4 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



to exchange his own happy soil for the possession of territory, 

 however extensive, in a part of the world so little known " would 

 have been justly censurable. For such a purpose there remained 

 criminals who, having forfeited their lives or liberties to justice, 

 "have become a forlorn hope, and have always been adjudged 

 a fair subject of hazardous experiments ; ... if the dangers 

 of a foreign climate or the improbability of returning to this 

 country be considered as nearly equivalent to death, the devoted 

 convict naturally reflects that his crimes have drawn on this 

 punishment, and that offended justice in consigning him to the 

 inhospitable shore of New Holland does not mean thereby to 

 seat him for his life on a bed of roses." 1 



There was, however, a difficulty in the likelihood that the 

 punishment would not prove a heavy one, and would thus en- 

 courage the commission of offences (a condition said to have 

 been realised thirty years later 2 ) or might prove a fatal argu- 

 ment for the multiplication of capital penalties. On the 

 whole the prospects of the new settlement were hopeful, the 

 future home of the convicts was likely to be better than they 

 expected or deserved, and " such of those unhappy people as 

 testify an amendment in their morals, or an inclination to em- 

 brace the profession of honest industry, will probably not be 

 shut out from enjoying in some measure even the comforts 

 of life". 3 



Of the Colony as an instrument of commerce, and ultimately 

 of profit to the mother country, he had high expectations, and 

 he pushed aside the less optimistic views of colonisation to 

 which the loss of America had given point He argued that 

 the errors and prejudices of past ages could not be fairly ad- 

 vanced "against the success of similar measures, when under- 

 taken at this period with the assistance of superior lights ". 4 



It is melancholy to reflect that the decree of the "superior 

 lights" was the foundation of a penal settlement under military 

 government. Having founded it, so lacking in forethought 

 and energy were these high powers that delay in sending 



1 History of New Holland, Preface, pp. v-vi. 



2 See H. G. Bennet in House of Commons. Hansard, vol. 39, p. 478, i8th 

 February, 1819. 



* Ibid., p. vi. 4 Ibid., p. ix. 



