Base and Clever
Author: Prof. Malcolm Prentis, Catholic University of Australia. Latest publication, ‘The Scots in Australia’.
A Scot himself, a landed gentleman and traveller, Alexander Marjoribanks observed of his felonious countrymen in Australia in 1847:
‘ A man is banished from Scotland for a great crime, from England for a small one, and from Ireland, morally speaking for no crime at all. … Both in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, Scotch convicts are considered the worst, and English the best. This seems to arise not so much from the laws of the two countries being so essentially different, as in their being differently administered; the punishment for minor crimes in particular, being infinitely more severe in England than in Scotland. Hence hundreds are transported annually from England, for offences which, in Scotland, would be punished by sixty days’ confinement in jail or Bridewell…In Scotland…they are mostly old offenders before they are transported’.
Three years later, this impression was confirmed by the conservative jurist Dr Archibald Allison: ‘It has generally been observed, by those practically acquainted with the working of the transportation system in the colonies, that the Irish convicts were generally the best, and the Scotch beyond all question, the worst who arrived’. This seemed a puzzle to those who esteemed the free settlers from the two countries in reverse order. Allison put it down to the superior legal system north of the Tweed. ‘The Scotch law,’ he continued, ‘administered almost entirely by professional men, and on fixed principles, has long been based on the principle of transporting persons only who were deemed irreclaimable in this country’.
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Proposal put before NSW Legislative Council in 1849 – for the Reintroduction of Convict Transportation from the Mother Country (Abolition of Transportation had already occurred in 1840).
The Committee gave consideration to the idea proposed by Earl Grey (UK Prime Minister) that:
“[With the total cost to the Home Government] being proposed at something short of £31 per head, this would save in relation to the cost of British gaols enough that would go far towards the extinction of the [British] national debt, enable Britain to organise a grand system of national education and immigration, ultimately reduce to a mere nominal amount the crime and pauperism, which are now the plague-spots of her system, and the main cause of the intestine turbulence and disorders with which she is troubled”.
Response from NSW Assembly
“This Council, having maturely considered the Despatch from the Secretary of State for the Colonies…declines to accede to the proposal therein contained for the renewal of Transportation to this Colony, and strongly protests against the adoption of any measure by which the Colony would be degraded into a Penal Settlement. Public meetings in Sydney on 8 June 1849, and also in Melbourne, passed Resolutions objecting to the renewal of transportation, while various Petitions against the renewal of transportation had been received by the Council. Governor Fitz Roy duly reported this to London, recommending that no more convicts be sent. Five ships had already sailed, and all prisoners found work somewhere in the Colony, but the public sentiment was abundantly clear: convicts were no longer welcome in New South Wales”.
Quote from LTS on Scottish Convicts
“Over four million Australians have convict ancestors. In the past ‘the convict stain’ was a source of embarrassment and shame. Today most Australians are proud of their convict ancestry and will actively investigate the lives of their forebears”
This claim is probably rather too optimistic. There is no register of Scottish convicts like the register for Irish Convicts on the Mayberry website. Even with the Irish site, active research from descendants into the lives of their forbears seems to be the rare exception rather than the rule.