It was his hope, that their labor would discharge the chief cost of their control, and end the mockery, and the inequalities of punishment.
Before the arrival of the Commissioner, penal establishments existed, and prisoners were sequestered for violations of local regulations; or on extensive farms, where grain was grown for the royal stores. At Newcastle, on the Hunter River, were coal mines (1818), where those under colonial sentences, or those _guilty_ of experience in mining, were subjected to a more rigorous servitude. By an onward progress of the settlers, this station was less adapted for its purpose, and (1821) a second was provided at Port Macquarie, 175 miles north of Port Jackson. The increase of population soon rendered a further movement requisite: it was not, however, until 1824, that Surveyor-general Oxley completed his report of Moreton Bay: pioneers were forwarded, and at length 1,000 prisoners were employed in that remote region. The plan thus narrowed, only partially succeeded, and the numbers at last dwindled to 300 men: the Commissioner's idea, therefore, was never fairly tested. An organisation of several thousands in a city of penitence; under a discipline, which, while excluding the worst temptations of regular society, might preserve many of its elementary forms; managed by permanent officers, in number and gradation, sufficient to form and preserve the tone of a profession--is unfortunately still a speculation: nor is it yet safe to assume, that the failure of stations, exhibiting several features of the Commissioner's scheme, but excluding others not less important, is a conclusive argument against the original design.[142]
In this colony, a penal station was projected during the residence of Bigge. While he approved the object, he did not cordially concur in the selected locality: he remarked several of those obstacles to access, which were not compensated by the difficulties of escape. The punishment of colonial offences, when persons were already in bonds, was attended with some difficulty; the law not authorising additions to a sentence, except by a court of criminal jurisdiction, regulated by the forms, and bounded by the limitations of English statutes. To punish a misdemeanour, and sometimes even capital offences, the culprit was brought before a justice of the peace, and sent to a penal settlement for the remainder of his sentence. Thus a widely different penalty attended the different parties to the same crime: one would scarcely touch the place of his second exile, before the termination of his British sentence restored him to full freedom; another, perhaps a prisoner for life, would linger out his wretched existence in the place of his seclusion, forgotten.[143]