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. Some of the events
narrated are doubtless tragic and terrible; but I hold it needful
to my purpose to record them, for they are events which have
actually occurred, and which, if the blunders which produced them
be repeated, must infallibly occur again. It is true that
the British Government have ceased to deport the criminals of England,
but the method of punishment, of which that deportation was a part,
is still in existence. Port Blair is a Port Arthur filled
with Indian-men instead of Englishmen; and, within the last year,
France has established, at New Caledonia, a penal settlement which will,
in the natural course of things, repeat in its annals the history
of Macquarie Harbour and of Norfolk Island.

With this brief preface I beg you to accept this work.
I would that its merits were equal either to your kindness or to my regard.

I am,