The Land of Dreams by David Kemp

Author:David Kemp [Kemp, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780522873344
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing

Transportation: revival or cessation?

The British policy that aroused radical democratic organisation in New South Wales, reignited the calls for political independence that had been briefly voiced at the time of the Molesworth Report and promoted national feeling across colonial boundaries was to be the transportation of convicts. Although the leadership of the campaign to force Britain’s hand on the issue had its headquarters in New South Wales, the principal grievance around which the campaign focused its energies concerned the use of Van Diemen’s Land as the empire’s principal jail.

While there were legitimate objections to the transportation of convicts elsewhere, in Van Diemen’s Land the bungling of British policy in the early 1840s led the free islanders to believe that Britain’s policy was in the process of destroying the colony as a venue for free settlement. It was the fear of the potential destruction of the free society in Van Diemen’s Land by an inrush of convicts that, more than anything else, motivated the political campaign to force Britain to end its long-standing policy and grant the colonists the right to govern themselves.

The first steps towards a national campaign occurred with the re-emergence of the convict system as a significant political issue in New South Wales in the later 1840s, a political development that was not anticipated by any concerned, first because transportation to the colony had been ended in 1840, and second, because the request for its revival came from the most influential citizens of the colony itself. It was not a policy initiative required of New South Wales by the British Government.

Russell’s Liberal government responded to a formal report of the New South Wales Legislative Council supporting the revival of transportation, which was seen, both in Britain and the colony, as in essence a policy for the provision of cheap labour to aid development in the more remote districts. The British Government seized the opportunity provided by the report to respond positively, confident that successful penal reform in Britain would enable a significant improvement in the character of convict labour. The initiative rapidly decayed into an angry political battle between the colonists and the British Government, fuelled by bitter misunderstandings—a circumstance that has to be explained against a background of powerful cross-currents generated by the British liberal reformers, by disagreements over political ideals within New South Wales, by the growing sense in Australia of the uniqueness and potential of the land, and by British misjudgements and bungling.

Although transportation to New South Wales had been discontinued in 1840, and the Molesworth Report had claimed that there were significant problems with the old system—indeed that the system was simply ‘white slavery’—there was renewed interest within the British Government in sending to Australia convicts under reformed policies that could avoid the former abuses, while still relieving Britain of the pressures on its penal system. Transportation remained a relatively cheap and useful option compared with the major investment in prisons that penal reform and the cessation of transportation would have required. It was

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