The Sun.
London, England, 1838-07-14 00:00:00

PRISON DISCIPLINE ATROCITIES

IN AUSTRALIA.

We invite the attention of our readers, the Legislature.
and the British public generally, to the following letter,
addressed by the Editor of Murray's Austral-Asiatic Re-
view to the Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Brougham, on
the subject of the frightful abuses that exist in the admi-
nistration of Justice among the unfortunate convicts under
sentence of transportation for crimes committed in this
country. The writer, be it remembered, has been long
an eye-witness of the working of the system which he de-
nounces ; and the ability with which his Journal is con-
ducted proves him to be a person of more than ordinary
shrewdness and intelligence :
TO Hla GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN,
AND TO LORD BROUGHAM.

MARCH 20 1838.
MY LORDS—It is understood that the Act of Parliament,
commonly known here as " the Huskisson Act,"
underwhich,
forming as it does the political constitution of these colonies
they are governed, having but another year to exist, deputies
have been dispatched by a small party of
mtahe colonists of
t.n
Newo
South Wales, for the avowed object of ki
which ample funds and considerable influence evecearny exertion
which to
prevent the British Parliament from bestowing upon the
people of these colonies those a free institutions, the pride
and boast of Britain their native land, and their own
birthright. In order to further these unholy views, books
filled with the most false and injurious statements have
been printed and extensively circulated, and every other
means had recourse to, which unlimited resources, power-
ful ability, and untiring assiduity could sugcst. On
the other hand, the great body of the Colonists (for the anti-
free institutionists are indeed but few in number), loud and
deep as are their demands for being placed upon a footing of
equality with their brethren—British subjects—in every other
colony, yet eontide so entirely to the rightfulness of their
demands, that they have not adopted one single proceeding to
controvert the unceasingly active operations or their enemies.
The great hope upon which the former rely, is that by spreA-
ing widely abroad in Britain a representation (wholly untrue)
that the transportation to these colonies of Britilt offenders is
anything but punishment, an excitement may 1,6 created at
least in Parliament. the effect of which may be a new Consti-
tution. if not the Iluiliison Act itself, at least such an ex-
tension of it, as shalt cuntinue filings nearly as they arc,
securing to. themselves a retention of tho immense alva!,tagcs,
rcuniary, social, and nit ral, whic'n th it continuation would
bestow. The recent ex!essive a.040-ations of the severity
of the ilia:anal criminal co,h•, have sea-led essentialli- to place
siie British leputation side by side, as well as rest': cts sound
polio; u humanity, with that of the remainder of the civilized
world. Those ameliorations unhappily extend not to this
penal settlesoent. The ce7ehra:ed " eorse than dea!li system,"
atrocious as irt itself it is, is here rendertal unspcsakl,hly so,
evoa in regard to the free inhabitants, by the enactments of
the' Colonial Legislature, urethr the pretaat of carrying into
elfact the British ordered system of teis.on discipline. It is to
this particular point that your Lordship's attention is now re-
spectfully but earnestly solicited.
We solicit your Lordships' attention to the effect of that
mteon upon the rnissrable Lumen beings, to the devising
iesnishrnent for whom so much legislatorial midnight oil has
teen
,4,,,y0 al
ted. In order to 's we first wish to bring to your
remembrance ale fact—one important fact, which
I.ord,,hp;
irrefot ibly, that the rcal ot-j,'et cf
we consider :11
t-ansoortation to :1-.ese colonies would now rena
not •••so ' turorm the aietims of the yeng-ew,re of the,
•law, Kithwhi!e slav'zs.
lov.. but to supply di, se. coiles,
the auppl v of !,lets:: s:avos being now prohibited by law, put
(lawn by the cff..ct of the :nivel-sal execration of mankind.
'rhe ore foe to:att.-kis ee-sreistrigo, that the law of Englas.O.
hen.* hielt i,t17.,01.•rs e..14tf0 trt,-,.p0tt..t;03 era II3A" pus
aiahcd Enolaaly. "Frnits tbe ,'nration of thist punsh,
-nt, f erfi uhnier 1, sefite,:xe i flrn!spu.:ufi,,,,
the 1,,,,•;c4 ,;.1. three fjeara. At the exdiri.c!on of that perio t,
s,sacts, that he shall be rts-oseil to It's I;b,rty, to
ft iietdo to buy country—in a word, to all that is d,ar to him ;
aria it rot onl r,...-tores him to all the rights of avert s::rt he
y
it pnnishes severely thoae wits, should
before possessed, bur.
dm,: to it protch him wit''what, the la .v having been satisfied,
has piss ri away. Thos is by law declarad to be, ascl with
,-
your Loriships is the utnlyinn reerit of aldiass csaect'ally
sour powerful eithrts and inflow,."" in the eqnally butane
aril politic constimmalon, the•resuft of ti 2,enknee of traoa-
portation ,arried 1,-to effect .Eagiattl, upon the worA
ott:nders—felons sen•enced for the l7eaviest cruses. Py
no possibility can that sentence be what is hero nalLd
" extendsd" even for an hour I This is the I?,agiiah beneficent
pr,eess of the punishment of transportation. Let your Lord-
staipe ,:ow sue what it LS here, littler the accent:y ordAii.ed
‘• worse ath" system. The priso,.er for IVe, or for
seven years, 4or the mast heinous of fdatlies, or for the must
venial of misdernlanour,. if punishable by tnrisp:)rtation, is
subj;,,ted sinful sent, _body, and heart-destroying eter-
nal to• tare ! The doom thus i 3 rendered ~ternal, so far
as his fellow men c,n dod the me..^s of rendering it so here,
and as they, it would appear. wou:si do, did the Divhse
author permit them, hereafter ! Every tin rltich endears him
to lith swt'pL asumicr, sep crated, for ever, by the erreatcst pos-
sible distance which the eitcumferent e of tie cart's too permit
from native land—kith, kin, end all those ti.eirest of as,-.,c;a,
Lions, by which all are attach, d, mere or the etiect
the utterance of the word transportation, if to be car-
ried into effect here, is to destroy him for every pur-
pose fur which a beneficent Creator brought him into
being. Lnaded _ with chains he is torn from all which
connect him With exstence--kept alive, and that is all, for the
Cole purpose of becoming a slave, and enduring the consequeet
torture of body and heart ! Theenetnaet of hla arrival here,
however tenderly ruav have been his rearing and Lis habits—
however unfitted for labour may he his physical constitution,
it is found at once to be capable of enduring what was not be-
fore supposed to be possible ! The inclemency of the weather
is no longer to have arty effect upon a frame which before
would be considered incapable of resisting it. For fear that
the mind should sink into a passive acqueiscence vii h h's
wretch state, fed, and insufficiently with the coarsest
food, he is subjected to the calls of hunger ! Men
of the most brutal ferocity are in general the inioistera
of his torture, his sustenance and his covering reduced to
the lowest amount which can keep the spark of life from ex-
piring, his chains and his sufferings are alone capable of in-
crease. And now, my Lords, when a human being has thus
'undergone all that heart, body, and soul can endure by this
preparative course, he is rendered a fitting subject for sumntary
jurisdiction !
A short time ago, my Lords, a French ship of war was
here; arid one of the officers who had taken the trouble to
investigate the "prison discipline" system, enquired what was
meant, by the above words. '" Summary jurisdiction," asked
he, " over a whole people ; lii*sv do you explain it ?" It was
impossible to make him comprehend its operation ; nothing
like it exist: in any other part of the civilized world, under any
circumstances whatever ! It is impossible to state where it
begins or where it ends. The free man and the slave are
equally subjected to its hateful oppression. There has indeed
been one accurate definition of it, that so well and so honour-
ably to him given of it by Mr. Stephen, " that it was a system

