Two voyages to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land : with a description of the present condition of that interesting colony: including facts and observations relative to the state and management of convicts of both sexes. Also reflections on seduction and its general consequences / By Thomas Reid.

  • Reid, Thomas, 1791-1825.
Date:
1822
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two voyages to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land : with a description of the present condition of that interesting colony: including facts and observations relative to the state and management of convicts of both sexes. Also reflections on seduction and its general consequences / By Thomas Reid. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    18/428
    and of moral and religious tracts, have opened the ready means of putting useful publications into the hands of the prisoners, which have also so much tended to soften down their obduracy, and generally to melio- rate their disposition and manners. The lot of the convicts meanwhile under sentence of transportation was not quite so happy. Cooped up in prison, waiting for the period at which they were to be shipped off, these hapless creatures of either sex remained immersed in all the turpid influence of that guilt which had brought them to such a state, and still wholly occupied their minds. The listlessness of mind resulting from their escape of capital punishment, the dreadful suspense of death removed, and their poignant oscillations of hope and fear subsided, produced a calm and satisfaction bor- dering on pleasure; and to the unrestrained indulgence of this they freely gave way. But their thoughts long inured in the ways of wickedness, and too willingly withdrawn from reflection on their recent danger, pre- sented no other mental employment than again tra- versing in idea the schemes they had practised, the gains they had successfully secured, and the merry scenes which those guilty gains enabled them to en- joy. No friendly counsel was near to hold up to their view the enormity of their crimes; even the humane admonitions of the venerable judge who found relief in assigning to their offences the mild punishment of transportation,—all was forgotten where no sort of