Every Man When He Sat Down Pulled
His Bread Out Of His Pocket, And Laid It By His Plate.
The insufficiency of our ration soon diminished our execution of labour.
Both soldiers and convicts pleaded such loss of strength, as to find themselves
unable to perform their accustomed tasks.
The hours of public work were
accordingly shortened or, rather, every man was ordered to do as much
as his strength would permit, and every other possible indulgence was granted.
May, 1790. In proportion, however, as lenity and mitigation were extended
to inability and helplessness, inasmuch was the most rigorous justice executed
on disturbers of the public tranquillity. Persons detected in robbing gardens,
or pilfering provisions, were never screened because, as every man
could possess, by his utmost exertions, but a bare sufficiency to preserve
life*, he who deprived his neighbour of that little, drove him to desperation.
No new laws for the punishment of theft were enacted; but persons of all
descriptions were publicly warned, that the severest penalties,
which the existing law in its greatest latitude would authorise,
should be inflicted on offenders. The following sentence of a court
of justice, of which I was a member, on a convict detected in a garden
stealing potatoes, will illustrate the subject. He was ordered to receive
three hundred lashes immediately, to be chained for six months to two
other criminals, who were thus fettered for former offences, and to have
his allowance of flour stopped for six months. So that during the operation
of the sentence, two pounds of pork, and two pounds of rice (or in lieu
of the latter, a quart of pease) per week, constituted his whole subsistence.
Such was the melancholy length to which we were compelled to stretch
our penal system.
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