18/06/2006
History of New South Wales From the Records
VOLUME 1 - GOVERNOR PHILLIP 1783-1789G. B. Barton - 1889
PART III
Dr. Lang's Estimate
"IT is no longer possible to ascertain with any degree of accuracy the number of convicts transported to the West Indies and the American colonies previous to the war of American Independence. During the publication of the Encyclopedie Methodique, in the year 1785, the article Etats Unis was submitted by its author, M. Jefferson Meusnier, to the President Jefferson, who was then American Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of France; and in reference to this class of persons, to which the French editor had alluded as one of the three classes that peopled America, Jefferson supplied him with the following remarks [quoted ante, p. 19]:-
"It is pretty evident, from the tenor of these observations, that this was by no means a favourite subject with the worthy Plenipotentiary, whose native patriotism, as well as his laudable desire to make his countrymen stand as well as possible with their good allies, doubtless induced him to throw a little American dust in the eyes of the French encyclopaedist. For while he would induce the reader, at the commencement of his remarks, to believe that not more than two thousand English convicts had ever been transported to America altogether, he intimates at the close of them that this estimate referred to the colony of Virginia alone, the comparison which he institutes being made with the population of that colony at the commencement of the war, and not with that of the United States generally.
"On the publication of Governor Phillip's Voyage to New South Wales in the year 1790 (1), an estimate of the number of convicts annually transported to America for some time previous to the war, was made expressly for that work (if I am not mistaken) by the Honorable Mr. Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland, a nobleman who had much better access to correct information on the subject of transportation than President Jefferson; who, besides, had no prejudice to bias him respecting it, and who had himself been in America in the capacity of envoy-extraordinary from Great Britain during the war; and the result of that estimate was, that the number so transported had been about two thousand every year.
"Allowing, however, that this estimate was as much above the truth as President Jefferson's was below it, I conceive it may be taken for granted that, as the system of transporting criminals to America had been in practice from the year 1619, or for one hundred and fifty-seven years previous to the American Declaration of Independence, as many convicts had been transported to America during that period as would have amounted to at least five hundred every year for a whole century previous to the war, or to fifty thousand altogether.
"It would seem that none of the convicts were ever transported to that part of the American territory called New England, comprising the States of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and Rhode Islands. The puritanical character and origin of their population preclude such an idea.
"The American colonies to which convicts were transported under the old system were those of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, North and South Carolina, Georgia, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania; the population of which amounted at the commencement of the war to 1,800,000, that of the New England colonies being about 700,000. It was, therefore, over a territory extending from north to south from six to seven hundred geographical miles, and of boundless extent to the westward - a country, moreover, containing at the close of the period referred to a population of upwards of a million and a half - that 50,000 British convicts were slowly dispersed in the course of a century and upward. These convicts were literally "bought by the planters for the terms specified in their respective warrants, and worked with their negro slaves under the lash of an overseer," as is testified by a contemporary writer; for it would seem that the British Government of that period never inquired how the convicts were treated in the American colonies, provided they were only prevented from returning home." - Dr. Lang, Transportation and Colonisation, 1837, p. 35.
NOTES:
1. The only estimate to be found in it appears in a foot-note (p. 6), where it is stated that "the mercantile returns" of the system amounted to £40,000 per annum; "about 2,000 convicts being sold for £20 each."
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