Such was the state of this important question during the last years of Arthur's administration. When he deemed the details of his penal system nearest perfection, the main principles on which it rested were undermined. The severity enjoined by Lord Stanley, and the lenity exercised by General Bourke, raised an outcry against transportation; and once more propagated the idea that in its lenity it was corrupt, and its severity cruel. A running fire was kept up by the press, which returned to the question of secondary punishments with new vigour, and repeated all the problems on this perplexing subject--perhaps, destined to confound the wise, and furnish a theme for dogmatism through all time. In 1837, the House of Commons appointed the committee, of which Sir William Molesworth was chairman. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 216: _Mudie's Felonry._] [Footnote 217: "I thought them a villanous shabby set, compared with convicts in Van Diemen's Land." "There appeared a great deal of flogging." "My men did twice as much work." "I told my brother, if he used his men as we did, he would get more work: he said _it would be ill-received through the country_. They had very inferior clothing, and got very little meat. These remarks were applicable to the estates in general."--_Mr. P. Murdoch's Evidence_--questions 1397 to 1403.] [Footnote 218: _Par. Pap._] [Footnote 219: _Sydney Gazette, April 1835._] [Footnote 220: "It was the uniform tendency or design of the writings of these individuals, as it has been also that of all other public writers of convict origin in the Australian colonies, to reduce the reputable portion of the community to the same level as themselves; to abolish all the salutary distinctions which the laws of God and man have erected between right and wrong; and if possible to dispossess the whole convict population of all sense of criminality and degradation."--_Lang's Transportation and Colonisation_, 1837. p. 109. And yet the disappearance of emancipist disqualifications has almost banished a class of writers who were accepted as champions, but who could not seriously affect the ultimate views of public and private morality--they were mere actors.] SECTION XIX.