No V.

Observations respecting the selection of convicts for transportation, and on the means of preserving health on the voyage.

UPON

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PON the proper selection of convicts to be transported to a new colony, its improvement must almost totally depend. The advice of Lord Bacon upon this subject is worthy of attention. "The people wherewith you plant," says his Lordship, in his essay on Planta tions," ought to be gardeners, ploughmen, labourers, smiths, carpenters, joiners, fishermen, fowlers, with some few apothecaries, surgeons, cooks, and bakers." How little such a selection is attended to in the transportation of convicts to New South Wales, was sufficiently exempliQ4 fied

fied on board the Calcutta, where, out of three hundred and seven convicts, there were but eight

carpenters and joiners, three smiths, one gardener, twenty labouring farmers, two fishermen, nine taylors, and four stone-masons. The remainder may be classed under the heads of gentlemen's servants, hair-dressers, hackney-coachmen, chairmen, silk-weavers, calico-printers, watch-makers, lapidaries, merchant's clerks, and gentlemen. It requires no argument to demonstrate the little use such trades are in an infant colony, where agriculture is the chief pursuit, and where manual labour is infinitely more necessary than ingenuity. It is true a watch-maker deals in metals as well as the smith, but we doubt whether, with all his exertions, he could make a hundred nails in a day. With respect to gentlemen convicts, they are worse than useless, for they are invariably troublesome, as the present government of New South Wales can sufficiently attest. The education and the manners of such people will,

will, in most instances, prevent their being employed in manual labour; they will always find advocates in the feelings of those who hold the rank which they once held, and this will prevent their being confounded with the common herd of convicted felons: but, although by their crimes they have lost the reality of their original rank, the shadow of it remains, together with a portion of the feelings which constituted their former character; hence they contemplate their degradation with impatience bordering on phrenzy; they are guilty of indiscretions (particularly in language) which must create continual disturbance to an administration, where coercion is the only engine of government, and where consequently jealousy is continually on the watch to anticipate insurrection,

The method of selecting the convicts sent out in the Calcutta might certainly be improved. A

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list of four hundred convicts was sent to the surgeon of that ship, from which he was to choose three hundred. In this selection, he, of course, regarded merely health and age, for he was to receive 10l. for every convict landed in health in New South Wales. Of their characters he could have no knowledge, and he had no instructions respecting peculiar trades, in preference to others.

The dreadful mortality which has, in several instances, taken place among the convicts on board transports going to New South Wales, must proceed chiefly from a want of attention to cleanliness, both in the persons of the convicts and the ship herself; for, in every instance where proper precautions were taken, no such mortality has taken place. The convicts, in general, being equally indolent and careless, as well as unused to a ship, will in many instances be found so

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negligent

negligent of themselves, that severity is some. times necessary to prevent their becoming the most disgusting objects from vermin and dirt. In passing through the warm latitudes in particular, the most rigid attention to cleanliness can alone prevent disease; the following precautions, if strictly followed, will, as far as it is in the power of man, prevent the admission of sickness, or effectually check its progress, in the most crowded ship. When the prison is on the orlop deck, where the air has but a scanty admission, it should never be wetted, the dirt should be scraped off every morning, and the deck afterwards scrubbed with bibles * and dry sand.

Every part of the prison should be clean, so that no receptacle for bones or other filth could be found; and should it be necessary to stow any

* These are blocks of wood a foot long, and six inches deep and wide.

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