New South Wales was regarded, by the laughing portion of the British
public, as a perpetual beggar's opera. One eminent writer said, that the
people of these colonies attracted attention only from the curiosity
they excited: mankind were amused to know what form would be assumed by
a community, composed of men who narrowly escaped the executioner. By
another they were compared to an old fashioned infant, which had all the
vices and deformity of a corrupt constitution and precocious passions.
The exhibition of a panorama of Sydney in the metropolis of England,
attracted large crowds. It was hardly possible to exaggerate the charms
of its scenery, when clothed in the radiant verdure of the spring; but
the dwellings were drawn, not only in their just proportions, but with
all the grace of the pencil--cabins looked like bowers. The poet,
Campbell, struck with the glowing harmony, exclaimed, how delightful to
the London thief--beneath the clear sky and amidst the magnificent
forests of Australia,
"Where Sydney Cove its lucid bosom swells"--
to shake the hand he once encountered in the same pocket at Covent Garden
theatre! It is thus, too often, that substantial interests are sacrificed
to humour. No one, acquainted with the minds of prisoners, can imagine
that the purest atmosphere, or most exhilarating prospect, would be
half so attractive to a veteran robber, as the murky cellars of the
"London Shades."
The writings of Archbishop Whately tended to the same result. Against
the principles of transportation he entered an earnest protest, not only
as defeating the primary objects of a penalty, but as constituting a
community charged with the elements of future mischief. He reasoned in
his closet, and formed his conclusions from a process of investigation
which was not complete: he overlooked some facts which tended largely to
neutralise the evil, and that suppress or defeat propensities which
thrive in Europe. He made many senatorial converts, and those he did not
convince, in reference to his main proposition, were anxious to obviate
his objections.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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