from reflection on their recent danger, presented no other mental employment than again traversing in idea the schemes they had practised, the gains they had successfully secured, and the merry scenes which those guilty gains enabled them to enjoy. No friendly counsel was near to hold up to their view the enormity of their crimes; even the humane admonitions of the venerable judge who found relief in assigning to their offences the mild punishment of transportation,all was forgotten where no sort of industrious employment was found to fill up the wasteful vacuum of imprisonment till the time of their departure.