to Norfolk Island; but as a rule the island was kept as a place of punishment for criminals who, already convicted in the mother country, were found guilty of new crimes during their residence in New South Wales.

The condition of things in New South Wales was such as civilization has not often seen. In Sydney especially it was extraordinary. When the convicts were sent out to the colony they received each in turn, after a certain period. of penal probation, a conditional freedom; in other words, a ticket of leave. They were allowed to work for the colonists, and to support themselves. Any one who wanted laborers, or artisans, or servants could apply to the authorities and have convicts assigned to him for the purpose. Female convicts as well as male were thus employed. There was, therefore, a large number of convicts, men and women, moving about freely in the active life of Sydney, doing business, working in trades, performing domestic service; to all appearance occupying the place that artisans, and laborers, and servants occupy among ourselves. But there was a profound difference. The convict laborers and servants were in reality little better than slaves. They were assigned to masters and mistresses, and they had to work. Stern laws were enacted, and were no doubt required, to keep those terrible subordinates in order. The lash was employed to discipline the men; the women were practically unmanageable. The magistrates had the power, on the complaint of any master or mistress, to order a man to be flogged with as many as fifty lashes. Some of the punishment lists remind a reader of the days of slavery in the United States. On every page we come on entries of the flogging of men for disobeying the orders of a master or mistress; for threatening a fellow - servant, for refusing to rub down the horse or clean the carriage, or some such breach of discipline. A master who was also a magistrate was not allowed to adjudicate in his own case; but practically it would seem that masters and mistresses could have their convict servants flogged whenever they thought fit. At that time a great many of the native population," the Blacks," as they were called, used to stream into the town of Sydney, as the Indians now come into Salt Lake City or some other Western town of America. In some of the out

lying houses they would lounge into the kitchens, as beggars used to do in Ireland in old days, looking out for any scraps that might be given to them. It was a common sight then to see half a dozen of the native women, absolutely naked, hanging round the doors of houses where they expected anything. Between the native women and the convicts at large an almost indiscriminate intercourse set in. The "black men would bring their wives into the town and offer them for a drop of rum or a morsel of tobacco. In this extraordinary society there were these three strands of humanity curiously intertwined. There was the civilized Englishman, with his money, his culture, his domestic habits; there was the outcast of English civilization, the jail-bird fresh from the prison and the hulks; and there was the aboriginal naked savage. In the drawing-room sat the wife and daughters of the magistrate; in the stable was the convict, whose crimes had perhaps been successive burglaries crowned with attempted murder; in the kitchen were women-servants taken from the convict depot and known to be prostitutes; and hanging round the door were the savages, men and women. All the evidence seems to agree that, with hardly any exceptions, the women convicts were literally prostitutes. There were some exceptions, which it is well to notice. Witnesses who were questioned on the subject gave it as the result of their experience, that women convicted of any offence whatever in this country and sent out to New South Wales invariably took to profligacy, unless they were Irish women. That is to say, it did not follow that an Irish convict woman must necessarily be a profligate woman; it did follow as a matter of fact in the case of other women. Some of the convicts married women of bad character and lived on their immoral earnings, and made no secret of the fact. Many of these husbands boasted that they made their wives keep them in what they considered luxuries by the wages of their sin. Tea and sugar were great luxuries to them at that time, and it was a common saying among men of this class that their wives must take care to have the tea and sugar bag filled every day. The convicts soon inoculated the natives with the vilest vices and the foulest diseases of civilization. Many an English lady found that her women-servants went off

in the night somewhere and came back in the morning, and they knew perfectly well that the women had been off on some wild freak of profligacy; but it was of no use to complain. In the midst of all this it would appear that a few of the convicts did behave well; that they kept to work with iron industry, and rose in the world, and were respected. In some cases the wives of convicts went out to New South Wales and started farms or shops, and had their husbands assigned to them as servants, and got on tolerably well. But in general the convicts led a life of utter profligacy, and they corrupted all that came within their reach. One convict said to a judge: "Let a man be what he will, when he comes out here he is soon as bad as the rest; a man's heart is taken from him, and there is given to him the heart of a beast." Perpetual profligacy, incessant flogging this was the combination of the convict's life. Many of the convicts liked the life on the whole, and wrote to friends at home urging them to commit some offence, get transported, and come out to New South Wales. An idle ruffian had often a fine time of it there. This, of course, does not apply to Norfolk Island. No wretch could be so degraded or so unhappy anywhere else as to find relief in that hideous lair of suffering and abomination.

