Note 125 — TRANSPORTATION (continued 2)

"Men are governed by words: under the infamous term convict, are comprehended offenders of the most different degrees and species of guilt. One man is transported for stealing three hams and a pot of sausages; in the next berth to him, is a young surgeon engaged in mutiny at the Nore; another, was so ill read in history, as to imagine that Ireland was ill-treated, and too bad a reasoner to suppose that nine catholics ought not to pay tithes to one protestant. Then comes a man who set his house on fire; another, the most glaring of all human villains, a poacher; driven from Europe, wife and child, by thirty lords of the manor, for killing a partridge. Now, all these are crimes, no doubt; but surely to which attach different degrees of contempt and horror. A warrant granted by a reformed bacon stealer would be absurd; but a hot brained young blockhead, who chose to favor the mutiny at the Nore, may, when he is forty years of age, and has cast his jacobin teeth, make a useful magistrate and loyal subject.

The most inflexible were some of the regiments stationed at Botany Bay—men, of course, who had uniformly shunned the society of gamesters, prostitutes, and drunkards; who had ruined no tailors, corrupted no wives, and had entitled themselves, by a long course of solemnity and decorum, to indulge in all the insolence of purity and virtue."—Rev. S. Smith, 1823.