Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/15

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TRANSPORTATION

AND

COLONIZATION.


CHAPTER I.

SKETCH OF THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM.

The punishment of banishment or exile, whether implying the mere expulsion of the criminal from his native country, or his transportation to some place of bondage and hard labour beyond seas, was equally unknown to the Jewish law and to the practice of primitive antiquity. In the turbulent republics of ancient Greece banishment was more frequently the lot of some patriot of commanding talents and splendid achievements, such as Miltiades, Themistocles, or Aristides; or the fate of some political minority, borne down in its death-struggle for ascendancy by the overwhelming force of an opposing faction; than the just award of the laws of the land for crimes and misde-