f the anti-emancipist party in New South Wales attribute
the increase of crime in that colony partly to alleged relaxation of
convict discipline under Sir Richard Bourke; partly to the action of the
Jury Laws, which permit persons who have been convicts to become jurors;
and lastly, to the increasing number of emancipists.

The first-mentioned cause of the increase of crime in New South Wales
refers to the Quarter Session Act, passed in 1833; by that Act, the
summary jurisdiction of single magistrates over convicts, was somewhat
diminished, and a magistrate was prevented from inflicting more than 50
lashes for a single offence, instead of 150 which he might have given
before at three separate inflictions. These complaints do not seem to
your Committee to have the slightest foundation in fact, and Sir Richard
Bourke appears to have acted with wisdom, justice, and humanity in his
treatment of the convict population.

With regard to the second alleged cause of the increase of crime,
namely, the jury laws, your Committee need hardly repeat, that the
well-proven effect of transportation is to demoralize, not to reform an
offender; therefore, in a community like New South Wales, wherein so
large a proportion of the population are persons who have been convicts,
to permit such persons generally to sit upon juries must evidently have
an injurious effect. Your Committee, however, must observe, that under a
good system of punishment, an offender should, at the expiration of his
sentence, be considered to have atoned for his crimes, and he should be
permitted to commence a new career without any reference to his past
one.

With regard to the last alleged cause of the increase of crime, namely,
the increasing number of emancipists; little doubt, your Committee
think, can be entertained of the pernicious consequences of annually
turning loose a number of unreclaimed offenders on so small a community
as that of New South Wales.

One of the supposed advantages of transportation is, that it prevents
this country from being burthened with criminal offenders, after the
expiration of their sentences. It is now, however, evident that
transportation does not tend to diminish the sum total of offences
committed in the British Dominions; it may, perhaps, relieve Great
Britain and Ireland from a portion of their burthen of crime; though,
from the little apprehension which transportation produces, that fact
may be reasonably doubted. On the