0,000 convicted persons will have
passed through Van Diemen's Land into the neighbouring colonies. They
will consist of men not only originally depraved: all will have gone
through the demoralizing probation of public gangs: they will all have
dwelt, for several years, in exclusively convict society, where every
prevailing sympathy must be tainted with the habits of crime. This
island will not be a filter; but the accumulation of moral wretchedness
will unavoidably contaminate every mind, and stamp on every character
the impression of its peculiar constitution. The sacrifice of this
colony will not, therefore, exempt the neighbouring settlements from any
portion of the mischief incident to direct transportation. They will
receive the prisoners later in life, but deteriorated in character. Evil
associations and evil men become worse and worse: such is the dictate of
reason, and such is the solemn warning written in the oracles of God.
If, then, your colony had cause to protest against the infliction of
this evil in a limited degree, how much stronger must be your opposition
to a system which will bring into your streets, your houses, your
hospitals and prisons, the crime, insanity, decrepitude, and pauperism
ever consequent on transportation, aggravated by transmission through a
country in moral ruin. Were we to appeal to a principle of selfishness
in addressing our countrymen, we might remind you that the reputation of
this entire hemisphere is compromised by the condition of Van Diemen's
Land. The nice geographical distinctions which colonists make are lost
in the distance. As your vessels enter foreign ports, the line which
divides your population from ours fails to distinguish them. We have
heard with regret, and not without humiliation, that the British name,
every where respectable until now, has ceased to insure to many, who
have never forfeited its sanction, the common confidence of foreign
nations. That a petty state, but of yesterday, has initiated laws
intended to stigmatise all the inhabitants of the southern world, and
attributing to the whole the character of convictism. A more serious
consideration is the positive injury inflicted upon the islanders of the
Southern Ocean by scattering among them desperate men who have been
perfected in all the arts of wickedness, and who are placed within reach
of an interesting and rising people, whom they too often shock by their
vices and oppress by their crimes. We submi