Even at the present day it is common in Guernsey and Jersey to "banish a criminal to England;" that is to say, to land him at Southampton, and then leave him free to go where he will so long as he does not revisit the Channel Islands.

In the same manner the smaller German principalities occasionally pay the passage of great criminals whom their forms of law prevent from executing without a confession of guilt, in order to save the expense of their maintenance during a perpetual imprisonment.

At Hamburg, a few years ago, it was accidentally discovered that the official representative of one of the northern dukedoms had arranged to despatch a small batch of murderers, burglars, and forgers by an emigrant ship bound to New York; but the exiles having illadvisedly made too much display of the deadly weapons, in pistols and daggers, with which, as stock in trade, they had provided themselves, the paternal intentions of the German prince were frustrated, and the throats and pockets of the honest passengers saved.

The first legislative trace of the punishment of transportation is to be found in the 39th of Elizabeth, c. 4, authorizing the banishment of rogues and vagabonds. This act James the First converted into an instrument for transportation to America, in a letter written in 1619, addressed to the council of the colony of Virginia, commanding them "to send a hundred dissolute persons to Virginia that the Knight-Marshall would deliver to them for that purpose." These being the very class of persons against whose introduction the celebrated hero of Virginia, Captain John Smith, had specially protested, in the same year, as a kind of counterpoise to these dissolute persons, the Company sent ninety agreeable girls, young and incorrupt; and again, in 1621, sixty more, "maids of virtuous education, young, and handsome." The first lot of females brought 120 lbs. of tobacco each, and the second 150 lbs. each.

The first distinct notice of transportation is to be found 18 Car. II., cap. 3, which gives the judges power at their discretion to execute, or transport for life, the moss-troopers of Cumberland or Northumberland.

The punishment was inflicted very frequently, in a very illegal manner, up to the reign of George the First, when its operation was extended and legalized.

Defoe, who always drew the outlines of his stories from actual life, no doubt gives a true picture of the life led by the convicts in the American plantations in his "History of Moll Flanders."

During the reign of James the Second, transportation, or rather

ANECDOTE OF JUDGE JEFFRIES.

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reduction to slavery, was a favourite, and to certain parties a profitable, punishment.

Dr. Lingard quotes a petition setting forth that seventy persons who had been apprehended on account of the Salisbury rising of Penruddock and Grove, after a year's imprisonment, had been sold at Barbados for 1,550lbs. of sugar a-piece, more or less, according to their working faculties. Among them were divines, officers, and gentlemen, who were represented as "grinding at the mills, attending at the furnaces, and digging in that scorching island, whipped at whipping-posts, and sleeping in sties worse than hogs in England."*

After Argyle's defeat the planters were on the alert to obtain white slaves, and were successful. Some of the common prisoners, and others, who were Highlanders, were by the Privy Council delivered to Mr. George Scott of Petlockey, and other planters in New Jersey, Jamaica.

After Monmouth's rebellion Lord Sunderland wrote from "Winser, Sept. 14th, 1685, to Judge Jeffries" to acquaint him from the king that, of such persons as the judge should think qualified for transportation, the following individuals were to be furnished with these numbers:-Sir Philip Howard to have 200 (convicts); Sir Richard White, 200; Sir William Booth, 100; Mr. Kendal, 100; Mr. Nipho, 100; Sir William Stapleton, 100; Sir Christopher Musgrave, 100; a merchant whose name Lord Sunderland did not know, 100. Thus it was proposed to give away 1,000. The King directed Chief Justice Jeffries to give orders for delivering the said numbers "to the above persons respectively, to be forthwith transported to some of his Majesty's southern plantations, viz., Jamaica, Barbados, or any of the Leeward Islands in America, to be kept there for the space of ten years before they have their liberty. In the end, eight hundred and forty-nine of Monmouth's followers, all from the west, were sold."† Macaulay's account of the traffic between the maids of honour and the relatives of prisoners will be in the recollection of all our readers, as well as the question of who was the Mr. Penn who acted as broker.

But the following Bristol legend of an incident in the life of Jeffries proves that he did not permit aldermen to follow the example of the maids of honour :

"As saints sometimes, after a life of asceticism, are in a weak moment betrayed into a faux-pas, so did Chief Justice Jeffries once stumble into a virtuous action.

"On his return from Taunton, where his mornings were passed in sentencing to hanging and burning, and his evenings with a congenial

• Lingard, xi. 143.

Roberts' "Duke of Monmouth," vol. 2, p. 248.

soul, Colonel Kirke, in drinking, he stopped at Bristol. Now, the mayor, aldermen, and justices of Bristol had been used to transport convicted criminals to the American plantations, and sell them by way of trade; and, finding the commodity turn to good account, they contrived a way to make it more plentiful. Their legal convicts were but few, and the exportation inconsiderable: when, therefore, any petty rogues and pilferers were brought before them in a judicial capacity they were sure to be terribly threatened with hanging, and they had some diligent officers attending who could advise the ignorant, intimidated creatures to pray for transportation, as the only way to save their lives; and in general, by some means or other, the advice was followed: then, without any more form, each alderman in turn took one, and sold him for his own benefit; and sometimes there arose warm disputes among them about the next turn. This trade had been carried on unnoticed many years, when it came to the knowledge of the Lord Chief Justice, who, finding upon inquiry that the mayor was equally involved with the rest of his brethren in this outrageous practice, made him descend from the bench where he was sitting, and stand at the bar in his scarlet and furs, and plead like any common criminal."

