OF TRAXSPORTATION. 447 sach term as should be made part of such conditions, if any par- 1718 ticular time should be specified by his Majesty." To carry out the intention of these singular provisions, it was further enacted that the persons so contracting, and their assigns, should have " a property and interest in the service of such J^«»*^ offenders for such terms of years." The effect of this was that the convicts became the property of the contractors — that is, the ship- owners who undertook to transport them — for the term of their respective sentences ; and as there was no restriction upon the mode of dealing with this property, the contractors adopted the only practicable means of turning it to account by selling the SeiUng the convicts, as soon as they were landed on the shores of Virginia or Maryland. Every convict sent to America under this system was sold like a slave, the only essential difference between the two being that the one was sold for life, and the other for a term of years. The profits made by the ship-owners on the sale of these cargoes paid the expense of transporting them ; the British Govern- Government ment by that means saving the expenditure which otherwise it expenditure would have had to incur for the purpose. At the same time it Sibiiitj^'^*^ relieved itself from all responsibility with respect to the treat- ment of the convicts during the passage and after their arri^^l at the port of destination.* The next section of the Act contains an open recognition of this right of property in the convict, the master or employer being described as "the owner or proprietor." It enacted that any offenders ordered to be transported, who should return before the expiration of their term, should be liable to suffer death: Pro- vided that his Majesty might pardon and dispense with any such convict transportation, and allow of the return of any such offenders from S? freedom. America, "they paying their owner or proprietor, at the time of such pardon, dispensation or allowance, such sum of money as should be adjudged reasonable by any two Justices of the Peace residing within the province where such owner dwells."
- " Eiiffliahmeii in authority, a little after the middle of the eighteenth
century,, did not let their left hand know what their right hand did ; and at the very time when they asserted the freedom of black slaves brought to England from the colomes, they exported white convicts under sentence of transportation for sale to settlers m America. The sum received was the payment to the owners and captains of the transport ships for their trouble and risk ; and it is said that the white slaves and the black were set to work together on the plantations, and were equally punished by the lash for idleness or disobedience."— Pike, History of Crime, voL ii, p. 349. Digitized by Google
