JB/116/292/002

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VII Escapes
No 5. (p. 159) April 1791. Information given by the government to
the convicts "that none would be permitted to quit the colony
"who had wives and children incapable of maintaining themselves
and likely to become burdensome to the settlement, until they
had found sufficient security for the maintenance of such wives
or children as long as they might continue after them."

What would be deemed sufficient security is not stated.
It could only be in here and there an instance, that a wretch
this circumstanced could be able to find any security at all.

The occasion of this ordinance is curious enough. Notions
were current among the convicts that the marriages of such
as them as had been married in the colony were not binding.
Such is the reason given for confining to the colony all men
whatever who had either wives or children there, whether the
marriage had been celebrated since their arrival in the colony or before.

In the case of a wife married in New South wales, and
whose term of punishment was unexpired, finding such security
was unprofitable. By marrying a woman so circumstanced a
man could neither remitt to her bondage nor forfeit his
own freedom.

Justice, or at least a semblance of it, is so interwoven
in this case with injustice, that it is no easy matter to disentangle
them. As an abstract proposition, it is but reasonable, that a man
should be prevented from leaving his wife or children from being
burdensome to the people. Such accordingly is the law in England.
When in England a man deserts his family he flies from home.
But in the case in question, the flight, if not obstructed, would
have been a flight homeward, and from a place in which no
authority there could detain a man without a crime. That the innocent

Identifier: | JB/116/292/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 116.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	116	Main Headings	panopticon versus new south wales
Folio number	292	Info in main headings field	n. s. wales
Image	002	Titles
Category	copy/fair copy sheet	Number of Pages	2
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	d13 f69 / d14 f70
Penner	john herbert koe	Watermarks
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections	jeremy bentham	Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	37825
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