Note 238 — TRANSPORTATION (continued 5)

The following extract from Maconochie's pamphlet, may be taken as his plan, matured by experience:—

"The management of penal settlements should be as follows:—1. A fictitious debt of 6,000, 8,000, or 10,000 marks should be created against every man, according to his offence, which he should redeem by labour and other good conduct, having a proportion placed to his credit daily as wages, according to his behaviour, and suffering a loss by fine if he offends. 2. No ration should be allowed him of right, except bread and water: for every thing else, following up the analogy thus created between marks and money, he should be charged in them. 3. He should be allowed, however, thus to expend his marks for present indulgencies to what extent he pleases, but never to obtain his discharge, till from his labour and economy combined (both voluntary) he shall fully redeem his debt. 4. On first arriving at a penal settlement, for a period not under three months, but beyond that depending entirely on his own regularity and proficiency, and the acquisition of marks exhibiting them, his treatment should consist of moral, religious, and other intellectual instruction in a penitentiary. 5. After this, he should for a time not under eighteen months, but the period also depending on the acquisition of marks, serve in a mutually responsible party, labouring for government, and disqualified for any situation of trust, authority or indulgence under it, or for any private service. 6. After this, he should hold for not less than fifteen months (making three years in all), and beyond this till he has fully redeemed his marks and earned his entire discharge, a ticket-of-leave in the settlement. 7. In this last stage every reasonable facility should be afforded him to accumulate a little money against his return to society. For this purpose small farms or gardens should be let to men holding this indulgence, at moderate rents in kind:—any stock or edible produce they may raise on these, beyond their rents, should be purchased from them at fair prices into the public stores:—and a fixed proportion of them (3, 4, or 5 per cent, of the entire number of prisoners on the settlement) should further be eligible, as selected by their superintendent, to fill subordinate stations of trust in the general management, and receive (say) 6d. per day as money salary, besides the marks attached to their situations. (In my proposed regulations I suggest also another mode of giving the men a little money to take with them on their return to society—which is, perhaps, a little extravagant, and it would thus admit, at least, of modification; but the point is very important.) 8. On discharge the utmost possible facilities should be afforded the men to disperse;—and their final liberation, as well as every intermediate step towards it, should in every case depend solely on having served the minimum time, and accumulated the corresponding number of marks. No discretion on either head should be vested in any local authority. The whole arrangement should be, as it were, a matter of contract; and the local authorities should have no other control over it, than to see its conditions on both sides punctually fulfilled."—Maconochie's Management, &c.