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38
discipline, 1dth which so many of them violently disagreed, had been
favourably received by the Colonial Secretary's Office, forwarded to
Lord Russell at the Home Office, from whence it had been introduced into
the House of Commons as a Parliamentary Paper and used by the Molesworth
Committee on Transportation, which had finally given its verdict :
transportation is both an unequal and uncertain punishment ,
produces but little apprehension amngst the criminal population
of this country, does not tend to reform the convict , is not
susceptible of any improvement which would render it an efficacious
punishment and that its influence on the moral state of society in
the penal colonies is of the worst description . . . . 7
The Committee recommended it should cease to New
South Wales and the
settled districts of Van Diemen 's Land.
Maconochie was surprised at the reception his report received;
Franklin was
inignant and mortified that his own suggestions were given
no publicity and neg lected in favour of his Private Secretary 's opinions ;
whilst the colonists were angered by the insult to their character.
In
the ensuing storm of feeling, Franklin felt obl _
iged to dismiss his Private
Secretary on September 21.
Moreover , residents of Campbell Town,
Oatlands and Bothwe ll, resentful of the slur cast upon their imag e,
requested his opinion on the moral character of the free population.
Tactful as ah;ays , he responded soothingly :
.... The unfavourab le features in the moral character of the free
population are due
population under the existing system ,
less to the connection with a convict
than to the recency of the
colony's existence, a position which was in its origin extremely
unfavourab le to the development of pub lic spirit by causing the
private interests of individuals struggling against hardship and
difficulties to appear almost exclusively urgent and imperative
in their own estimation . . .. 8
The storm slowly subsided.
With the publication in the press
of let.t ers
from Maconochie explaini_ng his ideas , and later the publication
of his book "Australiana" or Though ts on Convict Management and other
subjects connected with the Australian Penal Colonies ,
a capab ly-written
work , the
Public gradually began to take an interest in the social
philosophies he expounded and, in some cases , to accept them . On
October 12, 1838, the Tasmanian wrote:
.... The object of our native country is to reform its
transported criminals - to bring good out of evil - to regain
man from the degradation into ·which circumstances and untutored
dispositions have plunged him, without a greater severity than
7
B
Quoted Tasmanian and Revie\v , Oct . 26, 1838 .
Ibid, Oct. 12, 1838 .