little consequence as long as it continues to be an object of dread to
criminals at home. The corporeal wants of the convicts are tolerably
well supplied: their prospect of future liberty and comfort is not
distant, and, after good conduct, certain. A "ticket of leave," which,
as long as a man keeps clear of suspicion as well as of crime, makes
him free within a certain district, is given upon good conduct, after
years proportional to the length of the sentence; yet with all this,
and overlooking the previous imprisonment and wretched passage out, I
believe the years of assignment are passed away with discontent and
unhappiness. As an intelligent man remarked to me, the convicts know
no pleasure beyond sensuality, and in this they are not gratified. The
enormous bribe which Government possesses in offering free pardons,
together with the deep horror of the secluded penal settlements,
destroys confidence between the convicts, and so prevents crime. As to
a sense of shame, such a feeling does not appear to be known, and of
this I witnessed some very singular proofs. Though it is a curious
fact, I was universally told that the character of the convict
population is one of arrant cowardice: not unfrequently some become
desperate, and quite indifferent as to life, yet a plan requiring cool
or continued courage is seldom put into execution. The worst feature
in the whole case is, that although there exists what may be called a
legal reform, and comparatively little is committed which the law can
touch, yet that any moral reform should take place appears to be quite
out of the question. I was assured by well-informed people, that a man
who should try to improve, could not while living with other assigned
servants;--his life would be one of intolerable misery and persecution.
Nor must the contamination of the convict-ships and prisons, both here
and in England, be forgotten. On the whole, as a place of punishment,
the object is scarcely gained; as a real system of reform it has
failed, as perhaps would every other plan; but as a means of making men
outwardly honest,--of converting vagabonds, most useless in one
hemisphere, into active citizens of another, and thus giving birth to a
new and splendid country--a grand centre of civilization--it has
succeeded to a degree perhaps unparalleled in history.
30th.--The Beagle sailed for Hobart Town in Van Diemen's Land. On the
5th of February, after a six days' passage, of which the first part was
fine, and the latter very cold and squally, we entered the mouth of
Storm Bay: the weather justified this awful name. The bay should
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