LECTURE XII

Summary

The employment of the labour of transported convicts in colonies is necessarily so limited in extent, that inquiries relating to it may appear altogether insignificant, when compared with those suggested by the interests which we had under consideration in my last lecture. The subject presents, nevertheless, some important economical questions, and has lately received, for the first time, the attention which it merits on the part of the public of this country.

The Portuguese appear to have been the first European nation who employed transportation and penal labour in the colonies as a mode of punishment, and offenders are still frequently banished to their African settlements. The Paulistas, or people of San Paulo, in Brazil, renowned for their energy as discoverers and their ferocity towards the unfortunate natives of South America, are said to have sprung in great proportion from the original stock of convicts. England adopted, in the seventeenth century, the system of transportation to her North American plantations, and the example was propagated by Cromwell, who introduced the practice of selling his political captives as slaves to the West Indians. But the number of regular convicts was too small, and that of free labourers too large, in the old provinces of North America, to have allowed this infusion of a convict population to produce much effect on the development of those communities, either in inspect of their morals or their wealth.