commander. 1786 preparing for their reception in the river Thames, to instruct the Instructions commander of the ship-of-war to take the convict ships under his for the protection, and proceed with them and the tender (which he will employ as he shall find occasion) to Botany Bay, calling off Plymouth on his way thither for another convict ship, the master of which will be directed to join the convoy from thence, upon its appearance. From the length of the voyage to New South Wales the convoy will of course find it necessary to put into port on their way thither for the purpose of recruiting their water. Your lordships will therefore give instructions accordingly, only taking care that one Rendezvous of the places to be fixed upon for a rendezvous may be the Cape at the Cape of Good Hope, from whence it is intended that as many supplies as possible for the new settlement shall be procured. Garrison. Marines As it has been thought advisable that some military establishment shall be made at the new intended settlement, not only to enforce due subordination and obedience, but for the defence of the settlement against incursions of the natives, and as, from the nature of the service to be performed, it is highly expedient that it should be composed of men accustomed to and under proper discipline, his Majesty has been pleased to direct that one hundred and sixty private marines, with a suitable number of officers and non-commissioned officers, shall proceed in the ship-of-war and the tender to the new settlement, where it is intended they shall be disembarked for the purposes before mentioned. They will be properly victualled by a commissary immediately after their landing, and provision has also been made for supplying them with such tools, implements, and utensils, as they may have occasion for, to to be made render their situation comfortable during their continuance at the new intended settlement, which it is designed shall not exceed a period of three years. comfortable. When these circumstances are known, it is very probable that Volunteers. many of the non-commissioned officers and men may express a desire of embarking upon this expedition. If the whole number to be employed upon it were to consist of persons of that description, it would, upon many accounts, be advisable to give them a preference. It is therefore his Majesty's pleasure that their wishes in this respect should, as much as possible, be attended to; and that your lordships should, if there should be occasion, hold out such further Marines to indulgences to them as may induce them to embark voluntarily upon this service, either by bounty or promise of discharge, should they desire it upon their return; or, at the expiration of three years, to be computed from the time of their landing at the new intended settlement, should they prefer remaining in that country. Heads of a I enclose to your lordships herewith the heads of a plan upon which the new settlement is to be formed for your further information, together with the proposed establishment for its regulation be en couraged to volunteer. Plan. and government; and as soon as I am acquainted by your lord- 1786 ships with the names of the officers intended to command the Commisship-of-war and the marine corps, I shall receive his Majesty's sions and further pleasure for preparing their commissions and such instructions as may be requisite for their guidance. instructions. under the From the nature of the services they are to execute under Officers to be these instructions, entirely unconnected with maritime affairs, it Home Dewould be proper that they should be immediately subordinate to partment. the direction of this office, and upon that ground it is his Majesty's pleasure that they should be directed, after their arrival at New South Wales, to follow such orders and directions as they may receive from his Majesty, through his Principal Secretary of State for this Department. PORTUGUESE CONVICTS. Africa and "THESE were not the only colonists. Portugal had taken possession of Brazil, and meant to maintain it. It was the system of the Portuguese Government to make its criminals of some use to the State, a wise system if wisely regulated in that kingdom it obviously arose from the smallness of its territory and lack of population to support its extensive plans of ambition. Hitherto Convicts they had been degraded to the African frontier, and more recently sent to to India also. In these situations they certainly served the State, India, yet the service was not without heavy disadvantages. The usual offences which were thus punished were those of blood and violence, and the ferocious propensities which led to the commission of those crimes were not likely to be corrected by placing the offenders in situations where they might indulge them with impunity, and consider the indulgence as meritorious. This system was immediately extended to Brazil; the first Europeans who were left and Brazil. ashore there were two convicts. In Africa, as in India, the exile was sent to bear arms with his countrymen, who would not regard him as disgraced, because they were obliged to associate with him. To be degraded to Brazil was a heavier punishment; the chance of war would not enrich him there, and there was no possibility of returning home with honour for any signal service. They were in one point of view better disposed of, inasmuch as in new colonies ordinary men are of greater value than they can be elsewhere, but they became worse subjects. Always has this plague The plague persecuted Brazil and the other conquests of this kingdom,' says of the coloBalthazar Tellez. Their numbers bore a greater proportion to the better settlers, and they were therefore more likely to be encouraged in iniquity than reformed by example-to communicate evil than to learn good."