Although, as already stated, the property in the services of convicts was vested in the colonial governor, a practice prevailed in those places to which offenders were transported, of granting them in certain cases permission to employ themselves for their own benefit. These per missions were usually called " tickets of leave." By the stat. 6 & 7 Viet. c. 7, the legislature, thinking it just that such convicts should be protected in their persons and in the possession of such property as they might acquire by their industry, empowered them to hold per sonal property, and to maintain actions in respect thereof while their tickets remained unrevoked.
The reception of convicts having, however, become distasteful to the colonies, the stat. 10 & 11 Vict. c. 67, was passed, permitting offenders under sentence of transportation to be removed to any prison or peni tentiary in Great Britain ; directors of the principal convict prisons being appointed afterwards under the stat. 13 & 14 Vict. c. 39. The difficulty attending the reception by the colonies of transported 'con victs having increased, the stat. 16 & 17 Viet. c. 99, next abolished the punishment of transportation for any term less than fourteen years, and substituted penal servitude, giving the courts power in all cases to award that punishment in lieu of transportation.
Finally, the etat. 20 & 21 Vict. c. 3, abolished transportation alto gether as a punishment, substituting PENAL SERVITUDE; but convicts under sentence of penal servitude may still be sent beyond seas by order of the Secretary of State.
Transportation was of great value to our early colonists, as it sup plied what was so essential to their well-being—cheap labour. From Australia it was subsequently extended to the settlements of the Cape of Good Hopo, to Bermuda, and Gibraltar, but the last two were (and are) more of the nature of places of penal imprisonment abroad ; and with respect to Bermuda, it has been recently (1861) announced by the Secretary of the Colonies that the government have adopted measures for diminishing the number of convicts at Bermuda, with a view to the early abolishing of transportation to that colony.
All convicts sent to Bermuda or Gibraltar are employed by the government on public works in the dockyards and fortifications. The system of punishment pursued is essentially different from that which has been in force in the Australian penal colonies. The convicts sent to Bermuda are kept apart from the free population ; they are shut up in hulks by night, and are worked in gangs by day under the superin tendence of free overseers. A small amount of wages is paid to them for their labour, a portion of which they are allowed to spend, and the remainder forms a fund, which they receive on becoming free. At the expiration of their sentences they do not remain in Bermuda, but are sent back at the expense of the government of this country.
Mr. Bentham, Dr. Whately, the present archbishop of Dublin, and other writers on the theory of punishment, have condemned the general principle of transportation ; and comparatively little has been urged in opposition to their arguments. Mr. Bentham's objections will be found in a chapter on Transportation, in his ' Theory of punishments ;' the archbishop of Dublin's, in his two Letters to Earl Grey.' These argu ments, but still more the resolutions of the colonies not to receive any more convicts, led to the abandonment of the system. The colonists were no doubt right in refusing to let their society continue to be the receptacle of the crime and profligacy of the parent state ; but it is not se clear from doubt that in an early stage of settlement the system of transportation may not be adopted with advantage ; indeed the remarkable prosperity of Australia, if not its very existence as a settlement, is owing to this system. Where the population is small, and labour scarce, the criminal is removed from much temptation, and placed in the very best position for retrieving his character ; while the settler has the benefit of cheap and constant labour. The expense, however, to the parent state is large ; it was estimated that in transporting to Australia each convict cost the state S21.