INS U LA R A US 7 'A'. 1 1. A SI. I . 



1291 



efficiently conducted. Prisoners were sent there under such an adequate guard as to make 

 discipline effective and escape impossible; and so long as these conditions continued, the 

 settlement was sufficiently distant from the Australian coast to leave the danger of 

 contamination compara- 

 tively non-existent. But 

 quite another state of 

 things came in with the 

 Republic. When the 

 Commune fell in 1'aris, 

 and the prisons were 

 filled with persons con- 

 victed of having taken 

 part in the destructive 

 operations of that body, 

 M. Thiers found him- 

 self confronted with 

 much the same problem 

 as that laid before 

 Napoleon III. by his 

 advisers nearly twenty 

 years before. His de- 

 cision was a similar 



one. Regulations were 



passed, under which 

 New Caledonia thence- 

 forth became the recep- 

 tacle for all classes of 

 offenders, political or 

 criminal, and convicts 

 began to be deported 

 in such numbers that 

 the character of the 

 penal establishment 

 there was radically 

 changed, and many half- 

 punished offenders were 

 allowed semi-liberty. 

 The criminal popula- 

 tion rapidly out-grew 

 the ability of its guard 



to preserve real discipline. Order degenerated into lawlessness and disorder, until the state 



of things occurred which has made New Caledonia a danger to its Australian neighbours. 



The colony of New Caledonia consists of the large Island of that name, lying about 



a thousand miles from the east coast of Australia, in latitude twenty-two degrees south, 



THE INTERIOR OF A NEW CALEDONIAN I'KlSi'X. 



