Never, Perhaps, Did A
Subject More Interesting And More Curious Offer Itself To The Meditation
Of Either, Than The Colony Of Botany Bay, So Long Misunderstood In
Europe."* (* The Colony Was Not At Botany Bay, Though The Mistake Was
Common Enough Even In England.
But the champion error on that subject was
that of Dumas, who, in Les Trois Mousquetaires, chapter 52 - the
Period,
as "every schoolboy knows," of Cardinal Richelieu - represents Milady as
reflecting bitterly on her fate, and fearing that D'Artagnan would
transport her "to some loathsome Botany Bay," a century and a quarter
before Captain Cook discovered it! Dumas, however, was a law unto himself
in such matters.) Never, perhaps, was there a more shining example of the
powerful influence of laws and institutions upon the character of
individuals and peoples. To transform the most redoubtable highwaymen,
the most abandoned thieves of England, into honest and peaceable
citizens; to make laborious husbandmen of them; to effect the same
revolution in the characters of the vilest women; to force them, by
infallible methods, to become honest wives and excellent mothers of
families; to take the young and preserve them, by the most assiduous
care, from the contagion of their reprobate parents, and so to prepare a
generation more virtuous than that which it succeeds: such is the
touching spectacle that these new English colonies present."
The passage may be compared with Peron's own observations on the same
subject, given in Chapter 9. A more erroneous view of the effects of
convict colonisation could hardly have been conveyed; but the paragraph
may have been written to catch the eye of Napoleon, who was a strong
believer in transportation as a remedial punishment for serious crime,
and had spoken in favour of it in the Council of State during the
discussions on the Civil Code.* (* See Thibaudeau, Memoires sur le
Consulat, English edition, translated by G.K. Fortescue, LL.D., London
1908 page 180.
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