13 June 1802 39 N. S. Wales

One A case there is (I have just been observing) in which the intervention of a private Contractor is not necessary. This is where a Convict having been convicted of an

unclergyable offence of the offence being an unclergyable felony — an offence punished with death the Convict has received "a conditional pardon" on condition of transportation for "any number of years" or "for .. life". In this case by a special exception, power is reserved or granted to his Majesty to "authorize" the Convict to be his own transporter upon himself.

By this clause does a good deal more is done than is said by it. What it professes is to give All it speaks of is giving is a transient momentary accommodation: but in addition to this it gives without speaking of it, as if it were a thing not worth speaking of, perpetual freedom in the room of equally perpetual bondage.

The reason final cause of this distinction is not difficult to conceive. In Among chargyable felonies it seldom happens that offences any offences are included but offences of low bred indigence: the offence of an uneducated man, who was or ought to have been a working man, gaining his habituated to livelyhood by common labour: to a man of this class forced labour is not apt to present itself as an inapposite punishment. But unclergyable felony is a class born of wider extent comprehending in addition to the former those offences which now and then may fall to the lot understood to belong to the class of gentlemen — Murder, Rape, Forgery for example — but above all Traditional disaffection in under a variety of . shapes. For example the case of the Irish Rebels, and English and Scotch seditionists.