appropriate only to Turkey or Algiers." The free man is
usable to walk safely at night without being subject to im-
prisonment in a watch-house, from which no magistrate,
(those stipendiary of the police-office alone excepted,) can
liberate him. His wife, sleeping in her bed, is subjected to
" domiciliary visits" of police constables at midnight, who
without the authority of a warrant can break into the house,
and search even her bed itself, under no other restraint but
that of their own sense of decency, under the pretence of
looking fur " absentee convicts !! I" No man can employ
another who may seek service, be his occasion fur it, or the
circumstances under which it is tendered, he ever so free from
even the shadow of suspicion, without first ascertaining from
the police-office that the applicant is not a "convict." To
describe the whole extent, of " prison discipline summary
jurisdiction" would far exceed our limits.
The above instances, however, are sufficient to enable your
Lordships to understand somewhat of its truly " Turkish and
Algerine" qualities. An instance will best illustrate this.
The case of the wretched Greenwood is well known. It is
proverbial in this colony : it ought to have been a subject of
Parliamentary investigation in England. It was a frightful
affair. The poor wretch was an " absentee." A constable,
in the act of apprehending him, was cut by him in resistance
with a knife. He was taken before a Magistrate, and sen-
tenced to receive one hundred lashes for the absconding--
committed to take his vial before the Criminal Court upon
the capital charge of cutting a constable, found guilty, of
course, and executed, taken to death with the wounds
inflicted upon his back by the lash, being still open I It was a
dreadful spectacle —a dreadful affair altogether. The miserable
being sent to his account, the sufferings of bodily anguish,
necessarily preventing his being enabled to make that prepara-
tion which in a Christian land is afforded to the worst of mi.
minalia. This Greenwood affair, my Lords, affords one illus-
tration of the " summary jurisdiction" system. Mr. Mason
considered it proper to inflict the horrid personal punishment
pf the lash upon the miserable wretch who, at the same time,
he" committed" to death for " absconding." For the offence,
the wholly undefined, unlimitedly and unrestrainedly far and
wide extending offence of what is termed " insubordination" a
Magiatr:tte (your Lordships will not fail to bear in mind of
what- materials many of those of this Island are com-
a estend the sentence of transportation," that
posed) can
ia, can inflict that punishment with all its horrors so empha-
tically called. " worse than death, 7 for a certain number of
years ! That limit is a mockery in most cases the worst of
mockeries; no words, no language possesi power sufficient to
describe the feelings of a human being just upon the
tverge
mostslavery,
at being consigned by a Ma-
iristrate perhaps, mhos' originalstation in life, habits, and in.
.g i
ti,:!lect were obviously far mferiot to hiss? victim, at one breath
to al •struction, by the words " three ears' additional sen-
tence! 1!" What an amount of suffering, my Lords, is not
perpetrated upon the miserable wretch, by the utterance of
these few words ! What probably the offence ? A slave
at work in his gang," as we have said, on the point
of becoming free, irritated beyond the power of en-
durance, chlf,d to momentary forgetfulness of his
miserable condition by the oppression of some tyran-
nicalt... slave-driver, frequently himself a slave, aidw
(Alt the prospect of freedom (except by
favour)before
is insub-
Itirn, dares to reply, perhaps to disobey him. This
ordination of the worst sort. Ile 13 taken before a magistrate,
perhaps of the genus Mason. With all these, zeal for prison
discipline is held to give a paramount claim to high conside-
ration, Greenwood fur example. " Let his sentence be ex-
tended!" We forbear to od'er to your Lordships the picture
which. drawn only in the faintest colours, arising from this,
would present itseif to your view ! Desp,ration in general fol-
lows—the mind is filled with the detp-st feelings of resent-
ment for what is cr;mll;:red, and who will say unjustly, an