vengeance beyond
the intention of the judges, or the spirit of the laws.

To render corruption more difficult, the power of the governors was
limited by statute. They had granted tickets-of-leave for the discovery
of outlaws, the detection of serious crimes, and any service of great
public utility. They had been often swayed by feelings of humanity in
hastening the liberation of men, whose families required their care; but
an Act "for abolishing the punishment of death in certain cases,"[200]
not only fixed the time when prisoners should be capable of
tickets-of-leave, but abstracted the chief advantages a ticket
conferred. They were excluded from the protection of civil laws, and
thus thrown on the mercy of any who might employ them. These clauses
were introduced by Lord Wynford (Sergeant Best), and were intended to
equalise the punishment of offenders, and to prevent an early enjoyment
of plunder. This restriction was, however, practically unjust. The grant
of a ticket-of-leave was to enable a man to procure a livelihood: to
deprive him of legal resource, was to invite the swindler and the cheat
to make his earnings and acquisitions their prey. The local courts had
hitherto resisted the injustice by evasion: a record of conviction being
required to stay a civil action; although in the criminal courts it was
sufficient to prove that the person accused had been dealt with as a
transported offender.

Lord Wynford's Act made no such distinction. Its provision, probably the
result of inadvertence, was so palpably a contradiction, that it was
never acted upon in Van Diemen's Land, and was earnestly deprecated by
all classes. To grant a prisoner liberty to seek subsistence, and yet
suffer any fraudulent person to deprive him of his just wages, could
arise only from that confusion of ideas, too common in legislation on
the subject.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 187: "It can scarcely be doubted, that the main body of
convicts are under mental delirium--they see and appreciate every thing
through a false medium; and as, from long experience and close
observation, the Lieutenant-Governor is confident that a firm and
determined, but mild and consistent supervision, is the very best to be
followed, in order to remove the infirmity under which they labor, it is
the treatment he enjoins shall be uniformly observed!"--_Regulations
issued to the Roads' Department._]

[Footnote 188: "Absconding, insubordination, drunkenness, indecent
c