uthorised to pronounce the existing system of management defective, far
less in application than in principle. The course ascribed to Maconochie
was that of a prejudiced spy, seeking evidence for a case pre-judged:
that which he claimed, was the task of a philosopher, scanning facts
patent to every eye--even more striking when first seen. His conclusions
he attributed to the inevitable process by which facts are generalised,
and demonstrate systems. His style, when deliberate, is terse and
explicit: his ideas he expressed with the utmost freedom; or, as it then
seemed, audacity. The colonists he treated as an operator, who indeed
pities the sufferings of his patient, but disregards a natural outcry,
while expounding in the language of science both the symptoms and the
cure. Without circumlocution or reserve, he spoke of the officers
concerned in convict management as blinded by habit--as empirics who
could patch and cauterise a wound, but were involved in the hopeless
prejudices of a topical practice, and much too far gone to comprehend
improvements founded on scientific principles. His deviations from the
tone of philosophical discussion were not numerous, but they were
marked. The chief police magistrate he compared to the lamplighter, by
whom gas is detested. In praising that officer's administrative talent,
he observed that he belonged to the martinet school, and that his
estimate of human nature depressed it below its worth.

The representations of Maconochie, with reference to the condition of
the convicts and the character of the settlers, awakened a storm of
indignation. Transportation, he said, at a distance appeared a trivial
penalty; but when surveyed more nearly, it was found to be inhuman. The
servant was assigned to a master without his consent; his employment was
alien to his habits; he labored without wages; he was met with
suspicion, and ruled with insult or contempt. The servant became sullen,
the settler vindictive: slight offences were visited with punishments
"severe, to excessive cruelty,"--offences, often the ebullitions of
wounded feeling, and the tokens of a hopeless wretchedness.

Notwithstanding, this condition--unknown to the population at
home--afforded no warning. The victims were uncompensated--the great
majority unreformed. Thus, employers preferred new hands to those passed
through this discipline of suffering. Such as rose in society, were
seldom really respectable; they neither regrett