★ Keep up to date with the latest news - subscribe to the Transcribe Bentham newsletter; Find a new page to transcribe in our list of Untranscribed Manuscripts
Police Report
Expence of punishment.
That freedom fruitful as well as
sweetens labour, is an indisputable truth. But,
that labour, even when forced,+ is naturally
productive, and that to a degree beyond what is necessary
to pay for the maintenance of the labourer, is
a truth equally indisputable. In antient Greece
and Rome, —one may almost say in the antient world— wealth had no other bases. than
forced labour. In the Russian Empire it
rests on the same footing foundation even now.+2 Even
in this free and happy country which certainly
is not the less happy for the institution
of apprenticeship, force is the principle
without which the no positive value of could be depended
upon as the result of the labour of the apprentice,
and yet after allowance made for
the time consumed in instruction and for the
imbecillity and awkwardness that attend the
commencement of the term, the value of the
labour of an apprentice is universally found
and acknowledged to lie on the positive side be positive.+3 The
condition of a British convict would neither
have been nor ever can be attended with any
of these useless and arbitrary inflictions rigours/sufferings which
embittered the condition of the Grecian and Roman
Slave. But in as far as concern the faculty
of extracting a reasonable quantity
of ordinary labour, a quantity little if any
thing inferior to that which in a state of freedom
is extracted by daily pay, it does not appear
to your Committee why the value
of forced labour should stand at a lower
pitch under the gentle system of manners that present established
pitch in this country than under a state of
the most savage and and unbridled/obdurate barbarous tyranny.
above allowed to that is in faith. The result
of the practice of government in this country
is itself but a view to
+ and without the help of
physical barriers to secure
the presence of the labourer.
+2 It has no other in our
own or any other of the West
Indian Colonies—It
It would be an error if
we were to suppose that
this basis is composed of
in any degree of any thing
that if the odious ingredients
which enter into
the composition of slavery.
It is from Caprice and unbridled passion
that a state of servitude derives
all its horrors: but under the
government of this country no
passion is without its bridle:
and it is by steadiness, not by
caprice, that labour is extracted
to advantage.
+3 not to speak of the
protected though it is to
be found perhaps not yet sufficiently
protected condition
of the West Indian Negro,
the
Identifier: | JB/149/136/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 149.
|
|||
---|---|---|---|
149 |
panopticon versus new south wales |
||
136 |
police report |
||
001 |
|||
text sheet |
1 |
||
recto |
d2 |
||
jeremy bentham |
|||
49990 |
|||