Such was the condition of things described to the Committee of the House of Commons in 1837. It is right and even necessary to say that we have passed over, almost without allusion, some of the most hideous of the revelations. We have kept ourselves to abominations which, at all events, bear to be spoken of. From the publication of the evidence taken before the Committee, any one might have seen that the transportation system was doomed. It was clear that if any colony made up its mind to declare that it would not endure the thing any longer, no English Minister could venture to say that he would force it on the colonists. The doomed and odious system, however, continued for a long time to be put in operation, as far as possible. It was most tempting both as to theory and as to practice. It was an excellent thing for the people at home to get rid of so much of their ruffianism; and it was easy to persuade ourselves that the system gave the convicts a chance of reform, and ought to be acceptable to the colonists.

The colonists, however, made up their minds at last in most places, and would not have any more of our convicts. Only in Western Australia were the people willing to receive them on any conditions; and Western Australia had but scanty natural resources, and could in any case harbor very few of our outcasts. The discovery of gold in Australia settled the question of those colonies being troubled any more with our transportation system; for the greatest enthusiast for transportation would hardly propose to send out gangs of criminals to a region glowing with the temptations of gold. There were some thoughts of establishing a convict settlement on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, on the north side of the great Australian Island. Some such scheme was talked of at various intervals. It always, however, broke down on a little examination. One difficulty alone was enough to dispose of it effectually. It was impossible, after the revelations of the Committee of the House of Commons, to have a convict settlement of men alone; and if it was proposed to found a colony, where were the women to come from? Were respectable English and Irish girls to be enticed to go out and become the wives of convicts? What statesman would make such a proposal? The wildest projects were suggested. Let the convicts marry the savage women, one ingenious person suggested. Unfortunately, in the places thought most suitable for a settlement there happened to be no savage women. Let the convict men be married to convict women, said another philosopher. But even if any Colonial Minister could have been found hardy enough to approach Parliament with a scheme for the foundation of a colony on the basis of common crime, it had to be said that there were not nearly enough of convict women to supply brides for even a tolerable proportion of the convict men. Another suggestion it is only necessary to mention for the purpose of showing to what lengths the votaries of an idea will go in their effort to make it fit in with the actual conditions of things. There were persons who thought it would not be a bad plan to get rid of two nuisances at once, our convicts and a portion of what is euphuistically termed our "social evil," by founding a penal settlement on some lonely shore, and sending out cargoes of the abandoned women of our large towns

to be the wives of the present and the mothers of the future colonists. When it came to propositions of this kind, it was clear that there was an end to any serious discussion as to the possibility of founding a convict settlement. As late as 1856 Committees of both Houses of Parliament declared themselves greatly in favor of the transportation systemthat is, of some transportation system, of an ideal transportation system; but also recorded their conviction that it would be impossible to carry on the known system any longer.

The question then arose, What was England to do with the criminals whom up to that time she had been able to shovel out of her way? All the receptacles were closed but Western Australia, and that counted for almost nothing. Some prisoners were then, and since, sent out for a part of their term to Gibraltar and Bermuda; but they were always brought back to this country to be discharged, so that they may be considered as forming a part of the ordinary class of criminals kept in detention here. The transportation system was found to carry evils in its train which did not directly belong to its own organization. It had been for a long time the practice of England and Scotland to send out to a colony only those who were transported for ten years and upward, and to retain those condemned for shorter periods in the hulks and other convict prisons. In these hideous hulks the convicts were huddled together very much as in Norfolk Island, with scarcely any superintendence or discipline, and the result was that they became what were called, with hardly any exaggeration, "floating hells." It was quite clear that the whole system of our dealings with our convicts must be revised and reorganized. In 1853 the Government took a step which has been well described as an avowal that we must take the complete charge of our criminals upon ourselves. A bill was brought in by the Ministry to substitute penal servitude for transportation, unless in cases where the sentence was for fourteen years and upward. The bill reduced the scale of punishment; that is to say, made a shorter period of penal servitude supply the place of a longer term of transportation. Lord Palmerston was Home Secretary at this time. It was during that curious episode in his career described