however, true, that the inducement to pay large sums for occasional
labor, arose from the difficulty of obtaining it: few mechanics were
transported; so few, as to excite astonishment.[192]

But however exact and successful transportation, in Governor Arthur's
opinion, a variety of causes contributed to excite in England a powerful
prejudice against it, and to lead the ministers to interfere with some
of its details of great practical consequence. The gradual amelioration
of the criminal code--a restriction of capital punishments, demanded by
the humanity of the British public--was allowed by the ruling classes
with doubt and grudging. Some conspicuous cases confirmed their
predilection in favor of the scaffold. What punishment, they asked,
would transportation have proved to Fontleroy, who from the spoil of his
extensive forgeries, might have reserved an ample fortune? It was
reported, and not untruly, that many had carried to the penal colonies
the profit of their crime; that the wife had been assigned to the
nominal service of her husband; or, still more preposterous, the husband
committed to the control of the wife--and were enabled at once to invest
their capital in whatever form might promise success.

Several volumes issued in succession from the British press, full of
highly colored sketches of colonial life; in which the advantages
possessed by many emancipists, the splendour of their equipage, and the
luxurious profligacy of their lives, were exhibited as the larger prizes
of a fruitful lottery. Among these works, the most popular, that of
Cunningham, professed to delineate the sentiments of the prisoners, from
which it might be inferred that few conditions of human life offered so
many chances of gaiety and prosperity.[193]

About the same period, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, of a talented family,
and afterwards distinguished by his connection with colonisation, was
imprisoned in Newgate for the abduction of Miss Turner. During three
years' residence he professes to have devoted great attention to the
subject of transportation. Few sessions passed but some prisoner,
formerly transported, appeared under a second charge. In conversing upon
their prospects, they described the country of their former exile in
terms of high eulogy. It was the opinion of Wakefield that, as a
punishment, it had no influence in preventing crime. The evidence of
several settlers from New South Wales was of the same character; and
M'Que