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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
Introduction
It was the assignment of convicts to private masters that identified the convict system as a type of slavery, according to Sir William Molesworth and the evidence he stagemanaged before the House of Commons Select Committee on Transportation in 1837. The minister responsible for prisons in 1837, Lord John Russell, Secretary of State for Home Affairs, endorsed this view. All convicts should be placed on public works to avoid ‘evils… exaggerated by the difference of the humanity, weakness, fear or caprice of different masters’. By November of that year Australian colonists knew that cabinet expected to end assignment soon. The governors in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land began to wind down the assignment system by stages.
Russell became Secretary of State for Colonies at the beginning of 1839. He spoke his mind as vigorously as before:
The servitude or slavery, which is comprehended under the word assignment, varies and must vary as slavery does, according to the temper and character of the master to whom the convict is assigned. The worst criminal may have the best master, and the most repentant may be driven into fresh offences by the oppression of which he is the victim, and the profligacy of which he is the witness.
The British government stopped transporting prisoners to New South Wales in 1840. In compensation it directed twice the number to Van Diemen's Land annually as had gone there in previous years. Instead of being assigned, all newcomers in 1840 stepped ashore into public gangs.
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