Project Gutenberg's For the Term of His Natural Life, by Marcus Clarke

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Title: For the Term of His Natural Life

Author: Marcus Clarke

Release Date: September, 2002 [Etext #3424]
Posting Date: October 12, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE

By Marcus Clarke

DEDICATION TO SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY

My Dear Sir Charles, I take leave to dedicate this work to you, not
merely because your nineteen years of political and literary life in
Australia render it very fitting that any work written by a resident in
the colonies, and having to do with the history of past colonial
days, should bear your name upon its dedicatory page; but because the
publication of my book is due to your advice and encouragement.

The convict of fiction has been hitherto shown only at the beginning or
at the end of his career. Either his exile has been the mysterious end
to his misdeeds, or he has appeared upon the scene to claim interest by
reason of an equally unintelligible love of crime acquired during his
experience in a penal settlement. Charles Reade has drawn the interior
of a house of correction in England, and Victor Hugo has shown how
a French convict fares after the fulfilment of his sentence. But
no writer--so far as I am aware--has attempted to depict the dismal
condition of a felon during his term of transportation.

I have endeavoured in "His Natural Life" to set forth the working and
the results of an English system of transportation carefully considered
and carried out under official supervision; and to illustrate in the
manner best calculated, as I think, to attract general attention, the
inexpediency of again allowing offenders against the law to be herded
together in places remote from the wholesome influence of public
opinion, and to be submitted to a discipline which must necessarily
depend for its just administration upon the personal character and
temper of their gaolers.

Your critical faculty will doubtless find, in the construction and
artistic working of this book, many faults. I do no