The transporting of convicts by England to her American Colonies--a far greater injustice to them than the later taxation by which they were lost to her--began early and was, in Virginia, at once and most vigourously opposed; but the everpressing demand for laborers seems to have rapidly modified the opposition, at least on the part of the larger proprietors whose power and influence was out of all proportion to their number; and it was not long before convicts were not only accepted without protest but even sought. It is the old story, in America as elsewhere, of a selfish economic advantage blinding those in power to the welfare of the State as a whole, although many continued to hold misgivings of the outcome. Thus we find Beverley in a later edition of his history, recording: "as for malefactors condemned to transportation, the greedy planters will always buy them, yet it is to be feared that they will be very injurious to the Country, which has already suffered many murders and robberies, the effect of that new law of England."[33]
[33] He refers to the Act passed in 1718, on the transportation of convicts.
But a loose assumption that all the convicts or prisoners arriving were moral derelicts, or those whose offense essentially involved moral depravity, and that the proportion these bore to others leaving Europe for Virginia fixes the ratio of their descendants or influence in the Old Dominion's later population, would be wholly and demonstrably untrue. We must be much more discerning and analytical than that and, as in another instance, look to our definitions.
The penal law of England, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was far more severe than today. Literally scores of offenses were punishable by death or transportation which today are either not crimes or, if still so considered, are punishable only by fine or imprisonment. Among the transgressions most severely dealt with, were purely political offenses; and a political offense was essentially to have picked the wrong side in the many religious, dynastic or civic disturbances of the period. After the various Irish upheavals of the seventeenth century--and that island, it may be said, was conquered by the English no less than three times within less than a hundred years--there was banishment or transportation of many of the losing side. The transportation was especially ruthless after Cromwell's operations and again, a generation or more later, after the Battle of the Boyne. But the Irish were not the only political victims. When the forces of Parliament defeated the Stuart followers, they condemned to transportation a goodly number of their opponents; treatment which was promptly reciprocated by the triumphant Royalists after the Restoration who meted out the same punishment to former Cromwellian soldiers and non-conformists as well. Again, after the abortive effort made in 1685 by the Duke of Monmouth to seize his uncle's crown, the vicious and bloody Jeffries and his colleagues, in their less frenzied moments, sentenced, as criminals, multitudes of the unfortunate followers of Monmouth to transportation to Virginia--there to be sold into as virtual slavery as any thug convicted of murder or highway robbery who had, in one way or another, been lucky enough to escape hanging. On arrival they sold for from £10 to £15 each; and we find the King adding his gentle touch to the work. "Take all care" wrote James to the Council of Virginia "that they shall serve for ten years at least; and that they be not permitted to return themselves by money or otherwise until that term be fully expired. Prepare a bill for the Assembly of our Colony, with such clauses as shall be requisite for that purpose." Thus the king; but in four years he has lost his throne and William III is issuing a full pardon for all political offenders.