date

2 Feb 1803 Note — continued (2 to
2 Feb 1803 Note — continued (2

to which by the transportation the Convict may have happened to be

transported in the first instance, it

was not in its nature incapable of being remarked, without the

succession of the bondage. The bondage in like manner was not under

this system incapable of being

detached from the confinement and remitted by itself

the confinement continuing unremitted: but, +

+ as it was only in virtue of the bondage i:

e: the profit not made by the Court servant that the Traitor could have any

interest in keeping him in any sort of confinement

as the individual purchaser of the service. the Master of the

Convict would hav it was not natural that any such

separation should ever have taken place in practice.

Under the new system

confinement became fixed to a spot certain,

circumscribed by the by the courts of the settlement, the Governor

— now an Agent of the Crown, standing in the place of the Master

— the bondage might by a

parochial indulgence, declared or undeclared, be remitted, without

the intervention of any formal written instrument, and without

the remission of the confinement: the confinement might also be

remitted, and at any time before the expiration of the exile, though not

without a formal instrument for the purpose.

Under the old system, the distance of the

spot, to which the Convict was to be transported in the first

instance, made in an indirect way, in most instances, though not

necessarily a correspondent addition to the duration of the

exile. The right to the service of the Convict being sold for

the whole seven years, if accordingly he was kept in bondage in the last

day of that seven years

it could not even be in his power the day

after to find himself the day after on British ground so early as the next

day. He would have to wait in the first place for the sailing of a

ship bound to a port in Great Britain from the spot

on Colony in which

the
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    the last day of his service had been spent; in the next place for the

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    the last place for the arrival of such ship at a British fort.

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    Wales was appointed for the scene of the new system, could never

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    at any time be stated as contrary to law. It was however

    from the very first, in the first instance contrary to natural

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  • Title: [[094-314v] 16 Jan 1803 Expiries]
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  • Title: [Note 9 July 1802 + 12 13 N. S Wales]
    Description: Note 9 July 1802 + 12 13 N. S Wales

    N o

    5 (p.159.) April 1791. Information given by the Governor

    to the Convicts "that never would be permitted to quit the Colony who

    had "wives and children incapable of maintaining themselves and

    "likely to become burthensome to the settlement, untill

    they had "found sufficient security for the maintenance of such

    wives

    or children. "as long as they might

    continue after them."

    What would be deemed sufficient security is not stated.

    It could only be

    in here and there an instance that a watch thus circumstanced

    could be able to find any security at all.

    The occasion of this ordinance is curious enough:

    Notions were currant

    among the Convicts that the marriages of each of them as had been married

    in the Colony were not binding.

    Such is the reason given for

    confining to the Colony all men whatever who had

    either wives or children there, whether

    the marriage had been celebrated since their arrival in the

    Colony or before. ]

    +1

    +1 In the case of a wife married in South

    Wales and where term of punishment was unexpired, finding such

    security was impossible. By marrying a woman so circumstanced, a man could

    result to lose her bondage, nor

    forfeit his own

    freedom.

    to everyone married in law

    Justice — or at least a semblance of it is so interwoven in this

    case with injustice, that it is no easy matter to disentangle them. As an

    abstract proposition, it is but reasonable, that a man should be prevented

    from leaving his wife or children from being burthensome to

    other people. Such accordingly is the law in England. When in this

    country

    England a man deserts his family, he flied from home. But in the case in question, the flight, if not

    obstructed, would have been a flight

    homewards, and from a place in which no authority

    there could detain a man without a crime. That the inocent wife

    or inocent children having, under a mistaken confidence in the

    justice and humanity of government, suffered themselves to be transported

    to this unhuman

    region, should, by the

    improvidence, and injustice and inhumanity and

    improvidence of men in , see themselves confined then

    perhaps for life, is indeed a melancholy state of things: but it will be

    difficult to say that the injustice, done to any number

    of individuals thus circumstanced would be redressed, by adding to it

    another of the same kind. — +2

    +2 The solution of the difficulty is not

    difficult: to those who sent those innocents thither, belongs in

    justice the care and the expence of sending them back

    again.

    The more

    doubtfull, the course most proper to

    be taken on this occasion, the clearer the abominathness

    of the system and the improvidence and incapacity of those by whom it

    was contrived: +3

    +3 contrived without any known ,

    and afterwards itself magnified, in the

    bulk of convictions,

    into a pretense a pretense for relinquishing a system

    , without spot clear of those

    and

    this as well as all other abominations.