the unhappiest period of Australian
history. From its pages may be learned how long it has taken the
intelligent theorist of the British Government to acquire a practical
method of treating a difficult social question; how long stupidity and
inhumanity may be practised with the sanction of what Major Vickers was
fond of respectfully calling 'the King's regulations'; and how far
English gentlemen, remote from the influence of public opinion and
invested with more power than single individuals should ever possess,
may become despots, and even blackguards.

It is a grim record. Let those who are inclined to doubt it turn to the
originals, especially to the report of the House of Commons Committee of
1837-38, and they will find facts which the creator of Rufus Dawes, with
all his supple fancy and delicacy of language, could not bring himself
even to indicate. There are episodes which the more matter-of-fact
historians barely mention, but do not take advantage of their great
privileges to describe. For example, there were times during the first
thirty years of the century when the open and general lewdness of the
officials on some of the principal settlements, in their relations with
the female convicts, rendered them totally unfit for the positions they
held.

Clarke in his researches obtained abundant knowledge of this, but made
no use of it save in adding a few luminous touches to his portrait of
Dawes' passionate and licentious cousin.

In reading the novel for its historical interest, it is necessary
throughout to remember the limitation that the writer has specifically
put upon himself. He did not undertake to illustrate any of the good
effects of exile upon a section of the first offenders sent to the
colonies, and scarcely touches the travesties of justice so often
wrought by that lottery in human life known as the assignment system.
His purpose is to describe 'the dismal condition of a felon during his
term of transportation,' and to show the futility of a prison system
loosely planned at one end of the world and roughly executed at the
other by men who found it easier, and in some cases more agreeable, to
their undiscerning hearts to coerce than to ameliorate.

The Parliamentary Committee defined transportation as 'a series of
punishments embracing every degree of human suffering, from the lowest,
consisting of a slight restraint upon freedom of action, to the
highest, consisting of long and tedious torture.'