Fifty gentlemen presented a requisition to the sheriff, to call a meeting, to discuss the abuses of transportation: this, however, he declined, and the requisitionists permitted the matter to drop, lest an exposure should endanger assignment altogether. It could only suggest to the British parliament new arguments for abolition, when it was found that a doubly convicted offender was sent a few miles, into an opulent establishment, to enjoy the dominion of the larder, to romp with the maids, traffick with the tradesmen, and command the means of vicious gratification; while a simple rustic, fresh from his first transgression, was subject to all the hardships of predial bondage. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 226: Despatch lo Lord Glenelg, October, 1837.] SECTION XXI. But Sir W. Molesworth had roused opposition to the prevailing system. The Commons' committee examined twenty-three gentlemen, whose testimony would be without novelty to the reader of these volumes. The greater part concurred in the inexpediency of assignment, and in the usefulness and importance of transportation. These witnesses were charged by Maconochie with a general indifference to the moral welfare and personal improvement of the prisoners. A colonist would, however, easily distinguish substantial benevolence from sentimental opinions; and they knew, by the trials of experience, how toilsome are the most generous efforts to correct habits not to be softened by the tears of compassion, and which do not yield to the wand of the magician. The committee recommended that transportation to New South Wales, and the settled districts of Van Diemen's Land, should be discontinued: that establishments abroad should be limited to places where no free settlers were allowed to enter; that the abridgment of a sentence should be determined by fixed rules; that at its close, encouragement should be offered, to such as might merit the favor, to go to some country where support could be more easily obtained, and character recovered; and, finally, that no convict should be permitted to remain at the place of his punishment after its termination. Such were the recommendations of this famous committee, which were carried into effect only so far as suited the convenience of the ministers; who, however, stopped transportation to New South Wales, and revoked the order in council by which that country was constituted a penal settlement. "On the 1st of August, 1840," said Lord John Russell, "transportation to New South Wales will cease for ever." In van Diemen's Land, assignment was abolished: first in domestic service, then in the towns; and the opinion was intimated by Lord John Russell, that he inclined to the views of Archbishop Whately, with limitations and exceptions.[227]