AND HIS WORK. 103 strongly against it : " Deaths I think, will never be neces- l788-ft« sary." There were only two crimes which would merit death, in his opinion ; and for either of them be would sub- stitute exile to some ^' cruel island in the far-o£E sea," asExiieamoro a far more potent deterrent than the hangman's rope, check. Whether he was altogether serious in his proposal to confine the criminal in such cases till an opportunity ofEered of delivering him as a prisoner to the natives of New Zealand and let them eat him/' may be doubted; at any rate he did not ask for legislative powers to that effect.* Perhaps it was intended as a jocular suggestion from the quarter-deck, as the best-known method of instilling fear into the minds of hardened offenders. Among sailors of the old school, AsaUor^s no punishment was more dreaded than that of beiug left punisLnent. ashore in an unknown country, with the prospect of being either eaten by savages or condemned to lead a savage life among them.f Had the matter rested entirely in Phillip's discretion, he would have substituted exile for death in extreme cases, not for the purpose of condemning the crimi- nal to be devoured by cannibals, but in order that he might endure the prolonged suffering inseparable from isolation, and at the same time do some service to the State by forming connections among the natives, with the view of i>ipi<mifttic reconciling them to the presence of Europeans in their country. The five men whom he reprieved in the first month of his administration he had determined to exile to that part of the territory then known as the South Cape, J
- He asked for power to exile simply, but it was oot given. The only
sentences provided for by the Act and Letters Patent constituting the Criminal Court were death and corporal punishment ; post, pp. 455, 535. t This practice was known as marooninff, and was a common one among the buccaneers. Dampier relates that ** while we lay here" — ofif the north- west coast of New HoUand — ** I did endeavour to persuade our men to go to some English factory ; but was threatened to be turned ashore and iSt here for it. This made me desist." — Vol. i, p. 469. X Phillip's despatch, poet, p. 274. According to White, Journal, p. 128, three men were convicted on the 27th February, 1788, of '* feloniously and fraudulently taking away from the public store beef and pease, the property of the Crown" ; but one only was executed. They were all, ** about 6 o'clock the same evening, taken to the fatal tree," but two ** were respited until 6 o'clock the next evening. When that awful hour arrived, they were. Digitized by Google
