ce, and Clapperton was accordingly sent to
the residence of Captain Montagu. On the way to his destination he
called at the house of his old master, to acquaint the servants with the
favorable turn in his fortune: this became known to Mr. Alfred Stephen,
who found that, by the prosecution he had instituted, he had conferred a
favor upon an official friend. He immediately appealed to Sir John
Franklin, who was evidently unconcerned in the arrangement: he recalled
the man, and sent him to labor on the roads. The public discussion of
this case excited a strong sensation: it illustrated the system, which
sent one man to toil on the chain, and another to wear the livery of the
second officer of the government.

Fifty gentlemen presented a requisition to the sheriff, to call a
meeting, to discuss the abuses of transportation: this, however, he
declined, and the requisitionists permitted the matter to drop, lest an
exposure should endanger assignment altogether. It could only suggest to
the British parliament new arguments for abolition, when it was found
that a doubly convicted offender was sent a few miles, into an opulent
establishment, to enjoy the dominion of the larder, to romp with the
maids, traffick with the tradesmen, and command the means of vicious
gratification; while a simple rustic, fresh from his first
transgression, was subject to all the hardships of predial bondage.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 226: Despatch lo Lord Glenelg, October, 1837.]

SECTION XXI.

But Sir W. Molesworth had roused opposition to the prevailing system.
The Commons' committee examined twenty-three gentlemen, whose testimony
would be without novelty to the reader of these volumes. The greater
part concurred in the inexpediency of assignment, and in the usefulness
and importance of transportation. These witnesses were charged by
Maconochie with a general indifference to the moral welfare and personal
improvement of the prisoners. A colonist would, however, easily
distinguish substantial benevolence from sentimental opinions; and they
knew, by the trials of experience, how toilsome are the most generous
efforts to correct habits not to be softened by the tears of compassion,
and which do not yield to the wand of the magician.

The committee recommended that transportation to New South Wales, and
the settled districts of Van Diemen's Land, should be discontinued: that
establishments abroad should be limited to places where no free settle