definite in its amount, and certain in its infliction. Now, as it is evidently impossible, in the present condition of the Australian colonies, that the practice of assigning convicts as servants to private individuals should realize any one of these requisites of punishment, I conceive it is absolutely necessary, for ensuring the future efficiency of transportation, as a species of punishment, that that practice should be forthwith and for ever discontinued; and that all transported convicts should henceforth serve out their term of transportation at the public works, and be subject to one uniform and undeviating system of penal discipline.
Shortly after the original establishment of the colony of New South Wales, the assignment of convicts as agricultural labourers, mechanics, or house-servants to private individuals, was had recourse to, rather as a matter of convenience to the government than with the view of carrying into effect any well-digested system of penal discipline: for, in carrying out this arrangement, the government were merely desirous, on the one hand, of being eventually relieved of the maintenance of a large proportion of the convicts; and of enabling the colonists, on the other, to supply the settlement as speedily as possible with the necessaries of life.
The hardships experienced by all classes of
