506 REMARKS ON 



decreased one half; and, to close the financial ac- 

 count, at the end of 1844 the colony was in debt to 

 the Treasury, £100,000. 



Though many other causes may have co-operated 

 in producing this change, it seems acknowledged 

 by most persons, that the result is chiefly traceable 

 to the disproportionate increase of the convict popu- 

 lation, acting in the manner I have already de- 

 scribed; and this is itself encouragement to reconsider 

 the system of 1842. But if, as some maintain, this 

 plan has inflicted serious evils, in a moral point of 

 view, both on the free population and on the convicts 

 themselves, there is still greater inducement to exa- 

 mine whether some better mode could not be devised. 



I do not intend, however, to enter into the ques- 

 tion of convict discipline. It would be beside my 

 purpose to do so ; and want of space, moreover, for- 

 bids it. But I cannot refrain from observing, that 

 one feature in the new plan, — that of congregating 

 criminals during one period of their punishment in 

 probation gangs, almost isolated from the free 

 settlers, — seems productive of anything but good. 

 Under the system of assignment, whatever other 

 objections there may have been to it, the convict had 

 at least an excellent chance of becoming a better 

 man, especially when drafted to a pastoral or agri- 

 cultural district. Whereas, now that the well-dis- 

 posed and the irreclaimably bad are often brought 

 constantly together in the same class, it is much 

 more difficult for them to regain that self-command 



