For the Term of His Natural Life

Name: For the Term of His Natural Life
Author: Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke

by Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke

Pages: about 655
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 12 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 6.7 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

My Dear Sir Charles, I take leave to dedicate this work to you, not merely because your nineteen years of political and literary life in Australia render it very fitting that any work written by a resident in the colonies, and having to do with the history of past colonial days, should bear your name upon its dedicatory page; but because the publication of my book is due to your advice and encouragement.
The convict of fiction has been hitherto shown only at the beginning or at the end of his career. Either his exile has been the mysterious end to his misdeeds, or he has appeared upon the scene to claim interest by reason of an equally unintelligible love of crime acquired during his experience in a penal settlement. Charles Reade has drawn the interior of a house of correction in England, and Victor Hugo has shown how a French convict fares after the fulfilment of his sentence. But no writer--so far as I am aware--has attempted to depict the dismal condition of a felon during his term of transportation.
I have endeavoured in “His Natural Life” to set forth the working and the results of an English system of transportation carefully considered and carried out under official supervision; and to illustrate in the manner best calculated, as I think, to attract general attention, the inexpediency of again allowing offenders against the law to be herded together in places remote from the wholesome influence of public opinion, and to be submitted to a discipline which must necessarily depend for its just administration upon the personal character and temper of their gaolers.
Your critical faculty will doubtless find, in the construction and artistic working of this book, many faults. I do not think, however, that you will discover any exaggerations.

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For the Term of His Natural Life

From the opening

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