-Southey, History of Brazil, vol. i, p. 31. nies. Prevalent dread of THE DEPOPULATION THEORY. "AT a time when men are alarmed at every idea of emigration, I wish not to add to their fears by any attempt to depopulate the parent State." This remarkable passage—which appears in Sir George Young's Proposal for a Settlement on the coast of New South Wales, throws a striking light on the history of the times. The great wars in which England had been engaged for so many years previously, and the prospect of still greater wars in which the country might be involved at any time, probably gave rise to the alarm excited in the public mind by any proposal for free emigration; the prevalent ideas being that every able-bodied man who went out to settle in a new country was a direct loss to the State, and that the drain on its population entailed by the establishment of a colony might prove a serious public danger in the event of war. The state of public opinion on this subject in 1785 may be better Population appreciated by a glance at the population tables of the principal European States for the years 1800 and 1880 * of Europe. The depopulation theory dates from a very early period in EngColonies and lish history. Sir Josiah Child, in his New Discourse of Trade, population. published in 1668, argued strongly against it, contending that colonies do not depopulate the mother country. Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, mentioned in * Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics. In the Histoire des Navigations auz Terres Australes, Paris, 1758, the author mentions 20,000,000 as the sup posed population of France at that time, but admits that it is not a reliable estimate; vol. i, p. 25. Voltaire (Dialogue 24, premier entretien) alludes to this estimate as an exact one :-"Il est prouvé que la France ne contient qu'environ vingt millions d'âmes tout aut plus, par le dénombrement des feux exactement donnè en 1754." England. his chapter on Population that "it was long a prevalent opinion Spain and that the emigration to the New World had depopulated Spain, and it was also suspected that it had diminished the population of England. There is not, however," he added, "the least ground for any such opinion or conjecture." to Australia. But the opinions of these and other philosophers did not remove the popular prejudice on the subject. That it had active vitality even in the present century, may be seen from a book Emigration published in London in 1830, under the title of The Friend of Australia, in which the author, a retired East India Company's officer, advocated a systematic exploration of this country. Alluding to the prevalent objections to sending out emigrants to the colonies, he said: It is also a most egregious mistake for anyone to say that we should be parting with and sending out of the country the mainspring of our strength -our youth-who are to defend us in case of war. I wish to know what difference the thousands who have already left Great Britain have made in the great bulk of the population? None. Where are they missed? and Cal Perhaps the most forcible illustration of the current doctrine on this subject during the last century will be found in Callander's De Brosses collection of voyages,* published in 1766 under the title, Terra lander. Australis Cognita. This work was nothing more than a free translation, without acknowledgment, of the Histoire des Navigations aux Terers Australes, by the President, Charles de Brosses. In an introductory chapter "of the utility of further discoveries," Callander, adapting the Frenchman's argument, says:— Nobody now pretends to call in question that a State must augment her power and wealth by extending the several branches of her commerce by the means of colonies, provided this can be performed without depopulating too much the mother country. The task may be difficult to determine what part of the people of Britain can be spared for new establishments in distant regions. It is, I believe, generally admitted that this island is able to nourish a larger number of people than we actually have. Now the real riches of a State consist in the number of her subjects. of colonies. After enumerating the commercial advantages to be derived Advantages from "sending out well-regulated colonies," Callander proceeds to point out another advantage of a different kind : These are the useful articles that flow from exporting our people to colonies abroad; but there are others that may be found in some sense necessary; such as that of sending annually abroad certain people who only hurt Callander's work was published two years before Cook sailed in the Endeavour on his expedition to the South Sea, and was probably not without some influence in determining the Government of the day to prosecute the "further discoveries" which it advocated. The publication of the work at that time shows that public attention was directed to the subject. Utilising crime. society at home. Dalrymple also, in the introduction to his Collection of Voyages Dalrymple. in the South Pacific Ocean, published in 1770, refers to the prejudice against emigration: The First Experimen tum in corpore vile. An objection has been made to colonisation from an opinion that it draws away subjects from the mother country to the colonies; whereby the former is weakened, and the latter, by an idea of their own increasing power, encouraged to struggle for independence. Another illustration of the singular delusion referred to may be seen in the preface to The History of New Holland, published in 1787, just before the departure of the First Fleet. Referring to the expedition, the writer says: When it is considered as an experiment (for the disposal of convicts), the objections of those who exclaim against founding a colony upon the infamous assemblage of exiled felons will fall to the ground. Supposing that Government had chosen to embrace the single purpose of forming a settlement at Botany Bay, they would be justly censurable in inviting the industrious and reputable artisan to exchange his own happy soil for the possession of territory, however extensive, in a part of the world as yet so little known. But criminals, when their lives or liberties are forfeited to justice, become a forlorn hope, and have always been judged a fit subject of hazardous experiments to which it would be unjust to expose the more valuable members of a State. If there be any terrors in the prospect before the wretch who is banished to New South Wales, they are no more than he expects; 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. Herefordten years. Norfolklife. HISTORY OF TRANSPORTATION TO 1787. BANISHMENT from the King's dominions was a recognised mode of punishment from the earliest times, especially for political offences. A reference to it occurs in Shakspeare's Richard II, act i, scene 3, when the King, after having stopped the fight between Bolingbroke and Norfolk, addressed them as follows: |