This system and the demand for labour led to frequent cases of kidnapping of the poor and friendless, and of parties who had made themselves obnoxious to any powerful and unscrupulous individuals. Thus debtors disencumbered themselves of their creditors, wives of their husbands, and guardians of their wards. Even in vengeance the commercial spirit of Britain was displayed; and, while the clumsy Italian stabbed or poisoned his enemy, the Englishman sold him for a soldier, a sailor, or a slave.

Before the commencement of the American war of independence, the introduction of the more docile and laborious negro had rendered the American planters hostile to the importation of white convicts. That war put a stop to the traffic in white flesh, and crowded our gaols. At the same period the prison labours of Howard commenced. In his vocation he personally examined every place of imprisonment. He found the convicted prisoner with money in his purse revelling in debauchery, while the untried poor man was half starved, lodged on damp stones, exposed, through unglazed windows, to every blast, or crowded promiscuously with the vilest of mankind in deep dungeons, where fever and every kind of foul pestilence were ever smouldering. Sometimes a black assize swept away prisoners, gaolers, and even judges. The barbarity of the system may be appreciated from the circum

PROPOSITION FOR SHOVELLING OUT CRIMINALS.

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stance that Howard counted as a great triumph having obtained an order for a daily allowance of a penny loaf and small piece of cheese for each untried prisoner.

Howard was anxious to establish reformatory prisons or penitentiaries, but his humane schemes met with little favour. With the experience we have since had, we cannot imagine that he would have had any success, except in establishing a clean and wholesome system of management.

The country was no more prepared then, than it is at present, to permit desperate ruffians to be unloosed to renew their crimes on the expiration of their terms of imprisonment. But no one then contemplated prisons as costly as palaces, and almost as comfortable, in which the hard-labour test would consist in composing moral essays, and collating texts of Scripture.*

The annual accumulation of roguery was to be got rid of!—That was the problem; and, so long as it was solved, few cared how. Hanging had been stretched to its utmost limits; transportation had been checked by the revolt of a country which had decided to employ no slaves who had not at least 25 per cent. of black blood in their veins, and to receive no rogues, except those who had escaped unconvicted.

Under these difficult circumstances, a proposition for "shovelling" out our criminals on the shores of the antipodes, recently re-discovered by Cook, was eagerly entertained. There it was presumed, on very insufficient grounds, the place of punishment could be rendered selfsupporting; at any rate, the prisoners would cease to be a nuisance to the life and property of this country.

Howard opposed the project, but his opposition was fortunately unheeded, although founded on very sufficient grounds.

When we now examine the population, the wealth, the commerce, the sources of annually increasing power and prosperity in the Australian colonies, the undeniable elements of empire which they enjoy, it is scarcely possible to believe that the first settlement was formed with the overflowings of our gaols, and the sweepings of our streets; that, for a long series of years, its very existence was dependent on supplies of food, which the famine, occasioned by a month's delay of a store-ship, would have rendered useless, and on grants of money voted at a time when votes, except on the grand field-days of contending parties, were passed un-discussed in Parliament, and unreported in newspapers.

At this day, when care for the health, education, and religious

* Reading Gaol, Berks.

instruction of criminals is carried to an extent which shows, in painful relief, the neglect our peasantry endure, it is with amazement and horror that we look back on the cool, careless indifference with which the ministers of George the Third, in 1797, set about founding a penal settlement at the opposite side of the world.

The nearest approach to it may be found in the proceedings of the New Zealand Company in 1839, when they sold land, and sent out credulous colonists to take possession of barren forest-covered hills of an unknown island, in the occupation of fierce aborigines.

Captain Cook and his companions had passed a few days on the intended site of the proposed penal colony, and had found a small river, a profusion of curious plants, and an indifferent harbour. They had not seen any plains of pasture fit to feed live stock.

They had not found any large edible animals, such as deer, or buffaloes, or pigs. They had no means of ascertaining whether the soil was capable of carrying crops for the support of a considerable population; and the nearest land at which live stock and dry stores could be procured was the Cape of Good Hope, a colony in the possession of the Dutch.

As little judgment, as little forethought, as little common humanity was displayed in selecting the colonists as the colony. The first detachment consisted of the first governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, R.N., with a guard of marines, viz., a major-commandant, twelve subalterns, and twenty-four non-commissioned officers, one hundred and sixty-eight rank and file, with forty women, their wives. These were the unconvicted section of the intended colony. The prisoners were six hundred men, and two hundred and fifty women, the latter being not only the most abandoned of their sex, but many of them aged, infirm, and even idiotic.

This fearful disproportion of sexes was maintained, and even increased, until the proportion of men to women was as six to one, and the results became too horrible to be recorded.

This "goodly company" was embarked in a frigate, the Sirius, an armed tender, three store-ships, and six transports, under the command of Captain Hunter. At the last moment, by an afterthought, one chaplain was sent on board. There was no schoolmaster, no superintendent, or gaolers, or overseers, except marines with muskets loaded in case of revolt. No agriculturist was sent to teach the highwaymen and pickpockets to plough, and delve, and sow. No system of discipline was planned, nothing beyond mere coercion was attempted. Even the supply of mechanics required for erecting the needful houses