Tales of the Early Days

The most remarkable experiment, all things considered, ever made
with the noble purpose of reforming criminals was Captain Maconochie's
attempt to adapt his "mark" system to the monstrous conditions of
penal life at Norfolk Island. And being in principle humane, and in
method an arraignment of all notions current in British and Colonial
officialdom, it met with precisely that degree of success which was
prophesied for it by Mr.--not then "Sir"--E. Deas-Thomson, Colonial
Secretary of New South Wales.

"Speaking, your Excellency," said that venerable if somewhat
pragmatical gentleman to Governor Sir George Gipps, "from a lengthened
experience of--h'm!--convict disciplinary methods, I have--ah!--no
hope that Captain Maconochie's system will achieve the least good. It
must fail, sir!"

And fail it did. To the undisguised delight of the Colonial
Secretary's Office, Sydney, and the Deputy Commissariat-General's
Departments of Sydney and Norfolk Island, it failed. You see, the
first maxim of the Captain was the reformation of the criminal, while
almost every other person connected with the System, from Lord John
Russell to the meanest scourger on the Island or at Port Arthur,
thought the criminal was a mere thing to be locked up, and fettered,
and flogged into purity of life and integrity of conduct.

Now, Maconochie's success would have meant the System's
condemnation. And his failure meant that the System was right and its
administrators were wise. Therefore the failure was only to be
expected. Men do not care about being proved wrong, even if it could
be shown that a few dozen souls were saved in the process of
correction.

For instance, Mr. Assistant-Deputy-Commissary-General Shanks would
have had to confess himself egregiously in error had Convict Tobias
Tracey, pership John, third trip, kept continuously on the path of
rectitude which Captain Maconochie marked out for him. And that was
not to be thought of. Convict Tracey had to fall once more in the
slough of illdoing in order to prove A. D. C. G. Shanks right.

To enable you to understand how terrible was that fall we must
measure the height which he had attained. Step by step, climbing
upwards, now taking firm foothold on a dead sin, now clutching such
aid as came from the opportunity to do a kindly service to a brother-
felon; again slipping back into the pit of corruption because a
messmate jeered at him; yet again striving against the tremendous
alliance of the forces of evil, till he gained a new standing-place on
the up-track--this was the history of Tracey during 1840, and the
early part of 1841. In the later part of '41 he fell--thanks to A. D.
C. G. Shanks--irretrievably. In the early months of '41, he had first
come under the notice of the Captain-Superintendent, and had begun to
aspire towards a manlier existence. During the interval between those
first tentative strugglings to mount, and that last dreadful fall, his
life was epic in its storms and its battles, its victories and its
defeats.