Virginia, greatly in want, at its first settlement, of labourers to clear away the impenetrable forests which impeded all cultivation, was willing, from very early times, to receive as servants, those English criminals whom our Courts of Law deemed not sufficiently guilty for capital punishment.* The planters hired their services during a limited term; and they were latterly sent out under the care of contractors, who were obliged to prove, by certificates, that they had disposed of them, according to the intention of the law.

[* Banishment was first ordered as a punishment for rogues and vagrants, by statute 39 Eliz. ch. 4.  See Blackst.  Com.  IV. chap. 31.  But no place was there specified.  The practice of transporting criminals to America is said to have commenced in the reign of James I; the year 1619 being the memorable epoch of its origin:  but that destination is first expressly mentioned in 18 Car.  II. ch. 2.—­The transport traffic was first regulated by statute 4 George I. ch.  II. and the causes expressed in the preamble to be, the failure of those who undertook to transport themselves, and the great want of servants in his Majesty’s plantations.  Subsequent Acts enforced further regulations.]

The benefits of this regulation were various.  The colonies received by it, at an easy rate, an assistance very necessary; and the mother country was relieved from the burthen of subjects, who at home were not only useless but pernicious:  besides which, the mercantile returns, on this account alone, are reported to have arisen, in latter times, to a very considerable amount.* The individuals themselves, doubtless, in some instances, proved incorrigible; but it happened also, not very unfrequently, that, during the period of their legal servitude, they became reconciled to a life of honest industry, were altogether reformed in their manners, and rising gradually by laudable efforts, to situations of advantage, independence, and estimation, contributed honourably to the population and prosperity of their new country.**

[* It is said, forty thousand pounds per annum, about two thousand convicts being sold for twenty pounds each.]

[** The Abbe Raynal has given his full testimony to the policy of this species of banishment, in the fourteenth Book of his History, near the beginning.]

By the contest in America, and the subsequent separation of the thirteen Colonies, this traffic was of course destroyed.  Other expedients, well known to the public, have since been tried; some of which proved highly objectionable;* and all have been found to want some of the principal advantages experienced from the usual mode of transportation.—­The deliberations upon this subject, which more than once employed the attention of Parliament, produced at length the plan of which this volume displays the first result.  On December 6, 1786, the proper orders were issued by his Majesty in Council, and an Act establishing a Court of Judicature in the place of settlement, and making such other regulations as the occasion required, received the sanction of the whole legislature early in the year 1787.