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people 'i . n Britain who were concerned with social prob len,s , and i-.ri th the
penal system in particular, fe lt that the old system was outdated and unah le
to stand up to the claims of the new philosophies now being more widely held
by social theorists;
it was mos t desirable that methods of criminal
punishment be examined, revised and bro . ught into line with modern precepts .
In 1836 the House of Commons, acting in accordance with this widely-held
belief and determined to remodel the penal system, set up the Sir William
Mo lesworth Committee on the Transportation of Criminals .
During its
sittings 1837-8, it heard the evidence of many, varied people, including
-
ex-Governor of Van Diernen 's Land, Sir George Arthur , Bishop Ullathorne
(Hall's friend) and former colonial Police Magistrates like Peter Murdoch ,
previously temporarily at Richmond and later at Oatlands .
Some of those
giving evidence, like the former Superintendent at the Convicts ' Barracks
in Sydney, Slade , painted lurid pictures of the immorality, corruption,
crime and bribery to be found not only on the part of the convicts , but on
that , too , of the officials paid by the Government to care for them, from
the lowest to the highest functionary .
On Septemb er 7, 1836 , a despatch
was forwarded to the Governor of Van Diernen' s Land, enclosing a set of
sixty-seven questions on assignment to which the Molesworth Commi ttee
required answers .
Whi lst the Horne Government was wondering what it should do about
its convicts, Franklin arrived in Hobart Town .
In his party was Captain
A. Maconochie, a former naval officer from Edinburgh , who had vacated his
position as the first professor of geography at London University to which
he had been appointed in 1833, to accompany Frank lin, his friend of twenty
years 1 standi _
ng , to Hobart Town . After hesitating for some months , he had
at length agreed to make the journey as Franklin's Private Secretary , on
the - understanding tht he be offered a more important pos ition in the
administration of the colony later .
Maconochie, one of the founders of
the Royal Ge_ographical Society and its first Secretary , was a man of wide
and varied interests , one of them being the new philosophy concerned with
penal reform .
Before leaving London, he was requested by the Society
for the Improvement of Prison Discipline to report on the convict system
in Van Diernen 's Land . On referring the request to the Colonial Secretary ,
he was told that the British Government was most anxious to obtain
2
"Alexander Maconochie", Australian Dictionary of Vo l. 2,
p. 184 .
P. Serle, Dictionary of Australian Biography , Vol . 2, p. 101 .