These complaints do not seem to
your Committee to have the slightest foundation in fact, and Sir Richard
Bourke appears to have acted with wisdom, justice, and humanity in his
treatment of the convict population.
With regard to the second alleged cause of the increase of crime,
namely, the jury laws, your Committee need hardly repeat, that the
well-proven effect of transportation is to demoralize, not to reform an
offender; therefore, in a community like New South Wales, wherein so
large a proportion of the population are persons who have been convicts,
to permit such persons generally to sit upon juries must evidently have
an injurious effect. Your Committee, however, must observe, that under a
good system of punishment, an offender should, at the expiration of his
sentence, be considered to have atoned for his crimes, and he should be
permitted to commence a new career without any reference to his past
one.
With regard to the last alleged cause of the increase of crime, namely,
the increasing number of emancipists; little doubt, your Committee
think, can be entertained of the pernicious consequences of annually
turning loose a number of unreclaimed offenders on so small a community
as that of New South Wales.
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