2 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



so late as 1776 by Mr. William Eden, 1 who a few years after- 

 wards suggested hard labour at home or slavery in Moham- 

 medan lands in exchange for Christian captives as more 

 efficacious punishments.- 



Again, the bond-servants formed a minority and an unim- 

 portant minority of the whole colonial population. 



When this system was interrupted by the revolt of the 

 Colonies in 1776, and brought altogether to an end by the peace 

 of 1782, the Government decided to recommence the transporta- 

 tion of convicts, apparently unconscious of the extent to which 

 they were creating a new policy. Under the new scheme not 

 only were the majority of the colonists convicts, but they were 

 almost entirely, for the first few years wholly, under the direct 

 control of the Government. By an Act of 1783, the King in 

 Council was empowered to declare any territory in the foreign 

 possessions of Great Britain to be a place to which convicts 

 might be transported. 3 At the same time an expedition ex- 

 amined the West Coast of Africa in the search for territory, but 

 reported that it was too unhealthy even for the social outcast. 

 Yet to find some suitable country for the purpose became daily 

 more urgent With the growing humanity of the times the 

 commutation of the death penalty grew increasingly frequent. 

 England offered no places of confinement for the men whose 

 sentences were thus commuted save the pestilent, over-crowded 

 prisons or equally horrible river hulks. 



Meanwhile the immediate settlement of New Holland 4 was 

 being pressed upon the Government. 5 The opportunity of 

 achieving both objects was too good to be lost, and in 1784 the 

 scheme received the serious attention of Lord Sydney, the 

 Secretary of State for Home Affairs. In 1786 a further step 

 was taken, and Orders in Council issued which declared the 

 East Coast of New Holland to be a place within the meaning 



1 Afterwards the first Lord Auckland. 



* See History of New Holland, by William Eden, 1787, p. xxx. Discourse on 

 Banishment. 



'24 Geo. HI. cap. 56. 



4 i.e., Australia. New Holland was the earlier name for the Colony. In 

 Flinders' Charts, published in 1814, the name Australia was used, and Macquarie 

 in 1)., 4th April, 1817, hoped that the name would be adopted. One of the earliest 

 names given by the voyagers of the seventeenth century was Terra Australis. 



*See H.R., I., Pt. II., Memorial of Matra to Lord Sydney, 23rd August, 1783. 



