1296 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



to acknowledge the right of the British Authorities to interfere in a question which, he 

 maintained, concerned the internal administration of France. The colonies, however, carried 

 on the agitation; and the news of the passing of 'the new French Measure to make New 

 Caledonia a place of deportation for habitual criminals. gave rise to very bitter feelings. Pub- 

 lic meetings have been held on the question, and threats openly made to charter a ship 

 and convey all French convicts now in Australian gaols to France, and land them bodily 

 there. Between July and October, 1883, no less than fifty-three public demonstrations 

 were held in the principal Australian cities to protest against the recent action of France 

 in the matter. Lord Derby communicated the resolutions arrived at to the French 

 Government, merely receiving an assurance from M. Challemel-Lacour, in reply, that the 

 Recidivist or Habitual Criminal Bill had not at the time become law. Advantage was 

 taken of the pause thus secured to deport several hundred recidivists to New Caledonia, 

 notwithstanding the remonstrance of the British Ambassador at Paris. Ultimately, the 

 Measure passed, and under its provision any Tribunal Correct ioncl may order the 

 transportation () of any criminal who, within a period of ten years, shall have suffered 

 imprisonment four times, for terms of three months or upwards, for certain specific 

 crimes ; (K) of persons who, in a period of ten years, shall have been sentenced to trai'aux 

 forces on two separate occasions, or once sentenced to traran.v forces and once to 

 imprisonment for three months ; (c) or of those who, in the space of ten years, shall 

 have been sentenced on six separate occasions, including at least one term of three 

 months' duration. From these provisions it will be seen that the purpose of the penal 

 establishment in New Caledonia is to provide a receptacle for the criminal classes of the 

 mother-country. Recidivists so transported receive grants of land, and no disabilities are 

 placed upon them other than a prohibition to return to France. They are not herded 

 with the convicts, but regain their civil rights' in the colony. The object of the Bill 

 was to provide a population for the colony, by relieving the correctional system at home, 

 and, so far as it goes, the plan may be: said to have presented at first the appearance 

 of just such a humane socialistic experiment as would afford a philosophic French 

 theorist delight. The model aimed at was that of the Australian colonies ; but, so far, 

 those responsible for the working out of the theory have only succeeded in producing 

 another Norfolk Island on a somewhat larger scale, instead of a second New South 

 Wales. The scheme has been left to work itself out in the hands of officials whose 

 interest in the experiment is anything but a philosophic one, and the result is found to 

 be much the same as that arrived at under our own convict system in the earlier 

 stages of Australian colonization with the radical difference, however, that these colonies 

 offered room for expansion and pastoral settlement, which New Caledonia certainly does 

 not. The libcre, who is placed on the land as a settler, is not always the best indi- 

 vidual to experiment upon, but the unwieldy system finds relief by disburdening itself in this 

 way of the responsibility of his support. Convict women of the worst class, who are 

 very numerous in Xew Caledonia, help to make the task of reform almost a hopeless one, 

 and the lawless character of these people keeps the colony and its better disposed 

 settlers in a condition of continual ferment and restless agitation. Some of the deportcs 

 are hired out as labourers on easy terms to the colonists. It is not to be supposed 

 that the whole of the convict population of New Caledonia belongs to the hopelessly 



