Results of the Transportation Sijsteiu. 8i 



tlicir burdens and difficulties, furnish an instructive and cheer- 

 ing example of what may be made of even hordes of fallen 

 man under certain conditions, if they can be afforded the 

 opportunity of working and showing their powers. 



Confined in gloomy cells between high walls, chained hand 

 and foot with heavy iron fetters, condemned in their wretched 

 state to life-long inaction, the convicts sent out to Botany Bay 

 during fifty years would have cost the State directl}^, and so- 

 ciety indirectly, an enormous sum ; while their existence would 

 have passed in silent brooding over their fate, and speculations 

 as to the means of avenging themselves on mankind. 



Placed on a remote, healthy, fertile shore, with the cheering 

 prospect of inaugurating for themselves a new era of exist- 

 ence by labour and industry, and thus being enabled to at- 

 tain competency and respectability, these very same men 

 raise themselves, at but little cost, to the position of valuable 

 subjects to the state and to society, by causing to smile, under 

 the gold crop of agriculture, lands hitherto all but unknown, 

 and thus becoming the founders of a community, which bears 

 within itself the germ of such a marvellous development in 

 the future, that political seers even now designate it as '' the 

 Gkeat Britain of the Southern Hemisphere." 



A system which, despite the many serious deficiencies caused 

 by individual selfish short-sightedness, has produced such 

 results, cannot bo considered by any unprejudiced inquirer 

 as altogether objectionable or aimless ; — on the contrary, it 

 seems to us it has proved its utility in founding new over- 



VOL. III. 



