536 Monthly Review of Literature. 



and not an encourager of crime. Continual labour should be an invariable 

 accompaniment of transportation ; and every effort should be used to preserve 

 the virtuous emigrants from the contamination of vice and felony. Dr Lang 

 points out many ways in which the convicts may be profitably employed and 

 in such a way as at once to terrify those at home and to correct themselves. 

 The sound argumentative manner in which he treats his subject renders his 

 book well worthy of public attention. 



The other work by Mr. Mudie is written in a smart and dashing rather than 

 in a ratiocinative style, and the author is occasionally so intemperate as to 

 injure his cause. In fact he shows a soreness, which altogether destroys 

 his efficiency as a reformer. Still there are excellent passages in it ; and he 

 tells his story with a force and naivete that make them highly interesting. 

 The experience of fourteen years undoubtedly gives him a competency to 

 throw light on the internal polity and management of the colony ; and he 

 certainly has laid bare the political sores of the settlement with an unsparing 

 hand. We leave the author to decide, as pleases him best, the quarrel be- 

 tween Sir Ralph Darling the ex-governor, and Sir Richard Bourke the actual 

 governor of Sydney : both are bad enough. But we shall, perhaps, convey 

 to our readers some idea of the morals of New South Wales, and espe cially 

 of its convict population, from the following statements of Mr. Mudie. 



" The British public can have no idea of the inequalities of the punishments 

 which attend the sentence of transportation from this country. These in- 

 equalities are not, as it would be reasonable to suppose, proportioned to the 

 different degrees of turpitude in the crimes for which the same sentence has 

 originally been passed, nor even according to the former characters of the 

 culprits. Quite the contrary. A common labourer, or industrious mechanic, 

 whom want of work and distress may have driven into the temporary com- 

 mission of crime, is as liable and as likely to be transported as the most ex- 

 pert thief and experienced depredator in London. Every convict ship takes 

 out to the colony men of the above description, as well as desperate and 

 practised burglars, habitual and experienced receivers of stolen goods, artful 

 and designing swindlers, skilful forgers, robbers of banks and mail coaches, 

 and a sprinkling of all sorts of the villains denominated the swell mob. 



"On the arrival of this motley assemblage of criminals at the port of Sydney, 

 lists of the convicts are made out, applications for their assignment are put 

 in by those of the settlers who are entitled to convict servants, and in the 

 course of about eight days the new comers are landed and assigned. The 

 simple labourers and ordinary mechanics, having nothing to recommend them 

 but their former industry, the misfortunes which drove them to crime, aud 

 perhaps a remaining disposition still to behave well, are sure to undergo the 

 full measure of their sentence. They are at once assigned to agricultural 

 settlers or other suitable masters ; and, in proportion as they are well-behaved 

 and industrious, they have not unfrequently the less chance of obtaining 

 either tickets-of-leave or conditional pardons. They are of too ordinary a 

 character and too common a class either to attract the notice or to excite the 

 sympathy of the convict-loving philanthropists of Sydney. As for the mas- 

 ters to whom they are assigned, however humane and respectable they may 

 be, it is of course natural that they should look for labour from men both 

 able to labour, and sent to the colony for the purpose of being punished by 

 labour. To labour, therefore, they are put. In proportion as they are 

 laborious, it is not the interest of their assignee masters to facilitate their ob- 

 taining tickets-of-leave ; nor are the convicts of this description likely them- 

 selves to obtain indulgences of that kind by stratagem and deceit. They 

 usually, therefore, as has been stated, undergo the full measure of their 

 sentences ; or if, after the term of years prescribed as probationary, they at 

 length obtain tickets-of-leave, they are obliged to continue still at labour 

 somewhere, as a means of providing for their subsistence. 



" On the other hand, those of the convicts who have something of the ' look 



